Published Friday, June 23, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Castro predicts capitalism's death, socialism's success
By Juan O. Tamayo. jtamayo@herald.com.
President Fidel Castro of Cuba says his death will not alter the path of his revolution, and says that capitalists should gird for a ``catastrophic collapse of market economies and that socialism may eventually come to dominate the world economy.
``I am not a king, so I don't need to prepare a successor, Castro said in an unusually wide-ranging interview whose full transcript -- 16 single-spaced pages -- was published Thursday by the Granma newspaper in Havana.
Alternately self-assured, coy, extravagant and modest, Castro said little new as he answered 33 written questions from Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former head of UNESCO, the Unite Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
But his replies showed a ruler confident of his revolutionary legacy, dismissive of critics and certain that in the end history will show that capitalism is untenable and that his brand of socialism is right. Asked about his succession, the 73-year-old Castro said he is a ``very common man. I
did not inherit any position, and I am not king, and therefore I don't need to prepare a successor.
Cuba's institutions are strong enough to survive his departure from power, the president said, without mentioning that he has often said his successor would be his younger brother, Armed Forces Chief Raúl Castro.
``When a true revolution has been consolidated, and its ideas and consciousness have begun to bear fruit, no man, no matter how important his personal contribution might have been, is indispensable, he said.
Many young Cubans have moved into positions of authority in recent years, Castro added, ``And let's not forget: There is a [Communist] party with great prestige and moral authority. Why worry?
Instead, he said, it is capitalists who must worry about ``a catastrophic collapse that would overshadow the U.S. stock market crash in 1929. ``The medicine for avoiding that has not been invented.
``I dream of a world that would be impossible to reach if we start out from a capitalist philosophy,'' he said.
Only socialism holds the promise of a future in which nations cooperate, not compete, and avoid ``the genocide [of] the current world economic order.''
Asked by Mayor Zaragoza whether that assessment wasn't ``a bit exaggerated, Castro insisted that tens of millions of people die each day around the world as a result of poverty and preventable diseases.
Soviet-style socialism collapsed only because of ``stupid errors in Moscow, Castro added. ``What happened . . . was the nave ruin of a great social and historical process that should have been perfected, never destroyed.
Cuba will not make the same mistakes but will continue making economic adjustments ``that are possible and needed to ensure the revolution's survival while guaranteeing social benefits for all Cubans, Castro said.
He said his government will continue to seek foreign investments, but only in those areas where it needs major capital, and will never privatize state-owned enterprises simply to get rid of them.
The U.S. dollar will always be allowed to circulate legally in Cuba, but there may come a time when it will not be accepted for some transactions, Castro said, without going into details.
``We have not tried to commit the stupidity of adapting Cuba to the chaotic world; what we did was adapt [the world's] realities to ours, he wrote to Mayor Zaragoza.
Castro seemed far less voluble when asked about the lack of freedom in Cuba, the role of dissidents and whether Pope John Paul II had tried to persuade him to change his ways when the pontiff visited Cuba in 1998.
``Really, I don't remember that the pope tried to persuade me of anything, Castro said.
Family ties spurred rafters on Elián trip
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com
While the fate of Cuban rafter Elián González has captured most of the attention, new information has emerged on the motivation and circumstances of the fateful voyage in November that brought the boy to the United States, but killed 11 other passengers.
Newly released documents and interviews with relatives of some of the victims and law enforcement officials show:
The voyage may have been organized in part to bring to Miami two women, Elián's mother and a friend, to settle with their boyfriends here.
The trip, initially thought to be a for-profit smuggling operation, was more likely a cooperative effort in which friends and family members pooled their money to finance the venture.
Relatives of some of the victims knew in advance about the trip. But they say they had no specific information about when and where the group would arrive or who would be in it.
Federal authorities now believe the boat in which Elián was traveling capsized closer to South Florida than previously thought, only hours before the boy was rescued Thanksgiving Day -- not days as the two adult survivors now claim.
Tiny scraps of paper carried by one of the shipwreck victims, a young woman named Lirka Guillermo, suggest one possible motive for the trip.
One of the scraps bore the name and telephone number of a Miami man, Humberto Pérez Castro, who was Guillermo's boyfriend when he lived in Cuba.
He told The Herald that Guillermo may have been coming to Miami with Elián's mother, Elisabeth Brotons, so both could settle here with their boyfriends.
The boyfriend of Elián's mother, Lázaro Munero, was Pérez Castro's childhood friend. Both tried, but failed, to convince Brotons and Guillermo to flee Cuba when the men left the island on a boat in June 1998, Pérez Castro said.
