Gustavo Morales – Castro: From Blue to Red (2016)

Originally founded here

https://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/2022/12/gustavo-morales-castro-do-azul-ao.html

I met Fidel Castro — the Commander — in 1978. At the time, I was part of a Spanish delegation participating in the World Festival of Youth and Students in Cuba. 

The Commander came over and greeted us, surprised to see half a dozen people wearing blue shirts. I raised my arm in the air and he extended his hand to me, in a sign of cordiality, and said: “I know who you are”. Then he advised me to visit the Che House/Museum library. I followed his advice and there I found the Complete Works of José Antonio [Primo de Rivera], dedicated by Antonio de Olano to Fidel himself. I soon found out that a Jesuit professor named Armando Llorente had introduced Comandante Fidel to José Antonio, who considered him his best student: “He sang Cara al Sol with me twenty thousand times, with his arm raised”.

It would not take long for the landing of the Granma to take place. Then, the arduous battle in the mountains. The end of anonymity in your meetings with journalists. The activism and fights against the Batista government, as well as the triumphal entry into Havana in 1959, with his rifle raised and a rosary wrapped around his forearm. And, after all, the hostility of the United States on the beach of Girón and, consequently, realpolitik , when he turned to the Soviet Union as a result of the American siege.

The red-and-black flags became just red: he got off the Rocinante and mounted Sancho Panza’s mule. He had already forgotten what he had said about his brother Raúl — “he is good for nothing” — and succumbed to the charms of Moscow.

To paraphrase the Mexican saying: “Poor Cuba, so far from God and so close to the United States!”

Rest in peace, Commander. We have dreams, enemies and origins in common – but we don’t share your party, your system and your friends