2008: A Cuban Odyssey
Currie, Duncan
2008: A Cuban Odyssey What happens when Castro dies? BY DUNCAN CURRIE Coral Gables "DO WE HAVE to put tanks I in the streets?" asks Raul Castro, the new leader of the Cuban Communist party. It...
...Alarcon (former Cuban intelligence analyst Domingo Amuchastegui) warns that any violent action against the dissidents will be interpreted as a sign of weakness...
...A lot is happening, and quickly...
...The audience members ask questions...
...Let us cautiously surround Guantanamo City with all the appropriate security and military forces," Raul says...
...He firmly opposes welcoming any Bush officials—"in just a few months, they'll be out"—and instead suggests inviting U.S...
...In his big speech announcing Fidel's death, Raul recognizes he must give the Cuban people "hope...
...Finally, and perhaps most curiously: What if Raul dies first...
...He notes that perestroika hastened the downfall of the Soviet Union...
...This has been my position for at least the last dozen years...
...Moreover, structural economic changes "do not betray the rev-olution—they fulfill the revolution...
...This insubordination gets Alar-con bounced from the meeting and stripped of his job...
...Alvaro Lopez Miera (portrayed by Jaime Suchlicki, the director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies) is wary of conducting any negotiations with the Bush administration, which has been nakedly hostile to the regime...
...We are not providing any concessions to the Americans," Lopez Miera says bluntly...
...I think there would be a lot of sympathetic reaction" in Congress, predicts Latell...
...We don't need to put them in jail," he argues...
...Riots quickly ensue in Guantanamo City...
...congressmen who have opposed the sanctions...
...Rather than make an official announcement of Fidel's death, Raul orders a dirge to be broadcast around the island, thus alerting Cubans to the news...
...Raul notes that he has occasionally touted the benefits of free market policies and even sent Cuban authorities to study economics at Western universities...
...an indication of uncertainty...
...That's just what Lopez Miera fears...
...No media...
...Few Americans are better informed on that question than Latell, the CIA veteran and Cuba maven whose fascinating study of the Castro regime, After Fidel, was released last October...
...A neat and tidy, Eastern Europe-style democratic transition would of course be preferable to an autocratic succession...
...ed to Parkinson's disease (a reasonable assumption, given recent reports...
...Fidel would be very challenged to govern without Raul," Latell says...
...Now he has formally been named Cuba's presi-dent—and already he's blundered...
...This is one of the few moments when Raul finds himself in sync with Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, the head of Cuba's national assembly since 1993...
...The Guantanamo unrest could in fact be "an economic uprising" rather than "a political challenge to the government...
...Can we refrain from large-scale arrests and detentions of dissidents and human-rights activists...
...State Council vice president Carlos Lage—actually Cuba researcher Eric Driggs—agrees...
...Alarcon says, "This administration is already a lame duck...
...Then maybe we can make a deal with them [over Guantanamo...
...A veteran Politburo member charged with organizational duties, Machado reminds his comrades of the war games of 2007, in which the Communist party, the armed forces, and other state bodies prepped for a nationwide emergency that required immediate coordination against "counterrevolutionary" elements...
...If people see an opening, "there's a possibility that that may happen," says Eric Driggs...
...So, if Raul dies first, "the revolution is then in its very, very last chapter...
...When the (unrehearsed) presentation concludes—at the moment Alarcon is ejected from the meeting for disputing Fidel's funeral details—the audience applauds and the participants step back out of character...
...According to our program, "these were intended to anesthetize the populace and to prepare them for the elaborately planned, month-long funeral celebrations to be held across the island...
...The calculation was that the chances of sudden violent outbursts once Fidel's death was announced would therefore be reduced...
...Remember, it is February 2008...
...We hope that the scenario that we proposed tonight does not happen," affirms Jaime Suchlic-ki...
...he asks...
...Lopez Miera...
...He also shows his pragmatic streak when discussing Cuba's troubled economy...
...I'm concerned that we not overreact...
...sanctions, would America comply...
...This prompts a fierce row between the pragmatists (Raul and Lage) and the hardliners (Alarcon and Gen...
...The U.S...
...But Raul (who's being played by ex-CIA officer Brian Latell) sounds a note of hesitation...
