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Castro's mishap fuels exiles'
talk of transition
By Henry Hamman in Miami.
The Financial
Times, UK. Published: November 14 2004.
Fidel Castro's tumble during a televised
speech last month made front-page news in
Miami, where it has invigorated planning
among US officials and Cuban exiles for
an eventual transition on the communist
island.
The 78-year-old Cuban leader has been in
a wheelchair since shattering his left kneecap
and breaking his right arm in the spectacular
fall. But despite the obvious discomfort,
the energetic leader is expected to make
a full recovery much to the dismay of his
US-based enemies.
Still, some western diplomats said the
mishap remained important to those who are
trying to envision a post-Castro Cuba. "It
reminds people that, 'Hey, wait a minute,
there is an end to this'. And it reminds
people that he, too, is mortal," a
western diplomat who lives in Havana told
The Financial Times.
The diplomat said he saw a pervasive mood
of hopelessness in Havana. "You can
see it in the [young] age of people leaving
on the rafts: they realise there's no future
for them, and they take to the seas."
Dagoberto Valdes Hern-andez, a Cuban Catholic
dissident, echoed that assessment in Washington
last week, saying that Cuban society was
in its "terminal phase", according
to a Catholic News Service report.
The rare public demons-tration of Mr Castro's
mortality has touched off a debate in Miami
about the prospects for a western-style
free-market democracy in Cuba after his
passing.
"We're hoping for Czechoslovakia,
but we're fearing China," said Jaime
Suchlicki who directs the US-government
funded Cuba Transition Project at the University
of Miami.
The Czechs' Velvet Revolution 15 years
ago is often held up by Cuban dissidents
and human rights campaigners as the ideal
model for Cuba's transition to market democracy.
But many Cuba-watchers say that China's
model economic liberalisation under authoritarian
political control is a more likely one for
Cuba. As long as Mr Castro remains in power,
both camps agree, neither a Czech nor Chinese
transition is possible. Cubans are waiting
for "the biological solution",
according to James Cason, the US's top diplomat
in Havana. Mr Cason spoke last week in Miami
at a conference on transition planning,
sponsored by the Cuba Transition Project
and the government of the Czech Republic.
It took place against the backdrop of a
nearly two-year crackdown on dissent in
the island, tightening controls by the US
on exile cash remittances to Cuba and a
newly imposed ban on dollar holdings by
Cubans.
Opponents of Washington's hard line on
Cuba argue actions such as the US clampdown
on remittances, restrictions on travel to
the island by US citizens and residents,
and the four-decade-long trade embargo punish
the Cuban people while doing nothing to
dislodge Mr Castro.
But since President George W. Bush's re-election,
which he owed in part to Cuban-American
support in the crucial state of Florida,
there has been no hint of a change in policy.
Kevin Whittaker, co-ordinator of the US
State Department's Office of Cuba Affairs,
told the conference that while opposition
to the embargo in many European countries
was "a principled argument", it
served only to "dishearten the opposition
and strengthen the hardliners". He
also criticised Latin American leaders who
have visited Cuba over the past 10 months
but refused to meet with dissidents, among
them Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula
da Silva.
© Copyright
The Financial Times Ltd 2004. "FT"
and "Financial Times" are trademarks
of the Financial Times.
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