Surprising and angering the United States Government once again, Fidel Castro has refused to croak for what is perhaps the 100th time. Scholars in the audience may note that Castro has a long history of not dying. Since the early days of his revolutionary career, people have been trying to off him, and he has time and again refused.
During his ill fated attempt to topple the government of the Dominican Republic, his boat was shot out of the water and his fellow guerillas were captured and killed. Fidel, evidently unwilling to die even at such a young age, turned around and swam the 12 miles back to the southern coast of Cuba.
Later, he and a group of 160 rebels attacked the well-guarded Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and were met by 400 soldiers. Under the withering machine gun fire, Fidel and his lieutenants made a hasty retreat, leaving most of the men to be tortured and killed in the dungeons of the compound. Castro was captured by the police, tried, and sentenced to death for his role in the attack, but just at that time, Batista, the profoundly unlucky U.S. backed dictator outlawed the death penalty and Castro’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment.
After being freed and exiled from Cuba, Castro made the crossing from Mexico in a leaky and overloaded luxury yacht filled with guns and 81 other revolutionaries. After being decimated by the air force and abandoning most of their supplies, 12 of the 81 including Fidel, Raul, and Che made it to the Sierra Maestra mountains. They spent the next years in the jungle, building up the armed movement and skirmishing in the surrounding countryside, eventually overthrowing the Batista government with the help of urban revolutionaries.
Once in power after the 1959, Castro had to contend with constant challenges from within, some of them from fellow communists and some from counterrevolutionaries hoping to reverse the changes he had instituted. Armed resistance organizations operated in the mountains and cities of Cuba well into the 1970’s, and all of them hoped to end Castro’s long streak of not being killed.
The Kennedy administration was also vexed by Castro’s unwillingness to die, and his CIA trained and deployed a force of some 3000 Cuban exiles to overthrow the regime. Castro himself met them at the beach, and he and some 75,000 regular army and militiamen expressed their desire to live to the arriving invaders. The 2000 or so who survived were apparently quite convinced by the sincerity of Castro’s explanation.
Kennedy’s successors having evidently forgotten this forceful exposition continued their attempts to bury Castro. For decades, he successfully dodged a barrage of assassins’ bullets, bombs, and exploding cigars while going about his business.
In recent years, his principal enemies have been uneven staircases and old age. With Castro’s increasing senility many assumed that he would one day forget not to die.
When he took a header during a public appearance and was immobilized for several months, many in Miami and Washington were hopeful that his injuries would prove fatal. Fidel did not cooperate however.
Just this year when Castro’s health took a turn for the worse, the whole world held its breath with the expectation that he would soon expire. That he has not is a continuing disappointment to the Bush Administration which hopes to be allowed to fuck Cuba up as badly as it has fucked up Iraq.
Tearful prayers and expansive “Transition Plans” may all go to waste if the Bearded One does not hurry his departure to the great sugar plantation in the sky. I for one would hope he holds out until we have somebody competent in the White House, but the possibility of Fidel living forever makes me careful what I wish for. With any luck, two years will be enough.
