Historians on Fidel

Peter Bourne Fidel (1986)1

Largely unappreciated in the United States was the fact that Fidel received almost
universal endorsement from the Third World for his actions in Angola in the early
1970s. His willingness to commit troops was for many a demonstration of the
sincerity of his commitment to the cause of the developing world. Unlike the mere
rhetoric of the superpowers, the Soviet Union included, he had committed his own
people and resources to the struggle. The ultimate accolade came in 1976 when
the meeting invited Havana to host the next Non-Aligned summit in 1979,
automatically making Fidel chairman of the organization for the next three- year
term.

Peter Bourne Fidel (1986)

After the Revolution either they could accept that Fidel was committed to true
revolution and everything was going to be done the way Fidel wanted or they could
leave. One of the many who left was Fidels sister Juanita, who became a harsh
critic of her brother. To stay meant to place ones trust entirely in Fidel as he led the
country into dangerous and uncharted waters. . . Fidel knew he was forcing
educated, professional Cubans to make a decision many of whom had been
educated in the United States but if they stayed and continued to be in
disagreement with fundamental goals of the revolution, they would constitute a
growing liability. . . Fidel miscalculated the extent to which such rapid exodus of the
professional community would have on Cubas basic institutions.

Leycester Coltman The Real Fidel Castro (2003)2

By 1985 Castro felt the cold wind from Moscow. Many Western observers, knowing
the extent of Cubas dependence on Soviet aid, assumed Castro would have to go at
least some way toward supporting and copying the Gorbachev reforms. For a short
period he did try to gratify Gorbachev supporters by encouraging more open
discussion and criticism of government ministers (not of himself). But the
experiment was not taken far When in 1986 Castro introduced his own full-blown
reform program called the Rectification of Errors, it turned out the errors were not
the overly-centralized rigidity of the economy or the stultifying bureaucratic control
of information, but rather the reversal of small steps toward economic liberalization
that had been allowed a few years earlier.

Leycester Coltman The Real Fidel Castro (2003)

The 1991 Party Congress had virtually killed off all hopes that Castro would allow a
significant loosening of political control or liberalization of the economy. However,
low expectations are a good base from which to convince people that small
advances are significant. Family-scale enterprise was legalized, dollars were made
legal and dollar shops were opened to Cubans. Workers in the tourism industry
were allowed to accept tips and farmers were allowed to sell goods at open markets
at prices set by themselves.

Sheldon Liss Fidel! Castros Political and Social Thought (1994)3

1 Dr. Peter Bourne Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, Vice
Chancellor Emeritus of St. Georges University in Grenada, West Indies,.and Chairman of the Board of Medical
Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC).

2 Served as British Ambassador to Cuba from 1991 to 1994. Also served as Ambassador to Colombia

3 Sheldon B. Liss, - specialized in 20th-century radical political movements in Latin America,professor of history at
the University of Akron since 1967- He previously was on the faculties of Indiana State University in Terre Haute and
the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.
Cubans like to think that if Marx and Lenin had never existed, Castro would have
invented communism. They imply that theirs is a unique communism, not the
Soviet or Orthodox version Fidelism does not represent a closed model, but rather
a step in a revolutionary direction for other Latin American nations to examine and
construct their own radical movements based on historical conditions. . . Over the
years as his knowledge of Marxist theory has deepened, his social and political
analyses have become more concrete yet he claims he is neither dogmatic nor
pragmatic (he is both), but dialectical Thus nothing is permanent and all changes
Latin American intellectuals do not view him as a theoretician he is seen as an
implementer of a Marxist vision for Cuba and he increasingly portrays the Cuban
Revolution as humanist stemming for a desire to eliminate injustice and misery.

4
Andres Solares Cuba The Disaster of Castros Revolution (2010)

4 Andres Solares is a former Cuban political prisoner, who was imprisoned for trying
to create a new political party in the island to oppose Fidel Castro's policies. He was
freed thanks to a worldwide campaign promoted by Amnesty International,
America's Watch and Of Human Rights, the personal intervention of Senators Robert
Dole and Edward Kennedy and the requests of the American Congress and British
authorities. He is a Civil Engineer specialized in Economics in Great Britain and he
lectured post-graduate courses on these subjects in Cuba. He has carried on and
published numerous studies on Cuban matters. He lives in Miami with his wife
Adriana and their children and family