Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

Numerous attempts have been made to get Castro to tell his own story. But only now, in the twilight of his years, has he been prepared to set out the details of his remarkable biography for the world to read. This book is nothing less than his living testament. As he told reporters, his desire to finish checking its text was the one thing that kept him going through his recent illness. He presented a copy of the book in its Spanish edition to his compadre President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

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 (now longer than in the United States); 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 is confronted with a number of thorny issues, including democracy and human rights, discrimination toward homosexuals, and the continuing 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.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Castro's infomercial, 2008-12-27
"My Life" is essentially Fidel Castro doing an infomercial about himself. The entire book is literally one long question and answer interview.

Castro chose for this verbal autobiogrpahy, the uncritical Ignacio Ramonet. With the exception of questions regarding the death penalty, Ramonet is mostly apolitcal, but at least he had the deceny to admit as much in his introduction.

Also, in his introduciton, Ramonet states he felt that "family questions" were obviously considered "out of bounds." Now, I understand "family issues" are considered very private in the Hispanic culture, but after reading "My Life" I still don't know anything about Mrs. Castro or even if there is a Fidel Jr.

Through his telling to Ramonet, Castro does make some persuasive points. Not to "spoil the ending" but to avoid hundred of pages of dry reading, here are some of the highlights:

1) Castro has sincerely worked to avoid a "cult of personality". There are no statues of him erected in his honor, he is not pictured on Cuban currency, his photogrpah does not hang in government offices etc.

2) He is against mistreating prisoners of war (e.g. during the revolution) because, besides being "wrong," mistreating prisoners plays into the "enemy's hand."

3) Sending doctors to improvished areas thorughout the world, not only is the "right" thing to do, it helps bolster Cuba's standing in the international community.

4) Providing free health care and education (even college/vocational school for laid off sugar care workers) genuinely endears him to many, if not most, of his people.

However, Castro is not presuasive when he argues that the immigration policy of the United States is the cause of great suffering for the Cuban people, that the Cuban constiution provides meaningful "referendum rights" to the poeple, and that Marxism is "good" and capitalism is "bad".

Besides these persuasive and not-so persuasive points, "My Life" has little to offer the general reader. It is essentially humorless and there are few "human interest" stories. In short, like most informercials, "My Life" is repetitive and boring. So, unless you truly NEED a book on Castro, buy something else.







0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Disconcerting narration, 2008-12-04
If one has even an elementary knowledge of Spanish this recording is very disconcerting. The narrators have no idea how to pronounce Spanish proper names; they misplace accents, substitute vowels and even consonants for one another. They even use sounds that do not exist in Spanish (I noticed them using one sound that only occurs in Argentine Spanish). Combining two or more of these errors in one word can make it not only distracting, but even unrecognizable. On top of that, the two narrators sometimes pronounce the same word differently from one another--and the same narrator will even pronounce the same name differently at different times! The errors are not confined to Spanish, although the book presents more opportunities to butcher that particular language than, for instance, German. If you want to keep names of people and places straight, by all means purchase the printed book. If you can endure these errors, the content of the book is wonderful, and the English is clear (although it would profit by the use of well-established English pronunciations of certain words such as "Cuba".)


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Castro bio-interview, 2008-10-09
Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography
The book was in good shape except for occasional markings. Reading the book out loud has been a great experience for the two of us. It covers the time span from Fidel's birth to 2006: childhood, schools, Moncada, prison, meeting Che in Mexico, the Granma, Sierra Maestra, the January 1959 victory against the Batista tyranny, Bay of Pigs, missile crisis, etc. The interviewer asked probing questions about emigration policy, the death penalty, one-party system and Fidel's expectations of his succession. Introduction, photo section and notes supplement the book. Highly recommended!


0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Fidel Castro, My Life, 2008-08-13
This is a great book. You learn a different side of Castro that is depicted in the media. He is a very intelligent and interesting person. Whether you ageee with his polices or not, this is a good read.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

A consistent and fascinating read by and about an incredibly significant historical figure..., 2008-06-17
Though it feels like something of an awkward format for what is intended as the REAL word on Fidel Castro, and even though it will more than likely still be a very long time before we can really sum up the era of this man's Cuba, one alas must try to. This was after all one of history's most truly dynamic eras, one that changed not only the life of Cuba but of the world.

