Castro article raises authenticity issues

Posted on Wed, Apr. 05, 2006

Castro article raises authenticity issues
NEWSPAPER, PUBLISHER INSIST AUTHOR INTERVIEWED CUBAN LEADER
By Frances Robles
Knight Ridder

MIAMI - It was supposed to be a big scoop, one of those rare tell-all
interviews with Fidel Castro that fills books and sells papers.

But the interview published Sunday in the prominent Spanish daily El
País has some apparent problems: Several quotes are verbatim from public
speeches the Cuban leader gave.

``When I read it, it sounded familiar,'' said Ernesto Hernández-Busto, a
Cuban writer based in Spain who discovered the similarities. ``It wound
up being a cut-and-paste operation.''

El País on Sunday published an excerpt from ``Fidel Castro: biografía a
dos voces'' (``Fidel Castro: A Two-Voiced Biography'') written by French
leftist intellectual Ignacio Ramonet and published by Debate, a division
of Random House Mondadori. The headline said Ramonet, the editor of Le
Monde Diplomatique, a Paris scholarly review, got an unprecedented 100
hours of conversations with Castro. His is only the fifth such book
based on conversations with Castro in 50 years, according to the Spanish
newspaper.

Close to government

Begun January 2003, the last interview was in December, El País said.
Ramonet is known to be close to the Cuban government and has written a
prior book on Castro.

In the excerpt of the book published by El País, Castro goes into great
detail about the time he slipped and fell in 2004, but is circumspect
about his brother Raúl's role in an eventual transition government.

``When I reached the concrete area, about 15 or 20 meters from the first
row of chairs, I did not realize that there was a relatively high curb
from the pavement to the crowd. My left foot came down into the air,
because of the difference in height. The momentum, and the law of
gravity discovered some time ago by Newton, caused me, when I took that
false step, to plunge forward until I fell, in a fraction of a second,
onto the pavement,'' Ramonet quoted Castro.

That's exactly what he told the Cuban people in a letter explaining his
fall published Oct. 21, 2004, in the government newspaper Granma.

Ramonet wrote that when he asked whether Cuba's socialist revolution
could dissolve, the excerpts have Castro saying: ``This country can
self-destruct; this revolution can destroy itself, but they can never
destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.''

An English language transcript provided to the Miami Herald by the Cuban
government of a Nov. 17 Castro speech states: ``This country can
self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself, but they can never
destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.''

Publisher responds

Random House Mondadori insists that Ramonet did interview Castro, and
defends the writer with a simple explanation: The Cuban leader is
nothing if not repetitive.

``Fidel Castro is an older man who has been saying the same things for
years,'' spokeswoman Carlota del Amo said by phone from Barcelona. ``We
believe in Ignacio Ramonet 100 percent. He says it was an interview,
then of course it was an interview.''

She said the book is based on a documentary that shows Ramonet
interviewing the Cuban leader.

Ramonet could not be reached for comment. His office in Paris said he
was out of town until next week, and he did not respond to an e-mail
from the Miami Herald.

In 2002, Ramonet was involved in another flap when an article he
purportedly wrote criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez appeared
in a Caracas newspaper. Ramonet first denied writing the article and
accused the paper of publishing it without verifying it with him.

He later admitted writing it as a spoof to illustrate what he said was
the unreliability of the Venezuelan media.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/14267424.htm