The Secret Fidel Castro [Hardcover]

Servando Gonzalez (Author), Servando Gonzlez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol is neither a history of the Cuban revolution nor a biography of Fidel Castro. The book follows what intelligence services call a CPP (short for Comprehensive Personality Profile), similar to the ones intelligence services keep on foreign leaders. It focuses on different aspects of Castro?s actions and personality which, for some reasons, have been either ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented. The main thesis of this book is that there are many different Castros. The most widely known is the symbolic, public one, as it has been portrayed in official Cuban propaganda, Castro-friendly biographies, and mainstream American media. But there are also many secret Castros, highly different from the public one. By ?deconstructing? different aspects of the life of the symbolic Fidel Castro the author tries to prove that all of them, the symbolic and the secret ones, are suspect and, therefore, all answers are partial. The Secret Fidel Castro, focuses on little known aspects of Castro?s personality, important in the better understanding of the man and his actions?what really makes him tick.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 492 pages
• Publisher: Spooks Books (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971139105
• ISBN-13: 978-0971139107
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,487,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Secret Fidel Castro, December 28, 2001

By 

Servando Gonzalez "intelibooks" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Secret Fidel Castro (Hardcover)

The available information obtained about any person's life sometimes poses almost insurmountable problems. While the most readily verifiable information may not be the most revealing, the most interesting may not be easily verifiable. Thus, we have many accurate accounts of what Fidel Castro said, which, most of the time, fully contradicts what he actually did. In addition, not many of his biographers have tried to find out why he said or did some of these things, because to do so might require going beyond narrative history to examine a different, more elusive type of fact.

The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol is neither a history of the Cuban revolution nor a biography of Fidel Castro. The book follows what intelligence services call a CPP (short for Comprehensive Personality Profile), similar to the ones intelligence services keep on foreign leaders. It focuses on different aspects of Castro's actions and personality which, for some reasons, have been either ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented.

The book originates from the author's personal experiences in Cuba. From 1959 to 1963 he was a political officer in the Cuban Army. As such he participated in the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the anti-guerrilla actions in the Escambray mountains, and other important military operations. Also, on two occasions, in 1960 and 1964, the author had the opportunity of engaging in long conversations with Castro.

Do we understand the strange phenomenon called Fidel Castro? As you will see in this book, there are many unusual things about Castro, among them, his eidetic (photographic) memory, his uncanny ability to foretell events, his incredible good luck, and his ability to mesmerize people. Obviously, Fidel Castro is different-and not only because he is rich.

Despite the brilliance of innumerable studies about the Cuban leader, these works alone do not ultimately enable us to fully understand Castro himself or the changes he started in Cuba in 1959. After studying the mechanism by which Castro attained power, the uses to which he has put his power, his speeches, his writings and, above all, his actions, most people are still baffled by a flood of unanswered questions.

Why did a small Caribbean country abruptly become an important player in world politics? How could Castro achieved such unparalleled power in Cuba? How did he gain such a strong influence in other parts of the world? Why did Cubans come to venerate Castro as a god? Why, after a long chain of failures, does he still exert a mystique that is conspicuously absent when we study Stalin, Mussolini or Perón? Why does one feel that the Castroist revolution stands for a radically different type of revolution from the Mexican, the French, or the American ones? Most intriguing of all, what drives Fidel Castro, what motivates him? What went on in his mind when he sent his troops to Africa in 1975? What were his true intentions when he promoted guerrilla subversion in Latin America and terrorism in the U.S. and Europe? What was his ultimate goal when he tried in 1962 to push the United States and the Soviet Union to a nuclear confrontation? Was he involved in the Kennedy assassination? Is he the secret instigator of the September 11th attacks?

The main thesis of this book is that there are many different Castros. The most widely known is the symbolic, public one, as it has been portrayed in official Cuban propaganda, Castro-friendly biographies, and mainstream American media. But there are also many secret Castros, highly different from the public one. By "deconstructing" different aspects of the life of the symbolic Fidel Castro the author tries to prove that all of them, the symbolic and the secret ones, are suspect and, therefore, all answers are partial.

The Secret Fidel Castro, focuses on little known aspects of Castro's personality, important in the better understanding of the man and his actions--what really makes him tick.

This is not another book about Castro; this is THE book about Fidel Castro.

(I am not rating the book, rate it yourself once you read it)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gonzlez: The Secret Fidel Castro, May 16, 2010

By 

Gus Venegas (Cocoa, Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Secret Fidel Castro (Hardcover)

The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol is a Comprehensive Personality Profile (CPP) of Fidel Castro, similar to ones intelligence services keep on foreign leaders. It focuses on different aspects of Castro's actions and personality. The book originates from the author's personal experiences in Cuba as a staff member of the Cuban government (he was once in the staff for Raul Castro, present in several meetings with the Castro brothers, engaging them in conversation). In this book you will see many secret faces of Castro, from his fascist leanings in high school, his manipulating and mesmerizing personality, to mood swings, hatred for America, and violent behavior. This book is a bit hard to follow, yet I recommend it as a companion to a Castro biography (Quirk, Geyer, Latell, Szluc, Coltman, etc).

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why does Castro hate us so much?, May 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Secret Fidel Castro (Hardcover)

.
The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol is a take-no-prisoners approach to history. I could not stop reading it until the very end, though I confess than now I am more confused than before. The author proves that the answers to most questions about Castro are wrong, and adds some unanswered questions of his own.

Why does Fidel Castro hate us so much? A very disturbing book all Americans should read, particularly in these dangerous times.

Lisa Schmidt, Boston.