Nadie estará seguro si no desaparecen los arsenales nucleares, incluido el de Israel, advierte
Fidel Castro critica a Ahmadinejad por negar que haya ocurrido el Holocausto
Reconoce que la crisis de los misiles en 1962 no valió la pena, en entrevista a The Atlantic
El líder cubano Fidel Castro y el periodista Jeffrey Goldberg, de la revista The Atlantic, el pasado 30 de agosto en el Acuario Nacional, en La Habana
Foto Estudios Revolución/Cubadebate
Foto Estudios Revolución/Cubadebate
Corresponsal
Periódico La Jornada
Miércoles 8 de septiembre de 2010, p. 22
Nueva York, 7 de septiembre. Fidel Castro afirmó que Israel, al igual que todas las potencias nucleares, sólo tendrá seguridad si se deshace de sus arsenales atómicos, reiteró su advertencia sobre un próximo conflicto nuclear en torno a Irán, instó al líder de ese país a evitar el antisemitismo, y consideró que la crisis de los misiles en 1962 no valió la pena, según una entrevista con Jeffrey Goldberg de la revista The Atlantic.
Castro invitó a Golberg, corresponsal nacional de la revista, a La Habana, después de leer su artículo sobre la posible confrontación entre Israel e Irán, y comentó que confirmaba sus propias preocupaciones sobre ese conflicto. En la entrevista, cuya primera parte fue subida hoy al sitio de Internet de The Atlantic (al parecer habrá otra entrega mañana y posteriormente un artículo para la versión impresa de la revista mensual), Fidel reitera su mensaje que ese enfrentamiento podría tener severas consecuencias mundiales, y que los iraníes no van a retroceder ante amenazas de Estados Unidos o Israel. Los hombres piensan que se pueden controlar pero (Barack) Obama podría sobre reaccionar y una escalada gradual podría convertirse en una guerra nuclear
, advirtió Castro.
Goldberg le preguntó si esta óptica se basa en las experiencias de Castro en la llamada crisis de los misiles
en 1962, que llevó al borde de una confrontación nuclear entre la Unión Soviética y Estados Unidos por los misiles nucleares soviéticos en Cuba, y le recordó un mensaje que envío a Kruschev instándolo a considerar un ataque nuclear si Cuba era atacada por Washington, agregando a su pregunta si Castro pensaba si esa recomendación aún era lógica. Después de lo que he visto, y sabiendo lo que sé ahora, no valió todo eso
.
El mensaje de Castro a Israel en torno a la posible crisis bélica con Irán, reporta Goldberg, es que ese país sólo logrará la seguridad cuando abandone sus armas nucleares, al igual que todos los poderes nucleares del mundo. Y Goldberg comenta que Castro lo sorprendió con su simpatía por la historia del pueblo judío y el derecho de Israel a existir.
De hecho, Castro criticó al presidente de Irán, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, por negar la existencia del Holocausto y aconsejó que el gobierno iraní podría nutrir la paz al reconocer la historia única
del antisemitismo y entender algunas de las raíces de los temores de Israel como las consecuencias del antisemitismo teológico. No creo que nadie haya sido más calumniado (o difamado) que los judíos. Han sido calumniados más que los musulmanes porque son culpados y calumniados por todo
, dijo Castro. Él mismo recordó el antisemitismo que prevalecía en Cuba en su juventud.
Castro subrayó que el gobierno iraní necesita entender que los judíos fueron expulsados de su tierra, perseguidos y maltratados por todo el mundo
, y que esto ha ocurrido a lo largo de 2 mil años. Los judíos han vivido una existencia mucho más difícil que la nuestra. No hay nada que se compare con el Holocausto
. Goldberg le preguntó si le ha dicho todo esto al líder iraní, y que Castro le contestó: se lo estoy diciendo para que usted lo pueda comunicar
.
Goldberg escribe que aunque Castro aún está débil físicamente, su mente es aguda, su nivel de energía alta y no sólo eso: el Fidel Castro de etapas tardías resulta poseer algo de un sentido de humor modesto
, y que al preguntarle si su enfermedad lo llevó cambiar de opinión sobre la existencia de Dios, Castro le respondió: perdón, pero aún soy un materialista dialéctico
.
Fidel to Ahmadinejad: 'Stop Slandering the Jews'
(This is Part I of a report on my recent visit to Havana. I hope to post Part II tomorrow. And I also hope to be publishing a more comprehensive article about this subject in a forthcoming print edition of The Atlantic.)A couple of weeks ago, while I was on vacation, my cell phone rang; it was Jorge Bolanos, the head of the Cuban Interest Section (we of course don't have diplomatic relations with Cuba) in Washington. "I have a message for you from Fidel," he said. This made me sit up straight. "He has read your Atlantic article about Iran and Israel. He invites you to Havana on Sunday to discuss the article." I am always eager, of course, to interact with readers of The Atlantic, so I called a friend at the Council on Foreign Relations, Julia Sweig, who is a preeminent expert on Cuba and Latin America: "Road trip," I said.
