Cubans have remained eerily quiet since hearing of the serious illness of President Fidel Castro. Most of the country's population has not known a government other than the communist regime under Castro and his brother Raul, who appears to have made the transition from eternal deputy to clear successor, after taking the reins of power due to Fidel's illness.
For many people in the last communist state in the Western world, there is little reason to celebrate the announcement. While the seriousness of Castro's condition is unclear, those who remain loyal to the regime are anxious because they fear the end may be near, while the rest feel insecure because they do not know whether or not this is the long-awaited moment that will lead to a new beginning. "Everything is going to stay like he has meant it to," said Angel Rodriguez, a petrol station attendant in the southern port of Trinidad. "We are doing well. But there should still be changes, that is of course the point of revolutions."
The supposedly temporary ceding of power by a man who for half a century determined the thoughts, actions and destinies of his people, sparked a rumour-mill in Havana as soon as the announcement was made. Among its products was the possibility that Fidel might already be dead, or alternatively that the whole thing is in fact just a practice run for the power transfer which will eventually have to take place.
Publicist Reinaldo Escobar considers this to be the beginning of "Fidelism," a phenomenon he says will spread through Cuba once Fidel Castro dies and his acolytes rise to power.
According to official announcements, the Cuban leader has only transferred power to his brother on a temporary basis. This means that Fidel Castro, who turns 80 on August 13, counts on recovering and returning to office. "Do we really want that?," many people in the largest island in the Antilles are asking themselves. Many already regard the revolutionary leader, for all his achievements, as a historical figure. Every morning thousands of people wait at crossroads in villages and towns, or under the bridges of national roads, for an inadequate public transport to get them to work, school, shops or markets. It is obvious that they long for improvements in their lives and the meeting of their most basic needs.
Even the regime's critics see Raul Castro and the men around him as Cuba's only current option without Fidel. "We hope that this means an opening of the country," said dissident Manuel Cuesta Murua, of the Arco Progresista group. The Cuban Catholic Church, currently the only other power besides the regime that is present in all parts of the country, also speaks of a transition with Raul.
European economists believe in the possibility of piecemeal reforms, without fundamental changes to the underlying system, in a Cuba after Fidel Castro.
Castro's life has been dominated by a deep-running dispute with the United States, even beyond the demise of the former Soviet Union. The small island nation in the Caribbean survived the collapse of the world wide communist system led by Moscow, to which Castro had adhered. The economic troubles that resulted from post-Soviet era isolation left Cuba close to catastrophe in the 1990s. Fidel Castro managed to survive this crisis, just as he had previously withstood conspiracies and assassination attempts and the corrosive effects of Washington's decades-long economic blockade.
In the current year, his 80th birth year, he appeared firm and uncontested at the head of the state. But he also began to prepare Cuba, at home and abroad, for the period that is to follow his death. A few weeks ago, Castro reformed the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and put new people from the country's provinces in key positions. The party must be, according to Castro, his real successor after the death of its leader. Venezuela stepped in to fill the void left by the Soviet Union as the island's closest ally. Castro went about building, together with the fifth-largest crude-oil exporter in the world, a Latin American front against the United States. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez provides oil money, while Cuba provides human resources, in the services of well-trained doctors, teachers - and the guiding light of the dedicated revolutionary, now ill.
Castro was born on August 13, 1926 in the East Cuban town of Biran, the son of a Spanish immigrant. He attended a Jesuit school and studied law at the University of Havana. However, he did not go on to become a solicitor serving the poor country's small, wealthy elite but quite the opposite. He became a revolutionary who undertook the political and social transformation of his country. His first attempt was a failure. In 1953, Castro and his comrades stormed the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, in an effort to trigger a popular uprising against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro was condemned to 15 years in prison, but he received an amnesty after 22 months. At the end of 1956 he returned to Cuba from exile in Mexico and fought a guerrilla war against Batista that in 1959 succeeded in provoking a change of government. Castro then set about reforming Cuba along socialist principles, just 150 kilometres off shore of the world's largest foe of communism, the United States.
Washington put in place the economic blockade as a reaction for the nationalisation of US property. In response, Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union that was to remain alive for almost three decades. In the 1990s, the regime introduced some economic reforms, then pulled back some of them. Dissidents were persecuted and brutally jailed without trial, and Castro resisted firmly all demands for greater political opening and free elections. The fight against the United States - portrayed as a David and Goliath struggle in Havana - dominated the life of this Cuban revolutionary. If he was making a public speech, he rarely missed a chance to attack the northern enemy and accuse Washington of being responsible for economic hardship in Cuba.
At the beginning of this year, the dispute took a bizarre turn. A furious Castro ordered that 138 huge masts with black flags and stars be erected before the US representation in Havana. They were meant to block from view a sign in one of the upper floors of the building which broadcast information on human rights.
DPA
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