Cuba Libre

For nearly three generations of communists, socialists, revolutionaries and romantics, Fidel Castro of Cuba has been a political icon. His liberation of Cuba in 1959 from the Batista regime, which incidentally was supported by Cuban communists, acquired a larger-than-life significance in the annals of the 20th century. Nationalist first, Castro turned communist and aligned with the Soviet Union. His policies at home rapidly improved education and health standards and ended endemic corruption.

But it was his defiance of the US which turned against him the two along with the USSR were involved in the world8217;s real and only nuclear crisis in 1962 and his support to revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa that produced the Castro cult which refuses to die even as mortality begins to catch up with an aging autocrat. All cults, even the most endearing and global ones, take their toll. Cubans, who have never been asked to give their consent for Castro8217;s one-man rule for nearly half a century or for his international adventurism, have been paying dearly.

The initial gains from the Cuban revolution soon turned into economic and political oppression. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which massively subsidised the Cuban economy, Castro found other allies in China and the new Latin populists like Venezuela8217;s Hugo Chavez. A host of others, like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, embraced Cuba to demonstrate their independence from the US. After all, the Castro cult was more about persistent anti-American and anti-hegemonic sentiment around the world than Cuba itself. The new international enthusiasm for Castro has brought little relief for Cubans. The economic reforms of the early 8217;90s have largely been reversed except in the tourism sector. Cuba has had enough of one-man rule. It deserves to be spared the prospect of the dying dictator being succeeded by his hard-line brother. What Cuba needs is another revolution that promises political and economic rejuvenation to a people whose famed zest for life might turn out to be more enduring than five decades of Castro.