He may come off tacit and allusive at times, but he observes the major events of his life and history with remarkable aplomb, and very rarely contradicts himself.

When speaking about the development of his interest in politics during his University student days he explains how his original utopian ideas led to the firmer ground of Marxism as the scientific formula for the emancipation and liberation of all people... "Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventualy come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest not knowing anything."

Even more politically moderate readers will be surprised at his encyclopedic knowledge of history, in particuular that of his native island, and all of Latin America, and his attempts to explain the TRUE ethics behind the egalitarian society he inspired so many people to aspire for. He observes that "As in all Western thought, Marti's philosophy contains a certain amount of Christian ethics" and the idea that even with the teachings of Christ you can "formulate a radical Socialist programme, whether you're a believer or not."

He calmly and even logically explains his justification for mounting a guerrilla uprising to take state power rather than the long-broken electoral process in Cuba, and the summary trials and executions of traitors in their midst during those adrenaline-pumping days in the Sierra Maestra. He points out that "At that time, with a war being fought, it was unavoidable and it was effective, because from then on... a tradition has been created. And an ethics was born out of it: total respect for the populace."

Answering the criticisms about his alliance with the former Soviet Union during this time of Cold War politics, he refers to the innumerable attempts by the "neighbor to the North" to sabotage this little island's right to self-determination. Objective and subjective factors accelerated the revolutionary process.

Where his critics want so very badly for the ailing Castro to come off like a dogmatic dinosaur, a relic from history no longer of any significance, what you instead find is an idealistic, truly passionate and cultured human being, one who vigorously denounces the accuastions that a "cult of personality" exists in Cuba, and instead points to the patriotic fervor that runs through the island standing up to the great Goliath for all these years. And convincingly at that. He admits even that "the most difficult, most important fight that anyone with power faces is the fight against himself." Astounding coming from the man so oft-portrayed in the role of tyrannical dictator.

"I work from the position of a tremendous confidence that this human being, with all his defects and limitations, has enough smarts, if you will, to preserve himself," Castro states, "and has enough intelligence to improve himself. If I didn't believe that, there'd be no reason to fight to the death."

He interprets capitalism as "the creator of all sorts of germs," and Socialism as a society in which not necessarily are you devoid of those germs of corruption, but you rail against them harder and on a broader level, through a propaganda of education i.e. planting values and rigorously promoting them.

What Western so-called "democracy" advocates call political repression, the Cuban government sees as stopping acts of treason from forces attempting to break the people's will. And its fairly common knowledge the long list of overt and covert attempts by imperialism to do just that for all these decades. Fidel announces "All we need as justification is that exactly that sort of felony has been perpetuated against us in the past."

He answers 'freedom of press' critics with "our dream is of another freedom of the press, of a country that is educated and informed, of a country that has a holistic general culture and communicate with the world". One need only watch a couple hours of American television, whether news or entertainment, to realize how much culture digresses and decays in a capitalist society. Maybe there are no erroneous truths, but Fidel is right on much more than a few points in this book.

"Socialism is constructed by free men who want to make a new society," he says. Thereby it is an instrument of liberation when weilded by a like-minded people. And force imposed is justifiable when used to keep a long-exploited people's will from being divided.

As I said from the start, I don't think there can yet be a final word on the Castro era in Cuba today. Fidel is someone who will have to be judged by long history, the character of his and Cuba's work will grow clearer as it recedes from view. Build, resist, or be destroyed by the invading tentacles of imperialism.

As Che Guevara famously said "The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall." That is the current of thought that runs through the revolutionaries of the Cuban Revolution and its era on the world stage. And in here lies the foundations of a world that the militant working class dream of. A world where every human being, through the unity of diversity, can stretch out their hands to one another and heal, and work together for a better world.

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