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A hero of our times

The beard, the cigar, the fatigues, above all the unflinching courage and determination of the world’s longest-serving and most charismatic political leader are unmistakable. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruiz — Fidel to his legion of admirers in every continent — has announced that he will stand down on Sunday. Now 82, this revolutionary has been Prime Minister and President of Cuba since the band of revolutionaries he led overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batis ta in 1959. He has outlasted nine U.S. Presidents and six top leaders of the Soviet Union or Russia. Tiny Cuba has endured an economic blockade — which even a moderate commentator calls ‘thuggish’ — imposed by the United States. It was the target of a failed CIA-inspired invasion in the Bay of Pigs in 1960, and in October 1962 was the site of the closest approach to nuclear war the world has yet seen. The U.S. retains its infamous military prison at Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay, and the viciousness directed at the Cuban leader by American politicians and by Cuban-American exiles, who are mainly based in Florida, only 40 miles away across the Gulf of Mexico, has never ceased. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, its big ally, the Cuban people and state went through an unprecedented time of economic troubles, including food shortage, and came out of it inspiringly, with their heads high.

Fidel has always been hugely active, aiding national liberation movements with troops and medical staff in Angola and Ethiopia, and — with his former comrade in arms, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who was murdered in Bolivia in 1967 — serving as a socialist icon for millions around the world. He has been a great friend of India, as an Op-Ed article in this newspaper by former External Affairs Natwar Singh brought out insightfully and movingly. Fidel’s domestic achievements, if quite mixed in the economic field, are remarkable. They include good public-sector schooling, a high-quality public health service, and a disaster-management system far better than the third-world shambles exposed by Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. in 2005. Cuba has political prisoners — though following the 2003 invasion of Iraq it ill behoves many so-called democracies to accuse a victim of repeated aggression of that — and restrictions on the media and generally on the expression of dissent. It is also true that over time many Cubans have tried to escape in ramshackle craft across shark-infested seas. What Fidel indisputably has is popular support. Following Fidel’s serious illness in 2006, his 75-year-old brother and revolutionary comrade Raúl has been officiating as temporary President. Now Fidel has decided to call it a day. Old soldiers are supposed to just fade away. While saluting a hero of our times, the people of India will wish Fidel a reposeful retirement and happy soldiering on — in the realm of ideas, as he has promised to do.

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