Fidel Castro in 1994[/caption]Fifty years ago this month, the world held its breath as it contemplated nuclear armageddon over the stationing of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban soil—within reach of mainland America. Soviet Russia and America were on the brink of starting World War Three.
What motivated the communist leader, Fidel Castro, to allow the missile crisis of October 1962 to develop? The answer lies partly in his early childhood experiences and formative years in a strict, Catholic family and education system. Castro's childhood is a subject that rarely sees the light of day and about which little until now has been written. Due to his stubborn reluctance to discuss the subject, Castro's childhood is a subject that is rarely discussed—despite heroic attempts to get him to open up about this important time in his life. Journalists and biographers who have been granted rare access to “El Comandante” are quickly made aware this subject is strictly off-limits.
Castro's self-professed strongest influence was his Catholic upbringing and the strict Jesuit college tutors in particular, whom he cites as the model of his own personal self-sacrifice, absolute dedication to his ambitions, and relentless perseverance in the face of adversity—moreso than any ideological mantra of Marxism–Leninism. Most of his formative political ideology relied very little on the Communist Manifesto, but more on the writings and actions of heroic revolutionary Cuban Nationalists such as José Marti.
The few details Castro has shared about his early memories show a child playing happily in the fields, rivers, and hills of his father’s sugar cane estate. He talks of his joy at being able to run free with plantation workers’ children, his friendships with Haitian immigrant labourers’ children, and the Cuban children descended from slaves. His love of the outdoors began very early in his life, riding horses or climbing mountains; the joy in his words as he describes those early images and memories is palpable. [caption id="attachment_55234685" align="alignright" width="300"]
Cuban farmer Jose Teston moves a fuel tank used by a vehicle during the 1962 missile crisis (Getty images)[/caption]
Was he embarrassed and feeling guilty about his wealthy, privileged background, which enabled him to attend elite schools to the extent that he swore to eradicate such inequality? This is far too simple an explanation. His childhood was physically and psychologically tough, both at home and at school, with frequent changes and disruptions in his schooling, and long periods away from home.
His father was a tough and dominating personality who expected others to work as he had done as a poor migrant from Spain: relentlessly, compulsively, while enduring physical and emotional hardship. His temper was notorious and he often expressed a violent—almost pathological—hatred towards the Americans who controlled the sugar cane industry. He raged about their monopoly on power and accused them of ripping him off in trading contracts. His was not a political or ideological repugnance towards the “Yanquis,” simply that of a businessman who felt betrayed and cheated, or perhaps humiliated and powerless.
Castro was the middle child of three brothers; the eldest of them all was a sister. He struggled through his early years with emotionally distant parents. Sibling rivalry and the invisibility of being a middle boy meant he had to work hard to be noticed. What he did was to become aggressive, argumentative, and physically combative with authority figures—especially teachers. He clearly experienced a strong Oedipal conflict with his father during puberty, manifested in a threat to burn down the house. Soon after that, he lead a strike by the estate workers for better wages.
As a youngster, Castro had an appendectomy and was seriously ill in hospital for 12 weeks. Bering alone, frightened, and away from home were becoming recurring features in Castro's early development as he was shunted between different schools and carers in Santiago and Havana, spending long periods away from his family. At school he was bullied, ironically because the wealthy Spanish colonial elite disliked that he was from peasant stock—prone to crude language, swearing, and culturally lacking in manners and etiquette—while still being rich enough to be there.
They would also have been aware that he was born illegitimate, a hugely stigmatising and shameful position in the conservative social culture of high society. His parents eventually married—but it was too late for him to be spared daily humiliation in his formative years. He overcompensated for this social exclusion and feelings of inferiority by becoming a bully himself, picking fights with older, stronger boys and often losing. He threw himself into sports and was a national champion in baseball.
The picture that emerges is of a young person who had experienced a disjointed development in terms of physical location, education, and socialisation. Such change was not the pathway to a settled, harmonious, and integrated personality where Castro could feel comfortable in his own skin, relaxed and at ease with himself. Instead he was constantly on his guard, defensive and socially awkward, especially with girls. He developed a thick skin—to an ordinary outsider he seemed a hard, angry teenager with a temper and easily provoked into fist fights.
Yet underneath was a little boy, fragile, vulnerable, and frightened of change, feeling that he had little control over his life. He was a boy with tenuous attachments to a large family with whom he had less and less contact as he grew up. In early adulthood he found intimate personal relationships hard to sustain. He was clearly most comfortable in the macho worlds of sport and politics—and later among his cadre of guerillas who risked capture, torture, and death on a daily basis in their war against the puppet dictator, Batista.
During the the Cuban missile crisis, the world seemed paralysed with the fear of nuclear armageddon. The 50th anniversary offers the chance to reflect on what made Castro resort to provoking such a critical situation. The answer lies deep within his psyche, formed during a harsh, lonely childhood. His troubled adolescence and a deep religious faith fuelled his certainty about moral questions of right, wrong, and injustice. As his personality was formed, all the evidence was there to explain his near-suicidal and ultimately successful ambition to liberate Cuba from American control—nearly leading to catastrophic nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union.
