Well, maybe not. But after four decades, the Cuban dictator has shown one quality above all: an uncanny instinct for power and survival. Castro has defied every challenge to his rule, from the Bay of Pigs invasion and other CIA-sponsored plots to the United States trade embargo and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s key ally. As one of the world’s most enduring leaders–and one of only four communist rulers still in power–he has bedeviled nine U.S. presidents so far. At 72, Castro is showing signs of age. His beard is grayer, his cheeks are thinner and his hands occasionally seem to tremble. But his grip on power has never been firmer, and he seems in no hurry to figure out ““when it’s time to leave.’’ Yet many Cubans wonder: what is left of the revolution besides the instinct to survive?
Castro’s government did its best to celebrate its 40th anniversary last week, but there was little of the enthusiasm that greeted the barbudos when they rode down from the mountains in 1959. Communist youngsters around the country re-enacted–using blanks– the final battlefield victories that swept Castro’s rebel army to power after its two-year guerrilla war. The government buried the remains of a revered guerrilla heroine who had fought alongside Ernesto (Che) Guevara, while Granma, the communist daily, plastered its pages with congratulatory letters from Pope John Paul II, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian leader Boris Yeltsin. Castro capped off the week on Friday by delivering a speech in the same Santiago plaza where he first declared victory 40 years ago. The Cuban president, displaying his usual verbosity and vitality, criticized the ““theology of the market,’’ warned that his revolution was ““just beginning’’ and urged Cubans not to lose faith in the socialist system.
But faith, like many other things in Cuba these days, is in short supply. For some Cubans, especially exiles in Miami, Castro has always been a coldblooded tyrant who has killed or jailed his enemies to preserve his absolute power. U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American and distant Castro relative, said: ““This is an anniversary of blood and tears and shame and totalitarianism.’’ On the island itself, Castro is still widely admired as a patriot who resisted U.S. bullying and tried to create a more equitable society. Still, the withering impact of the economic crisis has dampened the enthusiasm of even Castro’s most fervent followers. ““I love Fidel,’’ said a schoolteacher in the poor Havana suburb of Parraga recently. ““But we can’t live off the past. For all of our ideals, we spend most of our time now inventing ways to make it through the day.''
In a world of shortages, everything must be ““invented’’: meals, jobs, transportation, entertainment. But what Cubans often forget is that Castro’s regime has been defined by inventive plots on both sides of the Straits of Florida. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961, when 2,600 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba only to be overwhelmed by Castro’s tipped-off troops, was just the start. According to CIA documents declassified in 1998, American spies dreamed up assassination plots against Castro using poison cigars, toxic wet suits, exploding seashells and Mafia hit men; they also considered launching a fake terror campaign in Miami or an attack on a civilian airplane to justify military intervention in Cuba. None of the plans worked, of course, but Castro still loves to highlight them in books, museums and conferences. One title in the market in Old Havana’s Plaza de Armas is ““The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1962.''
Castro has even been able to turn economic adversity to his advantage. When Washington first imposed the trade embargo 37 years ago, it was meant to cripple Cuba’s capacity to export revolution and to hike the costs of the Soviet empire. In some ways, it worked. But now that the cold war is over and Cuba has opened up to the world, the sanctions have lost their effectiveness. The United States is virtually alone on this issue: last year the United Nations voted 143 to 3 in favor of a resolution asking Washington to lift the embargo. The irony is that the embargo, while sharpening Cuba’s economic crisis, is helping Castro survive politically. The Cuban leader still uses ““Yanqui aggression’’ to justify everything from the hobbled economy to his absolute control over the media.
Nearly a decade ago, as the Soviet bloc began to collapse, pundits predicted that Castro wouldn’t last long. And who could argue? The Cuban economy sank more than 40 percent between 1991 and 1994; dissidents became more vocal, and thousands of Cuban rafters threw themselves into the Straits of Florida. But once again, Castro maneuvered to ensure his survival. He cracked down hard on internal dissent, even executing one popular army general in 1989 after charging him with drug trafficking. He also accepted stopgap solutions he had once deemed evil: foreign tourism and investment, the legalization of the U.S. dollar and a limited number of ““self-employed’’ workers. Today, relying mainly on tourism, sugar exports and cash remittances from abroad, the Cuban economy is staying afloat (1.2 percent growth in 1998). And Castro, a man without serious rivals, is staying in control.
But at what price? The Cuban revolution resonated so strongly around Latin America because it was a homegrown movement inspired by lofty goals, promises and ideals. Today most of those are gone. Cuba has made significant advances in health and education: infant-mortality, life-expectancy and literacy rates are among the best in the world. But the economy has been so devastated that Cuban officials say it will be another five years before it can return to 1985 levels. As Cubans scramble desperately to make ends meet, often resorting to the black market in food, merchandise and sex, a kind of moral rot has set in. Corruption, crime, prostitution–the vices of the old system–have all returned. Castro blames it on capitalism. ““We used to live in a glass bowl, sanitary and pure,’’ he said last October. ““And now we’re surrounded by viruses, the bacteria of alienation and egoism that the capitalist system creates.’’ But for many Cubans, the festivities last week only served as a reminder that the man they greeted so deliriously 40 years ago is still in power–even as the world moves on.
