August 2, 2006

Fraternal Ties
Castro's Illness Opens Window On Cuba Transition

Raúl Castro, Cuba's new temporary leader, is beginning what may be a long and uncertain transition from his legendary older brother's long rule over this communist island bastion.

The announcement Monday that Fidel Castro, after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding, had temporarily handed power to his uncharismatic and widely feared younger brother set off all-night celebrations in Miami. Cuban exiles there are convinced the beginning of the end has arrived for Mr. Castro's 47-year-old regime.

If Fidel Castro is unable to return as president and Communist Party head, it is possible though improbable that Cuba will turn fairly quickly toward democracy, as Eastern Europe did after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many Cuba analysts believe Raúl Castro would continue the Western Hemisphere's sole communist regime, and would rely heavily on money from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez to prop up the economy and tamp down dissent.

In a statement, Fidel Castro, who will turn 80 years old Aug. 13, said he expected to be back after a convalescence of "several weeks." Even if that happens, his younger brother's temporary assumption of power is a clear sign of what the future holds for Cuba. "What we are seeing is the first stage of a communist succession, a dynastic succession of one brother by another," says Brian Latell, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who has written a biography of Raúl Castro.

In the short run, 75-year-old Raúl, nicknamed "the Prussian" for his cold efficiency, should be able to maintain control of the island. He has a strong grip on the country's military, intelligence services and police. But over the longer term, any successor to Fidel must be able to cope with the country's deep-seated economic problems, fatigue with a revolutionary regime nearly 50 years old, and hunger for change -- tempered perhaps by fear about a future without the charismatic Mr. Castro.

Some Cuba watchers say that over the past year, as Fidel Castro's health has deteriorated noticeably, Raúl started playing a larger role. In June, the Cuban newspaper Granma published a long and flattering profile of the media-shy Raúl on his birthday. "Raúl is in charge, de facto if not de jure," says Jaime Suchliki, the head of the Cuban Transition Project at the University of Miami, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It is impossible to ascertain from his statement what is afflicting Fidel Castro. Common causes of sustained intestinal bleeding include ulcers, cancer, and broken blood vessels, says Harvard Medical School professor J. Thomas Lamont, chief of gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Often bleeding can be stopped with medicines, endoscopy, or surgical procedures that require a couple weeks of bed rest. The fact that Mr. Castro underwent surgery probably indicates that bleeding couldn't be stopped with medicines or endoscopy, says Dr. Lamont.

Fidel Castro pronounced himself in "good spirits" and in "stable condition" after stomach surgery, according to a statement read on Cuba state television, Reuters reported.

For now, the U.S. government's hostility to Cuba is not expected to change much, although Fidel Castro's temporary relinquishment of power is likely to renew calls to review the nearly five-decade-long U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. Many U.S. businesses are eager to trade with the country. But lifting or softening the embargo is anathema for most Cuban-Americans in Miami, who are overwhelmingly Republican and would view such a move as helping Raúl Castro to prolong the regime.

Even if President Bush were inclined to end the trade embargo under a Raúl Castro government, he would be barred from doing so by 1996 law that prevents the U.S. from normalizing commercial or political relations with any Cuban government that includes either Raúl or Fidel. (The president is permitted to offer aid, however, as an inducement for change.)

"The fact that you have an autocrat handing power off to his brother does not mark an end to autocracy," said White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Raúl Castro's assumption of power has put the international spotlight on him for the first time. His older brother Fidel was a brilliant orator, student and sportsman at the Jesuit Belén preparatory school in Havana, the country's best high school. Raúl was a mediocre student who was thrown out of Belen after a few months. He returned to the family farm to do manual work.

From the beginning, he has been Fidel Castro's most loyal and trusted supporter. Raúl was a member of a youth group affiliated with the Communist Party, and traveled to the Soviet Union. He joined his brother in opposing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and fought in his brother's disastrous attack on the Moncada army barracks, which gave birth to Fidel Castro's revolutionary 26 of July Movement. He joined his brother in exile in Mexico, then returned with Fidel and others when they invaded Cuba in an overcrowded yacht called the Granma.

During the early years of the revolution, Raúl Castro personally ordered hundreds of summary executions, earning a reputation for ruthlessness that has dogged him ever since. He is identified with some of the regime's worst excesses, such as its persecutions of dissidents and homosexuals.

For many years, Raúl drank heavily, says Mr. Latell, who kept tabs on the Castro brothers for the CIA. In 1989, he gave a bizarre performance in a nationally televised speech in which he condemned a close friend, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who was later executed for drug trafficking and treason after a summary trial.

But Castro family members say that for all his faults, Raúl is more approachable than his larger-than-life brother. He is a family man who married the daughter of a top Bacardi executive and who orchestrates clan gatherings where he plays with grandkids. He is now liberal enough to allow a daughter to run a support group for transsexuals, says a friend of the daughter. For years, Raul's managerial skills, honed running the armed forces, have helped rescue his older brother from his own most chaotic instincts.

Alina Fernandez, Fidel's estranged daughter, who lives in Miami, says Castro family members turn to Raúl to help sort out personal problems. She says that Cuba faces so many problems that her uncle may not want the job for long. "You can argue with Raúl," says Alcibiades Hidalgo, his former chief of staff. "You can't argue with Fidel."

The Cuban constitution indicates that Raúl is in line to be his brother's successor. His status was already evident five years ago when Fidel Castro fainted during a speech. Stunned onlookers watched as officials tried to prop up the fallen dictator. A cabinet minister shouted: "Viva Fidel! Viva la revolución! Viva Raul!" Others in the crowd took up the chant.

