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By Mustang Bobby
Still another report of the imminent demise of Fidel Castro.
''High sources in Washington are saying that reliable sources have said that he has taken gravely ill,'' said University of Miami's Andy Gomez, who serves as an advisor to the U.S. Task Force on Cuba, an arm of the Brookings Institution think tank comprised of academics and former diplomats. ''They are monitoring this very closely, including looking for additional movements of security and troops. So far, none of this has happened.''
Castro's continued absence from public view, an unusually long break from published essays, failure to schedule private chats with recent visiting presidents and veiled remarks by Venezuelan ally Hugo Chávez has elevated the unconfirmed reports of the Cuban leader's pending death.
U.S. officials from the State Department acknowledged that they were aware of the reports on Castro's health but denied they were monitoring troop activities on the island.
For those of you outside of the Miami area, this is a regular feature in our news here. Rumors start to spread: somebody heard from their cousin who got a late-night phone call from their sister's neighbor in Havana that Castro had fallen off the perch, and pretty soon everybody from Calle Ocho to Hialeah is sure that not only is he dead, but he's been dead since July 2006 and all the pictures of him have actually been of his brother Ramon, who's been his stand-in, and what we've been treated to for the last two years is the Latin version of Weekend at Bernie's. But then... nothing. No somber music over Radio Havana, no black-draped editions of Granma, and pretty soon it's all forgotten until the next one.
This time around there's little more than tea-leaves and vague signals, and The Miami Herald's Cuba watch-blog, Cuban Colada, is being very cautious. But the timing would be interesting; Fidel Castro goes out, the Obama administration, which has promised to lift the Bush administration's travel and money restrictions, comes in, and one of the unspoken requirements for lifting the embargo -- Fidel's passing -- is met.
It would be one of life's little ironies that Castro, who made his career out of being larger than life and who dominated the Latin American policy of the U.S. for fifty years, should fade away with barely a whimper on the eve of the inauguration of a president who is willing to deal with the Cuban government rather than isolate and lecture them.
(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
By Mustang Bobby
A poll in Miami-Dade County among Cuban-Americans indicates a marked change in attitude about the embargo and diplomatic relations with Cuba.
The poll, conducted by Florida International University's Institute for Public Opinion Research and funded by the Brookings Institution and the Cuba Study Group, indicates that 55 percent of those polled favor discontinuing the trade embargo imposed in 1962. Sixty-five percent favor reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.
''The poll has an extraordinary historical importance,'' said Guarione Díaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a nonpartisan advocacy group in Miami.
The results, particularly as they relate to the embargo, reflect ''the fact that the Cuban Americans who were born in the United States or left after 1980 do not have the same vision as those who came in the 60s,'' Díaz said.
Ninoska Pérez, director of the conservative Cuban Liberty Council, dismissed the results.
''I am tired of these polls that mean nothing,'' she said. ''The point is that three Congress members who support the embargo were elected by an overwhelming majority of the people. The reelection of these Congress members tells me that this sample is not a majority. I don't believe this poll.''
The embargo question has been consistent since FIU began conducting the poll in 1991. Beginning in 1997, the trend showed a gradual decrease of support for maintaining the embargo. But this year's poll is the first to show a majority in favor of lifting it. In 2007, 42 percent of those polled were in favor of ending the trade ban.
''It's a significant jump,'' said Hugh Gladwin, director of the Institute for Public Opinion Research at FIU.
''I'd give two explanations. The first one is that there's been this continuing demographic change. The other factor is the election of Obama. There's a process of change. People see the handwriting on the wall,'' he added.
I've been around long enough to have seen the embargo in place from the beginning in 1962 -- I was ten -- and I have never understood the reasoning behind it, then and now. When I moved to Miami in 1971 to go to college and then again thirty years later, I asked some Cuban friends to explain why the embargo, which by then was clearly not having the desired effect, still had their unshakable support. The answer boiled down to "It's a Cuban thing; you wouldn't understand."
Okay, well, then don't expect me to be sympathetic to a policy that seems both pointless and harmful, and not to the intended targets. There is no doubt that the Castro brothers are thugs and dictators, but all the embargo did was give them an excuse for prolonging their "struggle," and we couldn't have handed them a better gift of legitimizing their regime if we had delivered it to them with candy and a stripper. The tightening of the travel and financial restrictions by the current Bush administration did nothing to Fidel and Raul, but it imposed more misery and family separation on the exile community here in Miami. And yet every time someone mentions loosening the restraints and dealing with a dictatorship on the same level we deal with all the other non-democratic governments around the world, including Vietnam, where over 58,000 Americans lost their lives (and a country that now sells us tennis shoes) and China, which basically holds the mortgage on our financial system, we hear the knee-jerk responses like those of Ms. Pérez, who shuts her eyes, sticks her fingers in her ears, and basically says that she doesn't believe the polls.
While I may not understand the Cuban thing, one thing that's clear to me is that unlike Vietnam and China, the Cuban embargo is based not on practical policy but on a personal vendetta that is deeply felt by every exile who blames Fidel Castro personally for their plight and everything else that goes wrong in their life. The car won't start or the hot water heater leaks? Fidel did it. The dog crapped on the carpet? Again, Fidel. It's as if in 1959 Castro himself marched into their home in Pinar del Rio, parked his ass on the couch, put his combat boots on the coffee table, ground out his cigar in the family portrait, and told everyone to get out and leave the keys to the Desoto by the door.
