The Double Life of Fidel Castro (25 page)

I myself had arrived in the Spanish capital several days earlier, at the head of the team of forerunners. At the Ritz Hotel, one of the most beautiful luxury hotels in Madrid, I had put the time to good use by fraternizing with the manager, giving him three bottles of Havana Club rum and a box of Lanceros No. 1, the cigars manufactured by Cohiba that were so beloved by Che: such attentiveness is always useful in case one later needs to ask a favor or a service in the aim of improving the protection of the head of state. I also had Fidel’s bed, delivered in pieces from Havana, assembled, and I inspected the room. For the second time in my career, I discovered a mike—after the one I discovered in the false ceiling of our embassy in Zimbabwe— hidden by secret agents in a window frame of the presidential suite. We never found out who hid it there. Finally, I had a secret passage created via the dressing room so that Fidel’s suite had direct access to the room of his interpreter, Colonel Juanita; the son she had had with
El Jefe
was then nine years old.

Shortly after the two Ilyushins had landed and we had checked in to the Ritz Hotel, we learned that Orestes Lorenzo was in Madrid—a name that must be remembered, for his story was absolutely incredible. At the time, I didn’t see things that way, but today I have to say that I have limitless admiration for him. A year and a half later, on March 20, 1991, this Cuban air force pilot had banked, aimed for the lights of Florida, and defected while in command of his MiG-23. He landed a few minutes later on the air base of Key West. Needless to say, he made all the headlines. This fearless officer demanded freedom for his thirty-four-year-old wife, Victoria, and their two boys of eleven and six—in other words, for them to be able to leave Cuba to join him in his new life. Fidel, of course, rejected the demand, swearing that they would stay in Cuba for the rest of their lives and that the “traitor” would never see his family again. Orestes Lorenzo had then begun a terrible shuttling, going as far as New York, Geneva, and the UN Human Rights Commission to raise media awareness. All in vain. He even managed to speak to Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush, without any greater success.

For the moment, this kindly dad with his naïve, baby-faced looks, was in Madrid. He had chained himself to the railings in the Retiro park and had begun a hunger strike in front of posters and photos of his family under which the caption CASTRO’S HOSTAGES had been written. The media had devoted several articles to him. Now, at a certain moment during our brief stay in the capital, Fidel—leaving or coming back to the Ritz Hotel—decided he wanted to drive past the Retiro to see the extent of the scandal for himself: “So let’s go and see for ourselves what
este loco
[this madman] is doing.” Without Orestes Lorenzo having the least idea, we drove past him, just a few feet away. Fidel, with all the contempt of which he was capable, threw out,
“Este ridículo no va a lograr nada.”
(“This ridiculous man will not get anywhere.”) And yet, the following December 19, the “madman” accomplished one of the most beautiful and quixotic feats I have ever heard of. Like something out of a fairy tale, he went to get his family at the controls of an old, hired twin-engine 1960s Cessna, landing in daylight on a section of motorway in the north of Cuba where his wife and children were waiting for him, as per the instructions he had managed to relay to them thanks to two fake Mexican tourists. After picking up his family, right under the noses of Cuban radar surveillance, the epic voyage ended in glory after a low-flying skim across the sea: the hero brought his old crate to rest in Florida where, after a hundred minutes of extreme tension, he could at last kiss his beloved wife and darling children.

Many years later, when I, too, had gone to live on American soil, I met Orestes at his large house in Florida, where he lived with his family. Blissfully happy, he is today a wealthy head of a business. When I told him how, twenty years earlier, Fidel had passed a few feet away from him in Madrid during his hunger strike, we both fell silent for a moment as though overcome by our overlapping destinies.

After Madrid, Fidel, the monarch of Cuba, had gone to be with another king, Juan Carlos, on the occasion of the Olympic games in Barcelona. Among the personalities in the official box one could make out Nelson Mandela, François Mitterrand, Felipe González of Spain, the Catalan Jordi Pujol, the Argentinian Carlos Menem, and the U.S. vice president Dan Quayle. Fidel Castro had always taken the Olympic games very seriously, particularly the performances of the Cuban athletes who were, according to him, the expression of the greatness of the Revolution and of his country’s development. While the USSR had disintegrated a few months earlier that year, Fidel had proof that Cuba remained a great nation: at the end of the competition, our athletes were fourth in the medals table, behind the United States, Germany, and China but ahead of Spain, South Korea, Hungary, and France.

Finally, after a stopover in Seville, the visit to the selfgoverning region of Galicia was the high point of the trip. On the land of his ancestors, the former minister under Franco, Manuel Fraga, now president of the Galician assembly, welcomed him like both a king and a brother. It was three days of celebration and emotion. Fidel visited his father’s house in Láncara, where he met three distant cousins, after which Manuel Fraga organized a dominos tournament. The two politicians even played a game in the open air, sitting on the back of a truck. Fidel, the sore loser, must have won fairly quickly, or I would have remembered: we would have been there waiting for his victory until four in the morning. . . .

At a certain moment, a little girl of twelve or so, clearly from a humble background, appeared beside me. She was crying and looking at the
Comandante.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her. She explained that she, along with all her family, were fervent admirers of Fidel. She had not thought twice about walking for three days, a bundle on her shoulders and sleeping out under the stars, to see the great man. So I said to her, “Leave your bag here and come with me.” I took her to Fidel, who, like me, asked her,
“Qué te pasa?”
Then Fidel kissed her. Overwhelmed, trembling with emotion, she then said to me, “You’ve done such a huge thing for me.”

I have not forgotten that girl. I would really like this book to reach her and for her to remember the human moment we shared.

