At home with Castro: Cuba's 'maximum chief'

As the Cuban dictator nears his 80th birthday, ill health has forced him to hand over power to his brother, Raul. Phil Davison, our former Latin American correspondent, reveals the secretive world of Fidel and his family

On 28 July 1992, in his father's birthplace, a one-room stone croft in the rugged Spanish region of Galicia, Fidel Castro shed a tear. I had squeezed myself into the room before the door was closed and clearly saw the teardrop, a rare specimen, trickle down and then disappear into the famous beard.

The Cuban leader told a Spanish cousin who had come to welcome him that his father, Angel Castro Argiz, who emigrated to Cuba in 1902, had always wanted to return to his home in the village of Lancara but died in 1956 having never made the journey. The son had come to fulfil his father's wish. By the time he emerged into the sunlight and the camera lenses, the tear had long since dried and Castro had reverted to his macho public persona, albeit more sombre than usual.

On subsequent visits to Cuba, and watching him at various summit meetings around the world, I never again saw the self-styled Jefe Maximo - " maximum chief" - show any emotion other than fiery rants against American foreign policy, often with justification. But that single tear left me wondering who the real Fidel Castro was.A week before his 80th birthday, unwell after surgery and no longer in charge of his country - at least for now - he is both loved and loathed, but certainly not really known.

The man who has ruled for almost half a century, who has squared up to no fewer than 10 US presidents, most now dead, and who helped bring the world to the brink of a nuclear war in 1962, is an enigma. Almost without exception, his own people, three-quarters of whom have never known another leader, see him as a paternal figure - a loving father in the eyes of some, brutal and abusive, say others - but few of them know much about Castro the man.

Few have ever seen, or even heard of his wife, his eight children and at least a dozen grandchildren, or of his five siblings, except for his brother Raul, long his number two and now in charge of the country. There is no presidential palace and most Cubans couldn't tell you where he lives; partly because he moves around for security reasons, partly because the state-controlled media never mention his discreet main residence in western Havana, known to security staff as Punto Cero - "point zero".

No one is invited there. Guests are summoned at short notice to one of his other secret residences, or a cordoned-off floor of a state-owned hotel. A night owl, Castro likes friends to come for dinner or drinks that start in the small hours of the morning. Over the years these guests have included sometime Cuba-resident Ernest Hemingway, and, more recently, the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Argentina football legend Maradona, who recuperated from cocaine addiction in Havana at the Cuban regime's expense and who has a tattoo of Castro on his leg.

One who considers himself a good friend of Castro is George Galloway MP, who has described El Comandante as "the most impressive person I have ever met, a most charismatic man". And that was after he met Saddam Hussein. Galloway even strongly implied he went "skinny-dipping" in the Caribbean with the Cuban leader.

"He likes to meet late at night and talk into the early hours," the MP said. "One time I met him at 1am and the meeting lasted until dawn." In another interview, asked about the alleged skinny-dip, he replied: "You meet Fidel, you have to be prepared for a long night. If you are there on the right night, you end up in the Caribbean with Castro. It's quite a treat. I'll not go into what we were wearing... that would be a breach of confidence."

Punto Cero, Castro's main residence, came to light only after a Florida TV channel broadcast a 10-part series in 2002, La Vida Secreta de Fidel Castro - "The Secret Life of Fidel Castro". It was based on a home video shot in the relatively modest two-house retreat by one of Castro's sons, Antonio, an orthopaedic surgeon, who inadvertently left the tape in the home of an ex-girlfriend who later fled to Miami. The only luxury appeared to be a giant TV on which Castro was said to view videos of dissident activity filmed by his intelligence agents.

The home video showed the Comandante chatting with three of his grandchildren as they played in a small pool, with a tennis court and a basketball court nearby. We also learned that he was a lover of fine wines but that his favourite tipple was buffalo milk, apparently smuggled in especially for him from the US. The film also suggested that Castro's wife Dalia Soto del Valle wore the trousers, at least in the home. The spurned girlfriend who emerged with the home video, Dashiell Torralba, said that del Valle ruled the roost over her sons and daughters-in-law and that it was she who insisted Antonio dump his girlfriend.

A documentary in 2003, filmed by Hollywood director Oliver Stone and approved by Castro, revealed little, other than that he had had a crush on Brigitte Bardot as a young man. It seemed clear that the otherwise reticent Castro had understood the necessity of such an exclusive, though meaningless, titbit to promote the film.

