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The Day Castro Wept
Alejandro Ernesto, EPA / Corbis
In an exclusive excerpt from her new book, Without Fidel, Ann Louise Bardach penetrates the wall of secrecy around the Castro family and reveals the close calls during Fidel’s medical crisis.
•Castro does not have colon cancer, as was rumored, but “malignant diverticulitis,” which can be an equally dangerous illness.
•In July 2006, Castro rejected the recommended surgery and insisted on a riskier, more radical surgery that failed, almost costing him his life.
•When a second, life-saving surgery necessitated a colostomy, he wept.
•Castro’s son Antonio told friends in 2006, “What my old man has is insurmoutable.”
•Around the time of these surgeries, according to a prominent Swiss banker, some of Cuba’s accounts were transferred to an undisclosed signatory, most likely Raul Castro.
•For five months after the surgeries, Castro was fed intravenously and lost 45 pounds. He has since stabilized with the help of a highly restrictive diet and the use of a state-of-the-art hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
•In one of his frequent opinion columns for Granma, Castro wrote in late 2008 that he did not expect to live to see the end of Obama’s term.
The dying began on July 27, 2006—and it has yet to end. Certainly, it would have been hard to imagine a final coda less appealing to Fidel Castro—a proud and prudish man who has zealously guarded his personal privacy. For Castro, an obsessive autocrat and micro-manager, nothing could have been more distressing than to see details of his emergency intestinal surgery splayed across the front pages of newspapers and Web sites five months later. For the first time, Fidel Castro had been sidelined as the master of his own fate. A new portrait—that of a frail octogenarian clinging to life—supplanted his carefully crafted persona of the vigilant warrior.
But as befitted a movie-star dictator—and the world’s longest-reigning head of state—Castro would take his time leaving the stage. That exit, with periodic finales, is fated to be a marathon: an epic that one might be tempted to call The Fideliad.
Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington. By Ann Louise Bardach. 352 pages. Scribner. $30.
On July 26, 2006, Castro had participated in the usual anniversary celebrations of the Cuban Revolution. But as the day wore on, El Comandante was visibly piqued and coughing, in crippling pain. “I thought that would be the end of it,” he later reflected. Hours later, he was flown back to Havana and rushed to Cuba’s foremost medical facility. A week earlier in Argentina, Castro had sparred with a Cuban-American reporter who questioned him about a dissident denied a visa to leave Cuba. An enraged Castro had erupted into a lightning tirade, captured on videotape.
After he fell ill, one source close to Castro’s doctors speculated that the stressful encounter had precipitated a furious new bout of diverticulitis. This painful, recurrent intestinal infection had dogged Castro since the 1970s and reportedly first required surgery in the 1980s. Diverticulosis is a relatively common symptom of aging characterized by outpouchings—or diverticula—in the lining of the colon or large intestine. When the diverticula become infected, bleed or rupture, the so-called diverticulitis can be exceedingly painful and potentially life threatening.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Castro Family Values
Ann Louise Bardach is author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and the acclaimed Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. She is a PEN/USA award winning reporter and was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post Outlook, Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, and CNN, among others.
Trouble In Florida
Ann Louise Bardach is author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington and the acclaimed Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. She is a PEN/USA award winning reporter and was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and has written for The New York Times, Washington Post Outlook, Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Today, and CNN, among others.
Fortuneately for Castro, he is Castro. Therefore, he received prompt and appropriate medical treatment. If he were an average Cuban he would probably be deceased by now. That is why thousands risk their lives and flee that Communist dictatorship.
If he were an average american he'd probably be deceased right now too. That's what happens when you get old and have multiple complications from multiple ailments. I'm thinking that the state of their health care maybe a reason but it's definitly a lesser reason.
Douche
crngndmhm -
Like so many Americans,
I can't decide whether to build an improvised raft and float
in shark infested waters to get to Cuba
for "Freedom" and "great" medical care,
or move to the "open" societies of Russia, China, or Venezuela,
just to "escape" this horribly "oppressive" place.
Immigrants from all over the world are risking their lives every day
to get to Cuba, Russia, China, or Venezuela,
for a "better" life, for "better" medical care.
Right on. Castro gets state-of-the-art medical care while the Cuban people stand in line for a cup of rice.
Are average Americans risking their lives and fleeing to Cuba?
I smell toast!
Hmmm, a death foretold. I'd say it's more like a death long overdue.
How appropriate that he's shitting himself to death - by his own edict.
As dictators go Castro will come out quite well I believe compared to others such as the rulers of North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Sudan, etc. Cuba is poor but as far as I know, the people are not starving to death or the hapless victims of death squads. Literacy in Cuba is higher than in many Latin American countries with so-called democracy. Health care is rated just a little lower than in the US and less than a 100 people have died from hurricanes over several years while over 1000 died in Louisiana and Mississippi from Katrina alone. I believe than his legacy will be much better than most Americans have been led to expect due to the great hostility towards any leftist leader by the US. Poverty and illiteracy is not solved by democracy alone, especially when that democracy maintains the status quo of inequality.
Are we supposed to be crying, too?
Yes, Today Cuba is poor but, PRIOR to Castro, it was just behind the US in GNP (as relates to size and output), and the cuban currency was worth equal to the US dollar (not by gov't decree, but in the world financial exchange). Yes, literacy has gone up to close to 100, but then it was over 90%, behind only to the US. The only difference is that today you may be able to read, but only what the gov't censors allow you to read. Health care is NOT what the marketing machine says and what Mr. Moore wanted the public to believe (My family -IN CUBA- has over 3 MDs) If a regular citizen has to go to the hospital, he/she has to bring sheets, clothing, soap and even the bandaids that may be needed (all bought in the secondary markets), because there are none in the hospitals. The hospitals we all see in the marketing films and stories, are but a few that cater primarily to the $$ market (i believe this is now called "medical tourism").
There is hunger in Cuba now, and it is NOT due to an embargo. Cuba trades with every other country in the world; if you want something, you have to go to the Gov't stores (read: dollar stores) and you will find everything; from Nikes to Guccis, which are not available in the regular stores. The only problem? The average cuban earns about 20US$ per month.
This has nothing to do with left or right; either extreme is bad. There are good examples of moderate socialist gov'ts in the world, where people live in a democracy, with the right to choose their lives and to speak their minds, but Cuba is definitely NOT in this category. Back in the 70's, Castro's expressed ideal structure was that of Albania, considered to have been the worst, most sanguinary communist regime in history.
Please, look beyond the "fluff" and take a good, hard look at the realities of the island today, as compared to 50 years ago. Suffice it to say that most of the regular, every day infrastructure (electric, water, roads, etc) that is being used by the average cuban today, is the same that was there then. The exception?: tourism related areas, where most of the foreign investment funds have gone.
You are 100% rigth. As cuban who lived in the Island for almos 40 years of my life learning only what they wanted me to learn and not be able to express out what I learned was like living and inferno where you would be burning oursel in a fire while evil licked your burned skin. Baseed on my parent stories who were poor uneducated cubans , they had at least a farm where they had their own home and met the basic needs of our families. After 1959 they had to emigrate to the city with 3 kids and nothing to eat because the goverment had to build a dam.... Please , lets start thinking with our brains...
Thank you.
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