Ben_Norman's diary

“Men do not shape destiny, destiny produces the men of the hour.” Imbued with revolutionary fervour and a strong sense of both history and purpose Fidel Castro wrote these words about his old comrade Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Throughout the nineteen fifties and sixties revolutionary passion ran high across Latin America and the third world. It seemed that history had chosen its moment and in return destiny had chosen the men for the hour. Che, the name has become synonymous with youthful rebellion, a syllable for revolution. His face is guaranteed to appear, like a modern messiah, at most left wing protests since he became martyred to the cause in the Bolivian jungle. Of course if you don’t see his face on a placard or poster its advisable to look at hats, wallets, handbags, T-shirts, calendars, clocks or just about anything else in the ever growing “revolutionary industry”, where you can buy off the shelf ideals and a revolutionary image for a couple of dollars.  There are times when you cannot help but be impressed with how capitalism has taken a man who spent years of his life locked in the bitter struggle of jungle warfare against imperialism, a man who paid the ultimate price for his ideas, how capitalism can take such a man and turn everything he stood for on its head by selling his image to an lethargic mass who largely know nothing of his struggle. Whilst Che may have this cult status, his comrade and commander Fidel Castro, who is largely responsible for nurturing this image, has not enjoyed such iconic status even though his mark upon history has, for better or worse, been far more significant.

This week Castro, who at the time of writing is the longest serving ruler of a nation, has formally resigned from his position of chair of the Cuban Communist party, relinquishing power to his brother Raul Castro. Raul is Fidel’s long serving second in command and it is widely believed that he will be ratified by party election on Sunday the 24^th February. Fidel Castro has been a controversial figure on the international stage ever since his small force landed in Cuba in 1956 to begin the guerrilla war which would end with the fall of the corrupt, and American backed, Batista regime in 1959. There has always been an inescapable romanticism associated with the Cuban revolution, forgetting for a moment the fact that they became the poster boys of radicalism, the Cuban revolutionaries carved for themselves one of the defining moments of the twentieth century.  After the revolution and the American government’s swift excommunication Cuba became allied with the Soviet Union and the small Caribbean island played a pivotal role in the Cold War, both in terms of strategic position and by exporting the revolution to African and Latin America.

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