CASTRO'S CUBA, CUBA'S FIDEL, by Lee Lockwood. Macmillan and Company, N.Y. Illustrated. 288 pp. $9.95.
Like many of today's books, this one is expensive. But relative to what you usually get, it's worth scraping up the money for.
It is indicative of the changing political climate in the U.S., perhaps, that a major house like Macmillan felt free to publish a serious, honest work about Cuba. And, it must be said, they've done a technical job that's worthy of the skilled photography and objective reporting characteristic of Lee Lockwood at his best.
The book's principal feature is a probing, seven-day interview with Castro. About one-third of the interview was chopped out and published in the January issue of Playboy magazine along with stupid and tendentious interjections made by Playboy's editor -- interjections that some unwary readers thought were Lockwood's.
This was a particular injustice, since Lockwood is an honest reporter who seeks objectivity. He was an early partisan of the Cuban revolution but regards himself as anti-Marxist. He believes that socialist revolutions diminish individual freedom although he is hopeful that perhaps Cuba will escape this fate.
The one frustrating thing about the book is that the interview. took place 21 months ago, just prior to a new period of significant political developments in Cuba.
Since the interview, the Cuban leaders have declared their virtual independence politically from both Moscow and Peking. They have sharpened their revolutionary line abroad and stepped up the struggle against bureaucracy at home.
The battle against bureaucracy has been accompanied by a deepened sociological analysis of the problem. The narrow concept that bureaucracy is largely a technical problem is being replaced by the concept that it's a matter of coping with a privilege-seeking, politically conservative strata that acts as a brake on the revolution.
Despite the time lag, the book is of the highest political value. Lockwood is familiar with Cuba. He happened to be there on January 1, 1959, and reported on Castro's triumphal march to Havana. He made additional trips there for major U.S. publications in 1959 and 1960. Then, after four years, he returned in 1964. That visit prompted him to return in the spring of 1965 to gather material for this book.
Lockwood describes his reaction after a four-year absence:
"Almost immediately I was amazed at the apparent discrepancies which existed between what was popularly being said and believed about Cuba in the United States and what I actually saw. There had been considerable changes of course. Yet, after three weeks of traveling, including a seven-day, cross-country taken in Castro's company, I could find little evidence of the standard image of Cuba so luridly painted by American newspapers and magazines -- that of a crumbling economy, a populace in tatters and near starvation, and a political regime that had lost its popular support and was maintaining itself in power through oppression and terror. Instead, I found that, in spite of rationing, people were well-clothed and adequately fed, nearly everyone was working and had money, and -- contrary to all pronouncements by our State Department -~ Castro still enjoyed the support, even the affection, of the great majority of Cubans."
Lockwood spent 14 weeks in Cuba before Fidel sat down in front of a tape recorder for a scheduled one-day interview that stretched into a record-breaking seven days. During those 14 weeks, Lockwood gathered much valuable information.
He gives fascinating descriptions of personalities whose names are known to partisans of the revolution but about whom little is known outside the country. These include portraits of Fidel's closest personal and political associates, Célia Sanchez and Dr. René Vallejo, the gifted surgeon who has been Fidel's constant companion since the days they fought together in the mountains.
There are absorbing odd bits of political information strewn through the pages. At one point Lockwood asks Fidel about the charge that he was really a Communist when he took up the struggle against Batista. Fidel tells him neither he nor Che had been Communists.
Rati?" Lockwood asks: "Nor your brother al?
Castro replies: "RaGl, yes. Radl, completely on his own, while he was a student at the university, had joined the Communist Youth. But it should be said that when he went to the Moncada attack he was not behaving in a particularly disciplined way, properly speaking."
Lockwood: "You mean he broke party discipline?"
Fidel: "Exactly."
The facts, together with photos, presented by Lockwood provide an inspiring insight into the special program to train teachers for every area of the country, no matter how remote.