He has often been described as paranoid about his security but after more than 30 serious assassination attempts against him, some by the CIA at the height of the Cold War, and intelligence reports of up to 600 further planned attacks, the word paranoia - "unwarranted fear" - is hardly appropriate. Survival instinct, more like.

He admitted for the first time recently that, when he goes abroad, he travels in one of two identical jetliners, choosing which to fly on at the last minute, in the belief that he thus halves his chance of assassination.

Some of the attempts to kill him have been more Austin Powers than James Bond. There was the cigar, possibly primed by a CIA agent among his staff, stuffed with enough explosives to kill him but when it failed to light, he tossed it aside. Then there was the attempt in the cafeteria of the Habana Libre hotel, when a young hotel worker, paid by the CIA, was supposed to drug one of Castro's beloved strawberry milkshakes but was a nervous wreck and dropped the capsule before he could get it into the glass.

Less lethal attacks aimed at niggling the Cuban leader also failed, including the scuba diving wetsuit with a poisoned lining and the shampoo that was supposed to make his facial hair fall out and ruin his famous image as El Barbudo - the Bearded One. But these attempts led him to wear newly purchased underwear every day, according to a former bodyguard who fled the country, burning all his used underpants for fear they could be chemically tampered with in the laundry.

Unlike communist leaders such as Mao Zedong and Stalin, Castro has encouraged the opposite of a personality cult. There are no statues of him, no streets named after him, and few giant billboards displaying his image, except on celebratory occasions. The permanent billboards and posters generally show his top revolutionary compañeros Ernesto Che Guevara or Camilo Cienfuegos, both long dead, and it is Che's famous image that in Havana markets decorates T-shirts, mugs, towels or anything else you can think of.

Although Castro had effectively split with Guevara in the mid-1960s, happy to see the Argentinian wander off to Bolivia to foment Latin American revolution rather than dilute his own popularity, El Comandante was quick to cash in on the worldwide marketing tool that Che became after his death in Bolivia in 1967, largely because of the mesmerising photograph taken by Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz Korda. The iconic image captured the mood of the 1960s for students and dreamers around the world and more tourists visit Cuba - now a vital factor in its economy - because of Che than because of Fidel. The latter is well aware of that.

Nonetheless, those who know Castro believe he sees himself as a chosen one, a kind of messiah brought into the world to keep Cuba out of US hands and spread leftist ideals throughout Latin America. "Fidel rarely tolerates any kind of dissent from his own views," according to Orlando de Cardenas, a former arms procurer for Castro who later split with him. " His compulsive urge for personal control of whatever undertaking struck his fancy was not motivated by a mere lust for power but by the conviction that he was especially endowed with the wisdom for fulfilling the mission."

For those of us who were teenagers or older in 1959, the sight of the handsome, bearded Castro rolling into Havana, standing tall in a battered jeep, rifle in one hand and Cohiba cigar in the other, greeted by flower-throwing crowds, was a wildly romantic moment. The US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country on New Year's Day that year and we all felt the world was going to be a better place.

"Fidel comes in and he was the Messiah, the saviour," says the Cuban-born film-maker Adriana Bosch. "He was going to deliver people and deliver Cuba to its true greatness. There were pictures of him in every living room. When he announced he was a Communist, they said, 'If Fidel is a Communist, me too, me too, me too.' There was this overwhelming sense that this man had all the answers."

Melba Hernandez, a lawyer who joined Castro's guerilla movement in the early 1950s, says: "From the moment you shake hands with Fidel, you are impressed. His personality is so powerful. When I gave my hand to this young man I felt very secure. I felt I had found the way. When this young man began to talk, all I could do was listen."

A couple of years after the revolution, another young revolutionary who was coming to people's attention, Bob Dylan, gave the Cuban leader worldwide street cred, albeit with some irony, when he whined in the song " Motorpsycho Nightmare": "I had to say somethin'/ To strike him very weird/ So I yelled out/ 'I like Fidel Castro and his beard'."

The romance of the revolution was heightened as we learned that Fidel, Che and 80 other idealists, after plotting their revolution in a Mexico City cantina, had sailed from Mexico to Cuba on a rickety motor boat, built to sleep eight, a trip over rough seas which took more than a week. The American they bought the boat from had named it in honour of his granny, Granma, and that name was to become an incongruous leitmotif during Castro's rule. The first time I went to Cuba I thought the name of the Communist Party daily must be a Spanish word I didn't know. It was Granma, and still is.

