Cuba Without Castro (page 4 of 4)

The Danger

Most important, the regime's demise would deal a severe blow to the hemisphere's resurgent leftist movement. "If the regime falls, all sorts of truths are going to come to light," says Ian Vsquez, a Latin America specialist with the libertarian Cato Institute. "And they're going to be ugly truths. We're going to learn what life's really like for ordinary Cubans, and that should help to demystify the Cuban experiment."

For one Cuban, General José Quevedo Pérez, that realization already came. Now 81 and living in Miami, Quevedo is perhaps the only Cuban to point a gun at Castro and live to tell.

For ten days during the Summer Offensive of 1958, a major effort by the Batista regime to repel Castro's rebels, Quevedo watched in frustration as his weary and half-starved government troops withered under guerrilla attacks. Eventually, they had to surrender. Quevedo assembled what remained of his troops and steeled himself for his meeting with the young rebel leader. "I was sure they were going to execute me," he says.

Instead, Castro greeted Quevedo with an embrace, turned over Quevedo's men to the Red Cross, and allowed the general to keep his sidearm and roam freely about the camp. When the Batista regime denounced Quevedo for surrendering, Castro broadcast messages saying the officer had fought bravely. "So not only does he spare my life, he also rescues my dignity," Quevedo says with gravity.

For the next five months, until Batista fled the country on New Year's Day 1959, Quevedo remained with Castro, gradually coming under his sway. "When Fidel speaks to you, it is very hard for him not to convince you," Quevedo says. "I was very convinced that Fidel was going to save the Republic."

Over the following four decades, Quevedo rose in importance. He oversaw the founding of the regime's military academies and was later dispatched as the regime's military attaché to Moscow. In 1996, his long-overdue promotion to general came through, and two years later he joined the reserves.

By then, however, his loyalty to Castro was wavering. "Independent of my personal debt to Fidel, there were many things I didn't like," he now says. "Things kept on happening, and I couldn't stand it. [But] like a good officer, I stuck my head in the sand." While visiting his dying son in Miami, the general defected, becoming the highest-ranking Cuban army official to do so.

Quevedo claims he's learned a great many things about the regime he served. "Some people say I betrayed Fidel. But I feel like I am the one who was betrayed." Like General Quevedo, Cuba itself has long been sustained by Castro's charisma. But with his passing, it will become clear that the greatest threat to his revolution isn't the U.S. government but the impoverished masses themselves. As one dissident inside Cuba, who asked not to be identified, said, "You are not the danger. We are the danger."

From Reader's Digest - April 2007

 

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