Rallying Cuba, post-Castro

Island's revolutionary faithful include a crop of younger men and women who have no memories of life before Castro

By Oakland Ross / Feature writer
03/15/06 - Toronto Star

The new face of the Cuban revolution wears scholarly eye glasses, sports a trim moustache in place of a beard, speaks excellent English - and wasn't around on Jan. 1, 1959, when Fidel Castro seized power.
Granted, Carlos Amores Balbín had a pretty good excuse for being away that day. He wasn't born yet. In fact, he did not make an appearance until more than seven years later, on June 4, 1966.

Now the director of publicity and information for the Cuban foreign ministry, Amores is set to celebrate his 40th birthday this spring. Meanwhile, the grey-bearded and rather stooped-looking Castro will turn 80 in August.
You might think the two men would have nothing whatever in common, but it seems they do - a crazy little thing called communism.
"The fact is, except for Fidel and a couple of others, most of the leading people in Cuba are from another generation," Amores told the Toronto Star yesterday. "Cuba has already changed."

The island is still communist, however, and Amores believes it is going to stay that way, with or without Castro to call the shots. Never mind that communism has been roundly discredited in just about every other corner of the globe. In Cuba, people subscribe to the old ways still - or some people do. They include Raúl Castro, the current ruler's younger brother and designated successor. Now in his late 70s, Raúl would be unlikely to govern for very long.

Meanwhile, the island's revolutionary faithful now include a crop of younger men and women, like Amores, who have no memories of life before Castro because they weren't born yet. Now, they are assuming positions of power, thereby preparing the way for what Amores foresees as a smooth transition to the looming post-Castro era.
"I would draw a line that continues after Fidel," he said. "I don't see a dramatic change."
It's safe to say, however, that a lot of people feel otherwise - some in Cuba and many in the United States. They are convinced the creaking edifice of the Cuban revolution will come crashing earthward soon after Castro draws his final draught of the salty Caribbean air.

In fact, the George W. Bush administration in Washington has already made elaborate plans for filling the power vacuum many expect to open in Havana almost as soon as Castro is gone.
"They have said so," said Amores, who believes Washington will be able to achieve a regime-change in Havana only by military intervention. "The only thing they could do is invade Cuba. They couldn't do anything else."
The Cuban conceded, however, that keeping the political system intact will not be easy, not without Castro's legendary magnetism and his personal authority to keep everyone in line. "The difference is, we won't have the personal wisdom of Fidel," he said. "We will have to depend on ourselves."

During a 90-minute meeting at the Star yesterday, the Cuban bureaucrat also extolled his country's humanitarian record, boasted about a new exportable literacy program developed by Cuba's ministry of education, suggested that Canadians are perhaps too modest for their own good, and welcomed a trend toward left-leaning governments in Latin America.
Currently, Havana has teams of medical doctors working for free in more than 70 different countries around the world, he said. "We don't receive anything in return."
Meanwhile, he said, a new Cuban literacy program has been used in other countries, including Venezuela, where 1.5 million adults have gained basic reading and writing skills after only a few months' study. As a result, the South American country recently declared itself illiteracy-free. The same educational package is being used as far away as New Zealand, to teach Maori people to read and write in their own language.

Although Canada is among Cuba's leading trading partners and its principal source of tourists, the northern country does not enjoy as high a profile among ordinary Cubans as do many European or Latin American nations.
"Maybe the Canadians are a little bit shy," Amores said.
An official from the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa suggested Canadian tourists also tend to favour isolated beach resorts in areas such as Varadero or Holguín over urban destinations such as Havana or Santiago. As a result, they have only limited contact with Cuban people.

Predictably, Amores expressed satisfaction with a spate of recent elections that have installed leftist governments in a succession of Latin American capitals formerly ruled by conservatives.

"It's a much better situation for Cuba," he said, "and a much more complicated scenario for the United States."