Before Munero returned to Cuba four months later, Pérez Castro said, they had discussed the possibility of bringing Guillermo and Brotons to Miami.
Not everyone agrees with this scenario.
Relatives in Cuba say Guillermo left largely out of anger at the Cuban government for seizing her house after her mother fled to the United States in 1994. Guillermo's mother lives in Phoenix, Ariz., and could not be reached for comment.
A forensic pathologist working in Fort Pierce on the victims' autopsies found the tiny scraps of paper in a waterproof pouch carried by Guillermo. They bore the names and phone numbers of people in Miami, including Guillermo's old boyfriend.
The Herald called all five phone numbers, but only Pérez Castro could be reached.
Pérez Castro, a 23-year-old truck driver born on the same day and year as Guillermo, said that though neither Guillermo nor Munero told him in advance about the specifics of the trip, he now believes she may have been coming to Miami to join him after a two-year separation.
``We once had plans to build families here,'' Pérez Castro said. ``We had talked about that in general, Lázaro and I, from before. We wanted to make a future because, over there, there is no future.''
CHILDHOOD FRIENDS
Friends since elementary school in Cárdenas, a town on Cuba's north coast east of Havana where Elián was born, Pérez Castro and Munero fled Cuba together with two other men on a 12-foot boat in 1998.
While Pérez Castro seemed to adjust more easily to Miami, Munero did not.
He returned home in October 1998 aboard an inflatable raft with a small motor.
``Lázaro returned to Cuba because he didn't like it here; he couldn't accommodate himself,'' said María Díaz, cousin of Orlando Rodríguez, whose girlfriend is Carmen Brotons, a niece of Elián's mother who lives in Miami. Rodríguez lost his entire
immediate family on the trip: mother, father and two brothers.
Most of the people on the boat were members of two families, the Rodríguezes and the Muneros, who knew each other well. Elisabeth Brotons, Elián's mother, worked in a Cuban beach resort hotel with Orlando Rodríguez's brother Nelson and his wife, Zenaida Santos.
Orlando Rodriguez and other relatives of the victims said they learned in advance through telephone conversations with family members on the island that the trip would take place.
``Yes, the Rodríguezes and the Muneros, we knew they were coming, but not precisely who and when,'' Orlando Rodriguez said.
VESSEL'S LOCATION
Munero, who apparently built the boat for the return voyage, died along with Brotons, Guillermo and eight others after the vessel capsized somewhere off the Florida Keys -- possibly just 10 miles east of Key Largo, according to new information disclosed by the U.S. Border Patrol.
Previously, officials had speculated that the boat had capsized further south. But on the same day that Elián was rescued, Nov. 25, the U.S. Coast Guard sighted a debris field at a location just east of Key Largo, Coast Guard records show.
As a result, the U.S. Border Patrol now disputes the story told by the two adult survivors -- Arianne Horta and Nivaldo Fernández -- who claim the boat capsized at 10 p.m. Nov. 22 -- nearly 2 1/2 days before they and Elián were found.
Dan Geoghegan, assistant chief of the Miami Border Patrol sector, told The Herald that the couple and Elián couldn't have possibly been in the water that long.
In telephone interviews, Geoghegan said that although he is not sure precisely when or where the boat capsized, he now believes the event occurred much later than Horta and Fernández claim.
Geoghegan also disputed the claims by Horta and Fernández that they swam ashore when they saw the lights of Key Biscayne in the predawn darkness Nov. 25, some two or three hours before Elián was rescued off Fort Lauderdale.
Geoghegan said he now believes the story that a fisherman told The Herald last month: that he rescued Horta and Fernández as many as seven miles east of Key Biscayne -- along the same south-to-north line where Elián was rescued and the bodies of seven victims were recovered.
Fernández has declined interviews, but Horta insists that she and Fernández swam ashore despite the fact that early on she told reporters that a passing boat had picked them up.
About two hours after Horta and Fernández were found, two men on a fishing trip rescued Elián just off Commercial Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.
REVISED THEORY
The close relationships in the group eventually led federal immigration authorities to revise their initial theory that the Elián voyage had been a for-profit migrant smuggling operation.
In the hours after Elián was rescued, the U.S. Border Patrol drew that conclusion largely because of statements by the two adult survivors -- Horta and Fernández -- who told Miami-Dade Police they paid $2,000 to be on the boat.
Horta now claims they paid nothing.
Geoghegan, of the Border Patrol, says the agency now believes the voyage did not fit the classic for-profit pattern of passengers paying a stranger for the boat trip.
``It was more a venture among family and friends. In certain ventures aliens pool their resources and cooperate,'' he said. ``In this case, the vast majority of the people were relatives of Lázaro Munero.''
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