The Castro Dictatorship After Fidel: Now New and Improved!
What does Fidel Castro's resignation mean for the future of Cuba? Henry Louis Gomez says Cubans will still experience the same amount of repression, but now with 10% less bluster.
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As North America awoke this morning, it was confronted with the news that Fidel Castro has decided that he will “neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief.” In essence, the elder Castro is stepping aside officially in favor of the 76-year-old dauphin, his brother Raul.
What does this mean for the people of Cuba? In the short run, nothing. The elder Castro has been out of commission since his health failed him in July 2006. The nature of the illness is a state secret, but it’s apparent to any observer that Fidel has not wielded the reigns of power in Cuba since that time.
What has occurred in the interim is paradoxical. While Fidel’s prolonged illness has been useful to Raul (by allowing him to consolidate his power and get the Cuban people comfortable with the idea of life without the Maximum Leader), it has also served to create mounting expectations of change — and not just among everyday Cubans but also those in the upper echelons of power.
Self-proclaimed “Cubanologists” in the United States have made it fashionable to refer to Raul as “the pragmatic one” and “the reformer.” Of course, in contrast to Fidel who was notoriously capricious, arbitrary, egomaniacal, and stubborn, anyone short of Stalin could be legitimately labeled as pragmatic. Even Raul, who as Fidel’s right-hand man since the days of the rebel insurgency and head of Cuba’s armed forces, has just as much blood on his hands — if not more.
What Raul wants is for the world to see his succession to the throne of the house of Castro as legitimate. That’s why the regime went to such great lengths to stage its kabuki production of parliamentary “elections.” If the world accepts the succession without objection, then Raul would have accomplished the primary goal of keeping international pressure off, at least temporarily. And that’s what this has always been about: buying time.
In Spanish there’s a saying “no hay mal que dure cien años,” which means “there’s no evil that can last one hundred years.” Raul recognizes the inherent truth in this saying, but he doesn’t need this evil regime to last one hundred years. Only a few more years will suffice. Then, like his brother probably will, he can die peacefully in his sleep. It should be obvious to anyone that a Marxist state cannot be indefinitely viable. This one is reaching the inevitable end of its life. The only question is when.
Fidel famously warned Mikhail Gorbachev that glasnost and perestroika would spell the end of the Soviet Union. He, of course, was right. But the collapse of the USSR was just as inevitable as the collapse of Cuba is.
Fidel, through his force of will and a lot of intimidation, was able to keep things together and make people accept the fact that Cuba would liberalize its economy and political system over his dead body. It’s universally accepted that Raul is somehow more closely in tune with the attitudes of everyday Cubans. In a certain sense, his survival is going to have to depend on this trait, whether he currently possesses it or not. The dictator of Cuba has to walk a fine line: keep the people hungry enough that they spend most of their time looking for food, but not so hungry that it creates a social explosion. In other words, portray the illusion that incremental changes for the better are being undertaken, while changing as little as possible.
Raul’s “pragmatism” can be seen in how the political opposition in Cuba is currently treated. Today, by and large, dissidents and demonstrators are picked up by police, worked over either psychologically or physically, and then released. This is the kinder, gentler form of revolutionary repression under Raul the reformer. The regime has also continued to release a trickle of political prisoners, mainly into exile. It would be unbearable for the regime to buckle under international pressure and release a prisoner like
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12 Comments
Val Prieto:Excellent editorial, Henry.
Feb 19, 2008 - 11:27 am debbie:I hope to live long enough to see Cuba freed from it’s Marxist stronghold. That means the Castro boys shuffling off this mortal coil. I hope to vacation on Cubas lovely beaches when the embargo is lifted and free markets arrive to their shores. May this be swiftly, soon and in our lifetime.
Feb 19, 2008 - 12:24 pm legion:Have you noticed how much Barack Obama resembles Che Guevara?
If he has bad luck next November, neo-Che (he is the one) might try his luck down in Havana.
Michelle has never been jazzed about America anyway. Cuba may just be the cure.
Feb 19, 2008 - 1:02 pm Bruno:I guess nobody remembers the awful Batista dictatorship Castro liberated Cuba from in 59. We also have another saying in Spanish: “una de cal y una de arena”, which means more or less “one good deed, one bad deed”. I for one have no hopes that a government the US approves of would in the end solve the extreme poverty problems of Cuba.
Feb 19, 2008 - 1:28 pm Pantera:Yah, I’ve never understood how having an embargo against you forced a country to become a dictatorship. Especially since the reason for the embargo in the first place was because he had been a dictator and posed a strategic threat.
