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Welcome to The Latell Report. The Report,
analyzing Cuba's
contemporary domestic and foreign policy, is published monthly except
August and December and distributed by 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 Latell Report is a publication of ICCAS
and no government funding has been used in its publication. The opinions
expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of ICCAS and/or the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID).
Nine months since the dynastic transfer
of power, the possibility that Fidel Castro will reappear in public,
perhaps even assuming his familiar stance by addressing a mass audience on
May 1, remains in doubt. Assembly
president Ricardo Alarcon has implicitly conceded that Castro’s
condition remains tenuous, that he will probably not be up to the effort
required to preside at the May Day parade and festivities in Havana.
The first of May, international
labor day, has always been among Castro’s favorite holidays, one he
has frequently used in the past to inform the Cuban people, attack the United States,
and ruminate endlessly about whatever new concerns were on his mind. Through last year he did not fail to
speak on seven consecutive May Days. Thus, like his failures to appear last
September during the non-aligned nations conference,
or on December 2 on armed forces day, Fidel’s protracted withdrawal
increasingly points to the likelihood that he will not be able to return to
the full exercise of power.
Cuban spokesmen have not been
encouraging that expectation.
Foreign minister Perez Roque said in Hanoi in mid month
that Fidel is “gradually recuperating.” Alarcon said on April
25th that Fidel is “very well” but “it will be
preferable that he reappear on television before attending a mass public
event.” Unintentionally one
supposes, Alarcon conveyed the impression of his commander-in-chief as a
doddering old man now unable to make such day-to-day decisions
himself. All those around him
realize that if Fidel were to be seen in public, rather than in a
pre-recorded television session that could be edited, his every gesture,
step, and word would be scrutinized for tremors or slips that might display
his deterioration for all to see.
Perhaps the most unmistakable
evidence of his debility came from his outspoken niece, Raul’s
daughter Mariela, who has been emerging as an
unofficial Castro family and regime spokesman. She told Spanish reporters in late April
that although Fidel is “rapidly improving,” he will “not
govern again in the same fashion as before.” She had some other remarkably candid
things to say too. Since Fidel yielded power last July, “he has been
very respectful in not wanting to interfere in the decisions being
made.” She added that
“he is very careful not to influence the decisions” of his
successors who have assumed substantial new responsibilities.
Recent photographs released by
the Cuban government suggest he is physically stronger than before. He has recently been seen with foreign
visitors, in one photograph standing for the first time, outside in a
garden with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
In late April, after a meeting with a visiting Chinese Politburo
member, he was reported by the Chinese government news service to have
spoken “briskly,” while “in good spirits and walking with
a steady pace.” But he was
photographed at that meeting again wearing baggy athletic clothes and,
according to the Chinese account, remained after all these months in a
hospital room. The Chinese probably intended no irony by expressing hopes
for his “early recovery.”
More than eighty years old, the
cumulative toll of the three life-threatening surgeries Castro has
reportedly endured has surely been devastating. Last week a senior American intelligence
official confirmed in a meeting with reporters that Castro indeed suffers from
Parkinson’s disease as well as diverticulitis
and perhaps Crohn’s disease, a debilitating
inflammation of the digestive tract.
The brew of powerful
medications he takes to treat his infirmities and associated pain probably
has debilitating side effects. If,
as suspected, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s eight or ten years
ago, the medications to control its characteristic tremors and physical
rigidities may no longer be providing much relief. Some of those
medications can cause intermittent cognitive impairment. Not surprisingly, therefore, the unnamed U.S.
intelligence briefer told reporters that available evidence suggests that
Castro’s “health remains precarious.”
So if this analysis is
generally correct, how much longer will it be before Fidel’s official
and final abdication? As Cuban
leaders ponder that possibility they should review the text of an important
speech Castro delivered at the University
of Havana in March,
1966. Without naming Mao Tse Tung, Castro denounced him and other elderly
Chinese leaders with whom he was then bitterly at odds. Castro told his student audience that Mao
should step down and pass power to a younger generation of leaders.
That is what he would do when
he grew too old or infirm to govern effectively, Castro suggested.
“When in obedience to biological law we become unable to run this
country, we will know enough to leave our post to other men able to do it
better.”
Fidel was not yet 40 years old
when he said this. He was healthy,
filled with youthful audacity and self-confidence, not imagining that decades
later his criticism of Mao might be turned against him. So, as has been his custom when
delivering such perorations, he reiterated the now incriminating thought to
his audience:
“We hope that all
revolutionaries, as we become old, will be capable of understanding that we
are biologically and lamentably old.”
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Dr. Brian Latell, distinguished Cuba
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.
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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.
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