Castro May Be Dying, Castroism Isn't

Wild speculation has followed Cuba’s announcement last Monday that Fidel Castro was temporarily transferring power to his brother Raúl to recover from surgery. Some anti-Castro exiles in Miami immediately concluded that Fidel had died, that he has cancer, or that Raúl is not really in charge. Others, more realistic, presumed the elder brother would not return to power, and others still that Raúl’s ascent will usher in significant reforms.

The rumor mill seems to run on the assumption that, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated this week, “much is changing there.” Why this thinking? First, observers of Cuba may expect a repeat of New Year’s Eve 1958, when dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the island leaving a vacuum of power for Castro’s guerrillas to fill. In other words, Fidel Castro will go out the way he came in, by prompting revolutionary change. Second, many may assume that Castro has so monopolized power and that Cubans have so helplessly stood by that no successor(s) could keep the state on its feet. And finally there may be remnants of the time-honored stereotyping of Latin Americans as “hot-headed,” prone to violence, and satisfied only with sharp turnabouts in politics.

But we should expect no such turnabouts. Cuba’s radical half-century change, ironically, has brought stagnation. The land where the revolution is allegedly always ongoing—as symbolized by Castro’s ever-present fatigues—has actually turned into one of the more static political regimes on the globe. There are politico-bureaucratic, cultural, and international reasons for predicting minimal change in Cuba’s direction even after the Castros fade from the scene.

First, in almost a half-century of “revolution,” massive bureaucracy has made a surprising number comfortable with the way things are. Cuba’s government is not a typical dictatorship, where only a small group of men at the top benefit from power. The Communist Party apparatus pervades so much of Cuban society that thousands of its cadres have shared political spoils with Castro. Many of them have proven their leadership by winning local elections, even if they did run only against other Party members, and they are not likely to hand over power to exiles or even to serious home-grown reformers. And neighborhood watch groups keep millions more Cubans as politically active—or fearful—as ever.

Ordinary Cubans are also not culturally in a place that welcomes uprisings. Yes, they are unhappy with the present leadership, the persistent poverty, and the dearth of consumer goods. But, scared by decades of real and imagined CIA-exile efforts to undermine the revolution, the populace remains mired in a paranoid mindset according to which a guerra del pueblo would still be unleashed against any possible U.S. intervention. Men and women, old and young regularly participate in military drills, reinforcing this mindset. As a Cuban news presenter said last week of any possible military takeovers, “We’ll be waiting for them, arms in hand. Every Cuban is a warrior.”

Even if Cubans were not all warriors and communism fell, they would not likely tolerate the polar opposite as a replacement. Although they have trouble buying aspirin tablets, Cubans cherish their universal healthcare. They also have a minimum of ten years’ education, which makes them highly literate and aware of social alternatives. Were they relatively free to choose that alternative, the most likely one they would follow would be the social democratic model of Scandinavia, not the laissez-faire savage capitalism of the Republican Party.

And finally on the international front, “Castroism,” albeit now in a post-Cold War form, is stronger than it has been since the 1960s. It is now synonymous not with partnership with the Soviets but with alternatives to U.S.-led neo-liberalism. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales have lifted much of their anti-American rhetoric and many of their policies—for instance the nationalization of resources and the redistribution of land—from Castro’s playbook, thus giving Cuba a newly polished veneer in Latin America. Moreover, Chávez’s massive petroleum subsidies to the Cuban economy have afforded the Venezuelan great leverage in choosing the post-Castro leadership—and Chávez would not suffer the return of what Castro loyalists call the “Miami mafia.”

Another important international factor is the so-far predictable reaction of hard-line Republicans and exiles, who are only open to the quickest rout of the Castro system. The history of U.S.-Latin American relations shows that aggressive U.S. actions tend only to rally the people against Washington. That lesson was clear in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961, when Castro purged the island of subversives after a failed CIA-backed invasion assumed that locals would meet it with a spontaneous uprising. Then as now, and probably in the near future, the people were in no mood to revolt against the Castro regime.

Of course, one never knows. After Fidel and/or Raúl, there might be an unexpected implosion like the one begun in Moscow some twenty years ago. For President Bush to welcome that implosion is one thing. For him to prompt it through open intervention, however, might unleash an anti-U.S. revolt among not only Cubans but also Latin Americans, who are already ill-disposed toward this administration. Though Washington recently admitted its intelligence on Cuba is weak, we should hope that the intelligence community keeps its eyes peeled and its mind open and that it makes historically-informed recommendations to Bush so that we don’t witness another costly intelligence failure.