I quickly departed the People's Republic of Martha's Vineyard for Fidel's more tropical socialist island paradise. Despite the self-defeating American ban on travel to Cuba, both Julia and I, as journalists and researchers, qualified for a State Department exemption. The charter flight from Miami was bursting with Cuban-Americans carrying flat-screen televisions and computers for their technologically-bereft families. Fifty minutes after take-off, we arrived at the mostly-empty Jose Marti International Airport. Fidel's people met us on the tarmac (despite giving up his formal role as commandante en jefe after falling ill several years ago, Fidel still has many people). We were soon deposited at a "protocol house" in a government compound whose architecture reminded me of the gated communities of Boca Raton. The only other guest in this vast enclosure was the president of Guinea-Bissau.
I was aware that Castro had become preoccupied with the threat of a military confrontation in the Middle East between Iran and the U.S. (and Israel, the country he calls its Middle East "gendarme"). Since emerging from his medically induced, four-year purdah early this summer (various gastrointestinal maladies had combined to nearly kill him), the 84-year-old Castro has spoken mainly about the catastrophic threat of what he sees as an inevitable war.
I was curious to know why he saw conflict as unavoidable, and I wondered, of course, if personal experience - the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 that nearly caused the annihilation of most of humanity - informed his belief that a conflict between America and Iran would escalate into nuclear war. I was even more curious, however, to get a glimpse of the great man. Few people had seen him since he fell ill in 2006, and the state of his health has been a subject of much speculation. There were questions, too, about the role he plays now in governing Cuba; he formally handed off power to his younger brother, Raul, two years ago, but it was not clear how many strings Fidel still pulled.
The morning after our arrival in Havana, Julia and I were driven to a nearby convention center, and escorted upstairs, to a large and spare office. A frail and aged Fidel stood to greet us. He was wearing a red shirt, sweatpants, and black New Balance sneakers. The room was crowded with officials and family: His wife, Dalia, and son Antonio, as well as an Interior Ministry general, a translator, a doctor and several bodyguards, all of whom appeared to have been recruited from the Cuban national wrestling team. Two of these bodyguards held Castro at the elbow.
We shook hands, and he greeted Julia warmly; they have known each other for more than twenty years. Fidel lowered himself gently into his seat, and we began a conversation that would continue, in fits and starts, for three days. His body may be frail, but his mind is acute, his energy level is high, and not only that: the late-stage Fidel Castro turns out to possess something of a self-deprecating sense of humor. When I asked him, over lunch, to answer what I've come to think of as the Christopher Hitchens question - has your illness caused you to change your mind about the existence of God? - he answered, "Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist." (This is funnier if you are, like me, an ex-self-defined socialist.) At another point, he showed us a series of recent photographs taken of him, one of which portrayed him with a fierce expression. "This was how my face looked when I was angry with Khruschev," he said.
Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their weapons. Global and simultaneous nuclear disarmament is, of course, a worthy goal, but it is not, in the short term, realistic.
Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.
He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a small boy. "I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"
He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds. These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."
He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything." The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection. What's reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation." He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.
Castro went on to analyze the conflict between Israel and Iran. He said he understood Iranian fears of Israeli-American aggression and he added that, in his view, American sanctions and Israeli threats will not dissuade the Iranian leadership from pursuing nuclear weapons. "This problem is not going to get resolved, because the Iranians are not going to back down in the face of threats. That's my opinion," he said. He then noted that, unlike Cuba, Iran is a "profoundly religious country," and he said that religious leaders are less apt to compromise. He noted that even secular Cuba has resisted various American demands over the past 50 years.
We returned repeatedly in this first conversation to Castro's fear that a confrontation between the West and Iran could escalate into a nuclear conflict. "The Iranian capacity to inflict damage is not appreciated," he said. "Men think they can control themselves but Obama could overreact and a gradual escalation could become a nuclear war." I asked him if this fear was informed by his own experiences during the 1962 missile crisis, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. nearly went to war other over the presence of nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba (missiles installed at the invitation, of course, of Fidel Castro). I mentioned to Castro the letter he wrote to Khruschev, the Soviet premier, at the height of the crisis, in which he recommended that the Soviets consider launching a nuclear strike against the U.S. if the Americans attack Cuba. "That would be the time to think about liquidating such a danger forever through a legal right of self-defense," Castro wrote at the time.
I asked him, "At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?" He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all."
I was surprised to hear Castro express such doubts about his own behavior in the missile crisis - and I was, I admit, also surprised to hear him express such sympathy for Jews, and for Israel's right to exist (which he endorsed unequivocally).
After this first meeting, I asked Julia to explain the meaning of Castro's invitation to me, and of his message to Ahmadinejad. "Fidel is at an early stage of reinventing himself as a senior statesman, not as head of state, on the domestic stage, but primarily on the international stage, which has always been a priority for him," she said. "Matters of war, peace and international security are a central focus: Nuclear proliferation climate change, these are the major issues for him, and he's really just getting started, using any potential media platform to communicate his views. He has time on his hands now that he didn't expect to have. And he's revisiting history, and revisiting his own history."
There is a great deal more to report from this conversation, and from subsequent conversations, which I will do in posts to follow. But I will begin the next post on this subject by describing one of the stranger days I have experienced, a day which began with a simple question from Fidel: "Would you like to go to the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?"
