Romancing Fidel
August 5, 2006; Page A10

Fidel Castro's health has been declared a national secret. His brother Raul, to whom Fidel apparently ceded power at the beginning of the week, is nowhere to be seen. American journalists are being turned away at the airport. So one thing for certain hasn't changed on the island: It's still hard to know much about the internal life of the dictatorship that has oppressed Cuba for 47 years. But it seems likely that the era of Fidel Castro is finally winding down toward the dictator's final bravura performance.

But even should this prove true, Fidel can rest assured that his legacy will be honored for a long time. Across virtually his entire career, Fidel has offered himself as the perfect anti-capitalist revolutionary. Though the revolution ended decades ago with Cuba's economy in ruins and its dissident voices in dungeons, the international left then and now has kept the flame of romance burning beneath Castro's carefully nurtured reputation.

Still, his closest friends of late have come to constitute tough company for the average revolutionary romantic. Get-well-soon cards to Fidel arrived from the undemocratic regimes in Vietnam and North Korea this week, not to mention the nascent People's Democratic Republic of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Bolivia's new socialist president, Evo Morales, has also publicly conveyed wishes for a long life to El Maximo Lider.

Fidel's social circle may have narrowed in part for the way he returns favors. Jimmy Carter is surely still smarting from the way Fidel allowed him to visit the island and praise its economic and political liberalization, only to follow up by outlawing the very reform movement Mr. Carter praised. Fidel subsequently rounded up dozens of dissidents, most of whom still remain in prison. That crackdown cost Castro some political capital abroad, including a brief protest from the European Union. But a year after Mr. Carter's visit, 160 self-described artists and intellectuals renewed their support for the island dictator in an open letter. The signatories included four Nobel Prize winners along with actors Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte.

Fidel has cultivated his status as a left-wing icon since taking power in 1959. Remarkably, the fact that he has extracted from his impoverished and oppressed people a personal fortune -- Forbes magazine estimated it last year at over half a billion dollars for its World's Richest People list -- has done little to dent his image as a man of the people. The standard apologetics for the sorry state of the Cuban economy begin from the premise that America, not socialism, is responsible for Cuba's travails. But Castro's personal financial success suggests that in fact substantial revenue is sluicing through the island. Even with the U.S. embargo in place, there's plenty of money to be made in Cuba. It's just that nearly all of it the income from exports of seafood, tobacco, sugar and nickel, not to mention Fidel's real-estate and pharmaceutical operations, goes to the ruling clique or to the military, bypassing the population. There are good reasons to question the embargo, but the notion that it is the source of all of Cuba's ills isn't one of them.

In addition to personal enrichment, Castro always found plenty of ways to spend money on political adventurism.

In the 1960s and '70s, he exported revolutionaries to Africa and Latin America, funding both instability abroad and repression at home with largesse from a Soviet Union happy to prop up a communist dictator 90 miles from U.S. shores. In his early days, Fidel denied that he would allow Cuba to become "colonized" by the Soviet Union, but his scruples faded as the nationalization of the economy and the expropriation of private property took its toll on the island's economy.

For a while in the 1990s, it seemed that the passing of the Soviet Union would take Castro down in its wake, but in recent years Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has stepped into the support role, lavishing Cuba with oil and other subsidies.

Mr. Chavez, in fact, appears ready to graduate from his role as a Castro protege to fill Fidel's shoes as the hemisphere's anti-U.S. gadfly. He used his recent tour through Europe and Asia not only to hobnob with despots in Belarus and Iran, but also to stock up on Russian weaponry. It seems Mr. Chavez has absorbed the most salient lesson of Fidel's success -- the international left will overlook oppression and economic mismanagement at home if you market yourself as David to the American Goliath. The thousands killed by Castro over the years, the tens of thousands more who have died desperately seeking freedom in the U.S., the political prisoners, the torture -- all can be forgiven so long as you pose as the alternative to the American hegemon.

Of course it may be no coincidence that most of the admiration all these years has been from afar. The idea of "Fidel" allows his leftish admirers from the comforts of free, mostly capitalist societies to imagine that someone out there is struggling to build a better, more egalitarian way of life -- without any of them having to live amid the daily Cuban reality of grinding poverty and political intimidation.

Fidel may die, but his offshore Venceremos Brigade will live on.

          August 5, 2006

Life After Castro:
U.S. Braces for a Dictator to Fall
August 5, 2006; Page A9

THE MAIN EVENT

Cuban leader Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother Raúl, causing Cuban exiles in Miami to dance in the streets and the U.S. to ponder a post-communist era on the island.

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Mr. Castro, the world's longest-serving leader, has been a thorn in Washington's side for nearly half a century, defying a suffocating economic embargo and acting as an outpost for Soviet meddling in the region -- and even hosting nuclear missiles that nearly precipitated a direct military clash between the superpowers.

