Word: fidelitys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...politics have a record as long as Raúl Castro's, and yet rare is the leader as powerful as he who is as mysterious to the outside world. Raúl, who temporarily assumed charge of the Cuban presidency for the first time last week as Fidel recovered from abdominal surgery, has always been there. His brother's designated successor, he was beside Fidel from the moment the two, with Raúl's acquaintance Che Guevara, launched the revolution that overthrew the dictatorship of Cuba's Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Having joined the Socialist Youth as a university student, Raúl was red before...
...first time I met Raúl Castro, in 1972, I confess that I did not pay any attention to him at all. I was visiting revolutionary Cuba with a group of young "internationalists"; I was green and wanted to change the world. Fidel was the one that I wanted to see. First I met Vilma Espín, who had joined the revolution before marrying Raúl. That she was from a well-to-do family and had thrown away everything for the cause made her a dashing character in my eyes. She was then and remains today head of Cuba's Women...
...Fidel is so overpowering. When you talk to him he looks at you directly, into your eyes. He makes good use of his pale, long fingers, very much like a pianist's, touching you to make a point. He speaks in a circular way, taking you on a fact-filled detour and then back to the main point. Once when I was interviewing him, he turned to his secretary and said, "She is from Galicia, but from a very different background from mine." He then started telling the story of Galicia--the Spanish region from which his father came...
...extracts. At another it was special-operations training. He ate with the men and joked with them. He is a fine yarn teller, never too self-conscious to act a story out. He turns his head sideways when he listens to you and looks at you, not intensively like Fidel but more quizzically. Unlike Fidel, who takes no breaks from work for simple pleasures, Raúl likes a good time, enjoying cockfights and horses...
...always respected the family. Even though he is the fifth of seven children and the third and youngest male (Ramón, 81 and an agricultural adviser, is older than Fidel), Raúl has always been the clan's peacekeeper. When Fidel in the 1960s expropriated Cuba's ranches, including his family compound in Birán, where his mother Lina Ruz still lived, she met the revolutionaries at the door with a Winchester rifle, which she knew how to use. It was Raúl who convinced her of the merits of the reform. Lina continued to live on the compound after the state...