The Monster is Bigger than Fidel Castro

cubans fear the monster. the monster has many heads. just because one head is out of the game for a while doesn't mean the others aren't alert.

says the Chicago Tribune:

Despite the absence of Cuba's leaders, the fear and uncertainty that gripped people here immediately after Fidel Castro's announcement that he had undergone complicated surgery have been replaced by calm and a sense, even among government critics, that the island's socialist system may survive even if the president doesn't. Full Story.

if the writer truly understood Cubaland, he would have said "particularly among government critics." why? well, they have the most to lose.

one must have lived in the monster to understand. the real questions were "will the hammer come down with Fidel gone and Raul taking over? will there be waves of preventive arrests?will there be anti-Fidel sentiments expressed, leading to outsized repressive measures?

in short, the question was, will things get worse?

for now, at least, things appear to NOT be getting worse, quite a welcomed change in Cuba, where things have been getting steadily worse for the past 50 years.

says a Cuban woman in the Tribune interview:

"I am afraid. Now you don't know the consequences of your actions, you don't know ... if there are new rules."

better the monster you know than the monster you don't know.

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another piece of the puzzle is Raul Castro's reputation with the Cuban people. right or wrong, Raul is seen as an impulsive, ruthless enforcer, his big brother's "hatchet man."

Fidel, on the other hand, is seen as the voice of reason, the well intentioned but over-stretched leader who has to step in to fix the problems created by less brilliant officials (including his own brother). this is all a myth, of course, but it has served Fidel well as a dictator.

with Fidel out of the picture and Raul, the "hatchet man" stepping in, Cubans were understandably nervous in the context of their perceptions.

the reality is much more complex. Raul is in fact a rather skilled manager, and Cuba's Army (FAR in Spanish, for Revolutionary Armed Forces) is the best-run institution in Cuba. for almost 10 years now, the Army has run and managed tourism in Cuba. they have done such a good job, that tourism has supplanted every other form of income for Cuba except monetary remittances from relatives abroad.

and why would the Army run tourism? (can you imagine the Pentagon managing the Hilton chain of hotels?)

well... in Cuba, hard-currency means power. and tourism means hard currency.

and that's why the Cuban Army runs Cubaland's golf courses and beach-side resorts.