Fidel Castro, Two Rolexes and a Cohiba
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With a Cohiba between his lips, two Rolexes on his wrist, and a hard, impenetrable gaze, Fidel Castro never needed words to deliver a message. The simple act of wearing his watches was sometimes enough to say it all. In several photographs captured during the 1960s, the Cuban leader appears with two Rolex watches clearly visible on his left wrist. The image is striking, almost jarring. Two Swiss, capitalist luxury watches strapped to the arm of a man who had defied the American empire and sworn allegiance to Marxism-Leninism. What was Fidel Castro doing with two Rolexes on at once? Was it a whim? An ego trip? A military necessity? Or, in a testament to the sheer power of his persona, was it a perfectly calculated political symbol, cleverly projected through an object as everyday as a watch?
Of all the theories put forward, only one stands the test of time through its coherence and intelligence. Fidel Castro wore two watches to keep track of both Havana time and Moscow time. That is to say, the time of his own revolution, born in Cuba and rooted in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, and the time of the one that had armed, financed, and supported him: the Soviet revolution. In an era when the world was divided into two blocs, and when seconds could plunge history into nuclear war, displaying two time zones was far from trivial. It was a wordless message, a silent strategy, a way of saying both: “I am independent” and “I am not alone.” Through his watches, Fidel Castro was saying: “Cuba is with the USSR, but Cuba remains Cuba.”
This choice was not merely political. It was aesthetically calculated. Castro did not wear just any watches. He wore the Rolex Submariner, the Day-Date, and the GMT-Master. These were watches designed for professionals, divers, men of power, and timezone-crossing travelers. The Submariner symbolized robustness, endurance, and action. The Day-Date represented presidential precision, the kind required for split-second decisions. And the GMT-Master contained everything in a single piece: two
times, two worlds, two poles. When Castro later transitioned to wearing just a single watch, it would be a GMT-Master reference 6542, and later a 1675, both models capable of displaying the time in two different locations simultaneously. There was no longer any need for a double-watch wrist. Everything fit into a single case. His entire geopolitical philosophy, his entire international stance, was encapsulated in a timepiece capable of looking both East and toward the Caribbean.
Within this detail lies a political lesson. While other leaders delivered endless speeches, Fidel chose to speak through symbols. He turned his wrist into a miniature theater where the balance of the world was played out. Two watches for two hemispheres. Two dials for two ideologies. Two sets of hands for two revolutions. Then, a single watch, but one capable of encompassing it all. This is perhaps the finest definition of Cuban diplomacy during the Castro era: never severing the link with Moscow, while never losing the sovereignty of Havana.
Even today, this image of Castro remains etched in our minds. Rolex and communism? There was surely a good reason. Perhaps he wore them to show that he was not seeking prestige, but rather that he mastered the narrative. In a world where every second could count, he put time at the service of his ideology. And he did so with such audacity that one never knew if he was mocking the West, paying tribute to Swiss precision, or simply waging a war of symbols, the kind that only becomes clear in hindsight, when the photographs finally reveal their meaning.
Fidel Castro understood that power is not exercised solely through weapons or speeches. It is also written in objects, gestures, and details. By choosing his watches with care, he placed his struggle in a deeper, almost metaphysical dimension: that of time. He wore two time zones because he fought on two fronts. He displayed the time because he was heralding history.
If you enjoyed this article, you can also discover our piece on Mercedes Gleitze, the woman who popularized the Rolex Oyster.
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