by Marc Heller
Fidel Castro
While Fidel Castro announced Feb. 19 that he is resigning the Cuban presidency, not everyone this lawside of the Florida Straits is buying the idea that he’s giving up power.
Cuban-American lawmakers in Florida have a lukewarm response. A MiamiDade College expert on Cuba says the pace of change still depends mostly on Fidel, not on his brother Raúl, to whom he is passing the presidency.
If Castro is gravely ill and incapacitated, as some evidence suggests, the transfer of power will be genuine enough to permit a loosening of economic policies and possibly more freedom to travel outside the country, says Miami-Dade College sociology professor Juan Clark.
But if Fidel is well enough, it’s unlikely he will fully surrender control, says Clark, author of Cuba: Myth and Reality.
Clark’s analysis is part of the educatedguessing game after nearly five decades of one-man rule. “If he’s totally incapacitated and Raúl really takes over, we should see action to help the economic condition,” Clark said in a telephone interview.
An obvious indication, he suggests, will be if Fidel shows up in public, something he has not done in some time. Clark is not alone in his skepticism. Florida Cubans serving in Congress, all Republicans, give a subdued welcome to the news. “There has been no change in totalitarian Cuba,” Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart maintains.
“Fidel Castro has been critically ill and immobile for over a year and a half, but the dictator’s written declarations have the effect of totalitarian decrees, whether signed with the title Commander in Chief or Comrade, or simply with his name.”
Díaz-Balart’s brother Mario, also a House member, offers a similar statement. “He is still the dictator and in control. True change will not begin until all political prisoners are released, political parties, labor unions and free press are legalized, and the process of free, supervised, multi-party elections begins.”
U.S. Sen. Mel Martínez says cautiously the announcement may lead to progress. But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 104 members of Congress, mostly Democrats, embrace the idea that real power is shifting. No representatives from Florida signed.
“For five decades, U.S. policy has tried economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation,” the lawmakers wrote. “Our policy leaves us without influence at this critical moment, and this serves neither the U.S. national interest nor average Cubans, the intended beneficiaries.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who like Mel Martínez fled Cuba as a child, took the opportunity to call for Castro’s trial in the United States on murder charges related to the 1996 downing of airplanes carrying four anti-Castro activists whom Cuba claimed were violating its air space.
If Raúl Castro gains real power, economic liberalization could come quickly, Clark says. He calls Raúl more of a “normal person” than his brother and suggests he could free some political prisoners if he believes their main beef is with Fidel.
Hispanic Link.
