Fidel Castro may or may not be dying, but he's out of the picture for
now in a Cuba that's doing very nicely, thank you
The Economist
(Jan 6, 2007)
James Wormold, hero of Graham Greene's 1958 novel, Our Man In Havana, is
a vacuum cleaner salesman turned reluctant spy. He invents his sources
and sends drawings of vacuum cleaners to London, pretending they show a
secret Cuban military installation.
One wonders how many fellow hoaxers Wormold has in today's Havana.
Economists outside Cuba preface their research papers with warnings that
the statistics are untrustworthy -- there are no reliable sources. Right
now everybody agrees that Fidel Castro is sick, but no one seems to know
what he suffers from.
Castro is thought to have cancer. But the Cuban government has denied
this, claiming that he is not suffering from any terminal illness, while
declining to say when he might return to power.
After undergoing urgent intestinal surgery last summer, Castro
"temporarily" ceded power to his 75-year-old brother, Raul, in what is
now beginning to look like a permanent transition.
On Dec. 26, Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, Castro's Spanish surgeon,
"confirmed" that the Cuban leader did not have cancer and said he was on
the road to recovery. But in a new year's message read out in his name
four days later, Castro himself was more circumspect. He had always
believed his recovery would be "a long process," he said, adding that it
was "far from being a lost battle."
The Cuban leader has not appeared in public since July, missing both his
80th birthday celebration, which was postponed until early December, and
the commemoration on Dec. 2 of the 50th anniversary of his arrival from
Mexico with fellow rebels, marking the start of the revolution.
His disappearance from the public scene suggests either that he is
indeed too sick to resume his former role or that he wishes his brother
to take centre stage. Either way, it is clear that Raul is now running
things.
Although he lacks his brother's charisma -- as one Western diplomat in
Havana puts it, "Fidel has cast a spell over this country, and until he
is dead and buried the spell is still there" -- Raul was intimately
involved with the revolution from the start. None of Cuba's other
prominent politicians is likely to challenge him for the leadership.
Long in charge of the armed forces, he is also vice-president.
"Whatever Raul decides to do, the rest will follow," says the same
diplomat. But what that will be is still anyone's guess. Possible
scenarios range from maintaining the status quo to a Chinese-style
economic opening. Dissidents are unlikely to have much impact on the
sequence of events once Fidel dies.
It is unclear to what extent the United States understands or is willing
to accept this. Asked who in the Cuban government might be a useful
negotiating partner, Caleb McCarry, the State Department's special
co-ordinator for Cuban policy, replies firmly, "Our interlocutors are
the Cuban people."
But the people may not be listening. American government propaganda
efforts, such as Radio and TV Marti, reach almost no one in Cuba, while
the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, noted in a
recent report that money given in no-bid contracts to Cuban exile groups
was being spent on "PlayStations, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and
Godiva chocolates."
Last month 10 members of Congress, from both political parties, visited
the island, the biggest such group since Castro came to power nearly
five decades ago.
After the visit, even some Republicans took issue with the Bush
administration's harsh treatment of Cuba, which has included tightening
the long-standing travel ban and imposing restrictions on remittances.
The delegation's Democratic members were blunter: one of them called the
government's policies just plain "dumb."
Remittances are an important part of Cuba's wealth; between one-third
and two-thirds of the island's 11 million inhabitants are believed to
receive money from abroad.
The economy has been doing well. According to official figures, it grew
by 11.8 per cent in 2005. Even the CIA put growth at 8 per cent, says
Philip Peters of the Lexington Institute, an American think tank.
Tourism is booming. Although it did not grow as quickly last year as in
recent years, it brings in billions of dollars of hard currency.
Thanks to high prices on the world market, sugar has also helped to
boost the economy, despite the smallest crop in more than a century. And
record world nickel prices, coupled with a successful joint venture with
Sherritt International, a Canadian mining company, mean that Cuba's
other chief export also brings in a hefty chunk.
But the Chinese, who have increased their investments in Cuba
substantially, remain nervous about the economy's inherent inefficiencies.
The bedrock of the Cuban economy, says Dan Erikson of the Inter-American
Dialogue, a Washington-based group, is Cuba's political relationship
with Venezuela. High payments for some 20,000 Cuban doctors working in
Venezuela and heavily subsidized Venezuelan oil prices amount to a cash
transfer to Cuba of billions of dollars a year.
How much this hinges on the personal relationship between Venezuela's
leftist president, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro is unclear. But if
these subsidies continue after Castro goes, average Cubans may find that
the comandante's passing has little immediate effect on their daily lives.
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