Castro admits he's a Red to the core

MIAMI -- Fidel Castro boastfully revealed to the Cuban people today that he is a dedicated "Marxist-Leninist" follower of communism and has been at least since the beginning of his revolutionary movement in 1953.

He explained he had disguised his communism "because otherwise we might have alienated the bourgeoise and other forces which we knew we would eventually have to fight." He included the United States among these forces.

Castro stripped away the last veneer of democratic trappings in a five-hour speech in which he merged his own 26th of July revolutionary movement with the Communist party. Both organizations had been "deactivated" earlier this week following the return of Cuba's delegates from the Moscow Communist congress.

When Castro's little band of dissidents made its first abortive attack on the Moncado barracks at Santiago on July 26, 1953 "The revolutionary thinking was completely formed," Castro said.

In fact, he said he had read the Communist Manifesto and other Red works while a university student. "At the university I had my first contact with the bourgeoise economy and I began to doubt," he said.