To Guillermo Cabrera Infante,

sleepless defender of freedom.

The lecturer had the deep stare of those who meditate seriously. He arrived at the university campus on the last leg of a trip through Latin America, during which he had been hard on dictators and those who accept Marxist philosophy.

While he waited, a cigarette between his lips, some students asked him facetiously about his ``anti-Castro'' stance. The man answered without looking at them:

``Doctrine is one thing; the man, another. I believe that Fidel Castro is the greatest leader that Latin America has produced.''

Surprise made the students' smiles vanish.

He continued: ``I don't exaggerate. In the long run, what did Simon Bolivar accomplish? To confess, as he limped toward exile, that he had `plowed the seas.' And Jose de San Martin? To seek exile in France and refuse to return to Argentina ever again. And the others? To fragment the hemisphere with republics that had no citizens, only constitutions that served as fodder for the caudillos' horses.

``In turn, what has Fidel done? Fidel has done everything and has been applauded for everything. That applause is a gauge of how low the ethical level of our current politicians and intellectuals has fallen.
THE REGIME'S `SERVANTS'

``In the academic world, far from shutting their doors to Cuban professors -- not because they're professors but precisely because they aren't, because Raul Castro himself anointed them as `servants' of the regime -- some universities lower their standards to maintain their leftist image.

``Others turn their learning centers into platforms where one hears only the Cuban government's official version, never the repression or the asphyxia suffered by the true intellectuals. My own university, Georgetown, has one of those narrow-version learning centers.

``Fidel detests those hypocritical sinuosities. He attacks head on. He invaded Latin America with his guerrillas and forced all to sacrifice lives and fortunes in that struggle. Forty years later, the presidents of those countries treat him with respect.

``He defied the north with annihilative Soviet rocketry, and when he visits the United States, the TV networks melt under his charm. He shut down Catholic schools, expelled priests and nuns, imposed atheism as the sole truth -- and neither bishops nor cardinals whisper a protest.``As he himself confessed, if he had achieved power in Spain, he would have established an atheistic Inquisition to burn believers at the stake. If he had met resistance, he would have proclaimed himself caliph and summoned his Arab friends to re-establish order in Spain.
PEOPLE FAILED HIM

``He was unable to achieve such things, he proclaims, because the people failed him. While his rebels defeated Fulgencio Batista's army in two years, he says, the Colombian guerrillas have spent 20 years bleeding Colombia without seizing power. In Bolivia, the peasants were deaf to Che Guevara's cold words, and everywhere his guerrillas were defeated. Even the Russian people betrayed him, toppling the bloodthirsty system that nourished Cuba.

``Despite those costly disasters, Fidel went further and lower than anyone else in Latin America. His formula is simple: rhetorical concessions for foreign propaganda and a fist of steel to stay in power.

``His words about the poor are a pretext to eliminate the rich and make the poor miserable. Those who hunger think only about eating and cannot hatch conspiracies. So his solution is not to improve the lot of those who have nothing but to take everything away from those who have something.

``He and his brother Raul despise you. They know that you know the truth and that you accept the lie to gain prestige as leftist intellectuals.''