The Man Who Invented Fidel by Anthony Depalma (April 3, 2006, Public Affairs)

A Note from Anthony Deplama

The idea for this book came to me after I was given the chance to write Fidel Castro's advance obituary for the New York Times in 2001. I started out knowing that an obituary of Castro in the Times would have to deal with the way that Castro had supposedly fooled the Times's correspondent, Herbert Matthews, into thinking he commanded a larger army by marching the same men around him in circles during a famous interview in the Sierra Maestra in 1957 when the Revolution was young. It was a well-known story that I had heard many years before. But as I looked into it, I started to question the account. Matthews, it turned out, had not been a naive cub reporter but a fifty-seven-year old editor and war-hardened former foreign correspondent who had witnessed many battles during the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. It did not seem possible that Matthews could have been fooled by such a crude trick unless, of course, he wanted to be. Before long I found myself embarked on an investigation of such themes as objectivity, bias, and myth. It was a precarious expedition for me, as a correspondent, and a Timesman. Still, even though Matthews's interview with Castro took place nearly fifty years ago, the issues it raises are timely because the truth remains as elusive as ever.