As Fidel's health has faltered, interest in Raúl's role in Cuba's future has grown. Earlier this year, a panel of Cuba experts including Mr. Latell, the former CIA analyst, ran a simulation at the University of Miami to look at what would happen after Fidel died. Mr. Latell, playing Raúl, chaired a meeting of Cuba's Council of State, which was split for the exercise between liberal civilians favoring economic reforms and military hardliners urging Raúl to put down unrest forcefully. In the simulation, Raúl was torn about using force. He fired one of his top civilian ministers for continuing to argue a point he had already decided, but used Fidel's funeral to make an overture to the U.S.

Little is known about Raúl's health. If it were to falter, rivals for power could surface. Among them are Cuba's economics czar, Carlos Lage, a 54-year-old pediatrician who is seen as favoring economic reforms; Ricardo Alarcón, 69, the experienced president of Cuba's National Assembly; and Felipe Pérez Roque, 41, Cuba's foreign minister, who is considered a hard-liner.

As Fidel's successor, Raúl would have to wrestle with three big questions: whether to ease relations with the U.S.; how to handle his country's Venezuelan patron, Mr. Chávez; and how to jump-start the crisis-ridden economy.

Dealing with the U.S. may be the most straightforward. With Raúl in charge, the U.S. is unlikely to take major steps toward rapprochement. If the situation in Cuba deteriorated and masses of Cubans took to the seas to escape, the U.S. stance could create problems. Some analysts suggest that Raúl might try to govern from a nonofficial position to overcome any U.S. unwillingness to deal with him.

"I wonder if Washington is prepared to deal with such an unpredictable, uncertain and potentially messy situation just 90 miles from Miami," says Michael Shifter, an analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "For the Bush administration, so distracted and consumed by other hot spots, the timing of this unsettled situation is problematic."

Mr. Chávez's involvement could complicate matters. The Venezuelan leader has looked to Fidel as a father figure, and recently sent his best wishes to the Cuban leader's office. "We hope President Fidel Castro will recover rapidly. Viva Fidel Castro!" Mr. Chávez said.

If the elder Mr. Castro does not recover, the Venezuelan leader would miss a key source of strategic advice and guidance for his self-styled Bolivarian revolution. Fidel has acted as a brake on Mr. Chávez's more compulsive instinct. Without him, the Venezuelan former military officer could become more radical in his attempts to become a global anti-American leader, says Eric Eckvall, a political consultant in Caracas.

During the past week, Mr. Chávez visited Moscow and signed a $1 billion deal for fighter jets and helicopters, a deal that raised alarm bells in Washington. Then he flew to Tehran, where he signed a raft of oil cooperation deals and happily joined the Iranians in painting the U.S. as the "Great Satan." Mr. Chávez has even said he wants to visit North Korea, and Venezuela is pushing for a temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council.

With Raúl Castro in charge, there may be less appetite in Havana for Mr. Chávez's overseas adventures. But the younger Castro is unlikely to push Mr. Chávez too far away because he needs his economic aid, especially since the U.S. is unlikely to lift its economic embargo. "The money Venezuela is spending in Cuba is so huge, there's no way they would change the relationship," says Mr. Eckvall.

Surprisingly, Cuba's economy may give Raúl some breathing room. Economic growth has rebounded sharply during the past two years, although many still want to flee the nation. According to Cuban economic statistics, which are widely considered inflated, its economy grew by nearly 12% in 2005, due to a boost in tourism, sales of nickel and export of medical, sports and other services to Venezuela. The CIA puts the growth rate at 8%, although it notes that "the average standard of living remains at a lower level" than before the loss of subsidies from the former Soviet Union, which once supplied the island with oil and vastly overpaid for Cuban sugar.

After the Cuban economy plunged in the 1990s following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country made an effort to loosen controls. It allowed foreign investment in tourism and mining, permitted small-scale private agriculture and allowed ordinary citizens to use the U.S. dollar. Raúl played a significant role in that effort, and military officers under his control wound up controlling profitable tourist companies.

Then a series of hurricanes and a devastating drought battered the economy. Mr. Chávez stepped in to replace the Soviet Union as a beneficiary, and the Castro government changed course again. It recentralized the economy and banned circulation of the U.S. dollar.

Raúl is seen as more pragmatic than Fidel. He has visited China a number of times, and has sent some key army officers for management training at European business schools. People who know him say he has been behind the few attempts at economic reform attempted by the Cuban government in recent years, such as farmers markets.

Cuba now depends on the largesse of Venezuela, which is unlikely to diminish. According the Cuba Transition Project, Venezuela last year provided about $1.1 billion in subsidized oil -- a big help to an economy whose gross domestic product is roughly $40 billion, according to the CIA. In 2004, Venezuela imported about $500 million worth of goods and services, the transition project estimates, including purchases of sugar mills and medical equipment, and payment to Cuba for work done in Venezuela by Cuban teachers, doctors and trainers.

Cubans have some hope for recovering a degree of economic independence. Discoveries of oil off the coast have attracted interest from Western oil companies, and rising commodity prices have boosted foreign investment in Cuban nickel deposits.

For the moment, however, the shock of the announcement about Fidel Castro's health has left even his critics unsettled. Lázaro Ricardo Pérez García, a human rights activist and independent journalist in Isla de Pinos, an island off Cuba's western Caribbean coast, says Cubans are trading stories and speculating, but don't know what to expect. "We all knew this was going to happen someday, but you can't help being surprised," he says.

Yesterday, he says, there were more security forces than usual near government buildings along the main drag. "Residents don't know what to think," he says. "People are kind of numb."

Write to David Luhnow at david.luhnow@wsj.com³ and Bob Davis at bob.davis@wsj.com⁴

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