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Castro Totters Into Retirement But Cuba Remains His Prisoner

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 20, 2008

This week won't mark the end of a disastrous dictatorship in Cuba because reigns of terror don't end quietly, with the dictator easing into retirement with a few dull words of farewell and a yawn from the public.

Quitting after 49 years of ruthless rule, Fidel Castro leaves brother Raul in command, offering little hope that the Cuban police state will relax its iron grip on the people, the press, or the economy. It is time for the Cuban people to rattle their chains and begin the rough transition to joining the free world.

A good starting point would be a healthy dose of competition in Cuban politics. That hope for a transition to freedom was expressed by President Bush and by politicians across the political spectrum.

Imagine the debates the Cuban people would hear if Castro invited his favorite former president, Jimmy Carter, to come to Cuba and oversee free and fair elections. The list of outrages is a speechwriter's dream and on old tyrant's nightmare.

The Cuban economy has languished under state management for longer than most Cubans have been alive. The 1.5 million Cubans and Cuban Americans living in the United States produce more income that the combined efforts of the 11.5 million living in Cuba.

The average Cuban citizen isn't allowed to buy a computer or mobile phone. That's the only way to control a literate population: keep them in the dark.

Castro has locked up advocates of human rights, poets of freedom, and journalists of truth.

Defenders of Castro's communism would try to blame the longstanding U.S. embargo for the nation's poverty, but Cuba is free to trade with other countries in the world. Actually, the United States in a major trade partner, last year selling Cuba $437.5 million in food. Because they live in a nation trapped in welfare, Cubans must get that food through monthly ration cards.

Cuba needs active political parties, labor unions, Internet access, and independent newspapers. In the ranks of repression of the news, Cuban ranks up there with China, Iran and North Korea.

The person with the most cause to fear the power of the press is Castro, whose band of 82 fighters declared war on the Batista regime in 1956 and was soon nearly wiped out.

A New York Times reporter was escorted to the guerillas hiding in the mountains and produced a front-page story that reported Castro promised, "a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist." The story said that "thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro and the new deal for which they think he stands."

Too many people here and around the world still see Castro as a freedom fighter, despite a half century of contradictory evidence.

The transition to freedom would be hurried along if the United States would relax restrictions on tourism. Castro's retirement is a perfect time for the good people of Cuba and this country to get reacquainted with each other and with the truth.

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