Raul Cienfuegos was a member of the elite close circle of military men that surrounded Fidel Castro. They watched over his security and maintained the image of the manly Spartan world of a revolutionary. He was not of the same generation of Castro, but he carried the name of Camilo Cienfuegos one of the three heroes of the Revolution together with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Camilo Cienfuegos had been killed in a plane crash in October 1959.
Fidel Castro was the godfather of Raul Cienfuegos and had decided on a military career for the young Raul after his uncle’s untimely death. It was the duty of the revolution to care for the families of the people’s heroes.
That night when Castro had received Castlemain in Havana, Cienfuegos had been present. He did not have the same vision of the future as that of his godfather. He had tasted the rotten fruit of the Revolution, the corruption and despair that enveloped it. A monument to such a failure was an insult to the suffering of the Cuban people who had endured the grinding poverty of four decades, in a system that reeked of destitution and was falling apart at its seams.
In spite of that, Raul Cienfuegos admired El Jefe, he was a living legend, and maybe history had failed him. But time had worked its relentless machine and Fidel Castro’s last hour was approaching. The flag would be passed on, that was the way it was and always would be. Men like Jose Martti and Manuel de Cespedes had risen to carry the banner of their country, Fidel Castro was another giant and soon it would be the turn of a new flag bearer, Raul Cienfuegos believed he was that person, it was his destiny.
Cuba desperately needed a new leader for its reconstruction, for the future of the people, but not useless monuments to glorify his godfather’s failure.
Cienfuegos had a different vision, the vision of a new Pinochet, where a determined military man could rebuild a strong and vibrant economy, such as that of Chile. But Cuba was an eternal slave to sugar with the mentality that two generations of communism had bred. Cienfuegos needed capital and he was not prepared to exchange the misery of communism for an impoverished military dictatorship.
Carlos Ortega shared certain of his ideas and offered him his support with the money and power he controlled, to build a new Cuba, without the bitter old men from Florida nursing their old grudges from a bygone era.
New cities would be built, but according to his plans and not that of a dead ideology.
Raul Cienfuegos vowed that Ciudad ‘Castlemain’ would never be completed by that foolish Irishman, let alone be named after him, he would bide his time until the moment was ripe.