On Castro

It's 1958 and both my father and Fidel are still young men.
It's three years before I'm born, and only a year before Castro's Cuban revolution will succeed and he'll take power.

My father, and the family before my birth, is living on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where my father is working at the meteorological office. He's based at the airport, where these photographs are presumably taken. When Castro is passing through, my father luckily has a camera with him. Later, I remember him telling me that perhaps because of that camera, he was thought to be press and allowed closer, within Castro's circle. Perhaps it was an age of greater trust or laxer security, even for a man in the midst of a revolution. Or perhaps the protection from the trilby-hatted and, to our modern eyes, B-movie fellow-travelers (body guards, co-revolutionaries, both?) was deemed enough.

Whatever the reason, my non-photographer father took three quick snaps. It was a small moment whose photographic evidence occasionally made family photo-nights in the days when the curtains were closed and the projector switched on when guests could be convinced to watch. But, helped perhaps by that very non-photographer approach, or perhaps by our own retrospection 50 years after the event, it's also a small moment in history. Three small moments, in fact: in one, Castro looks face on, eyes behind dark glasses, closely surrounded and almost confronting the camera, so you can believe he's about to take power. In another, the trademark cigar is firmly in the corner of his mouth (such a trademark that the United States would reportedly plot killing him with an exploding version), but a finger rubs his nose or straightens his moustache, and the moment becomes an idle one, not an iconic one: a man caught at ease with his trademark. The third places him in a context, and my father suddenly seems the closest person to him, no other men are in the picture. Castro is reading a newspaper with a headline about an invasion of Cuba. For all of my life, indeed much of most people's, Cuba has been Castro's Cuba, but presumably this is a headline about Castro's own invasion, and the Cuba is still Batista's Cuba. He's catching up on a report of Batista's response to Castro's own battles.

It's the newspaper which suggests the best date for the picture. My mother only remembers that it was early in their stay in Trinidad of 1957 to 1960, and thought it was before Castro was prime minister (as he was at first, after his takeover in 1959, before becoming president). I can't find news that would warrant the headline for 1957, so it places the images in 1958, when Castro's forces invaded Cuba following the failure of Batista's anti-Castro 'Operation Verano' in May to June of that year.
I can only confirm for sure with my mother, almost the same age as Fidel. My father died more than 20 years ago. I'm now a 48-year-old who took up professional photography myself for a number of years, before shifting to design and moving to Tokyo. Castro himself, however, has been a consistency over the intervening period and, of course, was still President until 50 years after this small event. And even now, from his hospital bed, holds sway over Cuba. A young man grown old, once reading headlines of his own warfare - a headline now among memories for himself and the world.

-Andrew Pothecary

 

Fidel Castro - detail
By Ivan Pothecary ©Andrew Pothecary

Back to photography page

Visit lenakonstantakou.com for prints

ごめんなさい、このページは英語だけ