And I know any number of people in the exile community who are prepared for their own version of the Rapture: As soon as word comes that Fidel and Raul have shuffled off this khaki coil they will be on the first plane back to Havana, property deeds and house keys in hand, ready to resume their life as if they've been off on a vacation. They carry on about how they are dreaming of a "free Cuba," as if the previous regime of Batista was a model of Jeffersonian democracy. This, more than any economic or political logic, is the mindset that keeps the embargo in place, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that if we had flooded Cuba with McDonald's, Wal-Mart, and -- most importantly -- a chain of NAPA auto parts stores, the Cuban revolution's dictatorial and Soviet-style elements would have been deeply challenged by the time we started shipping them Ford Pintos in 1972. Capitalism may have its flaws, but it is undeniably human nature to try to make a buck, and it's awfully hard to chant revolutionary slogans when you're listening to the Beatles on an iPod.
Perhaps with a new administration in Washington -- the eleventh since Castro came to power -- will come some enlightenment about the embargo. And while there will be an uproar from some on Calle Ocho if the restrictions are loosened, you can be pretty sure that some of the first in line for the first flights back will be those who protested the loudest. But then, it's a Cuban thing; you wouldn't understand.
(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)
By Carl
As you must certainly know by now, Fidel Castro has formally renounced the presidency of Cuba. His brother, Raul, will assume permanently the role he's held for two years now, and hints at democratic reforms.
Naturally, and desperate for any win in a time of political cholera, elements of the right wing in this country are hooting how America's embargo forced this change.
Is it not ironic that those who most loudly espouse democracy and freedom for Cuba are in favor of the embargo that imprisoned and tyrranized her people?
To a point, the embargo had a point. That point was lost at least thirty years ago. Rather than collapse the Castro regime along with the Soviet Union and other communist and socialist states, we allowed it to fester by imposing our will on it. Why? It certainly on its own was no military threat to us, and it espoused no dangerous, violent theosophy to kill us in our beds. Indeed, one would be very hard pressed to find where any terror cell would have stood a chance in operating out of Cuba, no matter how much money they were to throw at Castro.
One gets the impression that Castro actually liked America, he just couldn't stand its leadership. Guantanamo Bay exists not in a vacuum, and indeed, America had to ask Castro's permission to use it as a prison for Al Qaeda suspects.
And perhaps he had a good reason for disliking American presidents and congresses.
By banning Cuban goods (something we had never done with Soviet-produced merchandise, or Chinese, for that matter), we enforced a poverty-stricken people with surveillance and hunger. Poor, hungry people act out. They must be controlled, a lesson not seemingly lost on this nation's government, as it imposes non-FISA surveillance, torture, and national identity cards upon us.
We defeated Communism with butter, not guns. The Beatles brought the West to the Soviet Union. Wrangler jeans. A United States-style union freed Poland. A playwright, Czechoslovakia. Reaganauts can claim the armament race put the Soviet Union out of business, but it was the will of its people who pulled the gates down and padlocked them.
I am fully in favor of ending the embargo now, and I think it's not soon enough. Indeed, Raul Castro had already made inroads into incorporating a China-style fusion of socialism and capitalism, by allowing free market farmer's markets to be established.
The best evidence we can give the Cuban people that freedom, democracy and free enterprise work is by lowering the embargo and opening trade with this nation, by allowing American tourism and business development interests to come in and demonstrate new ideas and new ways of thinking.
And in return, we could learn alot about the Cuban way of doing things, and learn ideas that could benefit us back here at home. These folks have been stuck in a fifty year time warp. There is much they know that we've forgotten in our full court press towards the 21st century.
(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)
By Capt. Fogg
Update: For how Castro's resignation might affect U.S.-Cuba relations, and how the leading presidential candidates (Obama, Clinton, and McCain) might respond to it, hopefully by changing course, see Steve Clemons over at The Washington Note. -- MJWS**********Bush began to talk about the "blessings of Liberty" like some Chatty Kathy Doll when he heard of Fidel Castro's resignation as President of Cuba. He launched into a typically rambling riff about unfair elections and people rotting in prisons while the gods of hypocrisy smiled down on him like a proud parent upon a favored child.
No, I'm not a fan of Fidel, but many Cubans are and they see him as having provided a better life than they had when Cuba was run by a feudal corruptocracy owned by American interests, legitimate and otherwise. Many Cubans see their financial problems as something done to them out of spite and malice by our fair country and indeed our policies have hurt the common man while strengthening Castro and his party. I would hardly be surprised to hear that many Cuban patriots wonder if those blessings of liberty Bush extols are like the blessings we have afforded other countries whose resources we crave and the "fair" elections he describes would be like those we have squashed or rigged in places like Iran and Latin America and Vietnam.
It's not that I'm sad to see him step down and I'm hopeful that Cuba will be allowed to rejoin the world and its economy in my lifetime. As a lifelong fan of Earnest Hemingway I would love to follow his route from Key West to Cuba in my own boat and be free to return home without reprisals from my own government. Who knows? It may happen, but not now. The embargo will remain in place, no move toward reconciliation will be made for despite the rapturous rhetoric about liberty, it's still all about the nationalization of US owned assets that offended our sense of entitlement so badly over 50 years ago. Cubans in Miami may be cheering Viva Cuba Libre, but in Washington the unheard prayer is Viva Coca Cola and Viva Cosa Nostra.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
By Michael J.W. StickingsHugo and Fidel.This is supposed to be some sort of "working visit," according to Cuban TV. Maybe Fidel and his brother Raul can show Hugo La Cabaña prison, where their pal Che presided over the mass execution of Hugo's opponents, or maybe they can talk about Che's Soviet-style labour camps and other good ways to brutalize the people in the name of totalitarian revolution.The Tyrant of Caracas can surely learn a lot from the Tyrant of Havana.
Still another report of the imminent demise of Fidel Castro.
