The Vengeful Visionary

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from an article published in TIME magazine on January 26, 1959.)

The executioner's rifle cracked across Cuba last week, and around the world voices hopefully cheering for a new democracy fell still. The men who had just won a popular revolution for old ideals -- for democracy, justice and honest government -- themselves picked up the arrogant tools of dictatorship. As its public urged them on, the Cuban rebel army shot more than 200 men, summarily convicted in drumhead courts, as torturers and mass murderers for the fallen Batista dictatorship. The constitution, a humanitarian document forbidding capital punishment, was overridden.

The only man who could have silenced the firing squads was Fidel Castro Ruz, the 32-year-old lawyer, fighter and visionary who led the rebellion. And Castro was in no mood for mercy. "They are criminals," he said. "Everybody knows that. We give them a fair trial. Mothers come in and say, 'This man killed my son.'" To demonstrate, Castro offered to stage the courts-martial in Havana's Central Park -- an unlikely spot for cool justice but perfect for a modern-day Madame Defarge.

In the trials rebels acted as prosecutor, defender and judge. Verdicts, quickly reached, were as quickly carried out. In Santiago the show was under the personal command of Fidel's brother Raul, 28, a slit-eyed man who had already executed 30 "informers" during two years of guerrilla war. Raul's firing squads worked in relays, and they worked hour after hour. Said Raul: "There's always a priest on hand to hear the last confession."

The world looked on, tried to understand the provocation, boggled at the bloodshed. Uruguay's U.N. delegate, Argentina's Cuban ambassador, liberal U.S. Senator Wayne Morse, all protested. Puerto Rico's Governor Luis Munoz Marin was "perturbed." Castro's answer: "We have given orders to shoot every last one of those murderers, and if we have to oppose world opinion to carry out justice, we are ready to do it." He added a few irresponsible crowd pleasers: "If the Americans do not like what is happening, they can send in the Marines; then there will be 200,000 gringos dead. We will make trenches in the streets." Although the U.S. had done nothing more than recognize his regime swiftly, he denounced "cannon diplomacy" and called for a rally of 500,000 this week in Havana.

No Cuban voices rose in protest, though there were doubtless many private misgivings. Sticking up for calm justice might be misinterpreted as sticking up for the tyrant Batista -- a dangerous practice in Cuba today. Overwhelming public opinion, especially among women, urged the firing squads on.

As he walked with his entourage through the lobby of the Havana Hilton last week, Castro stopped to talk with two old women, who blubbered a request that their murdered sons be avenged. "It is because of people like you," said Castro, hugging the pair, "that I am determined to show no mercy." All over Cuba, the justly aggrieved, the crackpot patriots and anyone who just wanted to square a minor account filled their black notebooks with the names of new candidates for rebel justice. Fidel Castro estimated that fewer than 450 would be shot; Raul Castro bragged that "a thousand may die."

Fidel Castro himself is egotistic, impulsive, immature, disorganized. A spellbinding romantic, he can talk spontaneously for as much as five hours without strain. He hates desks -- behind which he may have to sit to run Cuba. He sleeps irregularly or forgets to sleep, living on euphoria. He has always been late for everything, whether leading a combat patrol or speaking last week to the Havana Rotary Club, where a blue ribbon audience waited 4 3/4 hours for his arrival. Wildly, he blasted U.S. arms aid to Batista, but he paid a friendly call at 1 a.m. on the ambassador from Britain which sold tanks and planes to Batista for nearly a year after the U.S. had stopped.

Castro has the Cuban moralistic streak in spades, showing no apparent affection for money or soft living. He considers himself a Roman Catholic but is also impressed by Patriot Jose Marti's anticlerical tomes. He has to be cajoled into changing his filthy fatigue jacket. His only luxury is 50-cent Montecristo cigars.

He is full of soaring, vaguely leftist hopes for Cuba's future but has no clear program. Other Latin American leaders trust his democratic professions, hope that his shortcomings will not bring on disorder and another dictatorship.