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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Jul 30 2010 13:05 | LAST UPDATED Jul 30 2010 13:05 |
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Illness has forced him from public view, but Fidel Castro is back in Cuban living rooms via a lavish television series that celebrates his escape from 638 assassination plots. The eight-part series, He Who Must Live, is an extravagant departure from Cuban TV's typically low-budget fare: more than 1 000 actors and extras are used in a mix of CSI-type fiction, docu-drama and archive material. The Interior Ministry, institute of police sciences and state-sanctioned filmmakers teamed up to tell the story of how the CIA spent decades trying to murder the United States's tropical communist foe. "As an historical series we turn to a mix of genres to help us and give the viewers more information about the facts," the director, Rafael Ruiz Benítez, told officials before the first 70-minute instalment aired last Sunday. The prime time show, unprecedented in its glossiness, is to run over eight weeks, each episode focusing on a different period. It marks an unexpected starring role for a leader who relinquished power and vanished from public view four years ago after serious intestinal problems. Dan Erikson, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank and author of The Cuba Wars, said: "Fidel Castro may be leaving the stage but it's already clear that he has no plans to go quietly. By commissioning a major television series about how Fidel Castro outwitted and outlasted his foes in the United States over the past 50 years, the Cuban government is reviving one of its favourite storylines and burnishing the mythology that swirls around Cuba's revolutionary leader." The series took three years, 243 actors, 800 extras and a possibly significant chunk of Cuban TV's spartan filmmaking budget. The inaugural programme focuses on efforts to kill Castro when he was a young revolutionary in Mexico in 1956 preparing to lead several dozen guerrillas on a mission to overthrow Cuba's US-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Later instalments feature the CIA's notorious and much-derided efforts to kill the Soviet ally after his insurgency triumphed and he established a communist state 150km off Florida.  CONTINUES BELOW Some are well known: the exploding cigar, the ballpoint hypodermic syringe, the gift of a poisoned wetsuit. Others less so: a bacteria-infected hankie and an aerosol can filled with LSD. Cuban security services counted 638 assassination plots by the CIA or their many proxies. A retired agent, Fabián Escalante, wrote about them in his book, 638 Ways to Kill Castro. His colleague, Xavier Solado, wrote a pamphlet of the same name. There was also a 2006 Channel 4 documentary of the same name. Cuba's TV series features actors playing Batista, CIA director Allen Dulles and, it is thought, presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who authorised the murder attempts. A thaw after Barack Obama's election has ended with Washington and Havana trading insults, but the US has forsworn killing Castro. The series airs at a difficult time for the revolution. Raúl Castro has tinkered with the centrally planned economy he inherited from his big brother, but with little success. The state is struggling to pay international creditors and ordinary Cubans are suffering food shortages, electricity rationing and meagre wages. "The gigantic paternalistic state can no longer be, because there is no longer any way to maintain it," the Economy Minister, Marino Murillo, said in a recent video shown to communist party cadres, according to Reuters. With gloom widespread, the TV series may not set pulses racing, said Erikson. "While some older Cubans may be intrigued by this trip down memory lane, the reappearance of Fidel as a telenovela star will likely prompt younger generations of Cubans to reach for their remote controls." -- guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2010 TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Comments
Viva Castro,thanks for your efforts to liberate South Africa.
Facts and stuff like that on March 11, 2010, 9:27 am
viva fidel!!!
pieter January on March 11, 2010, 12:19 pm
638 assassination plots? He must be a very popular man!
Concerned Citizen on March 11, 2010, 12:36 pm
Viva Castro,
thanks for your effort to liberate Africa
Feruzi Ngwamba on March 11, 2010, 1:01 pm
...he may have fought to assist the liberation struggle, but in his own country he is a cruel dictator. Power is handed over, not voted over. So, let's not celebrate him being Mr Wonderful. In Cuba he is no hero.
Mark TC on March 11, 2010, 1:37 pm
Did he actually do anything for Africa ? I thought he as only interested in Cuba ?
Say What on March 11, 2010, 2:06 pm
A great man indeed who managed to indoctrinate his people - doctors professors included. He should be intelligent eeeeeh! I have a word of advice for him to advise his hand picked brother Raul that Communism doesn't work anymore!
Jabu Xhoi on March 11, 2010, 2:09 pm
@Say What: Where do you come from and what school did you go to? You are having Cuban doctors in rural SA, where SA doctors doesn't want to work. They all want to work in the Louis Pasteurs, Wilgers, Jacaranda etc hospital and they think they can all be accommodated there. Just take a walk back and learn about Castro and Augostinho Neto. SADF went on a relentless campaign to bring Angola to a stand-still, for what?
Mnike Leswena on March 12, 2010, 12:14 am
They don't call him die hard for nothing!
Mnike Leswena on March 12, 2010, 12:26 am
Mark TC American propanganda has tried relentlessly to paint Fidel as a despot but they failed miserably,yes its true FC has made mistakes but the good he brought to his country outweighs by far the supposedly the good that was backed by america.Why do we call america and other western nations democratic yet this nations have backed the most evil despots in many parts of third world?Open your eyes brother Mandela according to Mrs Thatcher and Dick Cheney was a terrorist that means they wanted apartheid to prevail in your country.FC has overstayed in power but he has brought good goods to the cubans and helped liberate south africa from a human destructive ideology that corrupts the mind of oppressor and the oppressed.Open your eyes as we eastafricans say
Ngim mwa on July 11, 2010, 9:35 am
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A new Cuban TV series celebrates Fidel Castro's escape from 638 assassination plots. (AP)
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