There is a great deal more to report from this conversation, and from subsequent conversations, which I will do in posts to follow. But I will begin the next post on this subject by describing one of the stranger days I have experienced, a day which began with a simple question from Fidel: "Would you like to go to the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?"
Fidel: 'Cuban Model Doesn't Even Work For Us Anymore'
There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I'll get to shortly), but one of the most unusual was Fidel Castro's level of self-reflection. I only have limited experience with Communist autocrats (I have more experience with non-Communist autocrats) but it seemed truly striking that Castro was willing to admit that he misplayed his hand at a crucial moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis (you can read about what he said toward the end of my previous post - but he said, in so many words, that he regrets asking Khruschev to nuke the U.S.).MORE ON Fidel Castro:
Jeffrey Goldberg: Castro has misgivings about how he handled the Cuban Missile Crisis
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.
This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?
I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, "He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."
Julia pointed out that one effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy. Raul Castro is already loosening the state's hold on the economy. He recently announced, in fact, that small businesses can now operate and that foreign investors could now buy Cuban real estate. (The joke of this new announcement, of course, is that Americans are not allowed to invest in Cuba, not because of Cuban policy, but because of American policy. In other words, Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long-demanded it adopt, but Americans are not allowed to participate in this free-market experiment because of our government's hypocritical and stupidly self-defeating embargo policy. We'll regret this, of course, when Cubans partner with Europeans and Brazilians to buy up all the best hotels).
But I digress. Toward the end of this long, relaxed lunch, Fidel proved to us that he was truly semi-retired. The next day was Monday, when maximum leaders are expected to be busy single-handedly managing their economies, throwing dissidents into prison, and the like. But Fidel's calendar was open. He asked us, "Would you like to go the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?"
I wasn't sure I heard him correctly. (This happened a number of times during my visit). "The dolphin show?"
"The dolphins are very intelligent animals," Castro said.
I noted that we had a meeting scheduled for the next morning, with Adela Dworin, the president of Cuba's Jewish community.
"Bring her," Fidel said.
Someone at the table mentioned that the aquarium was closed on Mondays. Fidel said, "It will be open tomorrow."
And so it was.
Late the next morning, after collecting Adela at the synagogue, we met Fidel on the steps of the dolphin house. He kissed Dworin, not incidentally in front of the cameras (another message for Ahmadinejad, perhaps). We went together into a large, blue-lit room that faces a massive, glass-enclosed dolphin tank. Fidel explained, at length, that the Havana Aquarium's dolphin show was the best dolphin show in the world, "completely unique," in fact, because it is an underwater show. Three human divers enter the water, without breathing equipment, and perform intricate acrobatics with the dolphins. "Do you like dolphins?" Fidel asked me.
"I like dolphins a lot," I said.
Fidel called over Guillermo Garcia, the director of the aquarium (every employee of the aquarium, of course, showed up for work -- "voluntarily," I was told) and told him to sit with us.
"Goldberg," Fidel said, "ask him questions about dolphins."
"What kind of questions?" I asked.
"You're a journalist, ask good questions," he said, and then interrupted himself. "He doesn't know much about dolphins anyway," he said, pointing to Garcia. He's actually a nuclear physicist."
"You are?" I asked.
"Yes," Garcia said, somewhat apologetically.
"Why are you running the aquarium?" I asked.
"We put him here to keep him from building nuclear bombs!" Fidel said, and then cracked-up laughing.
"In Cuba, we would only use nuclear power for peaceful means," Garcia said, earnestly.
"I didn't think I was in Iran," I answered.
Fidel pointed to the small rug under the special swivel chair his bodyguards bring along for him.
"It's Persian!" he said, and laughed again. Then he said, "Goldberg, ask your questions about dolphins."
Now on the spot, I turned to Garcia and asked, "How much do the dolphins weigh?"
They weigh between 100 and 150 kilograms, he said.
"How do you train the dolphins to do what they do?" I asked.
"That's a good question," Fidel said.
Garcia called over one of the aquarium's veterinarians to help answer the question. Her name was Celia. A few minutes later, Antonio Castro told me her last name: Guevara.
"You're Che's daughter?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"And you're a dolphin veterinarian?"
"I take care of all the inhabitants of the aquarium," she said.
"Che liked animals very much," Antonio Castro said.
It was time for the show to start. The lights dimmed, and the divers entered the water. Without describing it overly much, I will say that once again, and to my surprise, I found myself agreeing with Fidel: The aquarium in Havana puts on a fantastic dolphin show, the best I've ever seen, and as the father of three children, I've seen a lot of dolphin shows. I will also say this: I've never seen someone enjoy a dolphin show as much as Fidel Castro enjoyed the dolphin show.
In the next installment, I will deal with such issues as the American embargo, the status of religion in Cuba, the plight of political dissidents, and economic reform. For now, I leave you with this image from our day at the aquarium (I'm in the low chair; Che's daughter is behind me, with the short, blondish hair; Fidel is the guy who looks like Fidel if Fidel shopped at L.L. Bean):
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