Fidel, the last of an era

He wrote the script for a momentous period of our regional history and played an indelible part in the history of the Americas in the 20th century.

To the last, he polarised opinion.

He remained uncompromising and unbowed, attracting as much appreciation as deep opprobrium.

For most people in this country who were brought up in the 1950s onwards, Fidel mainly represented a cancer in our midst, although for others he was the bulwark against American imperialism in the region.

He certainly was the reason we got anywhere near experiencing the Cold War.

I was a child but I could never forget the urgency of the radio reports and the vivid newspaper images of the 1962 Kruschev-Kennedy stand-off that threatened to unleash nuclear war, caused by Russian manoeuvres and ballistic missiles in Cuban space, too close to the USA. These were acts of provocation.

The fear and excitement I picked up from all around me made me very curious about Cuba. I remember that no one I knew was on Castro’s side. There was vitriol over his audacity to attempt to challenge our way of life, our religion and good US supremacy. And, the same detractors spoke of the Cuban people as exotic, stylish dressers who resembled Trinis. I knew Cuba was the home of many of the popular Latin dances of the time. Our house was full of good Cuban music and American values overlaying an old-fashioned Trini-British way of doing things.

For those around me, the memories of WWII were fresh, at least, as international propaganda had shaped them. The Russians may have fought against Hitler but they were our enemies. We were fed the ideological rhetoric of the Cold War and it warmed our hearts.

Castro, I knew, had invited those aliens into our lives, cocking a snoot at the handsome President John F Kennedy.

If our newly independent government held a different view, it did not have household currency.

Anyway, nobody pressed the fabled red button to discharge nuclear weapons and by the time I was a teenager I too was in love with the even more handsome Che Guevara.

At university I read about the Cuban revolution, about why Castro and the group of young idealists had unseated a most despicable leader, one who had sold the soul of Cuba to American pleasure. They did not want Cuba to continue being a US nightclub and brothel.

They wanted, instead, good jobs and fair pay for Cuban citizens, and homes and the opportunity to realise themselves.

I learned that, contrary to what I knew, Castro never intended to establish a Communist state, but when the US failed to support the revolution and began to thwart it, he turned to the Communist bloc for support. Eager to get a foothold in the region, and on the US doorstep, the Russians were only too happy to guarantee the purchase of the Cuban sugar crop upon which Cuba became solely reliant.

Castro’s political position was dictated by circumstance, the ideology was constructed around it.

It had surprised me, in Britain as a teenager, that almost every English person I knew supported the Cuban revolution. They identified with the desire to be rid of a US cultural presence; increasing US dominance irked them.

Stories of endless failed US-attempted assassinations and the fabled length of his great speeches endeared Fidel to many, as did the ingenuity and suffering of the Cuban people, caused by the US embargo.

I first went to Cuba in the 1990s on a chartered flight, as regular UK flights were non-existent. I saw a remarkable experiment in independence and the triumph of a people over adversity.

I hope that spirit will not fade.

RIP Fidel Castro.