Fidel Castro reminiscences

by Sir James Mitchell

The last time I met President Fidel Castro was at the Japanese reception in New York during the Millennium Summit of the United Nations.

This was a memorable encounter, and in retrospect, clothed in a historic dimension, Fidel came up to me with enthusiasm and said, “I’m so glad you are here. They don’t know which of us to shoot!”{{more}}

In my early political life, my hair and beard all too easily bestowed a communist image, a la Castro on me. My physical likeness to Castro when I was a wanderer in Europe during the Cold War Era of the nineteen sixties, when I never visited a barber; my height, the flowing hair, and short beard attended only by affectionate friends, seem to give Europeans quite a Castro image, even though my travels in Europe had steered me away from any Socialist orientation. The contrast in life between Yugoslavia and Italy had cured me of any Socialist orientation.

Hitchhiking in Spain along the Costa Blanca, where the fishing villages were being overtaken by high rise hotels, I frequently got rides on trucks carrying building materials. My Spanish was fair and I could converse with the truck drivers. On one occasion, when we stopped at a building site, the driver got out and shouted to the workers on the hillside: “I brought along Fidel Castro.” The workers dropped their tools and descended. “Donde estan los canones?”

Spain’s historic presence in the Caribbean, its literature, art, culture, bullfights and music had inspired my explorations. But I knew also about Franco’s jails and the thought of stretching my luck could not be entertained. Better to be smothered under the skirts of the delightful Castanet dancing girls.

I did not hesitate to explain that this was just a preliminary surveillance exercise. “I would return!” I said.

In a train station, as I walked by a porter, he mumbled as he went by, “Fidel Castro bueno para L’Espana.” That was Spain in the sixties.

Next, Hamburg, Germany.

Drifting into a bar with my Swedish friend, we ordered the cheapest Hungarian Goulash and some beers. We settled in the rowdy ambience. Immediately, one drunken patron attacked me, using a lot of anti-Semitic rhetoric. Soon after, other patrons at the bar came to my defense and offered to pay our bills. I was confused about their motives. My Swedish friend translated. The guy thought I was Jewish, but the other people in the bar were annoyed with him, saying that anti-Semitism is finished in Germany. They subsequently threw him out of the bar, but he soon returned, and came after me again.

Knowing that the majority was on my side and being bigger than the assailant, I decided the second time that I’d make a go at him. I was cheered on by the crowd. Then they wanted to know where I was from. “I’m not Jewish. I’m from the Caribbean”, I said. “Oh, Fidel Castro”, they shouted. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the Cold War descended on me. The Cuba/Russia bond anathema to Germans, not anti-Semitism, had me back in the street. When it was all over, and we going back to the hostel, my Swedish friend then concluded the evening’s proceedings: “I’m Jewish”, she said.

On my state visit to Cuba, my delegation included representatives from our Chamber of Commerce. I wanted a wide cross-section of our society to witness life in Cuba, and the opportunities emerging there. As such, I opened up our diplomatic relations. I also brought along my daughter Louise, as a present for her Honours success in Law at Manchester University. Apart from being presented to meet President Castro, she had her own pleasure at a nightclub, meeting Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with whose writings she was familiar. An outing to Varadario Beach was most instructive. Here was the longest beach in the Caribbean, dwarfing all Caribbean beaches, which together with the music and dance in the famous Tropicana nightclub and the architecture of old Havana, set out for me a broader perspective of the tourism comparisons we would face in the future.

Fidel was fascinated with my personal family contact with Cuba. My father had vanished on his schooner in the Bermuda Triangle, bringing lumber from Mobile, Alabama to Cuba. I gave him a copy of an original port document. On telling him that my mother had told me her first visit to a hairdresser for a perm was in Havana, sailing with my father, he issued an invitation to bring her back to Cuba. He gave me a pink Cuban marble dish as a memento for her.

My official gift to Cuba was a Mustique coffee table book. Fidel went through it and questioned how we succeeded in getting such varied architecture in the islands. My answer was simple: tax incentives.

My top priority in going to Cuba was to secure about 100 scholarships for young Vincentians. When I made this request to Fidel Castro, he simply replied that 300 were available. Today, many professionals trained in Cuba are the beneficiaries of this initiative.

I am pleased that I served SVG in the Castro era. His Christmas cards are destined for our Bequia museum one fine day.