A LESSON IN HISTORY AND ETHICS

by Arleen Rodríguez Derivet

“Peace in Colombia” by Fidel Castro Ruz.  The title and the author’s name would be enough to turn this into the most widely sought-after and read book these days throughout the world.  Just looking at the excellent presentation of this publication by Editora Política leads one to imagine that its pages are a treasury of the personal opinions of the extraordinary statesman who writes about a complex and dark chapter in our times and region.

What cannot be revealed by a glance at the cover is what this book is in reality: nothing less than a vital half-century slice of contemporary history, narrated by one of its fundamental protagonists, possessing all the charm of a novel, while being absolutely true to facts. 

Here we have, with all the meticulously detailed notes by way of reports and documents, unpublished until today, everything we have ever wanted to know about the internal workings of the negotiations between the various Colombian governments and the leadership of the Cuban Revolution, with or without diplomatic relations, in order to remove the impediments to peace talks, rescue hostages and even to avoid massacres, as the ones that might have taken place as a result of the plan of the Julio César Turbay Ayala government to storm the Dominican Embassy, taken in the first months of 1980 by an M-19 commando group.

The book’s 16 chapters, including introduction and epilogue, contain significant revelations and they document, for the first time, events that were scattered throughout press clippings or which remained in sparsely circulated books, unknown to many.