Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
The Cuban Connection
By Alma Guillermoprieto
'I don't know whether to call you brother or father,' Hugo Chávez wrote to Fidel Castro one evening after receiving a handwritten note from him—several pages crammed on both sides with advice. Chávez told Aleida Guevara, a pediatrician who is the daughter of Che Guevara, about the correspondence when she interviewed him in 2003 (no uncomfortable questions were asked).[*] Fidel, Chávez went on to say, has great influence on him: he is always after him about his diet, and then takes himself to task about the shipments of Cuban ice cream—an excellent product—that he fondly sends to his protégé. Fidel watches over him in other ways as well: the older man seems to have convinced Chávez that 'they'—the referent is unclear—are out to kill him, so that now the Venezuelan is rarely seen in public. The two are on the phone constantly, and there have been a half-dozen state visits in the last six years, causing mem-bers of the Bush administration to mutter darkly about the new Cuba– Venezuela axis.
Feature, 1050 words
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