Fidel Castro - The Silver Spoon Bastard (Part II)

Angel Maria Castro Argiz, Fidel Castro's father

Fidel Castro was born on August 13, 1926, the bastard son of Angel Maria Castro Argiz, an illiterate peasant from Spain who immigrated to Cuba after serving in the Spanish Army during the Spanish American War.

Castro Argiz was conscripted into the Spanish Army to fight during the Cuban insurrection that led to the Spanish American War. Castro Argiz was inducted in place of a wealthy Spaniard's son, a common practice in Spain whereby the wealthy would pay to avoid having their sons serve in the Army.

During his service in the Spanish army, Castro Argiz took part in summary executions of those rebelling against Spain, the pillaging of villages inhabited by those considered to be separatists, and the massacre of those perceived to be rendering aid to Spain's enemies. These experiences emotionally warped the man who would soon spawn an even more warped, more vicious human being.

Angel Castro's immigration papers

Spain suffered a humiliating defeat in the war due to the intervention of the United States on behalf of those seeking independence from Spain. The price Spain paid for losing the war was the loss of the last crumbs of its once-global empire, i.e. colonies such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. The loss of these last vestiges of power had a devastating effect on the Spanish psyche and engendered a rabid hatred of the United States by Spaniards.

Castro Argiz was no exception. The war left him with an unbridled hatred for America that was exacerbated when he was deported from Cuba at the end of the war and was forced to return to Spain.

In 1906, Castro Argiz returned to Cuba as a penniless immigrant and settled in eastern Cuba. He acquired a small farm in Biran, named it Las Manacas, and increased its size to an eventual 26,000 acres through connivance, opportunism, and by the outright theft of land from others.

Castro Argiz added sizable chunks of land to his farm in 1917 during a revolt in in the Oriente province by leading a militia of men against revolutionary forces. Taking a page from his service in the Spanish Army, he seized farms belonging to the group's supporters and kept the land for himself.

Main house at Las Manacas

He added most of the Las Manacas acreage at night, piece by piece, stealing it from the American-owned United Fruit Company. By day, Castro Argiz would provide laborers and other necessities to United Fruit and made a living from his business dealings with the company. At night he would move the fences that bordered his property with United Fruit's property, increasing the size of his farm.

Angel Castro, overlord of Las Manacas, watching his workers in the fields

Angel would also steal farm equipment from United Fruit and paint it so as to hide its theft. United Fruit representatives would often retrieve equipment from Castro Argiz's farm after scraping the fresh  paint from tractors and discovering that they belonged to United Fruit.

Castro Argiz justified his practice by believing that he was entitled to take whatever he could from those who he believed had taken so much from Spain. He eventually came to employ over 400 workers and servants at Las Manacas, including Lina Ruz Gonzalez, a teenage household kitchen maid who became his mistress at the age of 14.  Angel fathered seven children (including Fidel and brother Raul) with Lina, who he eventually married.

Fidel Castro at age 5 when sent away to Santiago de Cuba

Before the marriage to Lina, the first three of Castro Argiz's illegitimate children (including Fidel) lived with Ruz in one of the farm's employee shacks and were barred from going into the main house where Angel lived with his wife. When Lina became pregnant with their fourth child (Raul) and the resemblance between the first three children and Angel became obvious, Fidel and his siblings were shipped off to Santiago de Cuba, some 80 miles away, to live with a family that was friends with Angel. Castro Argiz did not visit the children once during the two years that Fidel lived with that family.

Ever the unscrupulous miser, Castro Argiz turned Las Manacas into a company town complete with a general store, bakery, blacksmith, primary schoolhouse, hotel, pub, post office, billiard hall, telegraph office, and cockfighting ring. Instead of paying his employees with cash, Angel paid them with coupons that could only be redeemed within Las Manacas.

The cockfighting ring at Las Manacas

If you owed Castro Argiz money and were unable to pay it back, it was not uncommon for you to be forced to fight in the cockfight ring.

One little known tidbit is that Angel's plantation included a segregated community for black Jamaican, Cuban, and Haitian field workers that consisted of one-room huts with thatched roofs and dirt floors. Castro Argiz did not believe in racial equality or integration of races. In his world, blacks were inferior and were treated no better than slaves.

The example set by Castro Argiz with regard to blacks was ingrained in Fidel at an early age and served to shape his lifelong perception of blacks as an inferior race. Later in life, Fidel pretended to treat blacks as equals but only when it suited him politically or publicly. Until the day Fidel relinquished power, the number of blacks in Fidel's inner circle was zero, zippo, nada. This is in contrast to the number of blacks in Cuba which has been approximated at 62 percent of the population.

In a future post, I will discuss the pervasive racism that exists in Cuba even to this day, but that is for another post. This one belongs to Angel Castro as a backdrop to Fidel's psychopathic makeup.

Angel Castro at Las Manacas

Castro Argiz's inferiority complex manifested itself by finding disrespect by Americans where there was none. If someone didn't shake his hand it was because he was being looked down upon. If he wasn't invited to an event it was because he wasn't good enough. As he aged his hatred for Americans grew by the day, and it never stopped growing until the day he died.

Angel infused his hatred of the United States into Fidel's psyche. Hearing his father's constant railings against the so-called imperialists from the north, Fidel's hatred for the U.S. was formed at an early age. This went hand in hand with Angel's other insecurity issues which he also passed along to his son.

The discussion on Fidel Castro's childhood will continue in Part III which will walk you through Fidel's adolescent years. That will dovetail with the understanding you now have about Castro's father and ultimately will explain how a human being could turn out to be the man who destroyed what was once called the pearl of the Caribbean.