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Fidel exits on his own terms

Ellis Henican

February 20, 2008

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The beard is sparser than it used to be. The olive fatigues sometimes give way to a red Adidas running suit. It's been years now since a stadium full of Cubanos sat in rapt attention while Comandante en jefe spoke for seven hours straight.

Fidel Castro hardly ever comes out in public any more. But the 81-year-old Cuban dictator had three fresh reasons to smile yesterday.

1. He's easing out on his own terms, 2. at a time of his own choosing, 3. with his own little brother ready to be installed in his place.

And what do we have to show for nearly half a century of official U.S. hostility to Castro regime?

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Que lastimá!

The Bay of Pigs fiasco, some ineptly exploding cigars, the "Mariel boatlift" of prisoners and mental patients, among others, and a Marxist-Leninist government off the coast of Florida whose grip is as tight today as it's ever been.

And all of this was achieved while the Soviet Union crumbled, the Berlin Wall fell, the people of Eastern Europe were breathing free and even China was becoming economically liberalized.

Thank God the Cuba desk at the State Department wasn't handling Soviet relations. They'd still be singing the "Internationale" in Red Square.

Whatever we did in Cuba we must never do again.

In the end, advancing age and inflamed intestines did what nine U.S. presidents could not - nudge Fidel Castro toward retirement.

"I neither will aspire to, nor will I accept, the position of president of the Council of State and commander-in-chief," he wrote yesterday on the Web site of the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma. "It would betray my conscience to take up a responsibility that requires mobility and total commitment that I am not in physical condition to offer."

But stubbornness has a way of producing further stubbornness. And Washington was giving no hints of flexibility yesterday.

Asked whether Castro's power transfer portends an end to the 46-year-old U.S. embargo, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte just shook his head. "I can't imagine that happening any time soon," he said.

No wonder John McCain says we should be ready for 100 more years in Iraq!

Since the 1960s, stubborn talk about Cuba has been good politics in the United States, as Republicans and Democrats pandered to the close-knit community of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. They can still sway elections in South Florida, North Jersey and maybe another place or two.

And they got a lot to show for their cohesiveness and high voter turnout. The 1962 embargo, forbidding American trade and tourism. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996, further tightening the restrictions. President Clinton's decree in 1999 forbidding the foreign subsidiaries of American companies from trading with Cuba.

Each one of these policies had a grand-sounding name. (The Cuban Democracy Act, the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act.) Each was designed to "bring democracy to the Cuban people." Each had precisely the opposite effect.

Every time Congress tightened the embargo - or souped up the signal at anti-Castro Radio Marti - the Cuban president would make another rousing speech against yanqui imperialism - and a toss a few dozen more political prisoners in jail.

In Cuban neighborhoods across America, news of Castro's decision was greeted with a cheer, but a subdued one.

"What joy!" said Alicia Gonzalez, sitting in a cafeteria in the heavily Cuban suburb of Hialeah, Fla., waiting for the rain to stop. "It's a move toward some escape."

"Hopefully, it's one step closer to democracy," said Jose Perez, told a reporter while eating with his brother, Rafael, at the El Artesano restaurant in Union City.

But on streets in Union City and Hialeah, on Calle Ocho in Miami's Little Havana, there were no reports of parades or parties or street fairs - just a few blinking car lights and a couple of honking horns.

Everyone remembered how, in 2006, the ailing Cuban president temporarily handed over power to his brother, Raúl - and Cuban-Americans danced all night.

They woke up the next morning, and nothing had changed at all.

It was the same old Cuban stalemate.

They won't change, so we won't change, so they won't change - so here the both of us are.