Up close with Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro’s recent death triggered flashbacks of my encounter with Cuba’s president at the height of his power. As the then-Latin Affairs reporter for the Palm Beach Post, I was in Cozumel, Mexico, when Castro arrived on May 17, 1979, for a two-day mini-summit with Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo—where creating “a new international economic order” would be a key topic.

Clad in an olive-green military uniform, Castro descended from a jet to a hero’s welcome.

Noting that Castro had launched his revolution from Mexico, Portillo told him, “You’ve come back, having won dignity for the Cuban people.”

Castro said he wanted to fortify the Cuba-Mexico friendship, one so strong Mexico had refused to join in the economic blockade of Cuba.

“You were the only ones in this hemisphere who respected our auto-determination,” Castro said.

Both presidents met against a backdrop of turmoil in Central America. A civil war raged in Nicaragua; El Salvador tottered toward a similar conflict.

Before leaving Cozumel, Castro would deny assertions from the United States that Cuba was inciting unrest in those nations.

Comandante Castro had launched his revolution in 1956 by sailing from Tuxpan, Mexico, to Cuba, with 81 fellow guerrillas. Their reconditioned 60-foot yacht, Granma, reached Cuba on December 2, 1956.

Then, 58 years ago this week—on January 1, 1959—the rebels overthrew right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro had claimed to be pro-democracy, but instead imposed a communist regime. Doctors, engineers and other Cuban professionals began fleeing the island, followed by laborers and others. Many headed to Florida, to places such as Miami, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

In 1976, the Palm Beach Post lured me from California to be its Latin affairs writer. For the next eight years, I covered Palm Beach County’s fast-growing Hispanic community, which was predominantly Cuban. Like other Latinos, the vast majority of Cuban exiles I met were hard-working and admirable.

Many dreamed of someday resuming their lives in Cuba. But they couldn’t, they said, until Cuban communism was wiped out.

One assault against communist Cuba had occurred—the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, in which 1,400 Cuban exiles trained by the CIA made a futile thrust against Castro.

While I respected the Cuban Americans, I didn’t entirely agree with their politics.

Consider the co-owner of a small anti-Communist newspaper that I befriended.

In a casual conversation, she told me: “Many Latinos are lazy and waste their lives. In our countries, it’s good to have a strong dictator to motivate people, make them work.”

She meant a right-wing dictator, not a leftist one like Castro.

I was speechless. Life under a dictator, no matter his stripes, was not for me. And, it should go without saying, but Latinos are not lazy.

I was dispatched to Cozumel by my editor, Jim Quinlan, who feared lasting repercussions from Castro’s visit, repercussions that didn’t materialize.

“Castro may ask Mexico to cut off oil to the U.S.,” Jim said two days before the summit, urging me to depart immediately. I did.

Hours after arriving in Cozumel, Castro held a press conference for more than 100 international journalists.

So here he was up close, the towering figure who to that point had bedeviled six U.S. presidents; the man who had survived a revolutionary war, the Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs and countless assassination plots; the man who gave seven million Cubans “free” healthcare and “free” education—at the cost of their freedom; the man who would see more than 1.5 million Cubans escape overseas.

Castro didn’t have a speech so he took questions instead. His answers still flash in my mind today.

“When will Cuba hold free elections, like those in the U.S.?” one reporter asked.

“And who says the United States has the best system?” Castro said with a smirk, dismissing the query.

Another said: “Mr. President, you’ve been accused of active interventions in the affairs of Nicaragua and El Salvador.”

“That’s all we need, to be blamed for what’s happening in Central America,” Castro replied.

Nicaragua’s crisis was caused by right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza, whose family had plundered Nicaragua while Somoza’s soldiers committed mass murder, Castro said.

“Do you think people just cross their arms” amid such abuses, he asked, suggesting Nicaraguans chose to fight.

Somoza, toppled in mid-1979, was assassinated in Paraguay in 1980, at age 54.

Castro, by comparison, endured. He died at 90 on November 25.

Love him or hate him, Castro was one of the 20th century’s big names. I didn’t love him. I didn’t hate him. As a journalist, I was simply excited to cover his summit.