Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution, the pictures in this article are all visual China pictures
On a quiet Friday night in Havana, Raúl Castro informed "our people, our friends of the Americas and the world" through a televised speech that the commander-in-chief of the Cuban Revolution, his brother Fidel, had died at 10:29 p.m. on November 25, 2016. The speech was short and poignant, wrapped around the famous revolutionary slogan – "Victory forever!" ”
After 49 years of Che Guevara's death in the mountains of Bolivia, 43 years before Allende's death in the Chilean Presidential Palace, 4 years after The Unfinished Revolutionary cause of Chávez Bolivar and died of cancer, after more than 650 CIA assassination attempts, and after Miami, who does not know how many press releases announcing his death, Fidel died peacefully at the age of ninety, and was the last to leave for the Temple of The Pantheon of Latin American Left Heroes, with San Ernesto (Che), San Salvador (Allende), Saint evita (Madame perón) and Saint Hugo (Chavez) converged.
Sixty years ago, in 1956, also on the night of November 25, Castro and his comrades took anchor from the Mexican port of Tuxpan on the yacht "Gramma" and sailed to Cuba. The yacht was supposed to be able to accommodate only 10 to 12 people, but eventually boarded the ship with 82 people. The yacht struggled with the winds and waves in the Gulf of Mexico for many days before finally making landfall on December 2 on a mangroved seaside flat. Che Guevara famously said in his diary: It was not so much a landing as a shipwreck. After a series of setbacks, the landing guerrillas finally gained a foothold in the maestra mountains in the east and then liberated the entire island of Cuba from east to west. Today, according to official Cuban sources, Caun's remains will be cremated and will "retrace" the revolutionary path, from west to east, up to Santiago de Cuba. On December 4, the ashes will be buried in the cemetery of Santa Ephi Genia.
Castro's father, Angel Castro Russ, was a Galician, Spanish, veteran of the Spanish-American War, immigrated to Cuba after the war and built his own small farm in the Biran region of the then-Orente province. When Angel rejected radical ideas in his early years and discovered that his fourth son Raul was keen on a school boom, his father entrusted him to his second son Fidel, who was studying in the capital Havana, and asked the elder brother to discipline his younger brother, "otherwise he will become a communist!" Unbeknownst to Angel, it was his two sons who eventually became the main drivers of the introduction of communism into the Western Hemisphere.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 is hailed as the last romantic "revolution on horseback" in human history. Not only because of the "beauty" and rhetoric of several leaders, all of whom are in their mid-thirties, Che Guevara's "Memoirs of the Revolutionary War in Cuba" full of confidence in self-deprecation and jokes, castro's almost paranoid optimism and determination, are fascinating. For example, on December 18, 1956, After Fidel and Raul were reunited after being separated from each other in battle, after hugging each other, the two sides had such an evocative conversation - Fidel asked: "How many guns did you bring?" "Five," Raul replied. Well, plus my two, that's seven guns! Now we can definitely win this war! Fidel said resolutely. Raul recalls that at that moment he was a little skeptical about whether his brother was insane.
The victory of the Cuban revolution not only profoundly rewrote Cuban society, but also outlined the path for the direction of Latin American history thereafter. In the commander-in-chief's own words, "The Americans have internationalized capitalism, we have internationalized guerrilla warfare!" "The theory of guerrilla warfare, which was practiced and summarized by Castro and Che, spread throughout the Americas.
