A Conversation With Fidel (30th Anniversary)
Thirty years ago, in the summer of 1994, Cigar Aficionado magazine published a milestone piece that drew record attention to the publication. It was a Q&A between Cuban president Fidel Castro and Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado. Shanken interviewed Castro that February at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, the culmination of more than two years of effort. Castro died in 2016 at the age of 90. What follows are excerpts from his encounter with Shanken, one of few interviews Castro ever granted to an American journalist.
On Cigars
Shanken: How important are cigars to Cuba?
Castro: It is one of our most important export items. It is also one of our main sources of revenue. It is also an important factor for us in the domestic market . . . Cigars are one of the four or five most important items of export that we have. First, it’s sugar, then nickel, fish, tourism . . . Historically it has been very important.
Shanken: Is there any Cuban export that carries as much prestige today?
Castro: The cigar has made our country famous. It has given prestige to our country. Cuba is known among other things for the quality of its cigars.
Shanken: It’s also a craft with great tradition. When you feel it, when you smell it, when you look at it, you realize that great dedication has gone into the creation of every cigar. People have spent their lives making the cigars—some of the rollers have been making cigars for 30, 40, 50 years. To an aficionado, cigar making is like one of Beethoven’s symphonies.
Castro: You are right. Lots of things go into making Cuban cigars, both in cultivation and in the manufacturing. To tell you the truth, it is very hard work, especially growing quality tobacco. It requires a lot of operations. The cultivation and choosing the right leaves for the cigars are really an art. And then making cigars is really beautiful. It also very much relates to the history of Cuba and to the struggle of independence for Cuba. Many of the people who migrated to Cuba later worked in the cigar factories, and they were very active in the struggle for independence during colonial times.
Shanken: For many years, the world saw photographs of you smoking a cigar or holding a cigar in your hand, as you did just a moment ago . . . as you are now doing. [Castro picks up a Cohiba Esplendido with his right hand.] For the past seven or eight years, you have stopped smoking cigars. Don’t you miss them?
Castro: I used to be with a cigar in my mouth all the time. I always had a cigar . . . In 1985, there was a whole national movement against smoking. I came to a decision that I had to set the example and quit . . . My father was a cigar smoker, and he really appreciated a fine cigar. I when I was a teenager in high school. I was about 15. I had lunch with my father when he presented me with a cigar. So he introduced me to cigars.
Shanken: Which size did you prefer?
Castro: It wasn’t this one [points to the Churchill-sized Esplendido]. It was the smaller one. I’ll tell you something about the Cohiba. The Cohiba did not exist as a brand in Cuba. But one man who used to work for me as a bodyguard, I used to see the man smoking a very aromatic, very nice cigar, and I asked him what brand he was smoking. He told me that it was no special brand, but that it came from a friend who makes cigars and he gave them to him. I said, let’s find this man. I tried the cigar, and I found it so good that we got in touch with him and asked him how he made it. Then, we set up the house [the El Laguito factory], and he explained the blend of tobacco he used. He told which leaves he used from which tobacco plantations. He also told us about the wrappers he used and other things. We found a group of cigarmakers. We gave them the material, and that was how the factory was founded. Now, Cohiba is known all over the world.
Shanken: When Cohiba became a brand, was it made exclusively for you?
Castro: At first when the tobacco grower used to make it, he used to make it for himself and the bodyguard. And then for some time, he used to send me the same cigars, but I found it so good that I thought it could be a new brand. I thought that it would be worthwhile setting up a new factory to make this cigar.
Shanken: You sound like a businessman.
Castro: I thought it was worth its own factory. All it needed was a name. And based on the type of cigars from that man, I had the factory established.
Dreaming About Cigars
Shanken: I accept that you don’t smoke cigars now, but do you ever dream about cigars?
Castro: [Laughs loudly.] Well, I have had dreams about cigars. Sometimes I used to dream that I was smoking a cigar. The funny thing is that it doesn’t happen to me anymore. I think it happened to me in the first five years. Even in my dreams I used to think that I was doing something wrong. I was conscious that I had not permitted myself to smoke anymore, but I was still enjoying it in my sleep.
The Cuban Embargo
Shanken: Let’s move on to something a little more serious: the embargo. How has the production of cigars for export been affected because of your inability to get enough fertilizer, gasoline, tarpaulin and other resources for the growing of tobacco? You could export more cigars by lowering the standard of quality, but apparently you are not. I’ve been told that quality is your top priority.
Castro: We feel that it is fundamental to maintain the quality of our cigars, which is an important legacy that we must preserve. And I think that the quality can even be improved. We are more worried about the quality than the quantity of cigars that can be produced. We feel that the best cigars come from small areas, certain regions and climates where the finest tobacco can be grown. The great cigars of Havana come primarily from the tobacco of Pinar del Río. It is difficult in other regions. We are familiar with the different soils that give the best kind of tobacco leaves.
Shanken: I know the issues are great and complex, but do you see the day soon when America and Cuba will work together as neighbors and friends as they did many years ago?
Castro: I hope that day will come sometime, but no one will be able to say when that will happen. It is not an easy thing to happen. As for our side, we do not have any particular objections, nor do we lack the will.
Shanken: Have there been any private negotiations to try to come to a mutual understanding that will result in the elimination of the trade embargo?
Castro: No. No, not at this time.
