"Castro's Final Hour" strikes again in Miami Herald

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Miami Herald column -- by a writer for the Spanish-language and much more
extremist antiCuba El Nuevo Herald, owned by the Herald -- proclaims once
again "Castro's final hour" and calls for stepped up subversions and
assassination of the "tyrant."  Note  the fantasies that other government
officials will now have to topple Castro, paralleling the Miami Herald's
fantasy of the onetime revolutionary and later drug-dealer, businessman, and
all-around traitor Ochoa as wildly popular among the army and the people.
Fred Feldman

May 14, 2003, Wednesday

SECTION: COMMENTARY

KR-ACC-NO: K1018

LENGTH: 744 words

HEADLINE: Final chapter of Cuba's tragedy

BYLINE: By Andres Reynaldo

BODY:
They say that Xerxes I ordered his men to give the sea 300 lashes after
waves destroyed a huge boat bridge that he devised to invade Greece. I
wonder how many of the Persian generals around him thought, with bitter
embarrassment, that they were led by an imbecile. Eventually, after bloody
repressions and failed conquests, the despot was assassinated.

Stories like this serve to convince us that tyrannies always carry within
them a self-destructive germ of madness. Oppression does not take reality
into account.

Thousands of years later, that rule prevails. Don't we already see in
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez the signs of a future tragedy?

In Cuba, we witness the final chapter of an ancient drama. It's written on
the face of its protagonists. The ministers and generals who listened April
25 as Fidel Castro rambled on national television may be opportunists (some
may not) or fearful (all are), but I doubt that they are suicidal. Their
leader is tossing them down the cliff.

We have reached a point of no return. The governing team can no longer wait
for a change, lest it become an accessory to an international crisis of
catastrophic consequences for the island.

Castro obviously wants to provoke a confrontation with the United States.
Inscrutable though his motives may be, one thing is clear: He's not going to
give up power.

In him we see one of those brutal egotists, blinded by their own image and
lacking in affect, who will sacrifice family, homeland and reputation so
long as their own shoes don't get splashed.

No modern tyrant has enjoyed such a broad opportunity to negotiate a
bloodless, even honorable, departure. People have proposed dialogues of all
colors and solutions with all guarantees. To all these people, Castro has
lied. He has been too clever by half.

Now he has placed himself in a no-win situation. Times will be rough for him
if the Americans strike him. And if they don't strike him, times will be
rougher.

Without resources or guarantors, facing a popular explosion, confronted by a
Washington administration that won't tolerate an exodus and won't hold back
if challenged, what path can the dictatorship take that won't lead to a
collapse of Cuba's economy and society?

Hamstrung and corrupted though Cuban leaders may be, doesn't the government
apparatus retain a remnant of logic to evaluate the danger? Is there no
minister or general capable of saying out-loud what everyone whispers in
secret? Is Cuba such a morally and spiritually poisoned wasteland that
leaders and followers cannot envision any hope other than an invasion by the
United States?

If in the days to come these questions have no answer, this much will be
certain: The survival of the governing team will hinge, not on a post-Castro
transition, but on an anti-Castro transition.

To save their skins, they'll have to dispose of the comandante.

Recent events have brought substantial gains, however. International public
opinion has come to the healthy realization that the U.S. embargo and the
totalitarian repression are independent from each other. Castro's propaganda
has suffered a mortal blow. In a matter of hours, the doors of world
solidarity for political prisoners and Cuba's opposition have burst wide
open.

Many respectable voices from the left and the center, although opposed to
Washington's policy toward Cuba, have denounced the dictatorship. Belatedly,
but legitimately.

In Miami this time, we're playing with clear heads. Let's proceed with our
denunciations, increase our help to the dissidents and brake the
provocations wrought in the heat of enthusiasm. Let's allow events on the
island to flow at their own speed.

This is not the moment to propose dialogues or to fire shots. If dialogue is
called for, there's an opposition movement in Cuban that has earned moral
authority by taking the dictatorship head on.

And if anyone decides to pull the trigger, let him do so in the Palace of
the Revolution. In the roiling river of our history, freedom has gone
fishing.

___

Andres Reynaldo is a columnist for El Nuevo Herald.



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