Post-Castro Cuba will see evolution, not revolution: experts

Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s handover of power to his brother Raul is a temporary situation caused by stress and illness, says the Cuban government, but you might not know it on the streets of Miami.

As hundreds of Cuban-Americans took to the streets Sunday night to celebrate what they hope is the beginning of the end for the socialist dictatorship that has ruled the island for the past 47 years, anti-Castro groups, made up mostly of Cuban nationals, were busy mobilizing a new campaign to bring democratic reforms to the country.

“There are people in positions of power in Cuba today who want to bring a transition to democracy to the Cuban people, and they can,” Alfredo Mesa, director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said yesterday.

Mr. Mesa sounded energized as he announced that “anyone in a position of power with a genuine, transparent interest in a peaceful and nonviolent transition to democracy in Cuba has our support, and they are not alone.”

But that thinly-veiled call for an internal Cuban uprising, a goal shared by Washington, is unlikely to come to fruition, say many Cuba observers. In the view of numerous academics, when Fidel Castro dies, power will likely move smoothly to a new, younger generation of leaders in his communist party.

John Kirk, an expert in Cuban-Canadian relations at Dalhousie University, said yesterday that Cuba has been preparing for a long time for this moment.

“There won’t be rivers of blood, there won’t be any uprising. Instead, there has been a promise over the past 10 years of bringing in a younger generation (into government). They are going to form the new Cuba when Fidel Castro dies.”

A fundamental part of that plan was put in place just weeks ago, when Raul Castro was named to a new 12-member executive committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, one that has policy-making powers. Mr. Kirk believes it may not be coincidence that Raul Castro’s new role coincided with a noticeable increase in the past six months of the 75-year-old’s presence on state-run Cuban TV, a phenomenon he believes may be an attempt by the Cuban media to condition the public to a new leader.

The current Cuban government, Mr. Kirk points out, has many allies. The rise of the new left-leaning, anti-American governments such as those of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia have bolstered Castro, but more important, though, may be the economic relations that Cuba has built with foreign powers in recent years.

Chief among those is China, a country that is investing heavily in Cuba’s natural resources, including its large nickel deposits and recently-discovered oil fields.

Canada now has significant vested financial interests in Cuba. According to the U.S.-Cuba Trade Council, a group advocating the opening of Cuba to U.S. business, Canadian investors put $1.8 billion U.S. into the island from 1990 to 1999, more than any other country except Mexico.

Mr. Kirk says heavy investors in Cuba like Canada and China don’t have an interest in promoting regime change in Cuba. “I think they have an interest in maintaining the status quo.”

There is also the issue of Cuba’s surprising popularity among developing countries — surprising, that is, for people who have not been following Cuban foreign policy.

According to Mr. Kirk, more countries voted to put Cuba on the UN’s new human rights council than voted for Canada, a seemingly strange development given that Cuba has more than 70 political prisoners. But, observers say, it’s a phenomenon resulting from Cuba’s enormous efforts to be seen as a hero to developing countries.

“Cuba has 30,000 doctors working for free in the developing world,” Mr. Kirk said.

“The Cubans have got more doctors in the world than the World Health Organization and the G8 countries put together.

“When there was an earthquake in Pakistan last year, Cuba sent doctors and set up 12 hospitals which they then handed over to Pakistan. Compare that to Canada’s DART,” he said, referring to the Canadian Forces’ Disaster Assistance Response Team, which has a staff numbering in the hundreds.

Mr. Kirk holds out hope that the U.S. will change its stance on Cuba.

“I think waiting for an old man to die is a horribly unadventurous foreign policy.”

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro told his people yesterday he was in good spirits and stable after undergoing surgery and temporarily relinquishing power to his brother.

“I can say it is a stable condition, but a real evolution of the state of my health needs time,” Castro said in a statement read out on state television. He did not appear on the screen.

“I am in perfectly good spirits,” he said.

“The most I can say is that the situation will remain stable during many days before a verdict can be given.”

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Calgary Herald
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
The Vancouver Province
Wed, Aug 2, 2006