Fidel Castro: A living legend


In celebrating President Fidel Castro, revolutionary leader of Cuba for nearly five decades, we hope to accomplish two tasks. One is paying tribute to a living legend who forged a nation for his people, gave them a sense of nationhood and a nationist consciousness and preserved the very essence of the Cuban spirit.

It is important to state here that the Madiba, Nelson Mandela, lives on to enjoy a well-earned heroic eulogy from his people, all Africans and the world; Fidel Castro is another world leader who should be draped in garlands across the world by all those who cherish true heroism and enduring sacrifice from a leader who gave his all to endow his people and all struggling peoples of the world with the possibilities of the human spirit, that dare.

In spite of the travails he and his country suffered, partly because of geographical mis-location—a stone-throw from the United States and its neo-colonial subjection-effort—aegis of protracted colonial subjugation under Spain and a nauseating and harrowing predation from parasitic native men of power, the last of whom was Batista, whom Castro and his revolutionary army routed in January, 1959—Fidel Castro clutched to the ideals of nationalism which fired his revolutionary spirit, and which set aside his communist vision and praxis from the Western European type.

He has stepped down from power, voluntarily and with assured legacy for his people and veritable lessons for the rest of the Third World. His tenacity of purpose, his commitment to the enduring sustenance of the independence of his country in the face of foreign and imperial menace through decades of economic embargo, CIA-organised invasion at the historic Bay of Pigs, numerous assassination attempts, may have led to his justified authoritarianism which has been over-popularized by Washington.

He no doubt built a country in the harshest of climes and super-power persecution, that he has every reason to feel proud about it, in retirement. He is leaving an enviable legacy of a nearly 100 per centum literacy level for his country, world class health facilities and a proud, though materially constrained nation. He hands over power to his closest ally and brother, Raul, who had taken over the reins of governance since 2006 when Castro took ill. He has also given the indication that he will embrace some kind of market economy reforms.

As Fidel retires, there are a number of conjectures as to what will happen to his revolution and his legacy on both the political and economic fronts. One of the key postulations is that economic reforms will gradually take place under a firm grip of the communist political ideology that Castro and his party have deeply entrenched in the nation’s body politic. The fact that Raul sounds reformist should not lead anyone into the simplistic conclusion that Castro’s communist revolution will crumble instanta.

There has been a certain insipid cultural revolution that has taken place in the past 50 years and the majority of the Cuban populace has known only Fidel Castro and his revolution. In spite of the alleged censorship, Fidel has built a musical and cinematic industry for his country that has the potential, in a liberalized economy, to transform Cuba into the hub of cultural tourism in Latin America and sustain some of the core values of his revolution. Cuba has gone through hardship and absence of leisure. But majority of Cubans have come to value the integrity and indomitability of the Cuban spirit which Castro has sown among his people. Reform will be gradual, as this proposal avers, but it will be a creeping capitalism under a communist political control. Raul, we must remember, may be a delegator but he is certainly not a liberal democrat. He has been a young communist when Fidel Castro was evolving as a leftist and a nationalist. He ran Castro’s army after the revolution.

He is turning over farms to farmers, carrying out infrastructural reforms in the area of transport, creating more tourist space and opportunities near American bases, giving companies more operational liberties and so on. Yet, there is caution in the air that change may enhance inequality and brew class antagonism and discontent of a different kind than the opponents attribute to Fidel Castro’s centralized governance. Thus the ‘structural and conceptual changes’ which Raul talks about may be slow in coming. In any case, Raul lacks the oratory and charisma of his brother, and he may have to work through power devolution and greater bureaucracy.

The second proposition is that the departure of Fidel Castro from central government (he is still the First Secretary of the party) will immediately lead to the collapse of communism and the swift rise of liberal democracy. This must be the eager dream of Washington. This is the view which attributes the character of Cuban politics and its economy to the personality of Fidel Castro. This is the perception that locates Fidel Castro as a myth that can be trapped in a bottle. It is the kind of mentality that gave rise to regime change in Iraq through the removal of Saddam Hussein!
See where we are!!

Whatever changes may be forth-coming in ‘new’ Cuba, a lot will depend on how the traditional antagonists of Cuba read the nation’s social barometer, post-Fidel. Will America woo and lure Raul and the Communist Party in the hope that Castro’s communist system will be hastened to its grave? Will they in pursuance of that agenda rapidly drop the economic embargo on the country? No simple option should be anticipated. The Communist Party has survived decades of embargo and it will surely be mere wishful thinking to imagine that simply because Fidel Castro has left the driver’s seat, the pinch of embargo will force the regime to go down on its knees clutching to the straws of market mechanism, wily nilly.

Fidel Castro’s dogged love and committed vision for his country; the Third World and his leadership role among the Non-aligned nations of the world are veritable lessons for all those who aspire towards statesmanship—to lead selflessly and by example. Fidel Castro outlasted ten American presidents and their economic embargo, all of them. The present contenders from both parties do not sound any different about Cuba, not even the Democrats among them.
It will certainly not diminish the world to begin to take a positive view of Fidel Castro’s country, as the legend gives over power after an illustrious aegis of five decades.

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Isnt it typical Republican? Always sticking their noses in other people's bidness if he doesnt take time he might die before Castro

Well Castro is dead now, Nothing happens

Bastard John McCain eventually got his brain eaten up by cancer. May shango strike his corpses with a trillion maggots. Ogun kill John McCain again, again and again