Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [9]
Fidel returned to the university once more and turned his sights on campus politics. He accepted Communist support in the campaign for election to the vice-presidency of the Law School’s student government, then spun around to unleash a spirited campaign against the campus Communists. When the president resigned, Castro stepped to the helm of the student government.
He was learning. He was a natural politician, quick to sense the twists and turns of the game, ready to cement allegiances for his own personal gain. He was a pragmatic idealist—his goals were high and worthy, but he was willing to use less than idealistic means to achieve those goals. Fidel went on, continuing with his studies, advancing himself as a politician. Cuban politics were disorganized at the time. Batista had been living abroad in voluntary exile at Daytona Beach, Florida, since 1944; in that year he had finally held an honest election, the first since 1933, and had been beaten badly. But the administration which followed Batista was almost as corrupt, furthering the interests of the Cuban upper classes to the exclusion of the poor. Fidel dreamed of a free Cuba, her land redistributed to the peasants, her citizens equal before the law. In 1948 Fidel married; a year later his first son was born. In 1950 he graduated from the University of Havana and hung out his shingle as a lawyer. His idealism prevailed, and he spent the bulk of his time defending men and women of the lower classes, rarely collecting a fee. The common people of Havana knew Castro. They saw him as a good man, a man with their interests at heart. And how did Castro see himself? As an embryonic politician, a man with a future in Cuba. In those days, living in Havana, defending the poor in the Cuban courts, maybe Fidel Castro did not dream of revolutions. After all, Batista was in exile in Florida. The government was corrupt and reforms were needed desperately, but maybe he figured there was no reform which could not be achieved through legal means.
After all, in the elections of 1952, Fidel Castro intended to run for congress.
But there were no elections in 1952. That was the year Batista, hungry once more for power, returned from Daytona Beach to Cuba. On March tenth he entered Camp Columbia. His vast fortune had been depleted in a divorce settlement and he intended to rebuild it, squeezing the money from the island of Cuba. He seized control of the army and sent the legitimate government running for their lives.
Batista’s coup was conducted swiftly and efficiently. In no time at all he had complete control of the government. Foreign nations extended diplomatic recognition to him and the Cuban people themselves did not dare to raise their voices against him. But one young lawyer in Havana had different ideas. He saw only that a corrupt dictator once again had his grip on Cuba. He knew that this was wrong, and he tried to do something about it.
Castro submitted a brief to the Cuban courts contesting the Batista government. The brief was thrown out. He wrote a letter to Batista, calling for honest elections and representative government. The letter, of course, was ignored.
Batista remained in power.
And then Fidel Castro realized something. He saw that the Batista dictatorship was not the sort to be ousted through parliamentary means. He saw that the reforms he envisioned, the redistribution of land and the social progress, would not come about gradually. Batista’s Cuba was a toy for the rich, run for the benefit of corrupt Cuban politicians.
Batista could not be reformed. He could only be overthrown. He could not be changed but had to be thrown out bodily. The only politics which would work in Cuba were the politics of the knife and the Sten gun, the politics of guerrilla