...Each expert played the role of a senior Cuban Politburo official...
...But Gen...
...But at this point, the latter seems far more probable...
...Will Raul eventually liberalize the economy within an authoritarian framework, as in China...
...Raul must make his first crucial decisions—and he's getting some wildly disparate advice...
...Power, my friend, comes from the barrel of a gun...
...Pretty much all the participants assume that Cuba's democracy movement remains tiny and fractious: not even close to toppling a Raul-led regime...
...We need better relations with the Americans," he explains...
...To keep a lid on news of the riots, he adds, Cuba will not tell the American forces stationed at Guantanamo Bay...
...contingent at the funeral, as does Lage...
...Riots have broken out in Guanta-namo City...
...It's important that we don't jump to conclusions," he says...
...And, perhaps most important, "no foreign observers...
...We rehearsed this situation a year ago," declares Jose Ramon Machado Ventura (in the person of former Cuban diplomat Alcib^ades Hidalgo...
...No witnesses...
...In a sharp break with protocol, the Cuban government made no secret of Fidel's failing health...
...Why...
...This was the hypothetical scenario entertained earlier this month at the University of Miami by a group of Cuba experts, including several defectors, in a war-game-like simulated presentation, "Cuba Without Fidel Castro...
...The younger Castro, Cuba's longtime military chief, has convened a meeting of selected Politburo members to discuss the post-Fidel transition...
...Above all, Havana "must not convey...
...Alarcon is skeptical the secret can be maintained...
...Raul, we discover, favors hosting a senior U.S...
...That's a very likely model," says Suchlicki...
...State-run media outlets also aired tributes to El Comandante and extolled his long career of revolutionary passion...
...For well over an hour the participants, sitting at a long conference table in front of two oversized photos of the Castro brothers, squabbled about a host of concerns: the rioters, the dissidents, the Yanquis, the economy, and more...
...At least a hundred people, including a number of media, made up the audience...
...It is just past 6 A.M...
...Interests Section in Havana has requested permission to send a high-level American delegation to Fidel's state funeral...
...Raul later receives Washington's request for seats at the funeral...
...But even before his passing, "he had been unable to appear in public, or to speak intelligibly, since the previous July 26th," when he sat awkwardly through Raul's speech at the annual commemoration of the 1953 Moncada Barracks assault...
...After the Moncada ceremonies, Communist apparatchiks kept Cubans abreast of their leader's condition...
...Raul Castro, Fidel's designated successor, had essentially been running the show since his brother took a turn for the worse...
...We should expect the Democrats to win in November," he counsels...
...Raul calls for improved ties with U.S...
...I do not think providing economic incentives is the way to gain the youth back...
...We cannot have a Tiananmen Square in Cuba," booms Raul...
...Recalling that Fidel went to the scene of the melee during the 1994 riots along Cuba's famous Malecon boardwalk, Raul decides he will trek to Guantanamo and "try personally to calm the rioters...
...Once Fidel dies, will there be widespread reprisal killings among Cubans on the neighborhood level...
...military officials, narcotics officials, immigration officials, and others...
...According to the introduction, Fidel died from complications relatDuncan Currie is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Raul finds the whole conversation "disturbing...
...Just "put them under observation" and "supervise every move they make...
...Would Fidel, he asks, have tolerated such brazen dissent...
...on February 14, 2008, a few hours after the death of Raul's brother Fidel, who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century...
...Ever the hardliner, Lopez Miera scoffs at such thinking...
...he thunders...
...He believes maybe the best chance for a swift transition to Cuban democracy would come if the younger Castro passed away before his older brother...
...The rioters pose a pricklier dilemma...
...It would be the beginning of the end of my government...
...As Brian Latell puts it, citing his own performance in the simulation, Raul is "torn between soft and hard lines...
...It was corruption that destroyed the Soviet Union, not perestroika," Lage fires back...
...Cuba's new boss may not want "tanks in the streets" or "soldiers killing civilians"—but he insists on being ready in case the turmoil spills over...
...But he makes one thing abundantly clear: "I will not be another Gorbachev...
...If Cuba went the Chinese route, and Raul offered to negotiate an end to U.S...
...I will not meet with them," Raul says, but "let them come...
...Let them unilaterally lift the travel ban and the embargo...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 23
