Cuba braces for a post-Fidel era
The death watch for Fidel Castro is something that only Gabriel Garcia
Marquez could get right. His novel "Autumn of the Patriarch" captures
perfectly the moral squalor, political paralysis, and savage ennui that
enshrouds a society awaiting the death of a long-term dictator.
Commandante Fidel's departure from power, of course, will be solely a
matter of biology, and the few pictures of him that have emerged since
he took ill last year clearly show biology at work. When the end comes,
change in Cuba could be as vast as any that greeted the end of the last
century's great dictators.
Stalin, Franco, Tito, Mao: all were mostly alike in their means and
methods. How they passed from the scene, however, was often very
different, and these differences can shape societies for years and
decades to come.
Consider the Soviet Union. On March 9, 1953, from the Gulf of Finland to
the Bering Sea, everything stood still; likewise in Warsaw, Budapest,
Prague, and East Berlin. In Beijing, Mao Zedong himself bowed low before
an immense effigy of Joseph Stalin. Huge mourning crowds, crying, nearly
hysterical, could be seen all over the vast empire Stalin had ruled.
Yet, within days, the word Stalinism was being expunged from a new
Soviet dictionary, and three years later my grandfather, Nikita
Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's "cult of personality" in his famous
"Secret Speech" to the Communist Party's 20th Congress. The Khrushchev
thaw that followed may have been short-lived, but for the first time in
Soviet history the possibility of change was opened - a possibility that
Mikhail Gorbachev seized upon.
The death of Marshal Josip Broz Tito brought forth an outpouring of
another sort. For decades, his personal rule imposed a false unity on
Yugoslavia. Following his death in 1980, that artificial state began to
unravel, culminating in the genocidal wars in Bosnia, Croatia, and
Kosovo of the 1990's.
Not all long-term dictatorships, however, end in disintegration and
mayhem. Mao's death allowed for Deng Xiaoping's return from disgrace and
internal exile. Deng quickly routed Mao's "Gang of Four" heirs, and in
only a few years opened China's economy, fuelling a capitalist
revolution that has transformed China far more completely - and
successfully - than Mao's socialist revolution ever did.
Spain, too, escaped violent dissolution when Generalissimo Francisco
Franco's fascist dictatorship collapsed at his death. Here the old
dictator can take some credit, for by re-establishing the monarchy under
King Juan Carlos just before he died, Franco provided Spain with a
foundation on which to build anew. Little did Franco realise that what
Juan Carlos would build, with the help of a clever young Franco-era
bureaucrat named Adolfo Suarez, was the modern, democratic Spain of today.
It was no accident that communist countries were (and are) usually run
by geriatric leaders, and democracies by younger men and women. That
difference matters. Old leaders can preside successfully over smoothly
running countries that need no radical re-examination of their policies
and purposes.
Political competition makes it necessary for all politicians, whatever
their age, to stay on their toes, anticipate new problems, and remain
open to new ideas aimed at addressing them. No one can keep himself
ensconced in high office subject only to death or his own boredom.
One-party systems, one-man charismatic dictatorships, or a mixture of
the two, as in Tito's Yugoslavia, are a guarantee of sclerotic minds and
inert governments.
So what will become of Cuba after Fidel departs?
Many observers portray Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother and
designated heir, as a pragmatist - the "practical Castro". When Cuba's
lavish Soviet subsidies vanished in the early 1990s, it was Raul who
recognised that the regime's survival required economic reforms,
pressing to allow private agricultural markets to reopen in order to
boost food production and stave off possible starvation.
However, this is the same man who, as the head of Cuba's internal
security apparatus, for many years represented the knuckles of an
iron-fisted regime, directly responsible for imprisoning - and often
torturing - thousands of dissidents. So perhaps the best that could be
hoped for is a Russian-style experiment with liberalisation that is
quickly called off by the regime's nervous Old Guard.
Moreover, with the support of oil-rich allies like Venezuela's President
Hugo Chavez - and with the recent discovery of significant crude
reserves off Cuba's own coast - introducing reforms could well become
less urgent. In that case, Raul may seek to cling grimly to the
fossilised system that he helped build and maintain with such brutality.
But Raul Castro is an old man himself, so we can hope for the prospect
that some Deng or, better yet, a Suarez will ultimately emerge from the
wreckage of Fidelism. But for now, younger communist officials, like
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, remain ideological hard-liners whom
many Cubans refer to as "los Taleban". If they take control and stick to
their guns, Cuba could face another long biology lesson.
Nina Khrushchev is a professor of international affairs at New School
University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate.
Nina Khrushchev
New York
http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/01/18/opinion/opinion_30024412.php
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