Cuba after Castro
CUBA | Tuesday, 12 December 2006 | Views [1667]
The health of Cuban president Fidel Castro appears to be showing no sign of improvement and, as a result, his 47-year grip on power seems destined to end shortly. On 2 December 2006, Castro’s ill-health prevented him attending a huge military parade in honour of his 80th birthday in the Cuban capital, Havana. Castro’s health has been the subject of much speculation ever since he fainted during a speech in Cuba five years ago. Rumours over his health then intensified in 2004 when he fell from a platform and shattered his knee and elbow. The Cuban leader has since been dogged by reports of strokes and even of Parkinson’s disease. Late in July 2006, Castro underwent emergency surgery for sustained gastrointestinal bleeding. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and head of the military, stepped in as acting president while Fidel recuperated. However, since the operation, Castro has been seen only in photographs and videos. In his last video appearance on 28 October, Castro looked frail and gaunt and US officials have speculated that the Cuban president is suffering from terminal cancer of the stomach, colon or pancreas. If that is the case, he is unlikely to survive beyond the end of next year.
Many have predicted that Castro’s death will bring about the demise of the country’s socialist regime. They believe that without Castro’s iron fist, Cubans will erupt into a collective demand for rapid change. They envisage that the long-oppressed population will rise up and overthrow Fidel’s revolutionary cronies and clamour for democracy and economic liberalisation. However, such a scenario is unlikely, particularly in the immediate term. Castro’s succession process is already underway and his death is not likely to trigger rapid political change or instability.
For starters, Cuba has already undergone a smooth transition of power. In late July 2006, Fidel successfully transferred authority to his brother, Raul, and half a dozen loyalists who have been running the country under Fidel’s watch for decades. It was a notably smooth and stable changeover. Despite taking place in the intense heat and humidity of the summer season, and despite the rumour mill working overtime, there was not a single episode of violence in the streets and no massive exodus of refugees to Florida. There has been no power vacuum, no leadership battle and no instability.
When Fidel does pass away Raul and his colleagues will have superb instruments with which to continue to lead Cuban society. Despite many believing that the country has simply been held in a socialist stasis by the hypnotic charisma, authority and legend of Fidel, Cuba is, in reality, a very stable, functioning state. Although plagued by worsening corruption, Cuban institutions are staffed by an educated civil service, battle-tested officers, a capable diplomatic corp, and a skilled workforce. Cuban citizens are highly literate and cosmopolitan. Many have no interest in radical change, realising that a democratic revolution would be a costly affair. They are suspicious of the US and there is a certain complacency with the status quo. What dissent and opposition does exist toward the socialist regime is also divided, infiltrated and suffocated by the state’s two most effective agencies - the military and the police. Cuba is also far from politically isolated. It has diplomatic relations with over 160 countries, students from nearly 100 countries studying in its schools, and it has doctors stationed in 69. The resurgence of Latin America’s left, along with the recent rise in anti-American sentiment around the globe, will also help to consolidate the new regime’s stability.
Efforts by the exiled Cuban community to trigger change or conflict are also likely to fail. An attempt by Miami-based Cubans to wrest power from any resident-based government upon Castro’s death would undoubtedly be met with resistance by the overwhelming majority of Cubans. Most Cubans do not share the positions of the exiled community and many in fact distrust them as much as they do Washington. Since such an action would therefore result in violence and bloodshed, it is also unlikely to receive the support of any US administration. In addition, renegade factions within the Cuban exile community are also unlikely to succeed in penetrating the Cuban coastline to provoke any sort of ruckus. Both the US and Cuban governments have control of their security in coastal waters and both, even without talking to one another, will keep things under control.
In some ways, Fidel’s death will actually serve to improve Cuban stability and security. Social unrest is currently brewing just below Cuba’s surface, with an increasing number of Cubans dissatisfied with their material conditions. Food and medical shortages are common and many Cubans also privately express displeasure at what they perceive to be government corruption. Fidel had neither the ability nor the appetite to make the reforms necessary to address these social and economic ills. Raul, however, is a modernising reformist. He oversaw the government policies that opened up the country’s tourist industry to foreign investment in the 1990s and he also led the move toward integrating low-level capitalist enterprises into the Cuban economy. It is likely that after Fidel’s death Raul will continue with this gradual shift in economic activity in Cuba. Although this economic liberalisation will be twinned with continued political oppression, it will be enough to pacify the majority of the Cuban population.
Although many Cuban exiles and US politicians hope and believe that Castro’s death will mark the end for Fidel’s socialist experiment, such forecasts are based more on wishful thinking than on a clear appraisal of the facts and Cuba’s economic and social constitution. In the end, Castro’s death is unlikely to trigger unrest, indigenous democratic movements or regime change sponsored by the United States. Fidel has orchestrated an orderly transition and appears set to continue to frustrate Cuban exiles, the US and pro-democracy elements.
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