Nick Caistor

Castro, the state-socialist communist who was America's biggest bogeyman during the Cold-War and then the proverbial 'has-been' after the downfall of the Berlin wall. Caistor reveals the real Castro to us through this short but highly detailed biography. He charts the dictator's youth, tryst with Che and then eventual emergence as the Latin American emblem of Marxist Leninism.

It must be remembered that Caistor relies on facts available in the public domain to relate this introduction to the show more 20th century's most contradictory statesman. Castro valued human life but was also ruthless in his extinguishing of any opposition. Like many Dictators, he was a dimensional study in sadistic contradiction. And the latter is what Caistor succinctly brings to the fore.

Ultimately, by the book's end, we are left with the impression that Castro was a glitch in history's Matrix. A tyrant who survived both exterior and interior threats by being politically-definitely not ideologically-amorphous. His greatest achievement, other than surviving the USA's prolonged economical war against him, might be his Latinizing of Marxism to make it more feasible to South America. Otherwise as Caistor relays, he was well aware that his Red God of Communism had miserably failed and he was its last surviving Prophet in a world which had moved on from him.

Castro's greatest failure, as this biography makes clear, was his inability to secure relevance. The USA, his eternal nemesis, not only outwaited him but also 'outprogressed' him; capturing all attention for itself while rendering him the devilish child of outdated ideals and an anti-progressive. The Latin American dictator who had once struck fear throughout the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis was soon forgotten after a few decades until ultimately his name was written out of history. He died a lonely death atop his island atoll with the knowledge that Cuba, like any other nation, would soon move on from his legacy and the future would not be of his design. show less

I never get on that well with short stories. These ones were OK, but most of them I can't remember much detail about so I think they kind of went in one side and out the other.

Chile in Focus is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to Latin America's "success story".