A lot of people are looking toward the island of Cuba in lustful, unbridled anticipation. They dream of sun drenched, sandy beeches, of margueritas and pina coladas, or brown skinned, lithe and muscular men. And women. And boys and girls.
Of extravagant dining and entertainment, music and laughter, and dancing. Of resort hotels and gambling casinos. Of billions and billions of dollars. They stare wistfully at their humidores, and dream of days gone by, and, for most of them, of days that never were. Merely legendary stories handed down now for going on four generations, and more, from aged lips and wizened old eyes that stare out from wrinkled, furrowed brows.
There are less and less of them. They, too, are dying out. But they still dream their dreams, and they smile outwardly at the thought of bygone glorys, of happy memories that seem ever more distant. Their memories might in some cases be faulty. But it was the dream that was important.
Inwardly, they rage.
Castro's days are numbered. For fifty years he has kept the island nation in the vise like grip of Stalinist Communism, and now death seems to be knocking at his door. No further word on his current state of health for some days now, and no appearrance by his brother Raoul, to whom he temporarily ceded the reins of power. Can he maintain Fidel's hold on power after Fidel is gone, or will the country fall apart? Will he be open to minor economic and social and political reforms, or will he ruthlessly crush any dissent, real or imagined, in order to establish the totality of his new reign?
Fidel has all but carried Cuba to hell in a centralized planned handbasket in which no entrepreneur or business interest is wiling to invest any degree of capital. Everything is a shade of it's once fromer glory. The hotels, the beaches, the hookers, the liquor, the casinos, all those things that made Havanna one of the vacation spots of the world. Even the cigars aren't as good as what they once were.
There is a technique to making fine Cuban cigars that amounted to a secret recipe jeaousy guarded by a few families-all long gone from the island. What remains, while yet of the highest quality, is said to pale in comparison.
When Fidel overthrew business friendly and yet brutally dictatorial strong man Fulgencio Batista in the late nineteen fifties, the life blood of the island, it's inviting party atmosphere economy, similarly went up in a puff of smoke. Batista was friendly to the Mafia that made billions of dollars on the island. While he was there, they operated freely. When he left, they had to follow, along with the wealthier families, what ones were able, their properties confiscated by the new state, which pledged to never again allow the poor people of Cuba to become downtrooden, oppressed, and abused for the pleasure of the wealthy elites.
The party was over.
So what happens next? If the brothers Castro days are numbered, then what awaits the island and it's inhabitants?
The great hotel chains are doubtless bursting at the seams to re-establish a foothold on the island, along with assorted criminal enterprises and their devotees. You can almost imagine them clearing a space on their travel itinerary. The gamblers, the beach addicts, the hookers, the pimps, the johns, the pedophiles, the drug cartels, the land speculators, and on down the line to the remaining bottom feeders.
Who knows how many hundreds of millions, no, make that tens of billions, has been privately earmarked for Cuban investment?
But, not so fast. The last laugh could indeed be Fidels. News of his demise may be greatly exxagerrated, if that day ever comes, and any indication by Raoul of a willingness to consider any economic reforms might well turn out to be the greatest April Fools joke of all So don't pour that money into the island just yet, wait for the autopsy.
Fidel will eventually die, of course (and at seventy five, can Raoul be far behind?), but it won't be that easy. Thanks to the American embargo of the island, America has no diplomatic presence there, as of roughly fifty years ago. In other words, we have not the teeniest, tiniest leverage with which to influence events.
And there are of course more communists on the island than merely the Castro brothers. And they will not go quietly. Eventually, of course, there stands to be a great deal of tension, hostility, and even all out Civil War. The few remaining original Cuban ex-patriots in mainly Florida, especially the Miami area, will see to it that communist opponnents are well endowed with arms and tons of moral support.
They will fan the flames of Civil War, and will expect the US government to put out the fire, which could well conceivably turn into an inferno. Of course, the Bush Administration denies any plans to invade Cuba.
But there is, of course, a lot of oil there, just off the coast-lots and lots of oil.
Naturally, there will be a new tidal wave of immigration from the island on the offset of hostilities. The way the law stands, all any Cuban has to do is reach American soil, set foot on the ground, and he is home free. Percentage wise, they will rival Mexico in the amount of immigrants, both legal and illegal. A great many of these, of course, will be common criminals in addition to organized crime cartel members, such as gun runners and dope smugglers.
When people like Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice insists that Cubans will be discouraged from coming here in mass numbers, and Cuban Americans will be discouraged from returning to Cuba to further inflame tensions and incite rebellion, of course she is talking out of her ass. She knows that there is precous little that can be done to prevent it, if they wanted to, which they do not.
All of this is speculation, of course, but in the event of a massive, bloody civil war on this island jewel just fifty miles off the coast of Florida, can we stay out of it? Of course we can't, and anybody that thinks otherwise is smoking something stronger than any cigar.
The best thing for the island would be for either Castro to survive, or for Raoul to take over, and for both of them or either of them to agree to some of those limited reforms and to dialoque with the US. But it takes two. There has to be somebody here willing to partake of a diplomatic stategy, even if it were for no other reason than to validly establish a presence, and thus an influence, on the island when that day does eventually come around.
A nice, thoughtful get well card, even if insincere, might work wonders. Elean Gonzales wished Fidel a speedy recovery, surely we can, if but with tonque firmly, and diplomatically, planted in cheek.
5 comments:
Good question. Don't forget though, not just one man, but one man with a huge and loyal, devoted following. To an extent, the US made it easy for him to blame us for all his and his peoples problems. A great lot of his public appearrances and utterrances have contained long-winded diatribes against America, which are not wholly inaccurate, yet at the same time which are greatly exaggerated.
For all that, one thing a lot of people don't realize is that the majority of the Cuban people have always been poor, at least any still alive today, with the eceptions of the wealthy landowners and former Batista officials, which all told made up a very small minority of the population.
They were never "free" under Batista. What is even more important, for all it's vaunted wealth and prosperity, the Cuban people en masse were still poor. The only people who received any "trickle down" effect were those people fortunate enough to have daughters attractive enough to be prostitutes.
Otherwise, though they may have lived good lives, they had to work hard and sacrifice their dignity in this and other ways for what little they received.
In other words, communism doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are conditions that make it possible, and once it goes so far along, inevitable. And once it establishes itself, it creates a system that is hard to get rid of, as it is a self-perpetuating culture based on power, violence, and corruption.
Once Fidel is gone, it isn't just going to vanish overnight.
It's interesting- I remember someone once saying that communism would eventually become monarchalsim, and now they're planning to pass power on to his brother.
Just like in North Korea. Either family or a close group of asociates maintaiing the power structure. So much for the withering away of the state.
How did you get my picture???
HaHa, yeah that's a cool pic, ain't it? I got it from Creative Commons, just typed in "Cuban cigars pictures", and that was the first thing that popped up. Perfect for this post, I thought. I liked it so much I thought about trying to fool people into thinking it was me, but either they wouldn't have fell for it, or I would have to be living for a long time with that image in peoples minds.
Plus it is a woman, though it isn't really that obvious. If you look like that now at thirty, I don't want to think of what you will look like at sixty or seventy.
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