A future of permanent flag-waving
The Economist. April 28, 2000
NOW that Elian Gonzalez has been reunited with his father (see article), in keeping with the main aim of the huge protest rallies orchestrated by Fidel Castro over the past five months, political life in communist Cuba might be expected to return to a rather dull normality. Yet that looks
unlikely. Consider, for a start, the Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Platform.
This massive new $2m concrete stage has high-tech lighting and sound. At one end, stylised metal palm trees shade a statue of Cuba’s independence hero Jose Marti, in his arms a small boy who looks remarkably like Elian. Erected outside the United States’ Interest Section in Havana,
this structure shows every sign of having been built for permanent harangues.
After federal agents snatched Elian from his Miami relations on April 22nd, Mr Castro declared a "truce" with the United States government—but only for a day. He has a long list of other alleged injustices against his revolution in his sights. His targets include the Helms-Burton
law, which tightened the American embargo against the island, the invasion of United States’ culture and the European countries that last week backed the UN Human Rights Committee’s annual condemnation of Cuba.
"This is just beginning," Mr Castro told a rally of tens of thousands, within hours of the Miami raid. "There are 160 more municipalities to rally, and many more issues."
The first of those issues is the UN vote. Some 100,000 Cubans were mobilised to march past the Czech embassy after the committee’s censure shouting "traitors, lackeys, puppets" because Cuba’s former socialist ally had co-sponsored the UN resolution. More surprisingly, the
vote also prompted Cuba to cancel a visit by European Union officials, jeopardising several years of work aimed at including the island in the next Lomé agreement, a trade-and-aid pact due to be completed in June between Europe and more than 70 poor countries.
Daily three-hour television discussion programmes have switched their focus from Elian to the human-rights crimes of "hypocritical and racist" Europeans and Canadians, and character assassinations of the island’s leading dissidents. For several months there has been a general
crackdown on government opponents.
So what is Mr Castro after? He has long been trying to wrestle America’s policy from the grip of the Cuban-American lobby in Miami, and to persuade the American authorities that co-operation over illegal immigration and drugs are in their own interests. But the authorities were not paying
much attention—until Elian came along.
Appropriately enough, the Miami raid came on the day that Cuba’s president had organised a rally to celebrate the anniversary, a few days earlier, of his first great triumph over the Cuban-Americans, at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The rally was held at the sugar mill Mr Castro had used as his
headquarters when he defeated the invasion, with a tank from that battle behind him, and a giant poster of Elian in front.
His real victory, he thus implied, is the shift in America’s position: in 1961, the American government had supported the invading exiles, but this time it was on Cuba’s side. Opinion polls showing that over half of Americans would like normal relations with Cuba have been widely
publicised.
So why, at this crucial moment, is Mr Castro apparently shooting himself in the foot by clamping down internally, and picking a fight with his main trading partners in Europe and Canada? He himself has played down the possibility of better relations with the United States in the short term, and
has attacked both the main American presidential candidates as "unscrupulous" in their support of Elian’s relations in Miami. And some Cuba-watchers have long argued that Mr Castro does not in fact want the American trade embargo lifted, preferring to have a convenient bogeyman.
If so, he might have threatened to end co-operation with the United States over immigration, something he has avoided. A more likely hypothesis is that Mr Castro believes that the United States may soon relax the embargo. That would create new threats to his regime’s political control. An
influx of American tourists, their dollars and their culture would further strain the "revolutionary values" of Cuba’s young people. After all, Europeans who want Cuba to sign the Lomé accord argue that it will provide a forum to press for human rights and political freedom. Mr
Castro does not want that pressure. Instead, officials stress a desire for closer bilateral relations with European countries, where, usually, no strings are attached.
Mr Castro probably hopes that his victory over Elian will lead in time to a relaxation of American policy. But he is not going to give an inch in return. Just watch that Jose Marti platform. |