But while exiles celebrate, U.S. policy makers have to ponder a more complicated question: Is the U.S. prepared for the fallout from another collapsed regime -- this one just 90 miles from its shores?

The 79-year-old Cuban leader underwent surgery Monday for intestinal bleeding. But his government's secretiveness has kept the world wondering about his health.

Here's a look at what a post-Castro era could mean:

What does the U.S. want? With or without Mr. Castro, the U.S. is pushing for democratic transformation on the Caribbean island. Last month the Bush administration announced it would spend $80 million over two years to hasten the demise of the Cuban regime, in part by giving money to dissident groups and boosting pro-democracy radio broadcasts. Still, it won't be easy to sow democracy there after decades of iron-fisted rule.

Is immediate change likely in Cuba? Probably not. For years, Mr. Castro has been preparing for Cuba's life after his death. Raúl, together with a core group of Old Guard Cubans, is a firm believer in the regime's revolutionary ideals. Also, the military is deeply vested in the economy and therefore has a stake in maintaining the status quo. Still, change may come slowly. Cubans dissatisfied with meager food rations and political oppression could demand freedom. Also, some analysts say the younger Castro -- he is 75 -- may in time be inclined to introduce Chinese-style reforms: liberalizing the economy while retaining a tight grip on political activity. In the early 1990s, Fidel Castro allowed U.S. dollars to be used as a form of currency, and permitted private-home owners to rent rooms to tourists, with Raúl embracing the changes.

Would a freer Cuba create business opportunities for the U.S.? Possibly. Given Cuba's proximity to the U.S., businesses from tourism to energy are eyeing the island. Sugar production, which was once vibrant in Cuba, has practically collapsed. In the event of economic liberalization, Cuban-American sugar producers might be among the first to return. Also more Americans might have access to Cuban cigars, although Norman Sharp of the Cigar Association of America says the embargo hasn't been effective in keeping cigars out of the U.S. Cuba also recently discovered as much as 9.3 million barrels of oil off its coast, and some experts believe U.S. companies could enhance energy security by expanding refining capacity to Cuba.

Still, there is a stumbling block. The trade embargo -- tightened by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act -- prevents U.S. citizens from doing business in Cuba until both Fidel and Raúl are out of power, democracy takes hold and a free market is in place.

Could Castro's death cause an immigration crisis? If a transition broke down into social unrest or civil war, there could be a mass exodus -- a potential nightmare for the U.S. In 1980, Mr. Castro sent 125,000 undocumented migrants to south Florida. The U.S. Navy helped manage the so-called Mariel Boatlift with the largest peacetime naval operation ever undertaken up to that time.

Another concern is that the exile community could sail fleets to Cuba, either to save relatives or to storm the island to influence political change. The U.S. -- concerned this could cause instability in the region -- may be forced to set up a "reverse blockade." But with the lingering stain of the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and U.S. troops engaged in the Middle East, the U.S. likely won't be quick to deploy military force.

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POINTS OF VIEW

"I do not have the slightest doubt that our people and our revolution will fight to the last drop of blood ... Imperialism will never be able to crush Cuba. The Battle of Ideas will continue. Long live the fatherland!"

"If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes, we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under."

"Cuba is entering a new phase that may prove decisive. Each day, there is more certainty in all, whatever may be one's political position, that democratic change is necessary and inevitable."

"I wonder if Washington is prepared to deal with such an unpredictable, uncertain and potentially messy situation just 90 miles from Miami. For the Bush administration, so distracted and consumed by other hot spots, the timing of this unsettled situation is problematic."

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A declassified 1967 Central Intelligence Agency report shows the U.S. considered spraying hallucinogenic aerosol at a radio station where Mr. Castro was broadcasting a speech, contaminating a box of his cigars with chemicals and sprinkling thallium salts in his shoes to cause his beard to fall out.

About 36% of seats in Cuban parliament are held by women. That is a higher percentage of women than is found in any parliament other than those in Rwanda, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

More Cubans are caught each year trying to enter the U.S. by boat. Last year the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted 2,417 Cubans at sea. In 2000, that number was 637.

Cuba has 75 fixed-line and mobile-phone subscriptions and 13 Internet users per 1,000 people, according to the World Bank. The U.S. has 1,222 fixed-line and mobile-phone subscriptions and 630 Internet users per 1,000 people.

Last year, approximately 6,360 Cuban refugees arrived in the U.S. About 12% of all refugees in the U.S. came from Cuba, making it the third-largest source of refugees behind Somalia, at 19%; Laos, 16%.

Castro holds the Guinness world record for giving the longest United Nations speech: It was four hours and 29 minutes on Sept. 26, 1960. It isn't uncommon for him to give a single speech that lasts for eight hours.

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BY THE NUMBERS