Frei Betto: Was your mother from the countryside?
Fidel Castro: Yes.
Frei Betto: Cuban?
Fidel Castro: Yes, from a farming family.
Frei Betto: And your father?
Fidel Castro: My father, too, came from a farming family. He was a very poor farmer from Galicia, Spain. I would not say, however, that my mother was religious because of any religious training she received.
Frei Betto: Did she have faith?
Fidel Castro: There’s no doubt that she had a great deal of faith; I would like to add that she learned how to read and write when she was practically an adult.
Frei Betto: What was her name?
Fidel Castro: Lina.
Frei Betto: And your father’s?
Fidel Castro: Ángel. My mother was practically illiterate. She learned how to read and write by herself. I don’t remember her ever having a teacher other than herself. She never mentioned one. With great effort she tried to learn. I never heard of her ever having gone to school. She was self-taught. She could not attend school or church or receive religious training. I think her religious beliefs had their origin in some family tradition, for her parents — especially her mother, my grandmother — were also very religious.
Frei Betto: Was this religiousness limited to the home, or did she attend church frequently?
Fidel Castro: Well, it could not involve frequent church attendance, because there was no church where I was born, which was far from any city.
Frei Betto: Where were you born?
Fidel Castro: In the north-central part of what used to be Oriente Province, near Nipe Bay.
Frei Betto: What was the name of the town?
Fidel Castro: Well, it wasn’t a town. There was no church; it wasn’t a town. It was a farm called Birán. It had a few buildings. There was the family house and an annex containing a few small offices had been built on at one corner. Its architecture could be described as Spanish. You may wonder why a house built in Cuba should have Spanish architecture. It was because my father was a Spaniard from Galicia. In the villages there they had the custom of working a plot of land and keeping their animals under the house during the winter or throughout the year. They raised pigs and kept some cows there. My house was based on Galician architecture, because it was built on stilts.
Frei Betto: Why? As protection against floods?
Fidel Castro: No, there really wasn’t any need for that, because there wasn’t any flooding. Interestingly, many years later the blueprints that were prepared in Cuba for the junior high schools in the countryside — very modern, solid buildings — called for posts, but not for the same reason. The idea was to eliminate the need for earthmoving operations to level the ground. Using a series of support columns in areas where the land sloped saved on such operations. Cement posts of different lengths were used to achieve a level base.
I’ve often wondered why my house had such tall stilts. Some of them were more than six feet high. The land under the house was uneven, so that, at the far end of the house, where the kitchen was located in an extension attached to the house, the stilts were shorter. At the other end there was a slight slope, and they were taller; but as I have already explained, this wasn’t because of a desire to economize on earthmoving. Even though as a child I never stopped to think about such things, I’m convinced it was because of the Galician custom. Why? Because I remember that when I was very young — about three, four, five, or maybe six years old — the cows used to sleep under the house. There were 20 to 30 of them, and they were rounded up at dusk and driven to the house, where they slept below. They were milked there, and some were tied to the stilts.
I forgot to tell you that the house was made of wood. No mortar, cement or bricks. Plain wood. The stilts were made of hardwood, and they served as the foundation for the floor. The first story of the house, which I imagine was originally a square, was later extended and a hallway added which led from one side of the house to several small rooms. The first room had cabinets where medicines were kept; it was called the medicine room. The next one was the bathroom. Then came a small pantry followed by a hallway which led to the dining room and finally the kitchen. Between the dining room and the kitchen, there was a flight of stairs leading down to the ground. Another addition was made later on. A sort of office was built on to one corner. By the time I began to notice things around me, the kitchen had already been built. Above the square portion, there was another floor called the lookout, where my parents and their first three children slept until I was four or five years old.
Frei Betto: Did your mother have any religious statues?
Fidel Castro: Yes, I’m going to talk about that, but first I want to finish with the Spanish countryside architecture and other details.
My father built the house in keeping with the customs of his native region. He also had a farming background and had no opportunity to study. So like my mother, he learned how to read and write by himself, through sheer determination.
My father was the son of a very poor farmer in Galicia. At the time of Cuba’s last War of Independence, which began in 1895, he was sent here as a Spanish soldier to fight. So here my father was, very young and drafted into military service as a soldier in the Spanish army. When the war was over, he was shipped back to Spain, but it seems he had taken a liking to Cuba. Along with many other immigrants, he left for Cuba in the early years of this century. Penniless and with no relatives here, he got himself a job.
Important investments were made in that period. US citizens had seized the best land in Cuba and had started to destroy forests, build sugar mills and grow sugarcane, all of which involved big investments in those days. My father worked in one of the sugar mills.
Frei Betto: When did the War of Independence take place?
Fidel Castro: The last War of Independence began in 1895 and ended in 1898. Spain had been virtually defeated when the United States staged its opportunistic intervention in that war. It sent soldiers; took over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and some other islands in the Pacific; and occupied Cuba. It could not seize Cuba permanently, because Cuba had been fighting for a long time. Even though their numbers were small, the Cuban people had been fighting heroically for many years. The United States did not plan to seize Cuba openly, because the cause of Cuba’s independence had extensive support in Latin America and the world as a whole. As I have often said, Cuba was the 19th century’s Vietnam.
My father returned to Cuba and began working. Later, he apparently got a group of workers together. He managed them and contracted the men to work for a US firm. He set up a sort of small enterprise that, as far as I can remember, cleared land to plant sugarcane or felled trees to supply sugar mills with firewood. It’s possible that, as the organizer of that enterprise with a group of men under him, he began to make a profit. In other words, my father was clearly a very active, enterprising person, and he had an instinctive sense for organization.
I don’t know very much about his early years, because when I had a chance to inquire, I wasn’t as curious as I am now. And now, who is able to tell us about his experiences?
Frei Betto: When did your father die?
Fidel Castro: Much later, when I was 32. He died in 1956 before I came back from Mexico on the Granma expedition. Now, allow me to finish up these details before answering your question.
Frei Betto: I thought you were under 32 when the revolution triumphed in January 1959.
Fidel Castro: