For all its drama, Cuban President Fidel Castro’s announcement early Tuesday that his 49-year rule has come to an end is unlikely to bring significant political or economic changes to the Western Hemisphere’s only communist nation, nor is it likely to change U.S. policy.
After defying 10 U.S. presidents and an American economic embargo that spanned most of five decades, Castro is a singular figure in Cuban history and the only leader most of the island’s 11 million residents have ever known.
But experts say the 81-year-old Castro has wielded little actual power since July 2006, when he underwent emergency intestinal surgery and turned over the reins of government to his younger brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, and a cadre of top Communist Party officials. He has not appeared in public since.
Tuesday’s announcement, made in the form of a letter published in the state newspaper Granma, formalized what has long been known on the island: Cuba is in the hands of Raul Castro and other loyalists who are likely to implement modest steps to ease Cubans’ daily hardships but not the dramatic reforms that could threaten the country’s stability and the Communist Party’s grip on power.
“It would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer,” Fidel Castro wrote. “I say this devoid of all drama. Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process.”
A new president is scheduled to be chosen Sunday by the National Assembly. Most experts believe Raul Castro, long Fidel’s heir apparent, will be selected.
“It is obviously a historic moment,” said Frank Mora, a professor and expert on the Cuban military at the National War College in Washington, D.C. “Now the ball is in Raul’s court. There have to be gradual, targeted reforms to deal with the expectations that he and his people have raised. Raul Castro and the governing elites understand the dangers of going too far too fast. It’s all driven by politics. It’s driven by regime survival.”
Nor, experts said, was Castro’s resignation likely to bring a dramatic shift in U.S. policy. For nearly 50 years, Washington has sought to isolate Cuba politically and economically in an effort to push the country toward democracy. The Helms-Burton Act passed in 1996 allows U.S. sanctions to be eased only if Cuban authorities meet a series of conditions, including the release of political prisoners and the holding of multiparty elections. President Bush has tightened trade and travel sanctions during his presidency.
Bush calls for democracy
Speaking at a news conference in Rwanda during a five-country African trip, Bush urged the international community to work with Cubans to start building institutions necessary for democracy.
“Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections, and I mean free and I mean fair,” Bush said. “Not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy.”
None of the leading U.S. presidential candidates appears likely to change Cuba policy significantly. Democratic front-runners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton issued statements calling for a peaceful democratic transition but held back on suggesting a lifting of the embargo.
Obama, who has advocated easing U.S. restrictions on travel by Cuban-Americans to Cuba and the amount of money they can send to relatives, called for the prompt release of Cuba’s estimated 230 political prisoners, saying that Castro’s stepping down “is sadly insufficient in bringing freedom to Cuba.”
Clinton promised that she would push “an active policy that does everything possible to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and opportunity in Cuba.”
Republican presidential front-runner John McCain, who has sparred with Castro over the senator’s contention that a Cuban agent tortured American prisoners of war in Vietnam, called Castro’s departure “a great opportunity” for Cuba to begin a transition to democracy.
But he said the U.S. should withhold aid until free elections were held and political prisoners released. “I fear … that any assistance that came in earlier than that might serve to prop up a new regime or Raul or whoever it is that wants to take Castro’s place,” McCain said.
Cuban leaders bristle at suggestions they need to scrap or modify the nation’s one-party political system as a condition for improving relations with Washington. They argue that Cuba’s governance is an internal matter.
Experts say lifting U.S. sanctions would boost the Cuban economy immediately. But it could deprive Cuban authorities of a convenient scapegoat for the island’s economic troubles and make it more difficult to maintain political control in the face of a likely influx of American businesses and tourists.
“On balance, I do think they want the embargo lifted,” said William LeoGrande, a Latin America expert and dean of American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington. “The economic benefit outweighs the potential costs.”
Since ceding power, Castro has met sporadically with visiting world leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and written frequent essays on various topics that are published in Granma and other state-run media. In a letter read on state television in December, he said he did not intend to cling to power and wanted to make way for a new generation of leaders.
The announcement of his resignation comes only five days before the Cuban National Assembly, the country’s parliament, is scheduled to select the 31-member Council of State, Cuba’s top policymaking body. On Sunday, legislators also are expected to choose the Council of State’s next president, a position held by Fidel Castro since 1976.
The Council of State president is the nation’s head of state. Castro also served as Cuba’s commander in chief.
Though LeoGrande and other analysts said Raul Castro is the odds-on favorite to replace his brother, another possible candidate is Vice President Carlos Lage Davila, a 56-year-old physician, technocrat and economic expert.
Like Raul Castro, Lage is considered a pragmatist who championed limited market reforms in the 1990s that are credited with helping the Cuban economy pull out of a tailspin after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then Cuba’s main benefactor. Since Fidel Castro’s ceding of power, Lage’s profile has risen and he has been acting as a de facto prime minister.
“Lage has a chance. But if I had to bet, I’d bet on Raul,” said Philip Peters, a Cuba expert and vice president at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank.
While Raul Castro is less well known than his older brother outside of Cuba, the 76-year-old defense minister has long been the nation’s second-most powerful official and an indispensable figure in the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
A guerrilla commander during those days, Raul Castro is known as an exacting leader who shuns the spotlight and demands efficiency. While Fidel Castro is renowned for long-winded speeches and all-night strategy sessions, Raul Castro is a man of few words who arrives at meetings on time, sets a clear agenda and gets quickly to the point.
