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Castro Absent from Cuban Festivities
by
findingDulcinea Staff
With his non-appearance at the Revolution Day celebrations, Fidel Castro’s return to power looks less and less likely; analysts suspect that Castro’s chosen successor, despite his leftist reputation, will introduce market reforms.
30-Second Summary
The deterioration in Castro’s health over the past year, and his withdrawal from public life, suggest that his 47-year reign is drawing to a close.
On July 26, 2006, the 80-year-old leader was taken ill a few hours after the Revolution Day celebrations, the annual festivities marking an attack he led on an army barracks in 1959, launching the Cuban Revolution.
Except for an occasional television appearance, he has not been seen in public since falling ill. Now, on the eve of this year’s festivities, the Communist Party has announced that El Commandante will not be present to deliver his customary speech.
Castro has been through a number of operations in recent months to treat what is believed to be diverticulitis, a condition that causes the colon to bleed. One operation is known to have gone badly.
It is increasingly unlikely that he will ever return from semi-retirement.
His brother Raul, 76, is scheduled to take Fidel’s place. Although Raul has long been considered to be further to the political left than Fidel, many contemporary analysts expect that he would introduce market reforms to free up trade.
Until Raul’s succession, Cuba is set to remain in political limbo.
On July 26, 2006, the 80-year-old leader was taken ill a few hours after the Revolution Day celebrations, the annual festivities marking an attack he led on an army barracks in 1959, launching the Cuban Revolution.
Except for an occasional television appearance, he has not been seen in public since falling ill. Now, on the eve of this year’s festivities, the Communist Party has announced that El Commandante will not be present to deliver his customary speech.
Castro has been through a number of operations in recent months to treat what is believed to be diverticulitis, a condition that causes the colon to bleed. One operation is known to have gone badly.
It is increasingly unlikely that he will ever return from semi-retirement.
His brother Raul, 76, is scheduled to take Fidel’s place. Although Raul has long been considered to be further to the political left than Fidel, many contemporary analysts expect that he would introduce market reforms to free up trade.
Until Raul’s succession, Cuba is set to remain in political limbo.
Headline: Cuba in stasis, Castro's nonattendance
Many Cubans expect that Raul will introduce market reforms on assuming power, according to The Associated Press. However, until Fidel Castro stands down or dies, Raul, the caretaker leader at present, is unlikely to make any significant political decisions.
Source: The International Herald Tribune
“Raul Will Speak Tomorrow” declares the headline in the July 25 issue of Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper. This is the first occasion when Castro will not deliver a Revolution Day speech in the province judged to have been most economically and socially successful that year.
Source: Reuters
Reference Material: Castro's column, his illness, and a Cuban overview
A concise BBC overview of Cuba looks at the way this nation of 11.3 million survived the loss of its major sponsor in 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Restrictions on trade were loosened, but those reforms have recently been rolled back, and Fidel Castro has denounced the “new rich.” Cuba has also forged closer relations with Venezuela and China, but the money that Cuban exiles send to the old country remains vital to the economy.
Source: The BBC
Castro has been a prolific writer during his convalescence. As of this time of writing, the Cuban leader is producing a series of articles on the Pan-American Games for the Cuban newspaper Granma. In the latest such piece, Castro derides Cuban athletes who use such international events to seek political asylum: “Betrayal for money is one of the favorite weapons the United States uses to destroy Cuba’s resistance.”
Source: Granma
In January 2007, Spanish newspapers reported that Castro was suffering from diverticulitis. Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN describes the three operations Castro underwent in the course of being treated for an intestinal infection, which developed into perotinitis. Castro now has “a half-liter of fluids actually leaking into his abdominal cavity a day,” says Gupta. “That leads to a severe loss of nutrients [and] loss of muscle mass.”
Source: The International Herald Tribune
Background: Castro's last public appearance
July 26, 2006, was when Castro made his last public appearance. He was speaking at the yearly commemoration of the July 26, 1959, attack on an army barracks in the southern Cuban city of Bayamo, an action that began the July 26 Movement’s campaign that eventually overthrew the Batista regime. As detailed by The Daily Telegraph of London, Castro spoke jokingly last year to assure America that he wouldn’t be running Cuba at age 100.
Source: The Telegraph
Key Players: Fidel and Raul Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro has outlasted nine U.S. presidents, as profiled by the BBC. He came to power in 1959, and two-thirds of Cubans have known no other leader.
Source: The BBC
On July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother Raul while he recuperated from intestinal surgery. A year later, Fidel’s future as Cuba’s autocratic leader remains in question.
Source: The Washington Post
Raul Castro
Fidel Castro’s designated successor is his brother, Raul, a man who converted to communism earlier than Fidel and who has often been thought to be more extreme in his political convictions. According to the BBC profile, however, other students of Cuban politics surmise that Raul might facilitate a transition to a more market-orientated form of communism.
Source: The BBC
Author of a joint biography of the Castro brothers, Brian Latell, writes in August ’06 that should Raul take over from his brother, there will be no rapid transition to democracy. “Raul is more contradictory and emotionally complex than Fidel,” says Latell, “making him less predictable than the older brother the world has come to know so well.”
Source: The Washington Post
Opinion: Cuba's future
Signs that Cuba cannot maintain its current political stasis were discernible in Raul’s Revolution Day speech, writes The Wall Street Journal: “On matters of the economy Raul seemed to break ranks and signal that he knows things cannot go on the way they are. A less sympathetic view is that the speech was crafted to calm down a population at the breaking point due to privation.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal (registration may be required)
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