14ymedio, Juan Izquierdo, Havana, 9 August 2024 — “Fidel has done many things for Cuba, but the most important has been to save us.” This phrase – closer to religious catechism than to historiography – was expressed this Friday by one of the 39 children that the Fidel Castro Center has chosen for a special summer course. The objective of the program, for which the Spanish left-wing organization Alkaria, based in Catalonia, has contributed money, is for children to “immerse themselves” in the life and miracles of the caudillo. Since last July 8, the children have been instructed to serve as guides for the museum that houses the center. In images published by Televisión Cubana they are seen offering explanations about the type of weapons, military vehicles and historical episodes in which Castro was involved.
A girl under the age of ten explains to visitors that they are in the Room of the Word, where multiple screens – surrounded by verses of Castro’s speeches – show “Our Commander” haranguing a crowd. Another infant explains who “Fidel’s journalists” are and how they contributed to spreading his image around the world.
One child has the job of showing the K-69 jeep, the dictator’s favorite, and another gives details about the Granma yacht. In addition, they have to stop at images that border on the disturbing, such as the one that shows Castro lying in a blood donation chamber, with doctors and devices around him.
The head of the “squad” is Elianet Espinosa Chávez, a specialist from the center who is the group’s instructor
The head of the “squad” is Elianet Espinosa Chávez, a specialist from the center who is the instructor of the group, comprised of children between 6 and 14 years old. “They are very small, some have not even been given the History of Cuba,” she admits. Their mission has been to help them discover “how they feel Fidel” in every aspect of their lives.
A craft workshop – also impregnated with Fidelismo – is funded by Alkaria as an adjunct project. In addition to the 39 “guides,” there are 50 children each day. Xavier Barreda, director of Alkaria, personally supervises the development of the workshops, for which he dedicates – he says – “at least 20% of his annual budget.”
Alkaria defines itself as an organization of “developmental cooperation.” It belongs to the myriad of foreign institutions that “help” the Havana regime, not always in a transparent way. In fact, on the Alkaria website there is not a single word about the indoctrination of Cuban children, and the only project they admit to having destined for Havana is aid – in the form of medical donations – to the nursing home of San Miguel del Padrón.
According to his X profile, Barreda brought with him from Spain 660 pounds of sanitary, educational and sports material
According to his X profile, Barreda brought with him from Spain 660 pounds of sanitary, educational and sports material, a donation that he gathered with the help of the City Council of the Spanish municipality of Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, led by the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia.
Since the beginning of the summer, the Fidel Castro Center has put the children of the capital in its sights. Workshops, courses, films and conversations with retired soldiers have formed a detailed program of indoctrination in the “values” of Castroism. “I want to learn what Fidel did,” the children registered in the program repeat, one after another. On July 10, Ramiro Valdés in person went to give a children’s conference on Castro and “his teachings,” with the declared objective of having the children “continue his revolutionary work.”
Directed by historians René González Barrios and Elier Ramírez, the Center has become the mecca of Castro scholars, and its staff has been scrupulously selected. This has not prevented desertions, as told to 14ymedio by Miriam, a former employee of the Center.
“When the center opened, the workers were satisfied, because they sold us a box of subsidized frozen chicken”
“When the center opened, the workers were satisfied, because they sold us a box of subsidized frozen chicken,” she explains. However, a few months ago she left her job. Not only had they taken away “many stimuli,” including the chicken, but the “persistent” pressure exerted by the Center on its employees had reached its peak.
As August 13 – the anniversary of Castro’s birth – approaches, texts begin to proliferate in the official press that aren’t afraid of falling back on the idolatry. The figure of the dictator is approached with a romantic prose, which exaggerates his traits and idealizes his life.
This Friday, an article from Sierra Maestra alluded to Birán – the batey [sugar worker’s town] of Holguín where Castro was raised – as an idyllic place, where the “sweetness of the reeds and the bellowing of the cattle” cradled the birth of the dictator. The journalist then developed a disconcerting argument to demonstrate the “influence of the environment”: if Castro had come to power it was because Birán was impregnated with a revolutionary spirit from the Taino era – for the exploits of a bloody cacique [tribal chief] who decimated the region – until an alleged mambisa post was established in the area.
The reporter admits that Ángel Castro, the dictator’s father, arrived in Cuba – “paradoxically” – as part of the peninsular troops willing to destroy the mambises. The Galician soldier became rich and owned everything important in the batey, from the post office to the private school. Fidel and Raúl, who were born outside Castro’s marriage, grew up on the fringes of the house that now is presented as his family home .
Ángel Castro maintained his farm with cheap labor from Haiti, eastern Cuba and even his native Galicia
The semi-savage life that both boys led – to which Castro’s interviews attest, veiledly – is summarized by the journalist in several paragraphs. Those who met Castro as a young man say that “he would go with the other youngsters to the El Jobo pond, where they bathed, came back and cooked near the house.” Another explains that Fidel was a “friend of the Haitians.” “There were about 60 or 70 here. Almost all the workers here were Haitians,” explains a neighbor, without clarifying that Ángel Castro maintained his finca [estate] with cheap labor from Haiti, eastern Cuba and even his native Galicia.
Dozens of pages about Fidel Castro and his “imprint” will not be missing this August 13. They are written by the self-styled “privileged of the time,” the journalists whom the dictator once admitted to his press conferences and private parties. They themselves testified in a kind of collective hagiography. They plan to sell the book internationally, and the profits from the sale – they promise – will be donated to the “children of Cuba.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
____________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
