Castro: If the People Are Already Unanimous, Why Hold Elections?

Loris Zanatta walks into a bar to buy two cold Coca-Colas, one for himself and one for his son. The bartender, whose accent he takes to be Caribbean and Cuban, tries to talk him out of buying the drink of the Empire, the enemy. The conversation turns to Fidel Castro. She counters his criticism by observing that he is clearly not poor.

The episode opens the conclusions of Zanatta’s biography, whose Ukrainian title calls Castro the last “Catholic king.” It is revealing not because one bartender can represent Cuba, but because the subject of the conversation changes. Rather than answering criticism of a politician, she questions the critic’s moral standing to offer it.

In Zanatta’s interpretation, that substitution has a political counterpart. If the leader embodies the good people, a dissenter risks being placed not among his opponents, but outside the people themselves.

A rally that cannot change the government

The argument becomes most concrete in the chapter “Liberator.” After the revolution’s victory, its different participants contest their share of influence. The Revolutionary Directorate resents the distribution of positions and collects weapons. Zanatta cites Castro’s call for everyone to fall into the same ranks. He then describes a model in which the leader’s speech and the square’s approval are taken to establish the popular will.

The problem is not the rally itself. It is what the rally is supposed to replace. An approving crowd may demonstrate support; it does not establish a procedure through which dissenters can organise, propose another leader and have a chance to win. The people in the square and the entire citizenry are different groups, however large the square may be.

In the following subsection, “Constitution,” Zanatta traces how a promise of elections gives way to an argument about unanimity already achieved. If the whole people supports us, why have parties, parliamentary disputes or a separate space for opposition? Within this construction, the leader first defines who belongs to the people and then invokes their agreement. The result is protected against objections before anyone has had a chance to object.

“Catholic king” does not mean “secretly not a communist”

The title invites an easy mystery: what was Castro really? Zanatta resolves it himself in the preface. Castro was a communist and a Marxist-Leninist; the biographer does not propose erasing that identity.

His argument concerns how a communist project could absorb a Spanish-Catholic inheritance: the salvation of the people, a single true faith, a society understood as an organism. In this model, political conflict becomes a sickness in the community, while the ruler takes on the role of its guardian and healer. It then becomes easier to re-educate or remove a dissenter than to recognise an equal participant in politics.

That is a strong way to frame a question about power. But similarities between political and religious language do not, by themselves, establish that upbringing explains every subsequent decision Castro made. The “Catholic king” is Zanatta’s key to the biography, not an established causal law about Catholics, communists or Latin Americans.

Read the author alongside his warning

Zanatta is candid about two things. He dislikes Castro. And access to Cuban archival primary sources and Castro’s own papers is restricted, leaving a biographer to work extensively with his subject’s words.

That does not invalidate the argument, but it shapes how to read it. The bar conversation supports the author’s interpretation of a personality cult; it does not establish that every Cuban thinks that way. Similarly, a compelling religious metaphor does not remove the need to examine a specific political procedure. The book is most useful where the metaphor becomes concrete: who can form a party, challenge the ruler and bring about a change in a decision?

For a Ukrainian reader, the question travels better than a search for a local Castro. Unity around a goal and the right to political disagreement are different things. Assessing a particular Ukrainian situation requires its own facts and rules, not a ready-made Cuban label.

For this subject, read selectively: start with the preface, move to “Government and Power” and “Constitution” in “Liberator,” and finish with the conclusions. That puts the declared framework, the political mechanism and the polemical synthesis alongside one another. It is a route through one argument, not a substitute for a history of Cuba.

Source

Loris Zanatta, «Фідель Кастро. Останній “католицький король”»: «Передмова» (Preface); III, «Визволитель» (Liberator), subsections 3, «Уряд і влада» (Government and Power), and 4, «Конституція» (Constitution); «Висновки» (Conclusions). This essay examines the author’s argument rather than independently verifying every historical claim in the biography. English titles and formulations translate the consulted Ukrainian edition; they do not identify a separately checked English edition.