Fidel Castro - The Silver Spoon Bastard (Part III)

Fidel Castro, age 11

Fidel Castro was a nightmare waiting to happen. His childhood made certain of that.

Imagine being an illegitimate bastard and being prohibited from ever going into your father's house, a house that is situated on the very piece of land where you live.

Imagine being forced to live in a dirt floor hut with your pregnant, unmarried teenage mother and your other two siblings.

Imagine the constant feeling of hatred cast in your direction by your father's wife who spent every waking moment knowing that you were the product of your father's amorous preference for your mother.

Fidel (R) at the age of 8, with sister Angelina
and brother Ramon in Santiago de Cuba

Add to that being uprooted with your siblings and sent to live 80 miles away with another family that is paid by the month to house and feed you.

This was Fidel Castro's life during his first four years.

To make matters worse, Castro was not baptized nor had he taken his First Communion when he was sent away. In what was a very Roman Catholic country that was a huge black eye. It was difficult enough for Castro to be constantly ridiculed by other children and called a bastard; but he was also called a "dirty Jew" because of his Baptismal status.

Castro's mother tried to head off some of the cruel teasing of her son by arranging to have Castro baptized in a Santiago de Cuba cathedral. Since Fidel lacked a birth certificate with the name of his father his mother concocted a last name - "Hipolito". This was an extrapolation of the middle name belonging to the man (Luis Hyppolyte Alcides Hibbert) who had agreed to take the Castro children in.

Thus, Fidel became Fidel Hipolito.

Fidel's Baptismal certificate correctly identified Lina Ruz as his mother. Maternal grandparents and godparents were identified as the Hibberts. No paternal grandparents were listed nor was Angel Castro Argiz identified as the biological father.

Later that year, Fidel made his First Communion but neither the, nor being baptized, did anything to stop the mocking by his classmates.

Colegio La Salle, Class of 1936-37. Fidel is in the first standing row,
white jacket, 6th from the left. Brother Raul is seated directly in front of him

In 1936 when Fidel was 10 years old, and after his mother had given Castro Argiz two more daughters, Angel's wife reached the breaking point and she left him.  Lina Ruz was now moved into Castro Argiz's main house and their offspring were finally able to access Castro Argiz's plantation as if it was theirs. Fidel could now enjoy all the material trappings that came with it, except one thing - the name Castro.

Fidel (3rd from R to L) at age 11 with his La Salle classmates

Fidel's emotional scars were already indelibly etched in his psyche and they manifested themselves with aggressive, unruly behavior. While at La Salle, he was a constant behavioral problem and was frequently disciplined for fighting with other children. He was labeled a bully by the school's headmaster and in the fifth grade he punched and bit a school counselor.

Fidel, age 11, seated on his horse at Las Manacas

Fidel was expelled from La Salle in November of 1937 and returned to his father's plantation. But Las Manacas was hardly a fond home for Fidel as it harbored bad memories from his previous time there. Fidel threatened to set the house on fire if he was not sent away to a boarding school.

Angel obliged, sending him to the Colegio de Dolores in Santiago, a Jesuit prep school in Santiago reserved for the wealthy and socially prominent. Before leaving for school, Fidel's birth was finally registered in the civil archives with the name "Fidel Casiano Ruz Gonzalez".

Now a pre-teen, Fidel was only too aware of his illegitimate status. It hung around his neck like a ball and chain while he was at Dolores. Thrust into an elite setting, surrounded only by socially prominent children of Cuban society, Fidel's feelings of social inferiority heightened to new levels.

Fidel, age 15

Lina Ruz pleaded with Angel to correct their children's illegitimate status to no avail. She turned to one of Castro Argiz's mentors to convince Castro Argiz to legitimize the children. In 1940, Castro Argiz began to relent and he divorced his first wife. The following year he became a naturalized Cuban citizen and in 1943 he married Lina Ruz.

Castro Argiz was 67 years old.

Fidel was finally on the road to being legally legitimized by his father but then an unexpected monkey wrench reared its ugly head. It seems that Castro Argiz was not the only one with a wandering eye and rumors began to circulate that Fidels' brother Raul was not Angel's son but rather had been fathered by one of Lina's many other lovers.

Rumors of Lina's infidelity were nothing new. For quite some time there had also been persistent rumors that Fidel was not actually Angel's son but rather the product of a tryst between Lina and an American executive who worked for the United Fruit Company. These rumors were validated to some extent by the way in which Angel always treated Fidel - distant, cold, and overbearing.

Nothing was ever proven and so in 1943, at the age of 17, Angel legally recognized Fidel as his son.

Fidel was now Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, his third and last official name.

Unfortunately, being legitimized was far from the magic potion that would heal Fidel Castro's emotional psyche. On the occasions when Fidel would return home from school, Angel remained a distant, cold, ill tempered father who harshly disciplined Fidel and his siblings. Many visitors to Las Manacas commented that they never saw Angel and Fidel have a conversation that did not involve a myriad of reprimands and harsh words exchanged between the two.

Fidel (Far R, holding banner) on the volleyball team at Colegio de Dolores

Fidel recalled once in an interview that when he would return home from Dolores, Castro Argiz would make him work in the plantation's general store while brother Raul tended bar in the pub. He was quoted as saying that, "It was a hard house, of a very hard man...."

In 1942, Castro was enrolled in one of Cuba's most exclusive high schools and set off for Havana. As you will see in Part IV of Fidel Castro - The Silver Spoon Bastard, things only got worse for Fidel. While the Colegio de Dolores was an upper crust boarding school, his new school was even more exclusive. Thrust into the creme de la creme of Cuba's social elite, Castro was the proverbial fish out of water. He was perceived as a social rube, a hick from the sticks, and the bastard son of an illiterate peasant.

It was a precursor for what was to come - the transformation of a child into a man who sought revenge against those who had made his life the miserable existence they had created for him.