Cuba: Red Until Dead

One of the lingering myths about Cuba’s Fidel Castro has been that he was really a simple, well-intentioned reformer, who was forced into Communist arms by clumsy, unsympathetic treatment by the U.S. Last week, in a characteristic five-hour monologue over Havana TV, Castro himself set the record straight. He had had to dissemble his radical views earlier, he said, but now he could say: “Ever since college, I have been fundamentally influenced by Marxism. I believe absolutely in Marxism. I always believed Marxism was the correct doctrine. I am Marxist-Leninist and I will be Marxist-Leninist until I die.”