If he hadn’t been so tall and dashing, could the cult of Fidel Castro ever have lasted this long? For that matter, had Che Guevara been fat and bald, would college students bother wearing his picture on their T-shirts? I doubt it.
Perhaps this sounds absurdly reductive, but there’s no exaggerating the dazzling effect that good looks can have upon the unwary. And fairly or not, people instinctively associate stature with intelligence and leadership, which is why CEOs and political successes tend to be much taller than the average Joe.
I had known, like everyone, that the Cuban tyrant was an almost Obamalike sensation at international gatherings, but it wasn’t until I found myself accidentally in the same small room with him 10 or so years ago that I saw just how charismatic he was — and how nauseatingly quickly otherwise sensible people started swooning in his presence.
We were both, Fidel and I, attending a United Nations conference in Istanbul, Turkey.
I was trying to find my way to a meeting and, with a couple of other stragglers, had gotten lost in the tangle of hotel corridors. The three or four of us had just mistakenly entered an empty anteroom when in from the other side burst Castro, evidently just as confused as we were.
You can choose your metaphor for what happened next. My companions seemed to be jolted by electricity and then knocked by a wave of emotion as they took in the spectacle of the celebrated revolutionary, all 6-feet-3 of him, resplendent in green fatigues (this was before his geriatric tracksuit phase), standing right there!
An instant later, they surged around him, thrusting out hands and gazing with amazed adoration at the famous bearded face. Castro was less enchanted; he had a meeting to make, and soon effected his escape. The room when he left was practically vibrating with endorphins.
“Wow! I can’t believe it!” gushed a relief worker who five minutes earlier had been chatting dispassionately about her work in Kosovo. She looked at her hand and laughed: “I’ll never wash it again!”
In retrospect, I wish I’d managed to fix those suddenly lovesick post-adolescents with a beady eye and say something a bit sharper than I did, which was some feebleness such as, “Frankly, I’d rather not shake hands with a dictator.” And that was that. We all went off again in search of our meetings. I hoped Castro had remarked that I’d cut him socially. I doubt he noticed I was there in the first place.
At the time, Castro’s crimes and cruelties were perfectly well known: The executions and imprisonments; the political repression, and economic impoverishment that drove tens of thousands of Cubans to risk escaping to Florida through shark-infested waters.
None of the Westerners who mobbed him at that U.N. conference, or at any of the other gatherings where for years he’s been received with rapture, could be under any illusion about the true nature of this striking figure.
Of course, Castro’s anti-Americanism has been part of his appeal. Flouting the regional hegemon has always been an excellent way to lure foolish moths to socialist flames.
But anti-Americanism does not begin to explain the deep and almost erotic attachment outsiders have had to Fidel (or to the beret-wearing, long-dead Che). Nikita Khrushchev, for instance, was plenty anti-American, and you don’t see co-eds wearing his face on their bosoms. Why? Because Khrushchev was fat and bald.
We all know that people respond to beauty and dash. In a democracy — ours, say — voters can choose politicians for any reason they like, even the relatively frivolous reason of preferring a candidate’s appearance.
As Cubans move from Fidel’s control to that of his homely technocratic brother, let’s hope it means they are also be moving toward a day when the world — no longer starstruck by Fidel’s revolutionary elan — will support them in their democratic aspirations.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