In those days, at the dawn of the 1960s, none of us dreamed that Castro would turn his island into a one-party state modelled on the Soviet Union, one where freedom of speech and the press would be ruthlessly suppressed, citizens barred from travel, dissidents locked up for years and rebel military officers and others put to the firing squad.

Ironically, unlike his younger brother Raul, now "temporarily" in charge of Cuba, Castro was never a Communist as a young man. Only two years after he overthrew Batista did he announce that Cuba would henceforth be a socialist state. Before the revolution, the young Castro, a human rights lawyer, had sought democracy for his island nation and had hoped eventually to run as a candidate for the nationalist Orthodox Party, on the platform of moral and economic independence from the US, 90 miles to the north.

After Batista took power in a coup in 1952, and turned the island into what was considered a giant offshore casino and brothel for wealthy American celebrities and gangsters, the young lawyer saw no option but to take up arms. But nationalism, not socialism or communism, was still his driving force during the early years of the revolution.

In 1960, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, after meeting Castro, saw the potential of roping him in. He told an aide: "Castro is like a young horse that hasn't been broken. He needs some training but he's very spirited, we will have to be careful." Khrushchev was careful and used the young revolutionary's nationalism - his loathing of American " imperialism" - to bring him into the Communist fold.

It was also US antagonism to Castro's revolution, and specifically the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by US-backed Cuban exiles, signed off by President John F Kennedy, that pushed Castro into the arms of Moscow and prompted him to declare Cuba socialist. When Castro and his combat-experienced revolutionary army routed the invaders, it was a huge embarrassment to Kennedy and led, in turn, to the Soviet missile crisis in 1962, when 13 tense days saw Castro at the centre of world events.

It all started in a bar in Old Havana, where a CIA agent overheard Castro's personal pilot say that Cuba had developed a nuclear capability. JFK ordered U-2 spy planes to overfly the island to check it out. Sure enough, they captured images of 39 nuclear missile silos guarded by Soviet forces. Castro insisted the missiles were for self-defence, fearing a full-scale US invasion of his island. However, Soviet nuclear weapons within 90 miles of Florida represented a sudden and dramatic tipping of the arms-race scales in the Soviets' favour and a clear threat to US cities. There was a real sense that the first nuclear world war was starting.

Castro and Khrushchev backed down in the end, the missile silos were dismantled and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. But the Cuban and Soviet leaders had won their own quid pro quo, eliciting a pledge by JFK not to invade Cuba, as well as achieving the removal of US missiles from Turkey, which could have been a threat to Soviet cities. A bonus for Castro was having Moscow prop up the Cuban economy for what would turn out to be a generation, a vital lifeline in the light of a US trade embargo that is still ongoing.

Standing up to the mighty Uncle Sam, psychiatrists say, was a turning point in Castro's psyche - they believe he had previously suffered from an inferiority complex because of his lowly background and the fact that he came from a broken family. (His mother was Lina Ruz, the housemaid while his father was still married to Maria Argota. Castro more or less confirmed this by taking on the surname Ruz, and his father later married her.)

Castro's own love life was always overshadowed by his revolutionary activity. He married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948, producing a son, Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, widely known as Fidelito, or Little Fidel, the following year. But he divorced Mirta in 1955 as he concentrated on his political activity, then his attempts to overthrow the dictator Batista after the coup of 1952. Mirta was last known to be living in Spain but is said to visit the island regularly to see her son.

During his spell in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the late 1950s, Fidel had a daughter with a fellow guerrilla, Natalia "Naty" Revuelta. That daughter, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, now 50, fled to Miami in the 1990s, where she is an outspoken critic of her father's communist regime, most recently as a commentator on CNN.

After the revolution, Castro began living with the schoolteacher Dalia Soto del Valle, with whom he had five sons - Alejandro, Antonio, Alexis, Angel and Alex - their names all beginning with "A" because Alexander the Great was one of Castro's heroes. He had used the nom de guerre Alejandro as a guerrilla and later adopted it as his middle name. Fidel and Dalia are said to have eventually married in a secret ceremony.

While his daughter Alina is relatively well known in the Spanish and Florida media, Castro's sons in Cuba, in their thirties or early forties, remain virtually unknown on the island, as is their mother. They live quietly, using government cars and bodyguards when necessary, occasionally popping up incognito among crowds at pro-Castro rallies.

The eldest son, Fidelito, is an exception. Now 56, he is a scientist and eerily resembles his dad - he even has the beard. Fidelito was head of Cuba's Atomic Energy Commission from 1980 to 1992, when his father fired him for reasons that are not known. He remains a consultant to Castro's government, however, and pops up around the world at scientific conferences.

