There has been mixed reactions to the death of controversial Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Days after the passing of the 90-year-old dictator, debate rages as to his place in history. However, it definitely appears that the Marxist leader who waged a war against capitalism was indeed a hypocrite. Castro financially benefited immensely from his socialist “utopia” while his own citizens suffered in extreme poverty.
In 2006, Forbes released the net worth of kings, queens and dictators. The magazine estimated Castro’s personal wealth to be $900 million, nearly double that of the $500 million of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. If you figure in inflation, Castro would be worth $1,081,669,207.32 in 2016.
“El Comandante,” The Commander, was said to be siphoning off the proceeds from state-run enterprises, including a small gold mine.
Forbes had this to say about the Marxist dictator:
For another controversial dictator, Fidel Castro, we assume he has economic control over a web of state-owned companies, including El Palacio de Convenciones, a convention center near Havana; Cimex, retail conglomerate; and Medicuba, which sells vaccines and other pharmaceuticals produced in Cuba. Former Cuban officials insist Castro, who travels exclusively in a fleet of black Mercedes, has skimmed profits from these outfits for years. To come up with a net worth figure, we use a discounted cash flow method to value these companies and then assume a portion of that profit stream goes to Castro. To be conservative, we dont try to estimate any past profits he may have pocketed, though we have heard rumors of large stashes in Swiss bank accounts. Castro, for the record disagrees, insisting his personal net worth is zero.
Castro dismissed the Forbes article as CIA propaganda and said, “All this makes me sick.” The official Cuban media stated that Castro lived off a small salary of about $35 per month.
Juan Reinaldo Sanchez worked as Castro’s bodyguard for 17 years before being imprisoned for trying to retire in 1994. In 2014, he wrote a tell-all book about the secret life of Castro titled “The Hidden Life of Fidel Castro,” where he estimated Fidel’s worth was at least $100 million.
Sanchez, who escaped to Texas after 10 attempts, wrote about a conversation he overheard between Castro and José Abrantes, once the nation’s minister of the Interior. The dialogue featured Castro orchestrating a deal with a drug trafficker to keep his business: the man would keep working with the Cuban government if he could, for a $75,000 purchase of a vacation near Havana with his family.
“Very simply, a huge drug-trafficking transaction was being carried out at the highest echelons of the state,” Sanchez wrote. This is when Sanchez became disillusioned with the Revolution:
“I realized that the man for whom I had long sacrificed my life, the Líder whom I worshiped like a god and who counted more in my eyes than my own family, was caught up in cocaine trafficking to such an extent that he was directing illegal operations like a real godfather.”
Castro approved of the drug trade because “it corrupted and destabilized American society.”
Abrantes later died in jail of “suspicious” circumstances Sanchez said.
The ties between Castro’s Cuba and drug smuggling allegedly go even father:
“In an interview with Colombia’s El Espectador in April, Sanchez confirmed that Cuba not only provided safe harbor to FARC terrorists, but helped train them to fight Colombian soldiers. ‘I saw guerrillas in Punto Cero de Guanabo [a terrorist training camp east of Havana],’ he told the newspaper. ‘Castro spoke with them. To the FARC and these leftist movements in Latin America, Fidel supported them with arms and money because this was the way he thought possible to amass political power.’”
From the New York Times in 1989:
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Inter-American Studies at the University of Miami, in Florida, said there were apparently two drug-smuggling operations – “an official operation sanctioned by Fidel and Raul Castro and a second operation by Ochoa and small independent mafiosi.”
There is even a link between Fidel and infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar. John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, who was working as one of Pablo Escobar’s top hit men who killed at least 300 people and was implicated in the deaths of 3,000 more, said the Fidel and his brother Raul, who is now in power of Cuba, were responsible for the Medellin Cartel’s drugs getting into Miami.
Speaking with Puerto Rico’s Wapa TV, Popeye said that he hand-delivered letters from Escobar to Colombian literary icon Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who then passed the letters on to Fidel and Raul Castro.
