100 Hours with Fidel: Wall for Anti-Cuba Lies

Havana, May 18.- The revelations in “Cien horas con Fidel”, by French-Spanish writer Ignacio Ramonet, has a shattering effect on the old chain of lies against the Cuban Revolution and its leader.

The 715-page interview with President Fidel Castro, edited by the Cuban Council of State Publications Office, outlines key 20th century episodes, in the Island and the world, based on historic facts.

Ramonet says his motivation to publish a book of over 100 hours of conversations with the Cuban statesman was to give detailed and true political “food for thought” to the world youth fighting globalization and neoliberalism.

The new generations, especially in Europe, lack “critical distance” to resist the media anti-Cuba hate campaign.

It is important for young people to learn the truth, to give them a tool to look beyond the vicious hatred and Satanizing campaigns, he said, adding that it is a tool especially useful for Cubans.

Without evading prickly topics, some even taboo for Cubans at one time, “Cien horas con Fidel” has been launched as a lasting book, able to survive every situation, and deals with the caustic criticism against the Revolution.

Speaking of the Cuban president, the author commented: He never said I will not answer, he never asked me what I would ask about.

Ramonet is also author of Propaganda Silenciosa (Silent Propaganda) about the US invasion of Iraq.

Pedro Alvarez Tabio, editor and chief of the Council of State Historic Affairs Office, said the most distinctive feature of this book is the "sharp, at times provocative" nature of many questions.

Ramonet’s questioned Fidel Castro both with honest doubts about Cuba’s reality, prevailing in European intellectual circles, but also intentionally with questions –embarrassing for some- at the core of the anti-Cuba campaigns.

Great dreams, hopes, struggles, setbacks, frustrations and disappointments of, whom the author defines as, an awesome leader, are interlaced with perhaps the most extensive and profound discussion of the life of Fidel Castro.

The childhood of a leader, the forging of a rebel, the death of Che Guevara, lessons of a guerrilla, Cuba and Africa, Cuba-US emigration crisis, and the collapse of the USSR are collected in the 26 chapter book.

Difficult moments for the revolution, like the 1989 Ochoa Case and the death penalty, treason by ex revolutionaries, the March 2003 arrest of political mercenaries, and the April 2003 boat hijackings, are also in this book.

The book concludes with the chapter “After Fidel, What?”, a suggestive title that nonetheless has a clear answer for Ramonet.

“Fidel is a man that only has awesome ideas, but that is how history is made and victory achieved, because the revolution is to believe that you can move mountains. After Fidel, there will not be another Fidel,” said the anti-globalization activist.

The Cuban head of State, that never before devoted so many hours to a book interview, agreed with Ramonet that the book is an instrument of combat that emerged at a key moment when another slander against him circulates the world.

The US magazine Forbes, which Fidel Castro accused of libel, listed him among the ten wealthiest leaders in the world, an obvious attempt to discredit him and the revolution morally and politically. (Ulises Canales /PL)