TV Reviews : ‘Frontline’ Profiles Castro’s Career

“The amazing thing is that for 30 years, the world has thought it really knew Fidel Castro,” says journalist and longtime Cuba watcher Georgie Anne Geyer in Stephanie Tepper’s “Frontline” look at the Cuban leader, “The Last Communist” (tonight at 9, KCET Channel 28, KPBS Channel 15; 9:30 on KVCR Channel 24). “Thirty years later,” Geyer adds, “. . . nobody knows Fidel Castro at all.”

Tepper works very hard to lift the veil on Castro, but problems crop up--like the title. Geyer herself provides it, but with an all-crucial modifier: “He’s gonna be the last communist even though he never was a communist.” The greatest strength of the report is the lineup of commentators, from Castro biographer Tad Szulc to Cuba authority Jorge Dominguez, most of whom agree that Castro always put “Fidel” and Cuba above Marxist-Leninist ideals. Besides, there’s every possibility that “the last communists” will be in China and North Korea, not Cuba.

Interestingly, Tepper--whose more potent “Cuba and Cocaine” last year dramatically exposed the Castro regime’s drug-trade dealings--chooses not to dwell on Castro’s impotency in the post-Cold War world, but on his total career. Life with his land-owning father showed him how much the United States owned the island nation, and set him on a course of political radicalism, with the Italian fascist Mussolini as a model for public speaking.

Dominguez bitterly observes that Castro, after assuming power at the end of 1958, “deliberately lied about where he was leading the country” while opining about a free press and laying a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial during a visit to Washington. Consolidating personal power, Castro simply followed in the footsteps of the many strongman caudillos of Latin American history, but Tepper misses this connection.

For all the successful battles against literacy and poverty, there were also the absurd agricultural projects (plans for giant strawberries and “super-cows”), the notorious political prisons (gays and artists were particular targets), a police state and a deep dependency on the Soviet Union for goods. All Castro’s creations, all coming back to haunt him now. Tepper wisely concludes with the thought that a nation’s liberator has become the agent of that nation’s tragedy. When the tragedy will end is anyone’s guess.

Program is available in Spanish on KCET on stereo TV sets and VCR’s that have SAP (separate audio program) option.