My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

Couverture
Simon and Schuster, 9 juin 2009 - 736 pages
The intimate and highly revealing life story of the world’s longest-serving, most charismatic, and controversial head of state in modern times.

Fidel Castro was a dictatorial pariah to some and a hero and inspiration for many of the world's poor, defiantly charting an independent and revolutionary path for Cuba over nearly half a century. Numerous attempts were made to get Castro to tell his own story. But only in the twilight of his years was he prepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for the world to read before his death in 2016. This book is nothing less than his living testament.

In these pages, Castro narrates a compelling chronicle that spans the harshness of his elementary school teachers; the early failures of the revolution; his intense comradeship with Che Guevara and their astonishing, against-all-odds victory over the dictator Batista; the Cuban perspective on the Bay of Pigs and the ensuing missile crisis; the active role of Cuba in African independence movements (especially its large military involvement in fighting apartheid South Africa in Angola); his relations with prominent public figures such as Boris Yeltsin, Pope John Paul II, and Saddam Hussein; and his dealings with no less than ten successive American presidents, from Eisenhower to George W. Bush.

Castro talks proudly of increasing life expectancy in Cuba; of the half million students in Cuban universities; and of the training of seventy thousand Cuban doctors nearly half of whom work abroad, assisting the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He confronts a number of thorny issues, including democracy and human rights, discrimination toward homosexuals, and the presence of the death penalty on Cuban statute books. Along the way he shares intimacies about more personal matters: the benevolent strictness of his father, his successful attempt to give up cigars, his love of Ernest Hemingway's novels, and his calculation that by not shaving he saves up to ten working days each year.

Drawing on more than one hundred hours of interviews with Ignacio Ramonet, a knowledgeable and trusted interlocutor, this spoken autobiography will stand as the definitive record of an extraordinary life lived in turbulent times.
 

Pages sélectionnées

Table des matières

A Hundred Hours with Fidel
1
The Childhood of a Leader
23
The Forging of a Rebel
52
Entering Politics
83
The Assault on the Moncada Barracks
104
The Backdrop of the Revolution
135
History Will Absolve Me
158
Che Guevara
171
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
354
The Ochoa Case and the Death Penalty
367
Cuba and Neoliberal Globalization
386
President Jimmy Carters Visit
405
The Arrests of Dissidents in March 2003
432
The Hijackings in April 2003
460
Cuba and Spain
483
Fidel and France
506

In the Sierra Maestra
182
Lessons from a Guerrilla War
205
First Steps First Problems
215
The Conspiracies Begin
241
The Bay of PigsPlaya Giron
257
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962
271
The Death of Che Guevara
292
Cuba and Africa
308
The Emigration Crises
335
Latin America
520
Cuba Today
538
Summing up a Life and a Revolution
570
After Fidel What?
595
A Note on the Text and the Translation
627
Some Key Dates in the Life of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution 19262007
631
Notes
663
Index
713
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À propos de l'auteur (2009)

Ignacio Ramonet is editor of Le Monde diplomatique. He is the author of Wars of the 21st Century and Geopolitics of Chaos, the founder of Media Watch Global, and a regular contributor to the Spanish daily El País. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 in province of Oriente, Cuba. He entered the University of Havana's law school in 1945 and became involved in radical politics. After receiving his law degree, Castro briefly represented the poor, often bartering his services for food. In 1952, he ran for Congress as a candidate for the opposition Orthodox Party. However, the election was rushed because of a coup staged by Fulgencio Batista. Castro's initial response to the Batista government was to challenge it with a legal appeal, claiming that Batista's actions had violated the Constitution. The attempt failed. On July 26, 1953, Castro led a group of radical students in an attack on the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Many of the rebels were killed. He was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. To show the people that he was not a dictator, Batista released Castro and his followers in an amnesty after the 1954 presidential election. Once Castro returned to Cuba after an exile in Mexico, he began a campaign of harassment and guerrilla warfare against Batista. Batista fled Cuba on January 1, 1959. Under Castro's rule, more than 500 Batista-era officials were brought before courts-martial and special tribunals, convicted, and shot to death. Castro cut ties with the United States after President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut the American sugar quota and turned to the Soviet Union for assistance, eventually becoming a Communist. The Escambray Revolt, led by peasants and anti-Communist insurgents against the Castro government, lasted from 1959 to 1965, before it was crushed by Castro's army. Cuban exiles arrived in the United States by the thousands. The Central Intelligence Agency helped train an exile army to retake Cuba by force. On April 17, 1961, 1,500 Cuban fighters landed at the Bay of Pigs. Castro was waiting for them and most of the invaders were either captured or killed. Castro was the leader of Cuba until stepping down in 2006 due to diverticulitis. He died on November 25, 2016 at the age of 90.

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