Luis Aguilar Leon. Published Wednesday, January 17, 2001,
in the Miami Herald
Janus, the two-faced god of the ancient Romans after whom our first month is
named, navigated the timeline between one year's death and the birth of a new
one. He was represented as a bearded man, one face scanning the past with
furrowed brow, the other the future with an optimistic expression. "Yesterday
is a river of dead waters,'' Virgil wrote. "Tomorrow is a cause loaded with
hopes.''
Curiously, most of us continue doing more or less the same things. For all
its scientific and social leaps, the century just expired already appears
weighed down with shadows, the one just begun like a rocket bound for lights and
progress; despite the fact that 2001 already has sounded economic alarms and the
usual prophetic cries of the imminent Apocalypse.
Already, scholars have begun classifying the accomplishments and failures of
the 20th Century. They hope to determine the most significant events in a
century that waltzed in with Strauss, withstood two world wars and made way for
what seems a better world. Some believe that last century's most seminal
happening was the arrival of the Beatles. Others nominate the atom bomb.
Lately, the potential cloning of human beings has been advanced. A few, a
very few, cite political occurrences, providing the perfect cue for Commandant
Fidel Castro.
With his usual oceanic ego, Castro assured the always-sympathetic CNN
microphones that "without a doubt'' the most transcendental event of the
20th Century was the Cuban Revolution. He meant his revolution, and what Cuba
had accomplished -- read "what he had accomplished.'' Cuba would be "the
most influential force in the 21st Century,'' he said, in a fabulous twist on
the fading Karl Marx's dialectic.
Here sat an ailing 74-year-old leader, long rooted to the last century, not
only vaulting over Teddy Roosevelt (who helped free Cuba), Mahatma Gandhi,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan (who helped strip Cuba
of its longtime Soviet benefactors) and Nelson Mandela, but fancifully planting
his flag in the new century, one that already is ignoring him.
This old pillar of salt, with his gaze fixed on the past, pretends soon to
bring the world the very change that ruined his people physically and morally.
This is the same Castro who bored the world with his odes to Lenin's
revolution, "the most glorious event in the history of humanity.''
Surrounded by failure, Castro never mentions Lenin, now relegated to the
scrapheap of history even by the Russian people. He also never refers to his
former pantheon of heroes: Mao Zedong, Patrice Emergy Lumumba, Ho Chi Minh, not
even Che Guevara, the comrade who made defeat seem romantic to the '60s-spawned
Left.
This is the same leader who once screeched that socialism was invincible and
capitalism would fall, consumed by its own corruption and the noble example of
the Soviet Union; who now shows no trace of shame when beseeching the United
States to send more dollars to his impoverished island; who screamed that Cuban
beaches belong to the Cuban people, and foreign tourists nevermore would buy
Cuban women or bring "the stench of capitalism.'' Now Castro not only
prohibits Cubans from the tourist-only beaches; he is the first world leader to
promote prostitution, stating, "At least our women are healthy.''
The future can only be brighter that consigns such a man to the column of
20th Century failures. If remembered at all, may he recall words from a
much-earlier century, as having been "full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 