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Analyst
Rejects Notion of Major Changes Anytime Soon in
Cuba
Barry Wood. Cuba, 25 Sep 2003.
VOA News.
A leading United States expert on Cuba Tuesday
unveiled a new book examining prospects for U.S.-Cuban
relations in the years ahead. Scholar and policy
analyst Mark Falcoff rejects the notion that after
Fidel Castro Cuba will become a free market democracy.
Mr. Falcoff argues that Cuba has changed fundamentally
during Fidel Castro's over four decades of communist
rule. U.S. links with Cuba, the largest of the
Caribbean islands located just south of Florida,
have been severed since shortly after Cuba's 1959
revolution.
In his book Cuba the Morning After, Mr. Falcoff
assumes that eventually the U.S. trade embargo
will be lifted. But he doesn't see normalized
bi-lateral relations anytime soon. "Undoubtedly,
it would throw Castro on the diplomatic defensive
if there were a U.S. embassy in Havana. And probably
the U.S. could get the Europeans to take even
stronger action [in support of human rights] than
they're able to do now," he said. "But
in any event the embargo is not going to be lifted
right away. And certainly as long as Fidel Castro
is there it won't be, if for no other reason than
I'm convinced he doesn't want the embargo lifted."
According to Mr. Falcoff, the large Miami Cuban
exile community is increasingly divided on the
wisdom of maintaining the embargo it once so forcibly
promoted. Remittances from Cuban exiles most of
whom are in south Florida are second only to tourism
and ahead of sugar as Cuba's largest source of
foreign exchange.
Mr. Falcoff writes that with Mr. Castro now 77
years old a transition to a post-Fidel Cuba is
already underway.
"But it's not a transition to a free market
and a democracy," he said. "It's a transition
towards a kind of family rule with Raul [Fidel's
brother who heads the armed forces] and some of
his family Raul is taking over key positions in
the tourist industry and in other ministries."
Mr. Falcoff, a fellow at Washington's American
Enterprise Institute, foresees a continuation
of totalitarian rule in a Cuba that has grown
considerably poorer since huge Russian subsidies
were halted a decade ago. Cuba today, he says,
is poorer than at any time in its modern history
and unable to feed its people.
Mr. Falcoff says democracy may be slow to take
hold in Cuba because the government has so thoroughly
suppressed the pro-democracy movement. He explains:
"If you don't even know about a movement,
if the regime is so suffocating in its control
of the media and the knowledge that people have,
it's hard to imagine that one day Castro dies
and the next day his brother realizes he can't
hold it together, and the day after, these people
most Cubans have never heard of, suddenly emerge
and take over and provide an alternative."
Tired of a failed revolution, Mr. Falcoff says
many Cubans have given up on their country's future.
Cuba, he says, has become increasingly like its
poor Caribbean neighbors, a nation dependent on
tourism and remittances from abroad.
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