Several moments later, the crowds all around us began serving aguardiente (a Spanish brandy) and cooking in the street, with the hope of offering these things to Fidel and getting him to taste them. A line formed, for each of them wanted to honor the guest of the day with an empanada (fried dumpling filled with meat and vegetables) or a traditional local product. The intention was laudable, but my task consisted of preventing the
Comandante
from eating anything that had not been tested by our security services. So I tried to usher the “cooks” away as politely as possible, as I tasted each food. “Oh, I think it’s a little bit too salty for his taste,” I would say to one. “Put it there, I’ll give it to him later,” I said to another. Despite everything, the
Comandante
tasted a few rather fatty dishes and finished his Spanish journey as he had begun it: with a feast that ruined his diet.

I don’t know whether these departures from routine were behind the episode that followed, but no sooner had he arrived back in Havana than Fidel fell seriously ill for the second time in his life, in circumstances similar to the first. In early September 1992, while we were in the Havanan residence of Punto Cero, the Commander in Chief ’s leaving bell rang out at an unusual hour for the night owl he was: before daybreak! When I arrived at the
palacio
car garage, I noticed that Fidel—exactly like nine years earlier—was wearing only a military fatigues shirt on top of his blue pajamas and that his rear end was stained with blood. On the fourth floor, the whole of the clinic’s medical staff rapidly moved into action, but I soon realized that the situation was worse than in 1983. His doctors were more worried and Fidel was paler. At a certain moment, I saw him—for the first time in my life—lying unconscious on a stretcher.

Worried, I asked for an explanation from his nurse Wilder Fernández, who was one of the members of the escort. He told me that the transfusions were not working: “Fidel’s body is not accepting the blood.” Tears in his eyes, he added desperately, “Sánchez, Fidel is at death’s door. We have told the head of the escort to warn Raúl so that he can decide what should be done in the coming hours. He should get here at any moment.”

In 1983, nobody had been informed about Fidel’s elevenday hospitalization. Not even Raúl. But, this time, things were different. When the defense minister arrived on the fourth floor, the doctors immediately told him of the gravity of the situation. The decision was made to tell Dalia and her children, but not Fidelito or Jorge Ángel.

In the ensuing minutes, Raúl decided the procedure to be followed to alert the family and the highest political institutions in the country should the unthinkable happen: first, close colleagues would be told, then the members of the PPC politburo, then the members of the Council of State, then the chief of staff of the armed services, the members of the Central Committee of the PCC, and finally the people. The announcement would be spread over several days. The people would first be told that Fidel had been hospitalized, then that his condition had gone from “serious” to “critical,” and finally that the Commander in Chief had left us: all by means of a PCC politburo communiqué broadcast on television, radio, and in the
Granma
newspaper.

I do not know how because I am not a doctor, but Fidel managed to bounce back. I heard a rumor that with the help of the escort’s compatible blood donors, they had proceeded to give direct transfusions, vein to vein! If it was true—and it seems completely plausible because Fidel could have taken the inspiration for that from one of his historical texts, an old medical treatise or suchlike, to demand that such an experiment be tried—it was pure madness. Indeed, according to the doctors to whom I have spoken since I came to the United States, such a technique does not offer any advantages over a classic transfusion.

Whatever the case, his convalescence would last fifty-five days. Once again, Fidel’s hairdresser and makeup artist stuck a false beard on the double of the
Comandante
, Silvino Álvarez, who played his best character study, installed at the back of the presidential Mercedes.

In the end, after nearly two months’ absence from public life, Fidel reappeared at the
Palacio de Convenciones
on October 29, to give a speech to Cuban members of parliament. None of them were aware that just a few weeks earlier, their leader had been at death’s door.

War, at last! Over the course of his long life, Fidel Castro has advised, trained, and supported dozens of armed groups, inspiring hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions, of antiimperialist fighters all over the world. In Latin America, not a single country escaped his influence. And in Africa—where Che Guevara went in person to fight in 1964—no less than seventeen revolutionary movements have benefited from his expertise. But, in the end, all these subversive actions were occasional, limited in number and duration, and ultimately very modest in terms of the real planetary ambitions of the
Comandante
. They were “only” guerrillas. . . .

In Angola, Fidel Castro escalated his involvement with troops on the ground, tanks and other armored vehicles, batteries of artillery, helicopters, and fighter planes. For seventeen years, from 1975 to 1992, he accomplished the feat of sending to a front more than six thousand miles away from the Cuban coast a total contingent of two to three hundred thousand fighters and civilians. It is unprecedented: until now, no country of comparable size had carried out a military project so far away, for so long, with so many men. Cuban soldiers in Angola contributed to the weakening of the racist regime of South Africa by inflicting on it a bloody military and political defeat.

This incredible story—curiously little known outside of Cuba— began in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, when the Carnation Revolution brought down the Salazarist dictatorship that had held power in Portugal since the 1930s.

As soon as it was in power, the new government decided to abandon its colonial empire. In addition to Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Macao, and Timor, its “jewel in the crown” was Angola, rich in gas and minerals. In Angola, the three independence movements that had thus far confronted the colonial power separately immediately started fighting among themselves. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (known by its Portuguese abbreviation MPLA) headed by the Marxist leader Agostinho Neto was supported by the Soviet bloc. The two other movements, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) led by the independence fighter Holden Roberto and UNITA under the leadership of Jonas Savimbi, received the support of the West.

In order to calm the heightened tensions which threatened to drag the country into civil war, in January 1975 the Portuguese preemptively announced the date of future independence: the following November 11. The countdown started for each of the movements to prepare for war. Everybody understood that whoever controlled Luanda, the capital, the day the Portuguese left would automatically become the country’s new masters.