“I am going to give you a key bit of information: The link between everyone [Escobar, Cuba and the US] is called Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Laureate,” Popeye said, according to Colombia Reports.
“Raul Castro received cocaine on behalf of Pablo Escobar and Fidel was aware,” Popeye said in an interview with the Argentine outlet Todo Noticias. He added that Raul Castro was responsible for cocaine’s arrival in Miami.
“I was in Mexico carrying a letter to the Nobel Laureate for Raul and Fidel Castro; a manuscript of Escobar’s,” Popeye said.
“When I got off the plane the Mexican police were waiting for me and took me to where ‘Gabo’ was signing autographs,” he continued, according to Colombia Reports. “He called me aside and said, ‘Popeye, where is the letter?’ and I gave it to him.”
In the message, Popeye told Todo Noticias, “Pablo Escobar was asking Fidel for a Russian submarine to carry the drug from Mexico to Havana, and with this submarine, to Miami.”
“That (Fidel) is not a world leader, he is a dictator and a bandit,” Popeye said, according to Clarín. “I was in Key West, I saw the drugs.”
Throughout his life, the Marxist dictator repeated lies that he lived in a modest “fisherman’s cottage,” but in reality Castro lived in a 75-acre property known as Punto Cero. The facility was far from modest, featuring his personal ice-cream factory, quitet different from the crumbling buildings that his people lived in. The vast property near Havana was a golf course resort before the revolution. the estate complex includes orange, lemon, mandarin, grapefruit and banana trees, as well as cows (Each family member has their own dairy cow) and six greenhouses to grow food.
“It is obvious that this place has been transformed into a luxurious summer residence mobilizing considerable logistical means for its monitoring and maintenance,” Sanchez wrote. “To which we should add another dozen real estate properties, beginning with Punto Cero, the vast property near Havana, close to the embassy district.”
Castro is said to own 20 luxurious properties throughout the Caribbean, including a private island that was called the “Garden of Eden.” The socialist dictator visited the island by sailing on his 88-foot yacht made of rare Angolan wood. Castro’s residences featured an array of luxuries ranging from private marinas to rooftop bowling alleys to personal hospitals to indoor basketball courts.
“While his people suffered, Fidel Castro lived in comfort — keeping everything, including his eight children, his many mistresses, even his wife, a secret,” wrote Sanchez.
Castro fathered as many as 11 children by four different women, only two of whom he was married to. His notorious sexual prowess earned him the nickname “the Horse,” He half-jokingly told a journalist that it was his enormous sex drive that had led him away from the Roman Catholic Church.
His mistresses were kept out of the public eye, but so were his first two wives. Castro cheated on his first wife, the upper-middle-class Mirta Diaz-Balart, with Natalia Revuelta, who was also married at the time of their affair. Revuelta, a cardiologist’s wife, gave birth to Fidel’s daughter Alina. She would flee the country with the help of a wig, a false Spanish passport, and a network of international accomplices.
“When people tell me he’s a dictator, I tell them that’s not the right word,” Alina told the Miami Herald. “Strictly speaking, Fidel is a tyrant.”
Castro also cheated on his second wife Dalia Soto del Valle, seducing “comrade Celia Sanchez, his private secretary, confidante, and guard dog for 30 or so years,” Sanchez wrote.
Sanchez documented that Castro also bedded his English interpreter, his French interpreter, and a Cuban airline stewardess who attended him on foreign trips. Other reports say Castro had many lovers ranging from Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida to an underage nightclub dancer who claimed how he smoked continually during sex. There are also reports that Castro used Viagra later in life to quench his sexual desires.
Markus Wolf, East Germany’s former spy chief, recalled a security scare when Castro disappeared on a visit to East Berlin. One night the dictator climbed out of his hotel window and headed off to an illegal brothel.
The myth that Fidel Castro was a noble leader of his people who was fighting a war against excess is just that, a myth.