Opinion
- Editorial
Gwynne Dyer: After Castro
"Are
revolutions doomed to fail?" asked Fidel Castro
last November, addressing an audience of university
students in a five-hour speech that was followed
by a question-and-answer session that lasted until
dawn. "When the veterans start disappearing,
to make room for new generations of leaders, what
will be done? Can the revolutionary process be made
irreversible?"
Those
questions haunt Cubans now, as the 79-year-old Maximum
Leader recovers from surgery for "intestinal
bleeding," having temporarily handed power
over to his designated successor, his brother Raul.
Some Cubans desperately hope that Fidel will survive;
others hope just as strongly that he and his revolution
will pass away. But the only people currently in
a position to affect the outcome are the senior
officials of the Cuban Communist Party. None of
their alternatives is ideal.
Brother
Raul is not a viable long-term option: he is too
old (75), and he suffers from a drastic lack of
charisma. There is a younger generation of dedicated
Communists, people like Vice-President Carlos Lage
Davila and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque,
but they aren't exactly pop stars either. For almost
half a century Cubans have been incited, flattered,
thrilled and scolded by the incendiary rhetoric
of the 20th century's most articulate revolutionary,
and he is a hard act to follow.
But
there is Hugo Chavez.
Chavez's
drawbacks as a replacement for Fidel Castro are
obvious: he is the president of another country,
Venezuela, and he is not a Communist. On the other
hand, he is a tireless revolutionary orator in the
Castro mode, he is the right racial mixture to appeal
to the downtrodden in many Latin American countries-and
he does have money. With oil at its present near-record
price, about $200 million in oil revenues is flowing
into Caracas every day (half of it from the United
States), and Chavez has already proved generous
to his friends.
The
Communist bosses would expect to go on making the
real decisions in Cuba, of course. As hardened masters
of the dialectic, they are bound to see Chavez as
a naive, impulsive romantic, and in any case no
Cuban nationalist would hand over his country's
destiny to a mere Venezuelan. But a formal merger
of the two countries, rather along the lines of
the "United Arab Republic" that Egypt's
Gamal Abdul Nasser once declared with Syria and
Libya, would have major advantages for a beleaguered
post-Castro Communist regime in Havana.
That
regime will be under tremendous pressure from the
United States, where Cuban exiles in Miami are already
celebrating Castro's coming demise. In Washington,
the Bush administration has appointed Caleb McCarry
as "transition co-ordinator" for Cuba,
with a budget of $59 million to "hasten the
transition" and help Cubans "recover their
freedom after 47 years of brutal dictatorship".
US
hostility to the Castro regime has been relentless
for all of those years, even when Washington found
reasons to back brutal dictatorships elsewhere in
Latin America. The Bush administration has worked
hard to raise the pressure on Cuba, creating the
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (co-chaired
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rica and Treasury
Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban-American), and
reinforcing the long-standing trade embargo by cutting
the remittances that Cuban exiles can send home
to their families.
The
Cuban Communists fear indirect or even direct US
interference in the country to destabilise the regime
following Fidel's departure. They worry out loud
about the loyalty of a younger generation whose
nationalism (which in Cuba means anti-Americanism)
is at war with its urgent desire for access to all
the pleasures of consumerism. They worry more quietly
about the millions of Cubans who really would like
to see democracy in their country. Plenty of reasons,
then, to consider the Chavez option.
A
formal link between Cuba and Venezuela, with Chavez
as joint president, would give the regime in Havana
new ideological impetus by appealing to the old
Bolivarian dream of a unified Latin America. It
would give Cuba more access to Venezuelan oil, Venezuelan
financial aid, and perhaps even the modern arms
that Venezuela is now buying from Russia.
Chavez would be a sucker for such a proposal, partly
because it would appeal to his own Bolivarian dreams
and partly because it would drive the US government
crazy. As he said last year at a meeting of the
Joint Commission on the Comprehensive Cooperation
Agreement Between Cuba and Venezuela, "Cuba
and Venezuela have joined together, and at this
point, the world should know that our fate is sealed,
that these two homelands, which deep down are one,
are opening a new road at whatever cost."
It
isn't just a pipe dream. The first person to suggest
in public that the Cuban regime might be seriously
considering such a union was Ana Faya, now a senior
analyst at the Canadian Foundation for Latin America
(FOCAL) in Ottawa, but for ten years, until she
fled to Canada in 2000, an official of the Central
Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. "It
wouldn't be outrageous," she said in an interview
last October. "(But) it should take place while
(Fidel) Castro is still in charge."
If
she is right, it will now have become a very urgent
priority in Havana.
Gwynne
Dyer is a London-based independent
journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.
Editor's
Note: This commentary was published by The
Trinidad Express,
on
Sunday, August 6th 2006, Petroleumworld reprint
this article in the interest of our readers.
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Petroleumworld
Trinidad
Aug. 14th 2006
Copyright
© 2006
Gwynne Dyer.
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