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Copyright © 2006 Ocean Press
Copyright © 2006 Frei Betto
Translated by Mary Todd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9872283-8-3 (e-book)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 2006923943
Second edition 2006
Reprinted 2014, 2015
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CONTENTS
Fidel Castro
Frei Betto
20 Years Later: Introduction to the new edition by Frei Betto
Foreword by Armando Hart
Paths to a Meeting by Frei Betto
PART I: CHRONICLE OF A VISIT
Friday, May 10, 1985
Monday, May 13, 1985
Tuesday, May 14, 1985
Saturday, May 18, 1985
Sunday, May 19, 1985
Monday, May 20, 1985
Tuesday, May 21, 1985
Wednesday, May 22, 1985
PART II: THE INTERVIEW WITH FIDEL CASTRO
1
Family and religious background
Baptism as Fidel
Early years in Santiago de Cuba
Education in Catholic schools
Religious instruction
First ethical values
Introduction to Marxist ideas
2
The attack on Moncada
Capture
Imprisonment and the war
Father Guillermo Sardiñas
The Catholic church and the revolution
Initial tensions with the Catholic church
Christians and the Communist Party
3
Talks with US Catholic bishops
Accord between religious doctrine and revolution
Current role of the church and its believers
The Catholic church and revolutionary movements in Latin America
Liberation theology
Reflections on the Catholic church and social justice
4
Pope John Paul II and Cuba
Jesus Christ, the revolutionary
Christians and communists
Communism and religion
Love as a revolutionary requirement
Class struggle and hatred
Democracy in Cuba and bourgeois democracy
“Exporting the revolution”
Latin America’s foreign debt crisis
Relations with Brazil
Che and Camilo
Fidel Castro Ruz was born in Birán, in the former province of Oriente, on August 13, 1926. Born into a well-off, landowning family, he attended elite Catholic private schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, and graduated from law school at the University of Havana in 1950.
While at university, he joined a student group against political corruption. He was a member of the Cuban People’s Party (also known as the Orthodox Party) and in 1947 became a leader of its left wing. That same year, he volunteered for an armed expedition against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, though the expeditionaries were unable to leave Cuba to carry out their plans. As a student leader, Fidel Castro travelled to Venezuela, Panama, and Colombia to help organize a Latin American anti-imperialist student congress to coincide with the founding conference of the US-sponsored Organization of American States (OAS). While in Colombia, he participated in the April 1948 popular uprising in Bogotá.
After Fulgencio Batista’s March 10, 1952, coup d’état in Cuba, Fidel began to organize a revolutionary organization to initiate armed insurrection against the US-backed Batista dictatorship. He organized and led an unsuccessful assault on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953, for which he and over two dozen others were captured, tried, found guilty, and imprisoned. More than 60 revolutionaries were murdered by Batista’s army during, and immediately after, the Moncada attack. In prison, Fidel edited his defense speech from the trial into the pamphlet History Will Absolve Me, which was distributed in tens of thousands of copies and became the program of the July 26 Movement. Originally sentenced to 15 years, he and his comrades were released from prison in May 1955, after 22 months, as a result of a public campaign for amnesty.
On July 7, 1955, Fidel left for Mexico, where he began to organize a guerrilla expedition to launch armed insurrection in Cuba. On December 2, 1956, along with 81 other fighters, including his