Every evening you wonder if Daddy is coming today? Are you asking if they have arrested him already? Will he have to go into hiding again? Will it be hit by the ball of the hated government army? If you are having problems like this, it's a sign that you are screwed. Your father is a revolutionist
People who are completely devoted to an idea already have such a thing that multitasking is not their forte. Everything that does not fulfill the mission they have set themselves falls into the background. Their hierarchy of values is slightly different from the average. Homeland, honor, revolution, possibly also a communist international. And the family? Somewhere at the bottom.
It is hard to find a better example than the two leaders of the Cuban revolution:Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Before they started liberating Cuba, they went on girlfriends together in Mexico.
Homeland or death! And the kids will manage somehow
Quite recently, we wrote about how a hopeless seducer Ernesto Che Guevara was and that only by a miracle he managed to win his beloved's heart. Reading his wife's memoirs showed us something more - the father was even worse.
Che and Aleida with the offspring, without the youngest Ernesto, who was yet to be born.
Let's start with the fact that from his first (unsuccessful) marriage he had a daughter, Hildita. It is worth emphasizing that first the baby began to develop in Miss Hilda's womb, and only later was the wedding (incidentally, the groom was witnessed by Fidel Castro).
As long as the girl was raised by her mother, Che had little interest in her. As Hilda was a staunch socialist, he did not have to worry about the ideological formation of their daughter. Driven by ideals, together with his friend Fidel, he left to liberate Cuba from Batista's rule.
From that moment on, he was reluctant to meet his own child. He had a revolution on his head! In fact, did not meet his daughter until the day after his next wedding, several-year-old Hildita showed up at his doorstep. Che's new wife, Aleida March, summed up the moment in her memoirs:
Her mother sent her as a wedding gift thinking that he would make us angry this way (Quote from:Aleida March, "My Che. Very intimate").
Ernesto Che Guevara had four more children born to Aleida at almost equal intervals (he is a prophet every year!). Aleidita, Camilo, Celia and Ernesto were born successively.
There was no overflow at home. Instead of supporting his wife in bringing up five rascals, my father preferred to set off on new journeys and newer and newer wars. When he felt like he missed, he wrote to his wife:
Give kisses to the little fruit of my loins and also to all friends. I am sending you a kiss filled with longing and sadness. Your poor, audacious husband (Quote from Aleida March, "My Che. Very intimate.")
The revolution and the conspiracy were so important to him that on his way to Bolivia on his last mission, he did not even say goodbye to his children. It's not like he left without seeing them. Instead of humanly meeting the offspring as a dad, he appeared heavily disguised as an elderly gentleman on the bone (in this disguise he was supposed to get across the Bolivian border.
Aleida and her husband - handsome Che Guevara - disguised as a "friend of Uruguay".
He was unrecognizable and introduced himself to the children as a friend of their father in Uruguay who would love to meet them. The little ones did not guess anything and boasted about what they could in front of the guest. One of the daughters even said in Aleida's ear that this gentleman must have fallen in love with her, since he stares at her like that. Che left for Bolivia without revealing anything.
From the memories of Aleida, an image of deep love and family idyll emerges against the backdrop of the great revolution. Meanwhile, it is enough to look more closely in other sources and we will find out that between the birth of Celi and little Ernesto, Guevara had a "fruitful" jump to the side.
With a certain Lidia Lopez he had a son, Omar Perez, for whom he had to support. Before he left for Bolivia, he wrote a farewell letter to five of his legal children. Omar, the sixth sibling, was not so distinguished. The young Cuban found out that his father was the famous Che only in his twenties. Of all Guevara's children, he is the one most like him.
When the family of Ernesto Che Guevara heard news of his death, Fidel Castro appeared very quickly. He took care of the widow and the orphans, taking them to his home for a while and taking care of them. You might think - this is the example of a caring father. Nothing could be more wrong!
May he not be such a bad leader as a father!
When Fidel's wife, Mirta, was in her first pregnancy - with little Fidelit - she concluded that this was not how she imagined it. Her husband did not care for her at all, devoting his days to science and politics.
Not only did he not deal with her at all, despite his advanced altered state, also dragged her everywhere with him so that she would listen to his speeches until late at night. Once the firstborn was born, the caring daddy didn't change his habits.
The article is based primarily on the book "My Che" by SQN Publishing House (Krakow 2014).
Castro was a guest at home and he was not very interested in the financial situation of his loved ones. If it were not for the help of Fidel's parents, the child would not have had anything to eat (For ideological reasons, her husband forbade Mireta to accept any help from her family related to the Batista regime.
For his loyalty, food, care and upbringing of his son paid back to his wife ... with two illegitimate children already in the early 1950s (they got married in 1948).
Prison baby blues?
Eventually, Fidel and his companions attack the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba (July 26, 1953), are defeated, and Castro ends up in prison without taking any care of his family. There he continues to politics and corresponds with lovers of love at the same time.
The father of the year title goes to ... Fidel Castro!
When he sends a message to one of them with hot confessions, the letter is sent to his wife by mistake (who so far only got epistles full of complaints about raising her son).
This is one of the reasons that persuade Myrtta to take little Fidelit away and flee to the USA with relatives from whom Castro had previously isolated her. The next step was divorce. Daddy of the Year, of course, is furious. No, not because his wife left him and he won't see the baby, but as he writes:
I don't allow the thought that my son would spend even a night under the same roof with my worst, most disgusting enemies; that those pathetic Judas would kiss his innocent cheeks .
Fidel, who was at least a poor father to his own children, did not forget about the orphaned offspring of his friend Che. Here at the wedding of Aleidity (the eldest daughter of Aleida and Che). In the middle the mother of the bride.
These hideous enemies are the boy's maternal uncle and grandfather. Before the situation clears up, Fidelito becomes a bargaining chip for a long time, which the parents will tear at all costs. The words of Mirta after Batista's overthrow, when Castro took her child back from her again, are significant here:
Ah, unfortunate Kubo! If he is the same leader as the father, I feel sorry for him!
The first-born Fidelito is by no means an only child, but the first of nine children of the Cuban revolutionary. After the firstborn, a daughter, Alina, was born, due to the relationship with the aforementioned correspondent beloved. At first, the girl thought that her father was her mother's husband. Fidel had appeared rarely in her life, and his arrival was preceded by the noise of military jeeps and the clatter of trepes on the stairs.
Even when Alina found out that he was her father, she did not fall in love with him unconditionally. She remembered him that he had removed her foster father, whom she loved, and that one day, instead of the long-awaited fairy tale with Mickey Mouse, she saw the execution of prisoners on TV. When she became an adult woman and mother, she had no qualms.
With the help of her friends, she escaped from Cuba disguised as a Spanish tourist, settled in Miami and published the book "My Father Fidel", in which she spared no words of criticism. The second offspring in the order of seniority disturbed him a lot. No wonder.
From her and her mother, whom he had promised marriage at exactly the same time he was trying to reconcile and remarry with Myrtle, he preferred a revolution. Meanwhile, she was fed up with constant control, wiretapping, tracking her and other difficulties and limitations resulting from the fact that her father is Castro. It is hardly surprising.
Sources:
Basic:
- Aleida March, My Che. Very intimate , SQN Publishing House, Krakow 2014.
Complementary:
- Diane Ducret, Women Dictators 2 , Znak, Kraków 2013.
- Alina Fernandez, My father Fidel , Czytelnik, Warsaw 1999.