Jesus, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Robespierre, and now Fidel Castro: on Saturday, March 1st at Teatro Donizetti (11:00 AM), the last of The Rebels at the center of the second edition of History Lessons, an initiative conceived by Editori Laterza and co-produced with the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti with the support of Cassa Lombarda, will indeed be Cuba’s líder máximo. The task of portraying him from an unusual perspective will fall to Loris Zanatta: Fidel Castro, in the eyes of the University of Bologna professor, appears as the last Catholic king, who, just like the Catholic kings, was the architect of a fusion between politics and religion, coming to conceive a ‘political’ religion. According to Loris Zanatta, Fidel Castro did not create a political community but a community of faith, inclusive towards believers, ruthless with heretics. And his enemies were the same as those of Catholic Spain: Protestant civilization and the Enlightenment, renamed ‘capitalism‘ and ‘liberalism’.

The l “ast appointment of ‘History Lessons’, which is achieving considerable success with an average of over 900 attendees in the first four ‘lectures’, will be introduced by journalist Max Pavan, head of” information at Bergamo TV. At the end of the “meeting, t” he author will stay with the audience for book signing at the Ridotto Gavazzeni of the Donizetti.

Loris Zanatta teaches History and Institutions of Latin America at the University of Bologna. He is a columnist for the Buenos Aires newspapers “La Nación” and “Clarín” and a member of the Academy of the History of the Argentine Republic. He has numerous historical publications to his credit, including: Eva Perón. A political biography. (Rubbettino, 2009); History of Contemporary Latin America (Laterza, 2010); Populism (Carocci, 2013); The Catholic Nation. Church and dictatorship in Bergoglio’s Argentina. (Laterza, 2014, also published in Argentina), Fidel Castro. The last “Catholic King” (Salerno, 2019) and Jesuit populism. Perón, Fidel, Bergoglio (Laterza, 2020).