Raul consolidated power
During his 18 months as interim leader, Raul Castro has appointed key allies to political, military and economic positions to solidify his control in the post-Fidel era, experts said.
While pushing aside young ideologues promoted by Fidel, Raul Castro has publicly acknowledged the shortcomings of Cuba’s centralized economic system and said “structural” reforms are needed to improve Cubans’ standard of living.
Raul Castro also has allowed government-organized forums in which Cubans openly expressed frustration over living conditions and government restrictions that prevent most of them from accessing the Internet or traveling abroad.
Cubans receive free health care, education and other benefits, but they earn on average about $20 a month, and monthly government food rations often last only 10 days. Cubans must make up the difference by shopping at expensive markets. Putting enough food on the table is a daily concern.
Public transportation, housing and underemployment also remain leading challenges.
While Raul Castro has acted cautiously as interim president, he recently doubled and tripled the prices paid for meat, milk and other products to farmers to increase food production.
Some Cuban officials also have recently spoken of distributing vast tracts of idle farmland, and they reportedly are seeking foreign agricultural investment from Latin America and Europe.
Still, there is little indication that Raul Castro is contemplating the sort of capitalist-style reforms transforming China, or opening Cuba’s one-party political system to permit opposition.
“Only socialism can overcome the difficulties and preserve the conquests of almost a half-century of Revolution,” Raul Castro said in a December speech to legislators.
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Castro led island nation for nearly half a century
Fidel Castro’s 49-year rule over Cuba included what amounted to a miniature cold war between his country and the United States that spanned 10 American presidencies.
REVOLUTIONARY RISE
July 26, 1953: Forces led by Fidel Castro move against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista with an attack on a military barracks in the city of Santiago de Cuba. Castro is captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
1955: Castro is released from prison and moves to Mexico, where he and his brother Raul form the 26th of July Movement, a revolutionary group of Cuban exiles.
December 1956: Castro’s forces return to Cuba and establish a base in southeast Cuba. Their rebellion begins to pick up supporters.
Jan. 1, 1959: Batista flees Cuba; Castro’s rebels take power.
TAKING ON THE U.S.
June 1960: Cuba nationalizes U.S.-owned oil refineries. Nearly all other U.S. businesses are expropriated by October.
October 1960: Washington bans exports to Cuba, other than food and medicine.
Jan. 3, 1961: The U.S. government breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
April 16, 1961: Castro declares Cuba a socialist state.
April 17, 1961: About 1,300 Cuban exiles supported by the CIA invade at the Bay of Pigs; the attack collapses two days later.
Feb. 7, 1962: Washington bans Cuban imports.
October 1962: President John Kennedy blockades Cuba to force the removal of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles; the Soviets acquiesce and Kennedy privately agrees not to invade Cuba.
July 1972: Cuba joins Comecon, the Soviet-led economic bloc.
April 1980: A refugee crisis starts at the Mariel port as Cuba says it will let anyone leave; 125,000 flee by the end of September.
October 1983: To curtail Cuban influence on the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, the U.S. sends in troops, overthrowing Grenada’s Marxist government.
CUBA SINCE THE COLD WAR
December 1991: The Soviet Union?s collapse ends exten- sive aid to and trade with Cuba, whose economic output plunges 35 percent by 1994.
October 1997: Castro reaffirms his younger brother Raul as his successor.
June 23, 2001: Castro faints briefly while giving a speech, stunning Cubans and forcing many to accept his eventual mortality for the first time.
March 18, 2003: The Cuban government announces a crackdown on dissidents it accuses of working with U.S. officials to undermine its socialist system. Seventy-five of Castro’s most vocal critics ultimately are sentenced to prison terms ranging from 6 to 28 years.
Oct. 20, 2004: Castro trips and falls after a speech, shattering his left kneecap and breaking his right arm.
July 31, 2006: Castro temporarily cedes most of his titles to Raul Castro after suffering an “intestinal crisis” that requires surgery.
Feb. 19, 2008: Fidel Castro announces his resignation as president of Cuba.
SOURCES: Tribune news services, World Book encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, U.S. State Department, Tribune archives
TRIBUNE GRAPHIC – – –
Longest-serving leaders
Fidel Castro is stepping down as the world’s longest-serving national leader (excluding monarchs). Other veterans:
Omar Bongo of Gabon: Ascended to the presidency Dec. 2, 1967, after his predecessor’s death. Faces little political opposition in West African nation of 1.5 million.
Moammar Gadhafi of Libya: Took power through a Sept. 1, 1969, military coup in the North African nation of 6 million .
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of Maldives: Became president Nov. 11, 1978, in the Indian Ocean island nation of 370,000.
Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea: Seized power in the West African nation of 500,000 in Aug. 3, 1979, coup.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola: Took power Sept. 21, 1979, after winning election under one-party system then governing the southern Africa nation of 12 million.
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe: Only leader of nation of 12 million since independence from Britain on April 18, 1980.
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt: Became president of nation of 80 million on Oct. 14, 1981, after assassination of Anwar Sadat.
– Associated Press
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gmarx@tribune.com
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About the reporter
Gary Marx, the Tribune’s Havana correspondent from 2002 to 2007, won the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2007 for his coverage of Cuba.
