Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 10:48:49 AM
The media is fluttering with news that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has retired. That may be the rhetoric he has spouted, but anyone who knows anything about Communist political regimes knows that dictators such as Castro don't really retire. As long as he is lucid, Castro will still pull the strings from behind the curtain. No policies will be enacted by the Cuban regime without his blessing. Anyone who expects democratization and other substantive political or economic reforms to occur while Fidel is alive is sadly mistaken.
This supposed announcement is a good time to review Castro's nearly half century in power. This is a man who combined Marxist-Leninist ideology with a Hispanic caudillo's personality cult. For the first thirty years of his rule, Castro proved to be an incompetent economic manager who's country only survived due to generous infusions of Soviet aid. Since the Soviet Union's decline, Castro has made some economic reforms to promote tourism to attract gullible leftist imbeciles who want to spend their money propping up his regime which still holds a remarkable and pathetically attractive romantic image in their brain dead cells. He has also been aided by economic assistance provided by his Venezuelan ideological kindred spirit Hugo Chavez who thinks aiding a like-minded leftist demagogue is more important than enacting policies to improve the lives of Venezuelans.
Sadly, some U.S. conservatives have succumbed to the notion that we should trade with Castro. Many farm state conservatives see Cuba as an export market for U.S. grain and have deluded themselves into thinking that U.S. exports will result in more democratization for Cuba. Castro's appeal is especially prominent in some sectors of academe. A Political Science professor at the university where I work is a major devotee of Castro and his sordid regime. I would not be surprised if this professor has a secular shrine to Castro in his home that he kneels before every day. It's particularly sad that so many college students are indoctrinated with the belief that Castro is a misunderstood progressive reformer instead of a sadistic Communist dictator who has impoverished and repressed his own people and sought to export Marxist tyranny to countries as diverse as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Angola, and Ethiopia. The mythology of Castro's regime lives on in the presence of young people wearing tshirts of Castro's gangster compadre Che Guevara who was opposed to every form of freedom such young people supposedly believe in. Guevara, fortunately, got his just desserts in Bolivia and we can still hope Cubans will give Castro a similar fate and be inspired by how the Romanians treated the Ceausescus.
Yet, the Castro mythology lives on. Many deluded liberals now think Castro's younger brother Raul will deliver liberal reform for Cuba or that he is the Cuban Gorbachev who will promote glasnost and perestroika. Raul Castro is a beneficiary of the system that brought Fidel Castro to power and sustained him in power against all opposition for nearly five decades. It's absolute stupidity to think he will change the system that gave him such power! Maybe, after the Castros croak, possibilities for improvements in Cuba will occur but don't hold your breath waiting for it. The Cuban people have been brainwashed living under Communism for all these years and it will take time for the spell of Castro and Marxism-Lenism to dissipate from their island country. There will also be fierce resistance from Castro's apparatchiks who have become entrenched in power and will fight like the devils they are to prevent any diminshing of their status and perks and seeing their revolutionary vision become "contaminated" by free-market economics and genuine and accountable republican governance.