Mike Hart, an American new-left scholar and author of Empire, recalls that in the 1960s, when he was a radical student, he traveled to Places like Guatemala to make friends with local revolutionaries. When he briefed his new Central American friend on the difficulties of launching a revolutionary movement within the United States, he replied briefly and confidently: "Is there a mountain in the United States?" Up the hill, up the hill! Marcos, the leader and deputy commander of the Chiapas Aboriginal Uprising in southern Mexico in 1994, not only emulated the commander-in-chief in the tactics of the roundabout struggle in the mountains, but even had the shadow of Fidel in his speech style. The late Venezuelan president, Mr. Chávez, sees Castro as the father of the spirit. In an interview published on November 26, Bolivia's vice president, García Riñera, a new generation of Latin American theorists, said that he had heard the bad news last night and had quickly dialed President Evo Morales. The first indigenous president in Bolivian history found the news unbelievable, because in August he had just traveled to Havana to congratulate Cayon on his ninetieth birthday, when the commander-in-chief was in good shape. Riñella relayed Morales' bitter feelings, "The news is sad, because when I was the leader of the Coca Ye Union, I treated Fidel as a father. ”
Perhaps apart from Bolívar and José Martí, no leader since the independence of Latin America in the 19th century has matched Fidel. After all, many great lives died in battle before they could be fully unfolded: José Martí almost died in the first battle of the Revolutionary War, and Mariatji and Guevara died under the age of forty. His 47 years of long reign gave Cawon a sense of composure, allowing him to fully narrate his observations and thoughts. According to biographical statistics, he gave more than 2500 speeches in his lifetime, most of which lasted more than 5 hours and stood the whole time. Fidel is probably the ultimate representative of human history who expounds ideas and calls for revolutionary consciousness through speeches. After the transfer of power, he did not become an old man who raised flowers and grass, and as Renela summed up, in peacetime, he was a warrior of ideas.
Given that dependence and independence are a major axis of modern Latin American thought, perhaps the most important value of Fidel's thought remains a contribution to Latin American economic and intellectual independence. Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández, who remembered the death of her revolutionary predecessor in Tytri, also pointed out: "Fidel and Cuba will surely enter the history of capitalization." Together with the Cuban people, Fidel is a model for defending dignity and sovereignty. It is a miracle that he was able to survive the Cold War years and the "special period of peacetime" of extreme economic deprivation at a close distance from Florida. In the first 15 years of the new century, there was a widespread emergence of new left-wing regimes in South America, and although the prices of primary commodities were high, which economists talked about, the spiritual fire retained by Cuba under Castro still had an important impact.
Two documentaries by American director Oliver Stone depict this period of significant New Left rule: the 2003 film "The Commander-in-Chief" chronicles Fidel's revolutionary career, a period in which Cuba's situation is more or less similar to the story of The Old Man and the Sea, where Fidel fights the neoliberal sharks alone; 2009's South of the Border chronicles a shift in times, with New Left politicians in Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia recognizing Fidel as their spiritual leader. He is recognized as the bridge between the rebellious 1960s and the independent spirit of the new century. That's why it's only in Venezuelan condolences that Fidel is "the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, the father of the foundation of a new history in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the most important American and model for all generations in the history of the 20th century." ”
On November 26, the day I wrote the previous words, I woke up in Buenos Aires. Shocked by the overwhelming news on social media, annoyed by the biased reports on CNN's Spanish channel, I rushed to the streets to see how people in Che's hometown remembered his brother Fidel.
On November 26, 2016, local time, Havana, Cuba, Cuba lowered its flag to half-mast to mourn the death of former leader Fidel Castro.
On November 26, 2016, local time, in Havana, Cuba, Cuban university students gathered to mourn former leader Fidel Castro.
In the midst of the rain, Plaza de Mayo must have been planned, and a grand celebration of young gays and lesbians had just begun: LGBT rainbow flags filled the makeshift stage, and rock music was on the radio. I looked at Plaza de Mayo, the center of the Argentine political movement, and saw only a pair of beautiful Argentine girls kissing in the rain, and more people standing under the cloister of the city council. Probably because I was unfamiliar with the clues of political rallies, I was unable to spot Fidel's trail in posters, on street graffiti, and in conversations with young people in colorful hats. In the carriages of the A-line subway on the return journey, an aboriginal folk musician, plucking the four-stringed violin, playing the flute, and touring along the carriages. The repertoire is typical of the Andean region. The song ended, attracting applause from the passengers. By the way it looks, the musician is clearly a Bolivian or Peruvian immigrant — and it's no different.
At this moment, I was reminded of the words of García Rivera, "Fidel represents the best thing that the 20th century can leave us." "If, 60 years ago, on November 25, there had not been such a ship, anchoring from a Mexican port at night, would people have been able to clamor and celebrate the right to differences? When the Andean flute is blown, can one still joyfully recognize the melody that represents the whole of Latin America? This may be Fidel's victory: his gifts cannot be separated from the dignity and joy of ordinary people, nor must they be deliberately remembered.
November 26, 2016
(The author of this article is the translator of Márquez's work A Pre-publicized Murder.) ）