Shanken: The American trade embargo against Vietnam is ending. Russian and U.S. relations have been turned around. Even Israel and Palestine are trying to get together. Why is it, in your opinion, that Cuba continues to be embargoed? It is a question that we all ask. What do you think?
Castro: It is difficult to answer. It doesn’t stand up to logic. Perhaps it is because we are too close geographically to the United States. Perhaps [because] we have resisted the blockade for over 30 years. Perhaps it is a matter of national pride for the U.S. government that has turned us into an exception and has given us the honor to be its only long-standing adversary. I think it is not logical. I don’t know what history will say, though.
Shanken: There would be many benefits to both sides, if you were willing to take the first step.
Castro: How can we take the first step? We are the ones whom the blockade is imposed against. If we had a mutual blockade, then we could take the first step. But how can we? The first step should be taken by the U.S.
Human Rights
Shanken: From what I read, the American government is looking for Cuba to undergo political reform and improvement in its human rights.
Castro: That is the pretext that they use, and for many years they have used many different pretexts. At one time when we were in Africa, they used to say if the Cubans withdrew from Africa, then the relations would improve. That pretext was left behind. Later, they said that when the links with the Soviet Union were cut off, then our relations would begin with the United States. Now, the Soviet Union is not ing us anymore and nothing has changed. They keep on moving the goalposts back. Before it was Latin American subversion, the situation in Central America . . . and when they talk about reforms in Cuba, it is a precondition that we cannot accept because it has to do with independence and the sovereignty of our nation. It would be like if we were to give a precondition to the United States that it must change something in the Constitution in order for us to open up relations again. That’s absurd. As far as human rights, and I will try to keep my answer brief. No one in the world has done more than Cuba has done for human beings, for its citizens—no one else, in every sense. The best evidence of that is that our health programs have saved the lives of over 300,000 children, and we have been helping out in other places around the world with our doctors, medicines and knowledge, more than any other country in the world. So, I think that no other country has as unblemished behavior about human rights, considering how much we have done for man. That is a legend. [The human rights allegations are] a fabrication. It is an unjustifiable pretext.
Nationalization of Property
Shanken: The second issue regards compensation for the properties taken from private Cuban citizens at the time of the revolution. I would like to know your thinking as to whether or not there is any way to satisfy the Cuban Americans whose properties were taken so that we can move on to the bigger agenda of living together in a neighborly way?
Castro: Those thousands of Cubans whose economic situation were affected by the revolution were people who had experience in business, and thanks to the revolution, they were given facilities in the United States that they would have never received if the revolution had not been victorious. Those people are wealthier now than they were in Cuba. That they owe to the revolution. It would be to create a hope that our country were in an economic situation which would allow it to compensate those people whose property was taken. We cannot create that expectation because we do not have the resources and, also, because of the blockade, our country has been suffering great losses, several billion dollars’ worth. We are a small country, and the blockade has been very harmful to us. Now, we are suffering more with the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist states, with which we ed ourselves. But we are still striving. We are putting up a fight, and we are trying our best. You can be assured that, if, instead of Cubans there were Americans here setting the example that we are setting as far as our capacity for struggle and resistance, the American nation would be proud.
Shanken: Perhaps people in Washington will read this interview and begin to think more about how this ime can be overcome.
Castro: It is a struggle between Goliath and David. Let’s see if they wish one day to leave David alone. You say that Clinton smokes cigars?
Shanken: Yes. He has smoked for many years. But his wife, Hillary, has created a no-smoking policy in the White House. So now he just chews cigars, it seems.
Castro: Then I guess President Clinton and I will not be able to smoke our peace pipe or cigars in the White House.
On Stepping Down
Shanken: The American press repeatedly refers to the very poor conditions here in Cuba. The enormous shortages. The human suffering. Some are convinced you will fall soon or your government will be overthrown or perhaps you will step down. Like a great Broadway show, you have had a long run. Is it time to give someone else a turn? Do you have any such plans?
Castro: I wish I could. I wish I were free to do what I want to do. In easy times, you know, it is easy to talk about that, but in the hard times that we are living now, I would be shrugging off my responsibilities to my country if I did this. It would be like deserting the front line in the heat of the battle. I could not do that. I am not the owner of my life anymore. The most I can do is accept the responsibilities that I have been invested with by my fellow citizens and try to carry out those responsibilities for as long as I have them. But believe me, I would enjoy now to be free to do what I would like to do; however, it is not possible for me to have the freedom in the hard times that I am living in now. Perhaps I could even smoke cigars again without all these very important obligations. There are many things I would like to do. I wish I were the problem. The problem is the revolution, and the problem is our ideas. The United States, or some people in the United States—they do not just want Castro’s retirement. They want the total destruction of the revolution. And that is what the majority of our people would not accept. There is a new generation of Americans, and in the history of America, many similar things happened. First, you had the struggle for independence against the British with a long struggle that had great repercussions on the world. There was the Civil War in the days of Lincoln, which brought about great changes in American society. Now, in the United States, there is not a revolution but an evolution. But there are still many injustices to be changed. There are many people who are struggling in the United States for equality and social justice. One of the countries in the world where there are more social differences is the United States. The difference between the average salary of the workers and the executive. The executive makes 90 times more than the average worker. There are many injustices in the United States, but that is your task to change and not mine. I would not set up preconditions for relations based on these injustices. On a realistic basis, we should respect each other, and, in the world, peace should prevail. There was a great Mexican leader who said that respect for other peoples’ rights is peace. So peace should be based on mutual respect.
