Was Fidel Good for Cuba?

Communism Has Failed Cuba

By Carlos Alberto Montaner

After nearly 50 years of suffering under Fidel Castro's regime, Cubans can now realistically prepare for life after El Comandante. As of this writing, the 80-year-old Castro is very ill, if not completely incapacitated. When he dies, will the communist regime he created back in 1959 survive? Or will the country be transformed into a pluralist democracy, equipped with a market-based economic system and the existence of private property, as was the case with almost all of the communist Eastern Bloc dictatorships after the fall of the Soviet Union?

I predict the latter. In the Americas, at the turn of the 21st century, a dictatorship where human rights are not respected, which has more than 300 political prisoners -- including 48 young people for collecting signatures for a referendum, 23 journalists for writing articles about the regime, and 18 librarians for loaning forbidden books -- cannot be sustained. Fidel Castro's death will be the starting point for a series of political and economic changes similar to those that occurred in Europe. Here's why.

First, Castro's leadership is nontransferable. He is a strongman who has personally exercised power for almost half a century. Although his ideology is communism, he is from the same anthropological stock as Spain's Francisco Franco or the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo: the authoritarian military man. This type of authority, based as it is on a combination of fear and respect, cannot be handed down. It's true that Castro's brother, Raúl, has been hand-picked as the successor. But, at 75, his age is also a liability -- as is his alcoholism and lack of charisma. In short, he fails to inspire the kind of loyalty that his brother has. In all likelihood, Raúl will simply play a transitional role between the communist dictatorship and the arrival of democracy.

Second, the Cuban people know that the system Castro created has failed. Every day, they must reckon with the realization that communism has aggravated all of Cuba's basic material problems to the point of desperation. Food, housing, drinking water, transportation, electricity, communications, and clothing are wants that cannot be compensated for by an extensive but very poor educational and health system. Paradoxically, even the revolution’s achievements incriminate the regime. The fact that Cuba has a reasonably educated population fosters the society's desire for change and its dissatisfaction with a system bent on having the immense majority of Cubans live miserably. No one is more anxious to abandon egalitarian collectivism than the legion of engineers, doctors, technicians, and teachers forced to live without the slightest hope of betterment. These educated and frustrated Cubans will attempt to press for reform within the communist institutions, or even outside of them.

Third, Cuba must eventually face up to history. The country cannot continue as an anachronistic, collectivist, communist dictatorship in a world where Marxism has been competely discredited. Cuba belongs to Western civilization. It is part of Latin America, and it makes no sense for its government to keep the country isolated from its surroundings, its roots, and its natural evolution any longer. After all, the dictatorships of Latin America, both on the left (like Velasco Alvarado in Peru) and on the right (Augusto Pinochet and the military regimes in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay), were all replaced by governments legitimized at the ballot box.

Lastly, the reformists know that change is not only possible, it is desirable. Cuban leaders, especially those younger than Fidel and his brother Raúl's generation, realize that they are not heroes in a tale of romantic exploits, but the promoters of an absurd system from which everyone escapes who can. And, at the same time, they know, from having watched it in Eastern Europe, there is life after communism. They have all the moral and material incentives to contribute to change. I predict a peaceful change based on agreement between the regime's reformists and opposition democrats both on and off the island.

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