The words echoed among the audience as they took note of the sentences: “I have always thought that ideas do not revolve around public figures; it is they who must revolve around ideas,” Fidel Castro said in his slow, deliberate tone on December 5, 2004.
Speaking before dozens of young people at the 8th Congress of the Union of Young Communists, the Cuban leader repeated one of his guiding convictions: “The Revolution was able to resist because it sowed ideas.”
A veteran of countless battles, his remarks returned to what he often called a battle of ideas: an unrelenting fight against “formalism and conformism,” and against “routine and schematism.” For Fidel, only the anonymous efforts of ordinary people could build the horizons of revolutionary emancipation.
“It has been a constant effort to deepen a critical vision, avoiding self-complacency in our work and historical goals,” Fidel said that day.
His life’s story defies understatement: from his early international solidarity as a student, supporting anti-dictatorship struggles across Latin America, including resistance to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s rule in the Dominican Republic, to his early years as a lawyer defending workers and the poor; from fighting against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, imposed by a 1952 military coup, to becoming one of the leading figures of the first victorious socialist revolution in the Americas.
From his tireless pursuit of “dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world” to his role in liberation struggles across the globe, Fidel Castro was one of the 20th century’s most significant figures. And, above all, a central voice in the fight of peoples against oppression.
Cuba is preparing to mark the centenary of its revolutionary leader, born August 13, 1926. In a moment when the Revolution faces both long-standing challenges, such as persistent imperialist hostility, and new uncertainties, BdF spoke with activists and intellectuals about the ideas Fidel planted, and those still to be sown.
A memory of the future
For Cuban historian and researcher Frank Josué Solar, Fidel “must be seen more as a man of the future than of the past.” Approaching his thought, Frank says, is “not a mere exercise in historical nostalgia nor an academic pastime, but a conscious act to turn his ideas into living tools for current struggles.”
He stresses the importance of keeping Fidel away from “rituals and sites of worship” to preserve the subversive power of his revolutionary legacy. His dreams, Frank notes, remain unfulfilled in Cuba and elsewhere, and making them real requires “keeping him fighting symbolically by our side.”
Studying Fidel’s work and ideas, he adds, must be a path toward building a future of justice, freedom, and dignity. Above all, it means recovering “his rebellious spirit, forged in nonconformity and constant fight power.”
A community of ideas for the world we must build
For activist and popular educator Llanisca Lugo, the centenary is a moment to revisit essential debates for deepening socialism in Cuba, and to engage with “the tradition of social struggles of the Cuban people, of which Fidel was a synthesis.”
She recalls that Fidel and the so-called “Centenary Generation” revived the legacies of Cuba’s independence wars, the Revolution of 1930, and José Martí’s ideals, updating them for the battles of their time. Today, she says, this tradition means fighting from the real needs and demands of the people to achieve the greatest possible social justice.
“How do you expand, deepen, and defend a revolutionary project, and revolutionary power, in the face of a hostile enemy like imperialism and colonialism, while building a sovereign nation?” she asks.
For Llanisca, the Revolution must continually produce both revolutionary thinking and a revolutionary subject to lead it. Without this, she warns, processes stagnate and give way to individualism and complacency.
She argues that socialist projects must remain grounded in the pain, struggles, and aspirations of the people, aiming to surpass the capitalist system’s logic. That means seeking out “multiple voices and open discussions” in Cuba today that keep Fidel’s vision alive.
Paying our debts to humanity
Fidel played a decisive role in opening Cuba’s doors to students from around the world. Watan Jamil Alabed, a Palestinian graduate of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) – founded by the Cuban Revolution to train doctors from marginalized communities globally – is one of over 30,000 international doctors trained there.
He says his years in Cuba shaped his understanding of internationalism and the revolutionary principle to “change everything that must be changed.”
“Fidel was always on the side of fair causes, especially the Palestinian cause,” Watan says. This commitment, he adds, takes on special meaning today amid the ongoing, televised genocide against the Palestinian people.
Quoting Fidel, Watan recalls that internationalism means “paying our debts to humanity.” For him, the “Fidel centenary generation” – as he calls himself and fellow Palestinian graduates – has the duty to continue the fights and dreams of building a better world.
