As one of the few American students who managed, despite pain-in-the-ass Treasury Department regulations, to spend a semester studying in Cuba, I put my time to good use asking everybody I met, "What on earth is going to happen when Fidel dies?” During my four months at the University of Havana, I assaulted students, professors, taxi drivers, girls in clubs, and strangers on the street.
The answers I received ranged from “I would rather not stick around to find out,” to the more common “No es fácil” (It ain’t easy) - typically followed by a forlorn headshake and a rambling discourse on the various factions within the National Assembly or some similarly depressing theme.
One professor said to me during a conversation after class: “How can you as a foreigner understand Cuba when we don’t understand it ourselves?” She went on, “Why do hundreds of thousands turn out for marches they don’t care about? Why do we all speak one way about the government in our homes and another way in our offices and on the street? There is no hope for you.”
And yet I keep trying.
Don’t be fooled by people who tell you that they know exactly what will happen when the Máximo Líder ends his career as the world’s longest reigning head of state. One thing is certain however: even Castro cannot suspend biology.
The problem for pundits is that, by design, the Cuban system renders impossible the political forecasting that we practice in the United States. Public opinion polls are illegal and rank-and-file Cubans are prohibited from owning all practical methods of information dissemination.
These and other methods of social control certainly annoy the more politically aware Cubans I encountered, but not everyone is as “counterrevolutionary” as some Americans seem to believe. I heard dozens of Cubans exclaim, “You don’t have to like Fidel, but you can’t help but respect him.” To many, he is still a hero, a liberator, a larger-than-life, imperialist-dog-stomping badass.
He is admired as much as he is feared, and this is why he can hold on to power.
Fidel holds back the various fights that could flare up over differences of ideology or class on the island. When he is gone, there is no telling what factions will emerge. In the end, there will be no choice but some sort of market opening, however controlled and limited it might be. The official economy is badly broken, and the black market has stepped in to fill the significant gap between monthly rations and the necessities of life.
As it stands, the extent of the informal economy in Havana is astounding considering the vigorous official discouragement. Professionals and educated people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the inverted wage structure that dramatically favors black marketeers, the tourism sector, and farm workers while leaving doctors and engineers to subsist on the scraps.
One important point for Americans to consider when trying to imagine a post-Castro Cuba is the perception on the part of many Cubans that free universal health care and education, the core promises of Castro’s government, are every bit as important as the freedoms of speech and press enjoyed by residents of the United States. Any party that attacks these "rights" will be wildly unpopular in Cuba, at least in the immediate aftermath of Castro’s departure.
This statist bias is reinforced by the powerful nationalism that pervades the island. Cubans are deeply committed to self-determination regardless of their feelings about the current activities of their government. Cubans of all political stripes view the U.S. embargo as nothing short of economic war whose implied goal is re-colonization, not liberation.
Remember, we did attempt to invade the island during the lifetime of many Cubans. Americans should not believe that the U.S. Government will exert the sort of influence seen in post-Soviet Eastern Europe as Cuba undergoes its transition from Castro.
In fact, a high-profile U.S. government presence during the transition in Cuba could endanger reforms because conservative elements would be able to paint progressive Cubans as U.S. stooges, just as they have since 1959. If we forget about this history, the knee-jerk rejection of U.S. backed policies may doom real reform.
Cubans have no desire to go back to the 1950’s when Americans interests ruled Cuba and the streets of Havana were lined with casinos and hookers instead of clinics and bureaucrats.
