The Passing of Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro has, for many decades, been not so much a national leader as he has been part of nature, an irritant to the world, but also an absolute plague upon the long suffering, Cuban people. Now he is no longer (officially at least) Cuba's supreme leader.

Fidel Castro, as is typical with communist tyrants, managed to turn a country with considerable natural resources and a prime location for tourism into a third world cesspool in which shortages of even basic products (such as food) are the norm. The US led economic embargo (provoked by Castro's hostility to the West) was no help, but communist style central planning and a ruthless suppression of anything resembling a free market combined to keep the Cuban people in squalor.

Add to that, Castro's brutal imposition of a police state in which political dissidents are tossed into dungeons to languish. Others (such as gays) are suppressed. People are cowed into a kind of frightened silence, knowing that any hint of complaint against the state will bring that same state down like a hammer. All in all, the Cuban people have suffered a damnation made more exquisite by the fact that freedom is just a ninety mile boat trip away. No wonder South Florida is filled with refugees and the children of refugees from Castro's tyranny.

As an aside, considering these facts, it is curious how liberal intellectuals, including many in Hollywood, find Castro and his regime so attractive. Universal healthcare? Literacy? Those must be of some comfort to a Cuban whose face has been smashed in by a boot, to coin a phrase from George Orwell, for decades. Of course, Michael Moore to the contrary, Cuban style universal health care is probably worse than no health care at all.

Even more fascinating are those addled people who wear those tee shirts with the picture of Che Guevara on them. Most people today do not know that Che was Fidel Castro's enforcer, who initially ran the political prisons and the firing squads that were so busy during the first years of the Castro tyranny. Che Guevara was mercifully killed in Bolivia after leading a map cap, quixotic attempt to foment a revolution in that country.

Now Fidel Castro will be gone. Soon he will be dead. What does that change.

In the short run, very little. Fidel Castro has handpicked his brother, Raul Castro, to succeed him. Some pundits have suggested that Raul Castro wants a Chinese style regime in Cuba, in which people are free to make money but not to speak their minds.

The problem is that, at seventy five, Raul Castro is no spring chicken either. After him, who? Another of the aging old guard? Or some up and comer few people have yet heard of? Or, perhaps, revolution?

There is an opportunity. Raul Castro desperately wants the economic embargo lifted. This provides leverage and a basis of negotiation. Fidel Castro will have to actually die, of course, before real progress could be made. But there is, finally, a prospect of Cuban emerging from the long night and coming into the light of freedom. The question is, can it be managed painlessly, or does it have to be with blood and fire?