Story here. Kind of anticlimactic, he’s 81, after all – they won’t be dancing in the streets of Miami over this. But, what now? Is brother Raul’s accession to the presidency automatically assured? Any chance of a shake-up?
I’ll believe it when I see it. For now, I’ll just file it along with politicians promising to fix Social Security and such.
Even if Fidel chooses not to be reelected President of the Councils of State and Ministers he’ll proballly remain General Secretary of the Communist Party.
Paging lalenin for comment…
Personally, I don’t think it’ll make much difference, except if people chafe under Raul more than under Fidel.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or maybe something like…the king is dead (or retired)…long live the king! Or perhaps Meet the new boss, same as the old one.
A stitch in time saves 9? You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink if you beat it to death?
He’s old to, so I’m guessing this would only be a temporary fix…if it even happens. I’m not holding my breath for Fidel to trot off, stage left.
Not much of one, though you never know. If you assume the worst, then you can still be pleasantly surprised. I guess Bush COULD become a great president in the last few months…but I kind of doubt that too.
-XT
The thing is, we don’t really know what direction Cuba will go until someone other than Fidel consoldidates power. The next dictator probably won’t have nearly the level of power that Castro holds, or held. That means more centers of independent power, which means the end of totalitarianism. The new dictator won’t be able to rule by decree, but will have to have some sort of consensus among his cronies and rivals.
What people in the US always seem to forget, Cuba is already open to foreign investment, there are already foreign companies setting up shop in Cuba…it’s just that those foreign companies are Canadian and Mexican and European, not American. Fantasies that the minute Castro dies, Coca-Cola and the Mafia will rush in and take over the island are just fantasies. But the opening will accelerate after Castro’s death, because there will be more and more oligarchs in the Cuban leadership who will increasingly have their power based on how much money they can skim off the foreign hotels and businesses, and without puritanical old Castro around the opportunities to make money will increase.
Bush probably won’t normalize relations with Cuba even if Castro dies tomorrow, but there’s only one year left for Bush. With Castro dead, there will be no obstacles for the next president to normalize relations. But this isn’t going to do much to change Cuba, or be a hugely profitable for American companies, because there are already plenty of foreign companies in Cuba, but all operate firmly under control of the Cuban government. The days when very rich foreigners could buy and sell the Cuban government are over, and normalized relations won’t change that…if rich foreigners could do such a thing, the Europeans would already own Cuba.
That’s pretty naive, Lemur. The anti-normalization lobby will not wither and die with Castro. There’s the whole business of nationalized property that has to be dealt with. I’d love to see us lift the embargo, but I don’t see that happening until Cuba becomes at least nominally more democratic.
I’m sure it never will be, no matter what comes after Castro.
Why? IIRC, in the Soviet Union a lot of nationalized property was, um, de-nationalized. In China too. In several European nations where property was nationalized at one time it was later privatized.
Why couldn’t that happen in Cuba as well?
-XT
Should we be that pessimistic, though? Short term, I completely agree with you, but countries can and do rise out of authoritarian regimes. Spain managed to pull it off.
On the other hand, Spain was able to do so (I hear tell) because there were a lot of informal power structures allowed to develop/exist so the idea of authority other than The Leader had currency. I know almost nothing about life in modern Cuba, so what are the indicators? How difficult to democratize would Cuba be if it magically found itself with a leader open to the idea? If it doesn’t?
Again, I don’t know much about the internal politics of the place beyond knowing that Castro has to be near death (though if anyone would be able to preside over a thousand year reich, he’s it) and his brother/heir is old too. Who stands to rule when they die?
I don’t mean Cuba will remain authoritarian. I mean no post-Castro regime, authoritarian or liberal, capitalist or socialist, dictatorial or democratic, will have the slightest interest in compensating the owners (or heirs of owners) of property nationalized after the Revolution.
Gotcha. I agree with that. If, to borrow xtisme’s turn of phrase, things get denationalized they will be sold off to the highest bidder, not returned to the previous owners (or their descendants). It would be pure foolishness to think otherwise.
Tell that to the Cubanos in Miami who are practically perched in dive positions on the end of the piers waiting for Castro’s ticker to finally tock…
You called?
Actually I debated opening a thread on Fidel’s letter a couple of days ago, but after emailing about the letter to some friends in Cuba most agree that the letter means nothing. It helps to explain the context of the retirement comment.
Cuba has a nightly TV program called Mesa Redonda or Round Table, typically called by people in the street “Mesa Retonta”, or Stupid Table. When Fidel was healthy he would appear frequently on the program and when he did the show usually went on past its allotted time, which preempted all kinds of programming and pissed off many people. But anyway, since Fidel took sick he has, once in a while, sent letters of his to be read in the program, or the program’s topic discusses Fidel’s editorials in Granma, the local newspaper.
On Monday December 17 Fidel sent a letter to Mesa Retonta talking about the Bali environment conference, and the letter rambles on and on about carbon, and this and that, you can read it in Spanish here. Then at the end of the letter there is this:
"Mi deber elemental no es aferrarme a cargos, ni mucho menos obstruir el paso a personas más jóvenes, sino aportar experiencias e ideas cuyo modesto valor proviene de la época excepcional que me tocó vivir.
Pienso como Niemeyer que hay que ser consecuente hasta el final."
Translated:
"My duty is not to hold on to power, much less obstruct the way for younger people, but only to offer experiences and ideas, whose modest value comes from the exceptional times in which I’ve lived.
I think, like Niemeyer, that one has to be relevant until the end."
Now I don’t know about you, but those statements don’t mean retirement to me. I kind of read them as reafirming that as long as he is lucid he will stay on power, and don’t forget he was once again nominated for leadership in the upcoming Cuban elections, so my guess is that Fidel will be around for a while.
The one thing to take away from this is that Cuba’s government is so screwed up that even now, when Fidel is more or less irrelevant, there are people who scrutinize his statements like proclaiments from the oracle of Delfos, looking for hidden meaning.
I don’t know which Cubanos you’ve talked to but the majority of Cubans in Miami came to the US long after the Revolution, and consequently left nothing in the way of property back home. There might be a handful of families that had substantial holdings prior to the Revolution, the Bacardi’s come to mind, but those are more likely to work through the US government for compensation than trying to get anything from any post-Castro government.
And I doubt they’ll ever see a single centavo in compensation.
And if it goes like it did in the USSR, leading Party officials will get the first chance to bid.
Bump
I’ll bet this throws a monkey-wrench into the Democratic primaries (and the general election, to a significantly lesser extent). The candidates are going to start getting questions about policy towards Cuba now, and I don’t think anyone knows just yet what the “right” answer is (in terms of public opinion). One unfortunate statement form Obama could end him, I think.
There are still two more Castro brothers to go through and they don’t seem to be “revolutionaries” where Fidel’s policies are concerned, so the regime is probably safe for a few more years. (True, Raul is 76 and Ramon is 83, but they could have some time left in them.)