Word: fidelity
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President Carter has accused Moscow of using the Cubans as surrogates to interfere in "the internal affairs of Africa." Zbigniew Brzezinski has denounced the Cubans as "international marauders" who are doing the Kremlin's dirty work in the Third World. But Premier Fidel Castro's escalating military involvement in Africa has some homegrown and homefront benefits, as TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott discovered on an eleven-day visit to Cuba. His report...
...famous beard is necked with gray. His green fatigues have been artfully tailored to all but conceal a midriff bulge. Cuba's "maximum leader" will turn 52 in August. He has ruled Cuba for 19 years. Fully 45% of his 9.7 million subjects were born after Fidel and his guerrilla band came down from the Sierra Maestra and marched triumphantly into Havana...
Says Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, 65: "Compared to what my generation and Fidel's knew, life nowadays is easy, and this easiness may bring about a certain weakness." Then, getting in a dig at Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communists, Rodriguez adds: "We don't believe in solving this problem with a cultural revolution, parading people around with dunce caps on their heads. We believe that internationalist tasks help the revolution because they are important in the political character-building and moral mobilization of our youth." Cuban propaganda on posters and radio broadcasts stresses youth...
Cuban officials insist that both the civilian and military personnel in Africa are volunteers. Maybe so, but a young Cuban faces a formidable battery of social and governmental pressures to answer the call "Comrade Fidel wants you." A Havana resident described how authorities picked volunteers in the small town where a relative lives: "They lined up the young men and asked those who were willing to go to Africa to raise their hands. Anyone who didn't raise his hand was then told to explain why-and he better have a pretty good excuse, like illness or hardship...
...financial cost of that involvement is underwritten almost entirely by the Soviet Union (see box). And not just young men apply for African duty. Says Vilma Espin, 46, head of the Federation of Cuban Women and wife of Fidel's brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro: "At the height of the war in Angola, we had thousands of letters from women of all ages, including ones in their 70s, asking to go as cooks. One of the most important changes in Cuba since the revolution is that women who were afraid to go out of their houses 20 years...