The training begins at a special school high in the mountains, where young men and women learn to teach while they complete their high-school education. Physical comforts are at a minimum and the schedule is rigorous. But, Lockwood reports, "In spite of the harshness of the life, the long school hours and the short vacations (90 days a year), the discipline and the morale of the students are exceptionally high."
Equally impressive is his testimony on the state of the arts in Cuba: "Under the loosely administered patronage of the Revolution, the arts have flourished in Cuba and remained refreshingly free of the ideological influence or restraint common in other socialist cultures...Unlike other socialist countries, Cuba has not so far attempted to coerce her artists to produce only such art as can serve as propaganda for the Revolution and it shows no sign of doing so."
Lockwood's description of the rehabilitation program for political prisoners is one of the most fascinating chapters in the book. Only those who specifically request it are enlisted as participants in the program. They are given useful work and, where warranted, special training. They go to school three hours a day for a combination of regular courses based on previous education and courses in political education. These are described by Lockwood as "indoctrination." But, he adds, "It is not brainwashing."
Once every 45 days, each prisoner in the program is given a pass to visit his family for three days, plus necessary travel time. The trips are on the honor system, with the prisoner simply given money for fare and meals.
On the basis of what he saw firsthand, Lockwood accepts Fidel's statement that thus far not a single prisoner has failed to return from home on time.
The interview with Fidel is wideranging and difficult to treat adequately in a review. It covers Cuba's domestic policies, progress and problems; Fidel's political evolution, his view of the. world in general and of the U.S. in particular.
For this writer, Fidel's views about the political perspectives for the U.S. have been of particular interest. I have argued against his assertion in the interview, as presented in the Playboy excerpts, that there is little prospect for a revolutionary development in the U.S. At one point, as printed in Playboy, he told Lockwood:
"It would be absurd to speak at this moment of a revolution there. Perhaps there will never be a revolution in the United States in the classic sense of the word, but rather evolutionary changes. I am sure, for example, that within 500 years North American society will bear no resemblance to the present one."
In the full text this is stated less categorically. Also, Fidel concedes further on that his dim view of immediate prospects in the U.S. "perhaps is due to our great pessimism about whether the American people have much opportunity to express their own opinions, or to change a situation...we have no faith in the government of the United States and that could also have led us to a certain degree of underestimation of the people of the United States."
Elsewhere Castro showed lack of an adequate picture of the U.S. by stating that it takes the qualities of a revolutionary simply to be a liberal there.
This is an erroneous notion shared by many revolutionists around the world. They do not fully grasp that while many aspects still remain, McCarthyism has lost force in the U.S.; and, despite the pest efforts of the capitalists and their government to keep McCarthyism alive, radicalism is again on the rise in the U.S. today.
It was, of course, nearly two years ago that Fidel expressed the abovequoted views about the U.S.
Since then he has seen the development of a vigorous antiwar movement from California to Maine. Its significance has not escaped him. Following the giant April 15 demonstration against the Vietnam war, he declared in a speech that the demonstration showed that the world revolutionary forces now had a worthy ally right in the United States, one that would sooner or later develop into a powerful revolutionary force. [See excerpts from Castro's speech in World Outlook May 12, p- 499.]
Much of the interview takes the form of a near debate, with Lockwood pos-— ing all of the questions that are usually thrown at defenders of the Cuban revolution. (Weren't the original aims of the revolution "betrayed"? What about free elections? And so on.) Fidel's answers show how strong his desire is to stand on well-reasoned grounds in defending the revolution.
Cuba made a deep positive impres-
sion on Lockwood. He concludes:
"There is in Cuba today much of
the same spirit of excitement, of a sense
of purpose, of a moral momentum, of a
people making their own destiny, that
charged the air when Castro's Revolution
swept into power seven years ago. The
fact that this spirit, this élan vital,
has been preserved through all the years
of difficulties is one of the surest
signs of the revolution's health."