The blinds are going down on the presidency of Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. A stomach operation to stop intestinal bleeding has caused the 80-year-old leader to hand over power for the first time in 47 years and postpone his birthday celebrations, originally scheduled for this month to December. Power has been handed to his brother, Raul, five years his junior. Even if the charismatic Fidel bounces back from this medical emergency, Cubans are already asking what happens next. Largely thanks to Raul’s administration of a ferocious security apparatus, those Cubans, especially among the young, who have despaired of the revolution’s promised benefits, have either kept quiet or quit the country, legally or illegally. Though the regime guarantees health, housing and education, the standard of freedom remains pitifully low and many basic foodstuffs are still severely rationed.
Fidel has always blamed the US trade embargo, imposed in 1961 after all US businesses on the island were nationalized, for the economic failure of the revolution. The truth is, however, that Fidel would never have been easy over commercial relations with the US economic behemoth 90 miles away to the north. Nothing suited the communists more than the embargo. The 1959 Communist revolution Castro led overthrew the corrupt and debauched regime of President Fulgencio Batista who had sold out to the US mafia and allowed them to turn the island into a center for drugs, gambling and prostitution. It was the height of the Cold War and Cuba’s was the first communist regime in the Americas. Washington’s consequent panic seemed justified when Moscow sought to install missiles on the island, an incident which brought the world closer than it has ever been to nuclear conflict. Castro’s later attempt to export revolution to Central and South America caused the United States to arm and support a series of deeply objectionable dictatorships which committed widespread human rights abuses.
Ten US presidents later, Washington’s bogeyman is nearing his end. The question is whether Castro has done enough to institutionalize the communist regime or if it will crumble when he leaves the scene? China’s influence and subsidies to Cuba may tempt a new leadership to open up the economy and its 11 million people to capitalism. It is hard nonetheless to see how a Cuban Communist party could maintain a Chinese-style control of development, especially given the high degree of active ill-will felt and shown by Florida’s expatriate Cuban community. The likelihood must surely be that a post-Castro communist government will not last, especially if Washington ends its trade embargo and tempts millions of young Cubans with the forbidden fruits of capitalism. It would, however, be tragic if vengeful Americans sought to demolish all of Castro’s legacy. For all his own oppression, Castro has sought to create a decent and moral society. If Cuba were handed back to Mafia mobsters and unreconstructed refugees from the degenerate Batista era, ordinary Cubans would be the losers. Worse from Washington’s point of view, with hindsight Castro’s reputation would be considerably elevated in the eyes of history.
