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Europe and the
world's Left at last alienate Castro
By Carlos Alberto Montaner.
Posted on Mon, Jan. 05, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
First of all, the obligatory medical update.
As far as we know, Fidel Castro is a walking
catalog of geriatric ailments, meticulously
detailed by castropathologists who are always
on stand-by for his ''biological inevitability'':
Parkinson's, diverticulitis, partial obstruction
of the coronary arteries, chronic synovitis
(this ''blockade'' of the left knee hurts
him worse than the U.S. economic ''blockade,''
as he calls the embargo) and an alarming
loss of bone mass. These injuries, in addition
to several brain ischemia, have turned him
into a half-crazed, skinny old man who talks
slowly and mumbles, intermingling a Stalinist
jargon that drives his listeners crazy while
provoking the sneer of all Cubans who refer
to him as the Coma Andante -- the Walking
Coma.
And now, the political status report. Has
anything worth noting taken place during
2003? Of course. In March and April in summary
trials, revolutionary courts sent three
Cuban young men to the firing squad for
stealing a boat and sentenced peaceful democrats
to as much as 28 years of prison. The most
notable was Raúl Rivero, Cuba's premier
poet. Yet the biographies of the other 74
jailed are similar to his: journalists,
writers, librarians, economists, human-rights
activists, people who had collected signatures
requesting a referendum and leaders of political
opposition parties banned on the island
but recognized in the rest of the planet.
That was the moment when José Saramago,
Nobel Prize in Literature, followed by 100
left-leaning intellectuals took a step forward
in chorus to repeat his phase: ''This is
as far as I go.'' The rupture was very significant,
as it left Castro without any other source
of international support save for the most
discredited Stalinist fauna.
In Spain, for example, the Cuban government's
single remaining source of support came
from the terrorist group ETA. The same occured
in the rest of the West. Castro was left
alone, surrounded by a small band of political
thugs, who demoralized even his nomenklatura.
Until then, Castroite ''leaders'' saw themselves
as respected protagonists of a heroic epic.
Now they know that they are viewed as an
indefensible cadre of henchmen and oppressors.
After this spring's crimes, Europe, supported
by denunciations from the Left, increased
its criticism of the Castro dictatorship.
It ratified its ''common position'' of not
granting the Cuban state any preferential
treatment until it took steps toward change
and democracy, and Europeans opened the
doors of their Havana embassies to Cuban
dissidents. At last, a transcendental change
had taken place: Europe now clearly understood
that ''the Cuban problem'' was not a conflict
between the United States and Cuba, but
rather between democrats worldwide and the
last remaining Soviet-era dictatorship in
the West.
This climate of international rejection
led to grave psychological repercussions
as seen in the conduct of Castro's inner
circle. At year's end, the pot was bubbling
and it smelled rotten: At Cubanacán,
a state company that controls 42 percent
of the tourist business, millions of dollars
had ''disappeared.'' The same was happening
at Gaviota, another state-owned tourism
company managed by the military, and in
practically all sectors of what it's called
''the dollar area'' of the economy.
Why? Because the managers and executives
of these enterprises, convinced that the
dictatorship's final stage is at hand, steal,
accept commissions and discretely send money
abroad for the sad days ahead. This is called
"the spirit of regime end.''
But perhaps what was most transcendent
relative to Cuba last year was not a concrete
event but a theoretical formulation. Midyear
in Washington, D.C., a persuasive memo began
to circulate among Democrats and Republicans.
It proposed a bipartisan policy for the
future of Cuba: The United States would
not accept a post-Castro dictatorship controled
by a military-communist mafia establishing
friendly relations with Washington. Good
relations with Cuba would be reestablished
only after there were on the island a real
democracy supported by a reasonable economic
model.
News of this memo fell on Cuba's leadership
elites like a kick on a dying man's shin.
The military, with Raúl Castro at
the helm following his brother's demise,
thought that it could ''sell'' Washington
on the idea of a tranquil island, without
illegal Cuban migrants or drug trafficking
entering the United States. In exchange,
the United States would restore economic
and diplomatic ties and accept the dictatorship's
permanent nature.
The Americans are not ''buying'' this nauseating
merchandise. They know that this is the
formula for a future catastrophe. Likewise
the Europeans. That effectively sinks the
post-Castro totalitarian project. The regime
will begin to die at the wake of the leader
that gave it life.
http://www.firmaspress.com.
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