¡Hasta siempre Comandante!

Fidel Castro was one of the few great leaders of our time.  My most striking memory of Cuba was a sign I once saw on the road from Varadero, where we had just landed, to Havana, our principal destination.  It simply said: “Welcome to Cuba.  The first law is love.”  Now I’ve been pretty well all over the world--North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, not Australia but New Zealand.  But it was only in Cuba where I’ve seen or expected to receive such a welcome.  There are those who vilify Fidel Castro because he limited people’s freedom.  There is some truth to this claim.  He limited the freedom that people in Cuba had had to exploit their neighbours.  Those who felt begrudged by this left for latitudes in which there is wider scope for such freedom.  But there is by far too much emphasis put in those latitudes upon what Isaiah Berlin calls negative liberty--the liberty to wall oneself off from the rest of society and to do whatever one pleases within those walls.  Fidel Castro embraced a more positive type of liberty--the liberty to mold a life in which we are accountable to and responsible for one another.  As his name implies, he bore fidelity to that ideal his whole life through.  Well done, Fidel, you faithful servant of humankind.  ¡Hasta siempre Comandante!