Feb 19, 2008 - 1:59 pm Curly Smith:Bruno, you’re quite right. After living through the brutal Batista dictatorship (the bad deed) the Cuban people deserved 50 years of Castro (the good deed). I think the cure was worse than the disease but I didn’t major in journalism. Or maybe you meant Batista was the good deed?
Feb 19, 2008 - 5:01 pm Susan Katz Keating:Hmmm… looks as if Fidel has finally stubbed out his own cigar.
Feb 19, 2008 - 6:20 pm el chino:Bruno, no dictatorship is good but Batista was a walk in the park compared to Castro. Batista was a thug, interested mostly in getting rich. At least people were free to come and go as they pleased under Batista. And in those days, Cuba had a standard of living comparable to Italy’s. The “extreme poverty problems of Cuba” were caused by Castro. Just give the Cuban people freedom and they will solve their own poverty problems. You need look no further than Miami to see what the Cuban people can do.
Feb 20, 2008 - 2:30 am Hotpatch 6:The only real difference between Fidel and Raul is that Fidel is nearer to assuming room temperature. Raul is a murderous thug, like his older brother, who rules through fear but is not quite the self-promoting blowhard that Fidel is. He can be counted on to continue to spread the poverty among Cuban citizens, with the ruling elites being exempt (of course!) But this is merely socialism in action as we have seen so many times. The only truly good Castros are dead Castros.
Feb 20, 2008 - 9:24 am Ollie:Have a look at the following:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=1108FA89-5019-4FE5-A2FA-612C1B38C9D5
That is the reality in Cuba today. Most of what you have heard from the media for 50 years is not true.
There is no social redeeming characteristic of Castro in Cuba. It was a far better place before Castro. But that is all purposefully erased by the Left in most history books.
We are told by the Cuban propaganda machine that the US is bad, that Batista was bad… the Cubans are far worse off today than ever before 1960.
Feb 20, 2008 - 9:58 am Gringo:@ Bruno
guess nobody remembers the awful Batista dictatorship Castro liberated Cuba from in 59
On the contrary, those who have the most knowledge about Cuba before 1959 have the most negative view of Caudillo Fidel. Certainly Cuba and the world were glad to be rid of Batista’s dictatorship. Unfortunately, what followed was worse than Batista. Contrary to the picture that Caudillo Fidel and his band of useful idiots paint, Cuba before Caudillo Fidel was one of the best-off countries in Latin America, a country that Caudillo Fidel has run into the ground.
In 1957, Cuba had ~ 1000 inhabitants per MD, comparable to the US and Western European countries, better than many countries in Europe and all the “Third World” countries with the exception of Argentina, Uruguay, and Hong Kong.(UN, World Health Organization yearbook) While Caudillo Fidel may have contended that he inherited a banana republic, those bananas were pretty good.
Perhaps one way of looking at Cuba under Caudillo Fidel is to look at how Cuba kept up with technological progress. Back in the 1950s, TV was the next big thing. In 1957, Cuba’s number of TVs per 1,000 inhabitants was first in Latin America and fifth in the world (see previous link). We fast-forward a half century, where Internet access is now the next big thing. For 2004, Cuba was last in Latin America and 171st out of 211 countries in Internet access per 1,000. (World Bank Development Indicators)
Another good statistical source on pre-1959 Cuba is Carlos Montaner’s Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution.
I for one have no hopes that a government the US approves of would in the end solve the extreme poverty problems of Cuba.
I thought Caudillo Fidel had had long solved the problem of extreme poverty in Cuba. After all, that is what Caudillo Fidel and his band of useful idiots have been shouting for a half-century.
Feb 20, 2008 - 1:10 pm Theodore J. Scotes:Fidel and Raul Castro and their cabal of thugs are nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded murderers. I was stationed at Gitmo in 1968-69, after returning from VietNam. Christmas Eve, 1968, over one hundred Cubans risked their lives to escape Castro’s Communist paradise. They were part of a larger group of people fleeing Cuba over a period of several years who found life intolerable under Castro. It has been estimated, in intelligence reports of that period, that upwards of over three hundred thousand Cubans were executed between the periods of 1960-64. Just as Stalin liquidated his enemies of the revolution, so did Castro and his killers. I am personally aware of scores of individuals who attempted to escape and were shot in the process or were eaten by sharks as they attempted to swim to freedom at Gitmo. It never ceases to amuse me that Hollywood’s love affair with Fidel does not include any of Fidel’s admirers taking up residence in Castro’s Cuba.
Feb 22, 2008 - 6:09 pm