Hemingway, Raurk, Churchill, Capstick…names that roll off the tongue with ease in any discussion of “last hard men”. Men holding skill with gun, woman, and word. More than that…each of these followed or are to this day associated with “right” thinking ideology. Despite Hemingway’s affinity for the leftist, anti-government forces in Spain and Roosevelt’s breakup of Standard Oil, among other dalliances of these men, none were ever permanently painted them with a crimson patina in the mind of the general public.
We see ourselves, or our wished for selves, in such men and their exploits. Infrequently do we in the West, acknowledge our admiration for similar machismo amongst our AK toting brethren. Make no mistake, limp wristed malcontents, many of these communist crusaders were not.
Pour out a Cuba Libre for one Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz.
Yes, Cuba’s legendary despot possessed all the characteristics of a man we could get behind (goodness knows you wouldn’t turn your back on him).
Military experience? By the fleeing migrant boatload. Enough stories to drop panties from Fayetteville to Coronado. Just in hitting the main highlight you have enough for weeklong bull sessions including a 1,700 mile open water invasion of Cuba from Mexico in a 60 ft. cabin cruiser built for 12 but instead carrying more than 80 (the Granma as the transport was known, was constructed by the same builder as Hemingway’s Pilar).
Upon the landing and massacre of his men in a swamp, leaving Castro with only 20 odd survivors out of the original 80 plus, he worked to organize and execute classic guerrilla warfare from the mountainous Cuban interior. Taking out remote army posts, obtaining his supplies from those he defeated, and endearing himself to locals. His beginning force of less than two dozen eventually accumulated enough projectable force, propaganda, and support from the population, to depose a leader backed by a full panoply of modern weapons including tanks, mortars, helicopters, napalm, and planes.
Women? Who doesn’t love a swarthy, swaggering, six-foot, 3-inch (in his well-worn combat boots) soothsayer of the common man? Giving Wilt a run for his money, a commonly cited story from Cuban officials number Castro’s bedmates at some 35,000. Officially he had only seven children though the number of unrecognized offspring may drive the installation of a “Castro Blvd.” in every Cuban township. Cementing his reputation as a ladies’ man is the tale told by one Marita Lorenz in Vanity Fair where she recounts taking him for her first lover upon being struck by his powers of seduction within the first moments of their introduction (he was kind enough to let her keep her clothes on during said copulation). Marita was so smitten by our leading man that when she was hired to assassinate our swashbuckling Socialist a short period later, her mission would fail with the flushing of her poison pills to facilitate the rekindling of their carnal desires.
Castro didn’t lack sporting instincts we seek either. Better known for his play on the diamond as a pitcher at the University of Havana, he also directed his leisure time towards those of a more visceral nature.
A trip to Russia after the Cuban missile crisis is a significant example. There exists a wonderful propaganda film, available online, in which we see Castro ice fishing and pulling some good sized muskie looking critters out of their dacha’s watery depths followed by Castro and Khrushchev working over several wild boars they had collected, then proceeding to view Khrushchev loading up a double barrel to go after a moose and ends with their dispatching of hare and fox. It’s a wonderful collection of snippets to show the Russian populace “Look! Our partner in the Caribbean is hunter just like us!”
Lest you think this was a one-time event for the Russian cameras, he'd repeat these hunting expeditions on numerous occasions flitting about the globe from one Socialist feting to another. Here’s Castro deer hunting in a track suit and Converse sneakers in Romania, there’s Castro taking shots from his limousine in Czechoslovakia…None of which even touches upon his hunts for fowl among the foliage of his father’s sugar plantation or the game preserve he created from the varied gifts of animalia that Castro received as tokens of thanks for the military men and machines sent in support of worldwide Socialist domination. Water buffalo from China, eland from Namibia, nilgai from India and so on are now home to a cay off the north side of Cuba with a few of them ending up on the local menu despite the “reserve” status of locale.
Being a native of the Caribbean, Castro would have been poorly served without skills in the water and so he would be found bare-chested fishing with his buddy Che Guevara in the 1960 Ernest Hemingway International Billfishing Tournament. He would be handed the winning trophy by Papa himself. Under the water, Castro was a lifelong SCUBA and snorkeling aficionado to such an extent that the CIA tried to assassinate him with a tuberculosis and foot fungus laced diving suit. Later in life he’d welcome Jacques Cousteau to delve Cuba’s coral depths and be found dining aboard the Calypso while discussing the release of political prisoners and the protection of Cuba’s underwater ecosystem.
Nearly all of this was done with a fat cohiba between the fore and middle finger of course, further cementing his casual cool nature that makes McQueen seem a millennial teen before their first dose of Adderall in comparison.
What isn’t mentioned so far is Castro’s loquacious nature…No need to put you to sleep like he did those attending his infamously lengthy diatribes on the evils of the capitalist West. Though holding the record at four and a half hours for the longest nonstop speech at the United Nations (doubtful any of the greats mentioned at the beginning here could get through such a harangue without stopping for a drink), maybe a true renaissance man of the ladies, pen, sword, and hunt, doesn’t have to hold his audience at gunpoint to keep their attention. Maybe we can respect such men’s experience and skills where it overlaps with our own or our own desires…while still being secure in the fact that we tell better stories.