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editorial

Looking past Fidel's time

Whether he's at death's door or has a few more years of active life ahead of him, Fidel Castro will go down in Latin American history as a legendary figure. Very beautiful things and very ugly things can be and will be truthfully said about what he has done.

Castro stands for the proposition that Latin America is not the "back yard" of the United States, that the "lot line" runs along the Rio Grande and through the Straits of Florida. He is also a symbol of an Iberian tradition of autocratic rule that goes back to the Roman praetors --- a method of governance that has been abandoned in its countries of origin. He had to depend on the Russians to stand up against the Americans, and thus led the Cuban people into terrible economic hardships after the old Soviet Union collapsed. He's a survivor, whose too-long tenure in office bred a couple of generations of boring conformists from among whom too few real leaders have emerged. He proved that even a poor Latin American country that has a sugar cane economy and is hampered by a US economic embargo can provide food, education and health care to all of its children if it cares to do so. The product of a Catholic education, he suppressed the Mafia and its vice empires on his island, only to see prostitution and corruption creep back in when the economy went into free fall. A communist by conviction, he indulged in various dogmatic economic experiments, most of which failed, yet also cut a few shrewd capitalist deals on world markets. A talented baseball player himself, he turned Cuba into a major sports power but drove many of its best athletes to emigrate. A brilliant and well informed man, he systematically censored the information available to his fellow Cubans and frequently lowered the level of his nation's public discourse to the repetition of banal slogans. His military interventions in Africa propped up a brutal Ethiopian military dictatorship, but also repelled a South African invasion of Angola and thus hastened the end of the hated apartheid regime. At home he educated more doctors and teachers than Cuba's economy could employ, then sent many of these professionals abroad to the poorest, most illiterate countries to provide a boost to their development.

And what of Castro's most strident critics, the Miami exile leadership? It says a lot about them that they went dancing in the streets when they heard that Fidel was in the hospital. It says even more that the Cuban American National Foundation has called not for free elections, but for a military dictatorship as a prelude to their triumphal return. It also says a lot about George W. Bush's character that he sent a plane to bombard Cuba with right-wing propaganda when news of Castro's serious illness was released. History will judge the Miami exile leadership as, paradoxically, Fidel Castro's strongest supporters: one of the main reasons why the Cuban people put up with him all these decades is that the alternative on display in South Florida was so unappealing.

Make no mistake about it. We are all mortal, and all institutions devised by fallable human beings go through their changes. Cuba will have a post-Castro transition. That which follows in Havana will surely affect not only the island but also the Cuban exile communities and all of Latin America, even if not necessarily in the ways that the Cuban American National Foundation might prefer. Fidel's brother and his party won't be able to long continue without some major modifications. The question is what kinds of changes.

George W. Bush wants to replace the Castro regime with a return to rule by a wealthy oligarchy, most probably through a repressive right-wing dictatorship masked by the thinnest of "democratic" veneers.

Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Panama, ought to lend many kinds of assistance to ensure that our neighbor Cuba has the opportunity to choose better options than that.

One traditional Panamanian form of assistance would be to give safe haven to those Cubans and third nationality exiles who might otherwise become political prisoners as the direct or indirect result of changes in Havana. For our own unrelated purposes this country needs immigration reform, and one change that we ought to make right now is an easing of the restrictions on visas for Cubans.

On the diplomatic front, Panama should join with other countries in the region to insist upon Cuba's right to make the changes it needs and wants without interference from Washington. We might properly lend assistance or give advice in our own right, but Panama should never be the conduit for American pressures on a government it does not recognize. If the United States has something to say to this Cuban government or a future one, it should do so by the normal reciprocal means of communication that sovereign states ordinarily use.

In the end it should be the Cubans in Cuba who set their nation's future course. The Cuban government's overseas enemies especially, but its foreign friends as well, need to stand back and let this process take its natural course.

Bear in mind...

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it or who says it.

Malcolm X

Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice. It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.

Annie Besant

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.

Ursula K. LeGuin