Pol Pot and Fidel Castro as the Prominent Figures of Authoritarian History

Pol Pot, originally named Saloth Sar of Cambodia, and Cuba’s Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz were two of the world’s authoritarian leaders in history. Both came into power through somewhat similar means and conditions. The consequences had a large effect on Cambodia and Cuba respectively; however, it can be said that more Cambodians were killed under Pol Pot’s inhumane measures than Cubans under Castro during these leaders’ terms of power.

Both leaders shared similar childhoods and early lives as both came from relatively affluent farming families. Moreover, each embraced Marxist ideology as young adults. Born in 1926, Fidel Castro was the son of a fairly prosperous sugarcane farmer and as a young man attended the School of Law of the University of Havana where he took great interest in politics. In 1947 he joined a failed attempt by Dominican exiles and Cubans to invade the Dominican Republic and overthrow Gen. Rafael Trujillo. Additionally, Castro participated in urban riots that broke out in Bogotá, Colombia. Following his graduation, Castro practiced law and joined the reformist Cuban People’s Party. A candidate for holding a seat in the House of Representatives in the scheduled elections of 1952, that opportunity was lost when General Fulgencio Batitsta overthrew the government of President Carlo Prio Socarrás and canceled the elections. Pol Pot, a contemporary of Castro, was born one year before in 1925 as Saloth Sar. He, too, came from a relatively wealthy farming family in central Cambodia. He traveled to Paris on a scholarship in 1949 to study radio electronics, but got caught up in Marxism, thus neglecting his studies. He involved himself with the French Communist Party and joined a left-wing Cambodian nationlist group, the members of which would later join him to make up leadership within the Khmer Rouge. Losing his scholarship, Pol Pot returned to Cambodia where he joined the underground Communist movement. The following year, Cambodia gained its independence and was ruled by a royal monarchy. After teaching from 1956 to 1963, Pol Pot left the capital because he came under the radar of the police for his communist ties. He subsequently spent the next decade building up the Communist Party that was organized by 1960 in Cambodia with Pol Pot serving as secretary. Pol Pot and Castro both developed their reformist and political ideas around the time of their education. Not only did both embrace and study communist ideology as young men attracted to its Marxist-Leninist doctrines, but both came to power through revolutionary means, specifically using guerrilla warfare.

Fidel Castro led the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, while PolPot led the Khmer Rouge in guerrilla forces against Lon Nol’s regime. When Castro was unsuccessful in displacing Batista’s new dictatorship through legal measures, he moved towards organizing a rebel force up for the endeavor in 1953. Hoping to spark a popular uprising, Castro led 160 men, most of whom were killed, in a suicidal attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The charge led to Castro’s arrest, alongside his brother Raúl, after giving an emotional defense during his trial. The two were released in a political amnesty in 1955. In Mexico, they continued in their campaign against the Batista regime, gathering Cuban exiles into the 26th of July Movement, a revolutionary group. Castro and an armed expedition of 81 men landed on the Cuban east coast from the yacht named Granma on December 2, 1956. All were either killed or captured with the exception of Fidel and Raúl Castro, Ernesto Guevara, and nine others, who took refuge in the Sierra Maestra mountains where they waged guerrilla warfare against Batista’s forces. As Castro’s revolutionary volunteers grew, his force of 800 guerrillas won against Batista’s 30 000 professional, albeit demoralized and poorly led forces. Castro’s propaganda was effective while Batista’s support weakened and diminished. The latter fled the country on January 1, 1959. Finally, as the undoubted revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro was commander in chief of the armed forces in Cuba’s new government. In February 1959, Castro became Prime Minister, usurping the president, Manuel Urrutia. Castro held the title of premier until 1976 and subsequently held tenure as president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers until 2008. Meanwhile in Cambodia, Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces against Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s monarch, and the military government of Lon Nol’s regime in 1975. Pol Pot became prime minister in 1976 after Prince Norodom’s forced resignation, until being overthrown by invading Vietnamese in 1979.

Pol Pot retreated to bases in Thailand where he recommenced guerrilla operations against the new Hanoi-supported government in Phnom Penh. During this time he received military support from China as well as political support from the U.S. which opposed the Vietnamese occupation, but as long as Pol Pot remained leader of the Khmer Rouge, peace negotiations were unattainable. While seemingly removed from leadership of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, behind the scenes he continued to help direct the guerrilla campaign into the 1990’s. By 1997 the Khmer Rouge were diminishing given deserters and factions, and completely collapsed by the end of the decade. Another interesting similarity between these two dictators’ time as leaders has less to do with how both operated and implemented their revolutionary changes, and who was an international player in both Cuba and Cambodia given their military and political interests.