Fidel Castro: The Last Titan

Dayan JAYATILLEKA

CHANGE: Three dramatic, developing stories seize the attention of the public today; the Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon, the health of Fidel Castro and running a very distant third, the renewed fighting in Sri Lanka.

The first two divide the world. People everywhere are divided between those who support and oppose the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon, as well as those who are gladdened and saddened by the ill-health and absence from public view of Fidel Castro.

A far smaller segment of world opinion would be divided between those who support either the Sri Lankan armed forces or the Tamil Tigers in the ongoing battle.

On the first two issues there is a large degree of overlap: those who oppose the Israeli attack and those who wish Fidel Castro well seem to be the same people, while those who are celebrating Fidel's illness are also those who applaud Israeli aggression.

The US administration and those who support it ideologically take the same stand on both issues.

It is an indication of the complexity of the Sri Lankan case that the polarisation does not hold: the stand one takes on the issues of the Middle East and Cuba are not necessarily an indicator of one's stand on the Sri Lankan conflict, and vice versa.

How you feel depend on, and will therefore reveal, which values you hold most dearly.

At the time of writing Cuban TV has quoted Fidel as saying that he feels fine after his operation (for gastro-intestinal bleeding).

No footage of him has been shown as yet. Fidel has beaten the odds, cheated death and recovered from setbacks so often in a period of over half a century that it would be very much in character for him to survive and recover from the surgery, despite his advanced age.

He is to turn 80 on August 13 and has requested that celebrations be postponed until December 2 which would be the 50th anniversary of the landing of the boat 'Granma' with him, Raul, Che Guevara and 79 others on the shores of Cuba.

For that reason December 2nd is also commemorated as the founding date of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba.

Fidel has temporarily handed over power to his brother, Defence Minister Raul Castro. This is no act of nepotism. Raul was Fidel's first recruit to the cause of liberation, and participated in the unsuccessful assault on the Moncada barracks in 1953.

He recalls that in the early 1950s it was Fidel who introduced him to Marxism, gave him a copy of the Communist Manifesto and explained it to him.

Raul served with Fidel as a political prisoner after the abortive Moncada attack. Released from prison on an amnesty, Fidel and Raul went to Mexico to prepare for the next stage of the struggle.

There another Cuban rebel Nico Lopez introduced Raul to a young Argentinean doctor and Marxist, Ernesto Guevara. It was Raul who introduced Guevara to Fidel.

Raul landed with Fidel on the shores of Cuba on December 02, 1956 and was one of the handful (legend says twelve) of the original 82 who survived the devastating attack by Batista's air force and army.

While fighting in the Sierra Maestra mountains it is Raul who was the first to be hived-off from the main guerrilla encampment under Fidel and given a guerrilla column of his own with its separate zone of operation.

He distinguished himself in that area by organising the liberated zone, stimulating economic activities and laying out an airstrip.

In a recent book on Raul Castro titled After Fidel, the CIA's most experienced Cuba hand, Brian Latell credits Raul as being the man who made Fidel's ideas and strategy concretely realisable by being a brilliant organiser, disciplinarian and manager.

While Fidel was the leader, strategist and sometimes tactician of the Cuban armed forces, which Latell says were as good - and perhaps even better - than those of Israel, it was Raul who made that 'miracle' possible by his organisational and managerial genius.

Latell argues that Raul, far from being doctrinaire or dogmatist, has been a backer of the realistic reforms that Cuba has embarked upon since 1991. Reading the book one gets the impression of a Chu Deh, Peng De Huai or Deng Tsiao Peng.

Raul has always been Fidel's designated successor and is a logical one. No one understands Fidel's ideas more than Raul, and no one has been educated for longer at Fidel's side and by Fidel's example, than he.

He symbolises continuity of the Cuban revolution, stability of the revolutionary state, and political determination to defend that revolution from external threat and internal subversion.

While the Cuban community in Miami is ecstatic, believing that Fidel's illness and possible absence brings their day closer, the evidence points to the contrary. Going by all news reports there is a stark contrast between the scenes of exultation in Miami and the widespread mood, sombre, hopeful, stoic, in Cuba.

There is also a glaring gap between the reactions in Miami and those in the rest of Latin America. Whatever the outcome of Fidel's health crisis, the repugnant scenes in Miami have widened the moral gulf between native and rightwing ,migr, Cubans, and between the latter and the rest of Latin America.

Whatever the mirages of transition pursued by the White House, Fidel's illness makes the reclaiming of Havana by Miami less not more likely.

In his Cuba: A New History, a work that is rather critical of Fidel Castro, Richard Gott, veteran commentator on Latin America, author of a standard work on the region's guerrilla movements and one of those who identified Che Guevara's body in Bolivia, concludes with an unconventional observation, namely that the post Castro transition had already taken place:

'Personally I expect little change in the years ahead, or even when Castro dies. Cuba has already been governed for several years by a post-Castro government. Raul Castro runs the armed forces today as he has done since 1959.

Ricardo Alarcon at the national assembly is the country's political guru, aware of shifts in public opinion as well as a long serving and expert negotiator with the United States. Carlos Lage is the prime minister and controller of the country's economy.

Felipe Perez Roque is a sure hand at foreign affairs, sustaining Cuba's extraordinary worldwide support. This is a more than competent team that could run the affairs of any country at any time, as one admiring western ambassador explained to me.

Castro himself is now largely absent from the scene. Forty years ago, he was everywhere: on television every night, in the newspapers every day, and, if you were lucky, he might turn up at your hotel.

Cuba never indulged in a soviet style cult of the personality, but almost nothing happened without his say-so, and his enthusiasms became those of the country. Today he has become an emeritus president, an elder statesman, and the machinery of government turn without his hand on the tiller.

He remains a figure from all our yesterdays, grey bearded but eternally youthful like an ageing rock star. He does not run the country, but he resides over a government that is his creation.

He has changed his slogan from 'socialism or death', suitable for the violent twentieth century, to 'a better world is possible', appropriate for the more pacific revolutionaries of a new era. When he dies, there will be little change in Cuba. While few people have been looking, the change has already taken place."

Thus the collective mood in Cuba today, the fervent hopes and wishes for Fidel's recovery, does not stem from any political or administrative uncertainty but from authentic emotional attachment to Fidel, who is to the Bush White House and the Miami Cubans, the last tyrant, but to a majority of Cubans, Latin Americans and people of goodwill the world over, The Last Titan.