Interminably Hard Ride

I hadn’t intended to.  But in much the same way when another controversial pugilist, Muhammad Ali, passed a few months back, I found myself obsessed with considering the life of Fidel Castro.  As I commented at the time, as I recall that this has something to do with being far from home.  Fidel wasn’t of the United States, but he was, as it has been said, the perfect David to our Goliath.  Indefatigable opposition to the United States characterized his life.  And considering the clips, of his early visit to New York, his unbuttoning his shirt to show he wasn’t wearing a bullet proof vest on the plane, his oration in Harlem, his roadside chats with farmers back home, he was like Michelangelo’s work, undeniably captivating.   His passing made me want to reckon with that time that is now, as I steep myself within it, so close as only a time one lived through can be, and at the same time gone, completely beyond reach.

As with Ali, one marvels at the audacity of Castro in his prime: fearless, righteous and victorious.   And we wince as he grows arrogant, and foolish and is knocked off course.  I found that once again I didn’t really have much of anyone to share this with, at least in person.  As before I made my girls sit down and consider this man who was so influential, aspirational and so clearly a vain dictator as well.  

I watched a full two-hour biography I found that was reasonably balanced, though it was certainly far too laudatory for anyone in Miami to sit through.  We traced his life and considered the arc of his narrative.  How elevated his prestige when he successfully thwarted the Americans at the Bay of Pigs!  How notably insane he was to rationalize the destruction of his island and the world to smite America during the missile crisis only a short while later.  And how chastened he must have felt when Russia treated him like just another third-world hot head, in much the same way the U.S. had done when the USSR blinked and told Fidel to scrap the missiles.   Later, he could have made peace with Kissinger, but he opted to send troops to Angola.  Choosing once again, the hard way, the lofty high road.  Auguring and aiding certainly the fall of Apartheid he also consistently demanded his citizenry join along with him for this interminably hard ride.

Ali evoked pity in his old age, stricken with disease, no longer able to float gracefully, spin off his boastful doggerels, or talk much at all in the end.  Everyone wondered I suppose if it might have been different if he just hadn’t fought that last fight or two, when he was pounded and pounded down.  There are the clips of Fidel tripping and falling, feinting at the podium and generally looking increasingly mortal in a manner so at odds with his indomitable youthful mien.   How remarkable to have escaped assassination so many times and to still live openly.  How sad that in continuing to live he personified and protected the revolution ad nauseam, anchoring his land to the gone-by glory, of having stared down and pushed off the U.S., once, successfully, inviolably.