Castro has clearly told his family to avoid the trappings of wealth. He himself was angered by a report in Forbes magazine last year listing him as one of the world's wealthiest men, worth $550m, based on his theoretical control of state enterprises, notably Medicuba, which exports pharmaceuticals. "If they can prove I have an account abroad containing even one single dollar, I shall resign my post," he said. He put his net worth at "zero".

In truth, although he has long been in a position to milk his country, there is no evidence that he has done so. Dissidents in Havana say that his brother Raul is the more likely of the two to have a nest-egg stashed abroad, thanks to his leadership of the Cuban army, now the country's biggest convertible currency earner on the strengths of its efforts in foreign-financed joint ventures.

Since the collapse of Castro's Soviet benefactors a decade and a half ago, the economy has been in what Castro euphemistically billed "The Special Period," described by economists as "a peacetime war economy" with shortages, blackouts and empty shelves.

It was these empty shelves which led to a mass exodus in the 1990s of balseros, or "rafters", who tried to cross the treacherous Florida Straits in anything from converted car bodies to the inner tubes of lorry tyres, not so much to find the American dream as simply to feed their families. Hundreds, if not thousands never made it.

Since the start of the "Special Period", as in post-war Britain, the libreta, or rationing book, is the most-prized document in most households. It gets you your basics, such as black beans and rice, the staple meal that's known as Moros y Cristianos ("Moors and Christians", because of the colours).

La vida es difícil ("life is difficult") is the first phrase you'll hear from most Cubans if you ask them how they are. It has become a national motto. For most, life is about getting by, as well as getting around. To say that public transport is hit and miss is generous.

As for getting by, it largely means getting dollars. Although there are now three legal currencies: the peso, the convertible peso (CUC) and the US dollar. It is the greenback, legalised for the masses only six years ago, that rules. It is difficult to get your hands on such basics as milk or medicines, or petrol, unless you have dollars. To get dollars, you have to have caring relatives in the US or have a coveted job in tourism or related industries.

And the quest for dollars has led to a worrying rise in prostitution, male and female, as young locals wander Havana's seafront Malecon promenade looking for a way to buy food for their families, or maybe simply to buy a new pair of shoes.

Things have picked up slightly over the past year, largely due to Castro's new rapport with China, which has been providing cheap credit to improve Cuba's infrastructure, and his cosy political and economic alliance with the man seen by some as a "Castro clone", the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

For the past few years, Chavez has been providing his mentor with around 100,000 barrels of oil a day at subsidised prices, balanced against Castro's export of doctors and health workers to help poor Venezuelans.

Perhaps surprisingly, few Cubans blame Castro for their economic hardship, at least openly. He has long managed to blame it on the US embargo, and not without justification. But it is hard to judge the true sentiments of Cubans while they are under the watchful eye of Castro's police and neighbourhood committees - essentially spies.

Talking to a visitor, locals will often point to their chin - indicating a beard - instead of mentioning Castro's name. They know where criticism can get them. The Comandante's last crackdown was in 2003, when 75 dissidents were jailed for up to 20 years. Some have since been released but around 60 remain behind bars.

One criticism that is being increasingly whispered is the recent decline in medical facilities, long Castro's pride and joy and admired worldwide. Whereas he used to spread his socialist ideals to Latin America and Africa by sending soldiers and weapons, he is now sending doctors and other health workers, tens of thousands of them. Some 20,000 health workers, including 14,000 doctors, have been sent to Venezuela.

Castro was always an icon to leftists around Latin America, where he armed and financed many Marxist groups after his own revolution. His new strategy of exporting doctors, opticians and other health workers has given his popularity a new lease of life in South and Central America. In turn, it has added to the popularity of his allies, notably Chavez and the Bolivian president Evo Morales.

Castro famously told a court, jailing him for his attack on Batista's Moncada barracks in 1953: "History will absolve me." But will it?

Servando Gonzalez, a Cuban army officer who fought with Castro at the Bay of Pigs and was close to him during the 1962 missile crisis, believes the Cuban leader is "crazy and irrational" and suffers from a split personality. Gonzalez, author of The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol, says Castro has a photographic memory, which gives him a certain power over people.

"I don't think you can explain these strange, uncanny abilities by charisma alone. It's more than that. It is something that has no rational explanation. Hitler had the same faculties, as did Charles Manson. You cannot define what is their power."

