http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2305500.ece
When Castro believed in God: letters from prison reveal atheist leader's spiritual side By Andrew Buncombe in Washington Published: 26 February 2007 There are 21 letters in total, written when he was a young man and just as he was launching the uprising that would transform Cuba. Some are boastful, others display his fury, while at least one shows a spiritual side to Fidel Castro - something that will surprise many, given his regime's subsequent relationship with the church and his renunciation of his Catholic faith. Though published in Spanish in April 1959, just months before he and his revolutionary comrades overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista and seized power, the letters have never before appeared in English. This week a new collection containing the letters is to be published in the US - Mr Castro's most fervent enemy over the years. A report in a US newspaper reveals that the letters begin several months after the 26 July 1953 attack on the Moncada barracks, which proved disastrous for Mr Castro and his men, at least 60 of whom were killed. In the aftermath of the attack, Mr Castro was sent to prison. While he was a prisoner his wife, Mirta, accepted some money from her brother, Rafael Diaz-Balart, the country's deputy interior minister.Mr Castro wrote a furious barrage to his wife. He wrote: "I never imagined that Rafael could be such a scoundrel and that he has become so corrupted. I cannot conceive how he could have so pitilessly sacrificed the honour of and name of his sister, exposing her to eternal shame and humiliation." Writing in The Washington Post, the co-editor of the collection, Ann Louise Bardach, says the letters "are also an early indicator of his Machiavellian cunning and his genius for public relations. And they dramatise his resentments and rages. "Castro was remorseless and unforgiving of his perceived enemies, a man for whom compromise was a mark of weakness." The publication of the letters comes as Cuba finds itself under intense scrutiny from the outside world - triggered last summer with the news that Mr Castro had ceded power to his brother, Raul, for medical reasons. Mr Castro has not been seen in public for at least eight months, and at the end of last year there were reports claiming that the 80-year-old was close to death from intestinal cancer. The letters show a spiritual side to Mr Castro, who banned the public celebration of Christmas in 1969. Writing to the father of a dead comrade, he said: "Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably ... This truth should be taught to every human being - that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? ... God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice." Ms Bardach suggests that anyone reading the letters would be convinced that Mr Castro was a committed democrat - determined to hold free and fair elections. In one letter he writes that "any great civic-political movement ought to have sufficient force to conquer power, by either the peaceful or the revolutionary route, or it runs the risk of being robbed of it". In his own words * CASTRO ON HIS PATERNITY SUIT FOR THE CUSTODY OF HIS SON FIDELITO: "I do not care one bit if this battle drags on till the end of the world. If they think they can exhaust my patience and, based on this, that I am going to concede - they are going to find that I am wrapped in Buddhist tranquillity and am prepared to re-enact the famous Hundred Years War - and win it! To these private matters, add my reflection on the political panorama - and it will not be difficult to imagine that I will leave this prison as the man of iron." * ON THE DEATH OF A FALLEN COMRADE: "I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably... This truth should be taught to every human being - that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice - how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice." * ON CHRISTMAS PRISON PROTEST: "It is decided we shall not have Christmas - not to even drink water on that day as a sign of mourning... 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