The Latell Report

Welcome to The Latell Report, the newest publication of the electronic information service of the Cuba Transition Project (CTP) at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS). The Report, analyzing Cuba's contemporary domestic and foreign policy, will be published monthly.

Dr. Brian Latell, distinguished Cuban analyst and recent author of the book, After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader, is a Senior Research Associate at ICCAS. He has informed American and foreign presidents, cabinet members, and legislators about Cuba and Fidel Castro in a number of capacities. He served in the early 1990s as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America at the Central Intelligence Agency and taught at Georgetown University for a quarter century. Dr. Latell has written, lectured, and consulted extensively.

Nearly 40 years ago Fidel Castro acknowledged in an interview with his pliable ally Herbert Matthews of the New York Times, that “the first period after something happened to him could be the most difficult.”

He was concerned that his brother Raul and other leaders might not be able to manage a smooth succession that would preserve his legacy. The unguarded remark suggested that he feared conflict among contending leaders and possibly popular unrest abetted by Cubans abroad. Everything he had struggled for since Moncada, he feared, would be at risk once he could no longer control events. The same worry appears to be among his principal concerns today.

I am not aware that Castro responded so truthfully on any other occasion when questioned about the revolution’s prospects after his death or incapacitation. With just this one exception, his stock response has been that the revolution is indestructible. He boasts that it does not depend on one man but is the embodiment of enduring principles and accomplishments. Other revolutionaries will faithfully carry on after him, he insists, and it is always implicit in his self-serving cant that he expects his followers to remain loyal to his policies and visions. But he did not really believe such rhetoric when he talked to Matthews in May 1966, and he has never believed it since.

Psychologically, it is impossible for him to contemplate others filling his shoes. No one else could possibly measure up to his standards of leadership, and in his view, no successors – including Raul – would be able to control events for long once he is gone. Fidel’s extreme narcissism, the conviction since childhood in his own special destiny, and his sense of personal autonomy are traits – among others – that have always caused him to believe absolutely in his own abilities while distrusting the reliability of almost everyone else.

A lifelong fear of betrayal perhaps best explains Castro’s recent ruminations that echoed the concerns he expressed years before to Matthews.

“This country can self-destruct,” he warned last November in a speech at the University of Havana. “The Revolution can destroy itself.”

In that confused and rambling discourse, he commented repeatedly on the corruption and inequality that have sundered Cuba’s supposedly egalitarian society. He railed against those with access to dollars who are enriching themselves, criminals who blatantly steal from the state with impunity, and exploiters who “earn 40 or 50 times” what doctors make.

About a month later the regime’s supreme fidelista zealot, foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque, reiterated his chief’s complaints, pointing especially at Cuban youth. Remarkably, he complained that two and a half million Cubans under the age of 30 are alienated or apathetic, guilty of “moral drowsiness and fakery.” Many, he said, exhibit “individualism,” a characteristic presumably admirable only in the commander in chief himself. And like his idol, who sat at his side as he spoke, Perez Roque admitted the revolution is “reversible.” He too seems to have been thinking of Cuba’s uncertain future after Fidel.

We are going to fix those problems “any way we can” Castro threatened. But he did not exude confidence that much could be done. In fact the regime has few good options and many leaders, especially in the top ranks of the military, would be loath to unleash destabilizing crackdowns like several tumultuous ones in the past. Limited, cautious measures are more likely. A few government and communist party officials will probably be scapegoated; propaganda will focus on themes of revival; new programs aimed at disaffected youth will be introduced; and other measures imposed with the goal of narrowing extreme social and economic inequalities.

But thus far, the most dramatic new initiative has involved disenchanted youths themselves. The regime claims that more than 30,000 have been enlisted as revolutionary “social workers” to monitor, interrogate, and identify Cubans guilty of the crimes and abuses the commander in chief described. In the process, fidelista hardliners hope, wayward youths will develop stronger revolutionary values and become a reliable new vanguard that will assure current orthodoxies will endure after Fidel Castro’s demise. But those goals almost certainly are unattainable.

Youthful unrest is already so endemic that the regime’s half-hearted and disorganized mobilizations are unlikely to have much lasting effect. They may well turn out to be counterproductive. Few of the youths inducted will be converted into fidelista revolutionaries and most are likely instead to grow more cynical and estranged from the system. Aware of the dictator’s failing health, younger Cubans in overwhelming numbers are likely to continue hoping that a sweeping dismantling of the fidelista system will occur within the next few years.

Thus, even if Raul does follow his brother in power as planned, many of the policies Fidel Castro so tenaciously holds today are almost certain to be abandoned or diluted. He cannot have many illusions about this, knowing that a raulista succession is the most likely short term future after his death but also that a raulista regime would not faithfully duplicate the fidelista one.

In the mid 1990’s Raul dispatched senior military officers abroad to study modern business and management techniques. In that era he more than once spoke on the record of the virtues of supply and demand, a concept that remains anathema to his brother. Considerable evidence indicates that Raul favors limited market-oriented economic reforms, though not a political opening. He has put out feelers to the American military, given active and retired senior officers the green light to run a wide range of capitalist enterprises, while allowing the impression that he would generally be more flexible.

A raulista succession may not endure long and could unintentionally pave the way for a genuine democratic transition. But during whatever period of time Raul and the raulistas might be able to govern Cuba on their own, Fidel knows that many of his most cherished policies will likely be discarded. Fearing and guarding against betrayal nearly all of his life, he now worries about the worst of all possibilities: that his successors will posthumously betray him. If so, tensions between the regime’s most hard-line zealots and more moderate military and civilian officials may now be reaching a higher crescendo than at any time before in the revolution’s history.

The CTP, funded by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), can be contacted at P.O. Box 248174, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3010, Tel: 305-284-CUBA (2822), Fax: 305-284-4875, and by email at ctp.iccas@miami.edu.