In a 1992 interview with the Uruguayan newspaper Brecha, Castro was asked during his visit to Galicia whether he still thought history would absolve him. "Perhaps 1,000 years will pass, but history will absolve me."

Asked "how will Cuba be after Castro?" he replied: "There have been hundreds of years of Cuba without Fidel, and hundreds of years can pass in Cuba without Fidel.

"I will be but a sigh in history. I always remember the Jesuits taught me 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust...'. Very few people will remember me."

Did he really mean it?

I met Fidel

George Galloway

The Respect MP regards Castro as a personal friend, and has written " The Fidel Castro Handbook", to be published in October. "He is one of the most charismatic, impressive, knowledgeable, interested and interesting people I have ever met, by a long way. He has the mind of 10 men - he retains facts and figures and historical anecdotes like no one I know and he has been around so long and known all of these great figures that there is no shortage of things to talk about. I suppose he likes me because I am militant in the same movement as him. Neither of us drinks, and he long ago forbade me to smoke - he said he needs me more as a militant than as a customer of Havana tobacco. We sit and drink tea and talk at extraordinary length about everything."

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg raised eyebrows when he made a pilgrimage to see Castro in 2002. He described their dinner as "the eight most important hours of my life".

Naomi Campbell

The model went to Cuba with Kate Moss for "Harper's Bazaar" in 1998. They met Castro after a fashion shoot in Havana. "I compare him with Nelson Mandela because these are two men I think are an inspiration to everyone. They have fought with integrity to stick to their beliefs. He said that seeing us in person was very spiritual. He knew that I was the first black woman to appear on the cover of "Vogue" and Kate started the revolution of little models. So I suppose we were both revolutionaries in his eyes."

Don King

The boxing promoter met Castro many years ago in Harlem. "The propaganda machine has been critical of him, but he's been in office close to 40 years. You don't stay in office in the Third World and emerging countries that long. So it can't be true what they all say about him, because the people still support him."

Oliver Stone

The director travelled to Cuba to meet Castro and make a documentary - titled "Comandante" - about him. "There's something El Greco-like about him. Don Quixote comes to mind. And he's tilting at windmills in the same way as Don Quixote, because after 40 years, he is isolated, he hasn't changed his position. But he has to stay firm to his revolution. He makes the point that if you sell out to the US one quarter inch, you lose: that's where they get in. Once they put in the first McDonald's, they keep coming."

Selina Scott

Selina Scott met Castro at a state dinner given by King Juan Carlos in Barcelona for the 1992 Olympics. "I was immediately struck by his presence. He was so imposing and incredibly focused on the people he was meeting. There was this air of command about him. I was trying to work out who in the world I would like to interview for a programme I was doing on ITV and here was the person who was right at the top of the list."

Ranald Macdonald

Owner of the Boisdale restaurant in London, which sells more Cuban cigars than any other. "We put on events in Cuba and Fidel Castro has come to many of our dinners. He comes across as eccentric, paternal, caring, dedicated and charming. When people are out there they often look at the standard of living and compare it to that in Europe. And the embargo has definitely reduced the standard of living there dramatically. But it is still much higher than in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. Castro is definitely dedicated to that improvement, and the results are amazing considering the circumstances."

The Manic Street Preachers

Castro met the band before their show in Cuba in 2001. As they shook hands, bass player Nicky Wire warned the Cuban leader, "We might be playing quite loud." Castro retorted, "It won't be as loud as the war!"

Burt Glinn

The photographer was present to photograph Castro's victory parade in 1959 for the celebrated agency Magnum. "We were the least important thing in his life at that moment. He was victorious in a revolution and all the people were ecstatic. On the 25th anniversary of the revolution we were astounded he was still around. So we started working on a book and an exhibition, which we took to Havana. Fidel wasn't there but he sent a message that he would like to meet us, so I went with my wife and my son to his private office. We spent three hours talking to him, and he went through all his files of photographs from that time. He found one of me, and gave it to me... I wouldn't be a great fan of Fidel but I have been in dictatorships a lot of times and his was not that restrictive. He was really concerned that foreign money would come in and take control."

Ibrahim Ferrer

The late Bueno Vista Social Club vocalist met Castro for the first time in 2003. "He was in the audience to hear me sing and he asked to see me afterwards. He said he liked my gold watch and asked me to show it to him. He put it on his wrist for our entire conversation and only gave it back when I left. He's a great joker. He's not how people think he is. I swear to you he's a very humble person with a good heart."