EPTWELCOME to another rambling of a silly 17 year old kid and his experiences before he actually has to really know anything about the "real world!" This blog will also look very different from the previous ones since its a bit less random and more pointed with quite a bit of background writing within the blog. As the Reader if you know about Castro/revolution in south america (probably know more than my little brain has) you can skip the TL;DR, if not you can read it for however long you wish to 
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.Today, my rambling, poorly written, and passionate blog is going to reflect / ask the fairly knowledgable people on TL about a man who made a living along with a country wide revolution doing the same thing. Now if you want, you and I can play a little guessing game about who I am talking about. I'm going to give you 2 hints, 1) best beard ever, he grew it in the Sierra Maestra as a sign of the revolution, 2) History Will Absolve Him. If that doesn't give you the clue about who it is, check the spoiler below.
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![[image loading]](http://pr0t0typeb0y.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/fidel-castro.jpg)
I am currently doing my IB EE on Castro and, "to what extent the 26th of July Movement was Communist," and this is proving fairly difficult, unfortunately.
Skip if you already understand the IB
A very quick synopsis of what an EE for IB is. For those who do not take IB or live across the pond from my American butt, IB or International Baccalaureate is a series of classes that define a very liberal arts style highschool education with a focus on being a Renaissance man or woman. You take exactly 7 classes usually, 3 HL (harder classes that can grant you college/uni credit) 3 SL (classes that should be easier, but sometimes, when the school
My essay focuses on the early years that Fidel faced, from his time at the attack on the Moncada Barracks, to his speech, History Will Absolve Me, to his time in Mexico and then everything UNTIL, he is well into his regime. Now granted I use some evidence from his time in the Fidelista Communist Regime, but most of my essay will focus on the earlier years. This is where my main issues come and a lot of where my growth as a person also comes in. Fidel is an enigmatic figure, that is undisputable, what is very disputable is whether or not he was actually a Marxist-Lenninist or even a Communist at all, even being that specific a Communist. In an era full of Communist revolutionaries and successful along with unsuccessful revolutions in Latin America, Castro is a relatively enigmatic figure. People like Che Guevara were obviously Communists, with radical change in mind.
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![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fswDvPSZvLM/TdJLz2_Ik1I/AAAAAAAAABo/I4ik8Lej5BE/s1600/CheG1951.jpg)
There were even more versions of this kind of armed revolution popping up after Castro attained power because of his promise to Che to export radical revolution to Che's home country of Argentina. Now despite how miserably the Peron era went, as we can see, there is definitely a grade of radicalness and redness to the revolutions withing South American and the Carribean. These different shades of red (red meaning Communist) make Castro somewhat of an enigma. His brother, Raul, pretty much stayed around Che's level or slightly under in Redness with Castro's other cohorts, Camilo Cienfuego and Juan Almeida beign quite conservative compared to Raul Castro and Che Guevara. This environment along with the young anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist experiences that Fidel had as a child definitely added to a somewhat growing Communist sentiment within Castro.
TL;DR: Fidel is enigmatic because people argue about how Red he was when he started the revolution vs how Nationalistic he was. People say that Che and his Brother influenced him to be Marxist, but Fidel argues now that he had been Communist, but was hiding it because of the anti-Communist the times he lived in were especially tense with his previous ties to the U.S.A. This is mainly due to U.S. and their need for a new leader in Cuba considering the corrupt Fugulcencio Batista regime's failure. This has caused people like Richard Pipes to argue that Castro was just sucking the U.S.S.R.'s dick for oil when his sugar trade plan with China failed, post the Bay of Pigs failure and the U.S.'s created trade embargo against Cuba. Some argue (including he, himself) that he always had been but needed to keep it on the DL and that his style of leadership is actually very reminiscent of Communists but with a bit more openness. Some argue that its all bullshit and Castro does whatever to make sure Cuba does not fail and so his precious Revolution doesn't go down the tube, Ala John Gaddis.
Now take this with a grain of salt as I am not a master of Castro's life, but I have read quite a bit about this from his own writing and others writing as impartially about him as is possible, because things are about to get very, very questionable and very open to interpretation. This is where the real blog kind of starts
I am unsure of what to think about Fidel, Raul, Che, Camilo, and Juan (OH yeah I totes know them on a first name basis
). I'll break it down into 3 parts: Redness, Nationalism, Pure hate.- Redness = Communist-ness. How committed they are towards the Communist cause vs. nationalistic causes. Basically how Ideal/Utopian Commuinist they are.
