Why Castroism will die with Castro

Carlos Alberto Montaner

(FIRMAS PRESS) With Fidel Castro at age 80, ill and close to death, the essential factor is not when he will disappear but what will happen afterward. Will the dictatorship remain in place without the Comandante? Probably not; all the conditions are there for a change to begin. Here I list eight very important ones.

With his ponderous weight, Fidel Castro has crushed all the institutions in the country. The Communist Party is a hollow shell, inhabited by automatons who decades ago lost their devotion and revolutionary mystique. The National Assembly of the People's Power (Parliament), known as “The Havana Boys Choir,” is a parrot cage where a discordant note has never been heard. The mass organizations (labor unions, women's and students' federations, etc.) represent not its members but the political police that controls them.

The leading class is totally demoralized and secretly desires profound changes. As intelligent people, after all, and after half a century of a failed exercise of power, the people at the top know they defend a universally detested cause. That's what they hear from their children, siblings and spouses in the privacy of their homes. Many of their relatives have left because they can't stand such a disastrous regime. The leaders know that today they are not the protagonists of a heroic feat, as they saw themselves at the start of the revolution, but the inept managers of a hated and feared dictatorship.

Half a century of material failure is far too long a period. Authoritarian collectivism has plunged Cuba into misery. Despite having in his hands all the strings of power, the longest government in the history of the West has turned into martyrdom the most basic problems of society: drinking water, food, housing, transportation, electricity and communications. Simultaneously, it has accomplished the amazing countermiracle of decimating Cuba's centenary sugar industry to the point that its production levels today are those of 1905.

The “achievements” of the revolution have become the grimmest evidence yet against the system, as well as a source of frustration. How is it possible that an educated and healthy population lives in such a miserable manner? Didn't we agree that human capital is the key to prosperity? Why does that arbitrary and dogmatic State, clinging stubbornly to an absurd system, prevent Cubans from creating wealth with their labor and enjoying the fruits of their labor? There is no one more dissatisfied and desirous of changes than an engineer, a woman doctor or a teacher needlessly sentenced to poverty and an absence of hope.

Cuba, situated in the heart of the free world, cannot remain permanently as the anachronistic exception of a utopia that was buried more than 15 years ago. Communism was a 20th-Century nightmare that left 100 million dead and a third of the planet mired in poverty and terror. The Cubans (including pro-Castro Cubans) are not unaware that all of Eastern Europe today is happier and more prosperous than before 1989, a fact that is proven by the scant support for old-line Stalinists at the ballot box. They also know that the Chinese and the Vietnamese are rapidly distancing themselves from the Marxist superstitions and are reviving the market and private property.

There is life beyond communism. The Cuban “revolutionaries” not only have all the incentives needed to change but also have learned that the old communists -- unless guilty of horrendous crimes -- can be recycled within democratic political structures, as has happened in Poland, Slovenia and Russia, and remain in power or regain it via the ballot box and popular support, as long as they respect the freedoms. They already know that the end of the dictatorship does not mean a personal catastrophe for them but the start of a new and promising stage.

A democratic opposition exists, inside Cuba and abroad, that can be a partner to transition. With the passing of years, the pain and the experience, a democratic opposition has developed inside Cuba and abroad that, once Fidel Castro disappears, is willing to foster a peaceful transition to freedom, working out conditions and timetables with the reform-minded sectors of government.

The United States does not wish to annex Cuba, but to contribute copiously so a democratic government and an economic system capable of generating a growing prosperity can be installed in Cuba. All Cubans know -- and that's a great incentive to stimulate transition -- that the United States will contribute its economic might to stabilize the situation on the island and make Cubans see an immediate, substantial improvement in their standard of living, so they may be discouraged from emigrating illegally to the United States. With democracy, economic freedom and the rule of law, in the course of one generation Cuba will stand -- along with Chile, Argentina and Uruguay -- at the head of Latin America, as it did before 1959. [©FIRMAS PRESS]

August 17, 2006

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