Revolutionaries around the world celebrate this Saturday the 96th anniversary of the birth of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, a universal symbol of emancipatory ideas and the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle.
Fidel is a benchmark of Marxist thought and its creative application in Cuba, a nation that, though small and poor, became a torch in the dark shadow of empire.
Much is known of the man who led the triumph of the mass movement in 1959, which he later defined as “a revolution of the workers, peasants and students”. Less well known, however, are other facets of his life that brought people closer to his versatility.
Restless and curious student
Fidel Castro was a restless and inquisitive student. His passion for reading and learning shaped his ability to form and deepen a comprehensive picture of social and historical processes.
The graduate album of the Colegio de Belén in Havana, where Fidel studied between 1942 and 1945, states that “he always excelled in all subjects related to letters”.
A passion for sports
His passion for sport also accompanied him throughout his life. In Belén’s graduate book you can read that “he was a real athlete who always defended the college flag with courage and pride. He managed to win everyone’s admiration and affection.”
He was drawn to basketball, baseball and swimming. He is also reminded to play chess games. He believed that physical exercise enhanced health and character.
True to his premise of sport as law, he created a system of sports facilities and a synergy between sport and education that helps to understand that a nation facing a heavy blockade by the United States has 84 Olympic titles, far ahead of countries like Spain and Brazil.
solidarity and humanism
Nicolás Maduro once called it “the common solidarity that today embraces the peoples of the world”. And to understand the phrase, it would be enough to see Fidel among the hundreds of Vietnam fighters he visited in September 1973, in the midst of the liberation war against the American invader.
No other ruler and statesman risked a journey to this site. With two years to go before the fall of Saigon, Fidel already foresaw that the Vietnamese people would break the back of what he said was “the most powerful imperialist country industrially, militarily and economically”.
internationalist character
Faced with interventionist and interventionist policies that send soldiers and guns to every corner of the world, Fidel sent doctors to those most in need. Since the early 1960s, approximately 420,000 Cuban health workers have provided care in more than 120 countries.
The care of more than 26,000 seriously ill children from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine between 1990 and 2011 after the Chernobyl reactor accident (April 1986) was unique and unique.
Fidel took a personal interest in them, in expressions of affection that he multiplied among Cuban children and young people, to whom he entrusted the future of the revolution and the most important tasks from the very beginning.
Between 2015 and 2018 alone, Cuba deployed more than 50,000 doctors, nurses and other technicians to 68 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Memories from the great homeland
As former President of Ecuador Rafael Correa said after Fidel’s death, Cuba built with him not the walls erected by empires, but bastions of dignity, respect and internationalism.
Evo Morales said that while fighting the Empire’s policies, Fidel put Cuba on the world map while the world recognizes Fidel as an unattainable epic in times of loneliness for all mankind.