- Nationalism = The opposite of Utopian / Ideal Communism. This focuses around change for a select group of people recognizing that Communist revolution is not the priority but rather part of the aftermath of a revolution and that the "constituency" of the revolution is what matters.
- Pure hate = Lennin-ness. Seriously, how much someone wants the revolution for Ideal reasons or for person gain. I'm calling this pure hate because its pure hate of the norm of the time vs. pure love of the communist Ideal and pure love of change for the proletariate vs. just trying to kill the "ancient regime."
For some of these people its very easy to tell so I will make another list with a 1-10 number for each attribute afterwards.
- Fidel Castro: I have absolutely no idea, people fight over this so much, but personally I think that he is somewhat Utopian Communist, very Nationalist, not much pure hate. 7, 8, 2
- Raul Castro: He seems very Utopian Communist and very much Nationalist, but more Communist than Nationalist, with some pure hate thrown in the mix but not much. 8, 5, 2
- Ernesto "Che" Guevara: VERY Communist, not at all nationalist, lots of pure, unadulterated hate stemming from his motorcycle diaries, very reckless, and very reminiscent of Vladimir Lennin. This makes a lot of sense since he was a blatant and very devout Marxist-Lenninist, which most likely had a profund effect on Raul and Fidel Castro who are very impressionable people. 10, 0, 7
- Camilo Cienfuego: He is quite conservative, he is the generic Nationalist. He reminds me mostly of Mao, less in the fact that he camped out in a remote area of the country while fighting much larger armies and commanding a large portion of Castro's army, but more in the fact that he wants to change the ancient regime and if Communism happens, then meh, it happens. He isn't really pushing too much of the Communist revolution as much as he buys into Castro's Idealistic Communism and says, yeah this will bring needed change. He also is very vibrant and funny, and CAlCULATED, the anti-che. 2, 10, 5
- Juan Almeida: See above. Almeida and Camilo Cienfuego, though different characteristically, are similar in political view and Almeida isn't very important in general though he was a general in the army that survived. He was not the Commandante like Fidel, but he commanded a column in the army and is thus somewhat important though I doubt I will include him in my essay since no one seems to care about him, he is the SlayerS_Ganzi of the July 26th Movement. 2, 10, 5,
I know what to think about Raul, Che, and Camilo (fuck Juan, seriously he isn't that important and he would be over shadowed had a man named Abel not died as a column general, and before Castro made the Sierra Maestra revolution the most important part of the revolution, Juan would be just an anecdote in history, despite his high ranking role in the Cuban Communist Party), they are all very obvious, save maybe Raul to some extent. Che and Camilo are about as polar as it gets, they were friendly, but did not agree on their political and life philosophies. Where as Che was willing to give is life, to the point where he wrote Camilo telling Camilo to spill what he knew about the campaign so that He (Che) could most likely take on the most dangerous mission and martyr for the cause; Camilo chose to live a calculated, and very safe life and tried more than anything to not lose life, his military engagements tended to be quite safe with little exception and the Revolution was founded around magnifying and discrediting Batista. Raul ended up being quite Communist, but with his recent overtaking of Cuba, has shown to have become more and more nationalist in nature, but that may be because of the modern history of Castro's Cuba.
Fidel is where I am torn. He shows the youth and Idealism of a Utopian Communist, and also the want to change the political system from his early law school and college days, often making speeches and being part of the anti-Batista campaigns of his youth. Now this does not make him pure hate, that is very different, that is a grudge againt the ruling party and Castro did not have that kind of feelings toward the Batista, or any other dictatorial regime of his time, the only time he harbored that was after the Bay of Pigs where he
TL;DR, Castro is an asshole who can't make up his mind about doing this politically
On a more serious note than the above sentence, I would rather comments in this section be a bit thought out since I may take a lot of the advice here into consideration. Also know that I have at least skimmed through around >7 books and 1 53 page speech (history will absolve me) along with general wikipedia reading so it would be awesome if people commenting here could at least read through what I have written to the extent that they are somewhat knowledgable
. Cheers guys, and thanks for the reading.P.S. Most of my blogs past this should retain the funky feeling and structure that they normally have for aesthetic design and creativity on my own part, but this one needs the visual flow so I kept it the standard for TL blog looks. Hopefully I can get a following for my blogs
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