Mourning the promise of dignity: How Fidel wrote us into history

I have been crying all morning and I can’t explain why.   I, we, had known that he would soon travel on, and yet I wasn’t ready.  Perhaps so soon after the empire has proclaimed its fascism in a spectacle of violent misogyny and white supremacy, the loss of Fidel is an even bitterer pill to swallow.

I cry for Fidel, as though for a loved one.  Yet, I realize that I am not crying for Fidel the man, a man I have never met and who is surely as full of flaws and imperfections, as he is of beauty and greatness.  But I cry for Fidel the dream, the idea, the vision.  The Fidel that tells us, the wretched, that our liberation is not only possible, but that our defeat is impossible.  History doesn’t just absolve Fidel, Fidel has written us all into history.

I took out my Fidel Castro Reader this morning. As I went over the timeline in the preface, it struck me that there is no moment over the last 57 years where the Cuban people have been truly alone. They have stood out as the most consistent, clear, steadfast and self-sacrificing people and Revolution but through each decade of resistance a new crop of people, freedom dreams in hand, join the battle fields of dissent to believe and build a future in which they are written.  Be it the people of Angola, of Burkina Faso, of Grenada, of El Salvador, of Chile, of Bolivia, of Venezuela, of Chiapas. And every wave of insurgent imagination has brought with it recognition for an island that has held a promise of possibility, translating into concrete solidarity, mutual recognition and exchange.

I cry for Fidel the dream, the idea, the vision.  The Fidel that tells us, the wretched, that our liberation is not only possible, but that our defeat is impossible.  History doesn’t just absolve Fidel, Fidel has written us all into history.

Many in Cuba have only known life under the Revolution.  Many of us in Africa have only known life under neo-colonialism.  Many say the gains of the Revolution are the free, quality and universal health care and education, the advances in science and culture.   These are gains we crave for on a continent where the majority are born with a death sentence of impoverishment, seemingly disposable, seemingly collateral, on a world stage hell bent on extracting … well, everything.  But those gains are mere symptoms of the real victories of the Revolution.  The victory of having built a society that takes as self-evident the necessity of sacrifice and solidarity for the equal benefit of the whole, that take as self-evident that violence against women is intolerable, that take as self-evident the dignity and worth of every person.  Lest we forget, the road has been rough.  Like Fidel, the Revolution is flawed and imperfect. There have been mistakes that have cost people their lives.  Black people, queer people and people living with HIV have waged struggle within a struggle to assert their freedom and place.  In the spirit of claiming no easy victories, these failures must neither be denied nor downplayed. To hide these mistakes would be to again deny the humanity that was lost and scoff at the privilege of learning.

I don’t believe in heroes. I think that freedom and self-determination will be realized through autonomous self-governance. Fidel’s centralization of power is at odds with my vision of freedom.  Yet I grieve deeply, bearing witness to the draw of the masses around the world towards the ravages of ideologies that seek domination: be it a capitalism that necessitates the subjugation of the impoverished and of nature, or the vitriol of white supremacist fascism, or the brutality of fundamentalisms in the name of a higher being or the imported heterosexist fascism of the periphery.   These make me mourn for, yearn for, cry for a Fidel that held that “a dignified people, a valiant people, like us, doesn’t surrender or return to slavery”.  And so we will hold his words and, as a generation, invent our future with his certainty in hand.

Travel well comrade, travel well. Hasta siempre.