Letters From Prison: Castro Revealed

Of his own situation he bitterly complained:

"About me, I can tell you that the only company I have is when they lay out a dead prisoner in the small funeral parlor which is across from my cell; there are occasions of mysterious hangings, strange murders of men whose health was annihilated by means of blows and tortures. But I cannot see them because there is a six foot screen blocking the only entrance to my cell, so that I may not see another human being, alive or dead. It would be too much magnanimity to permit me the company of a corpse!"

Most of all, it seemed certain that his outrage against Batista's upending of the 1952 national elections would have led him to promptly reinstate free and transparent elections in Cuba. " Any great civic-political movement ought to have sufficient force to conquer power, by either the peaceful or the revolutionary route, or it runs the risk of being robbed of it, as happened to the Orthodox[Castro's political party] just two months before the elections."

And he lamented the trend toward cults of personality in Latin American politics. " I believe fundamentally that one of the greatest obstacles to the formation of such a movement is the excess of personalities and the ambitions of groups and leaders."

But in a few short years, Castro himself would become the looming personality in the hemisphere, while maintaining an inviolate zone of personal privacy for himself. Moreover, Cuba has not had a presidential election since 1948.

Toward the end of his incarceration, Castro began a correspondence with an ardent young supporter named Maria Laborde, in which he expressed a desire for a more intimate exchange. "The inscription on your card was so beautifully written, I have set my hope on the pleasure of soon receiving a letter from you, with the only variant that you use 'tu' instead of 'usted.' Could this be too much to hope?"

Castro's wish was realized soon after his release. Although it is not widely known, he began a liaison with the devoted Laborde, who later bore him a son.

In May 1955, just 13 days before his release, a light-hearted Castro wrote to his sister, ironing out his future housekeeping arrangements: " Regarding material comforts, if it were not essential to live with a minimum of material decency, believe me I would be happy living in a tenement and sleeping on a cot with a box in which to keep my clothes. I could eat a plate of malanga or potatoes and find it as exquisite as the manna of the Israelites. . . .

" There is nothing more agreeable than having a place where one can flick on the floor as many cigarette butts as one deems convenient without the subconscious fear of a housewife, vigilant as a sentinel, setting the ashtray where the ashes are about to fall. . . . Do not think I am an eccentric or that I have become one. . . . Books alone I need."

On May 15, a triumphant Fidel, his brother Raúl, and their followers strolled past the gates of the Isle of Pines prison -- the beneficiaries of a national amnesty for political prisoners that Castro had campaigned for from his cell. Castro went directly to Havana to resume his campaign to topple the Batista government while Raul went to visit their ailing father in Biran. Angel Castro was a brawny, self-made land tycoon with whom Fidel had had a sometimes contentious relationship. Two months later, the brothers and their followers fled to Mexico. Castro would never see his father again.

Several years ago, Castro seemed to have made his peace with his father and installed a photograph of him on the wall of his office. Angel Castro died in 1956 of an intestinal hemorrhage at the age of 80 -- precisely the age at which Castro became gravely ill with a similar affliction.

ABardach@aol.com

Ann Louise Bardach is co-editor of "The Prison Letters of Fidel Castro," due out this week from Avalon/Nation, and the author of "Cuba Confidential" (Random House).