The end of an era

Posted on Sun, Dec. 10, 2006

FIDEL CASTRO
The end of an era
BY BRIAN LATELL
iccas@miami.edu

Perhaps only Fidel Castro's most fanatical followers truly expected him
to appear during his belated 80th birthday celebrations on Dec. 2 in
Havana. Fewer still expected him to be strong enough to deliver a
speech. There is perhaps nothing he would have liked to do more. But
what would the man who has spoken more words on the public record than
any political figure in history have said that day?

Recent rumors that he is experiencing a deathbed religious catharsis,
possibly even repenting and recanting, seem wildly improbable. He has
never been known as an adult to have confessed to morally indefensible
behavior or admitted to regrets about his treatment of others. All his
life he has been incapable of introspection in the presence of
witnesses. So if he were to rally sufficiently to deliver another
oration. it would most likely resemble his two most recent ones.

Castro's speeches on July 26 -- the first delivered at dawn in Bayamo,
in eastern Cuba, and the second, more perfunctory one a few hours later
in Holguin -- are likely to be recorded as his last. He was already
gravely ill on that 53rd anniversary of the Moncada attack and was
operated on the next day.

Near Sierra Maestra

Raúl Castro, or some third tier leader, could have substituted for him
at the podium. But perhaps Fidel knew that his condition was so acute
that he might not have another chance to preside on his favorite
revolutionary holiday. He had personally selected Bayamo, near the
Sierra Maestra where he had fought as a guerrilla, to host the
observances. He wanted to be with the humble guajiros (peasant farmer)
of the eastern countryside, back possibly for the last time in that
remote region where he had spent his troubled youth, where he had also
both pejoratively and affectionately been called guajiro.

It was in the early morning when he walked slowly to take a seat at the
front of a crowd assembled downtown. On cue, thousands of little paper
Cuban flags began to flutter in greeting, waved by an otherwise subdued
audience. It was about 7 a.m. Many had come a long way, from mountain
hamlets and crossroads villages, bussed in by local Communist Party
bosses over rough roads in the middle of the night.

The Cuban media said that 100,000 were there in the spacious Plaza de la
Patria. Politburo members and top civilian and military leaders were
also in attendance in a show of solidarity, but Raúl was not present. He
was no doubt preoccupied with organizing the military and security
forces that would be deployed and ready for any eventuality once Fidel's
condition was revealed to the populace.

The sun was just beginning to rise when Castro began speaking. In
earlier years, it had been more common for him to conclude speeches in
the early morning hours near sunrise, but he and his doctors knew he had
to avoid the summer heat that day. Reading from a prepared text, he
boasted of accomplishments in health, education and construction. But
his recounting of excruciating statistical details was in a passionless
monotone.

He said nothing memorable or at all revealing of his state of mind in
those moments of personal anguish, suspecting that the speeches that day
might well be his last.

Unlike many of his previous July 26 appearances, there was no
reminiscing about his triumphal revolutionary feats, no boasting of
victories against ''imperialism.'' He criticized the United States and
capitalism, but vaguely and with no real feeling. He went through some
bouts of coughing, sipped tea, and once became annoyed that the crowd
was not waving their little flags energetically enough.

''It is good exercise,'' he told them, ``so keep on waving them.''

Castro talked for almost 2 ½ hours. That speech, and the shorter one a
few hours later in Holguin, were sodden rhetorical anticlimaxes to the
nearly six decades of his remarkable public performances. His audience
in Bayamo was tired and sullen. There was nothing he said that rallied
or inspired the people or raised new

hopes for a better day. They

were merely going through

the motions with him.

Unyielding, implacable

He announced no new

policies or initiatives, shared

no new visions or hopes and

in fact did not speak at all

about the future. He gave perhaps a single hint of his deteriorating
condition, the only sentence he spoke that day that was both personal
and uncharacteristically reflective.

``I will fight for the rest of my life, until the last second, as long
as I have the use of my reason, to do something good, something useful.''

But now, more than four months later, he is near death, no longer in
control of his revolution.

And not surprisingly, in what may have been his last public utterances,
Fidel Castro was as unyielding, implacable and unchastened as ever in
his long career. He might just as well have said again, ``History will
absolve me.''

Brian Latell is a senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban
and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami. He is the author
of the recently released After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's
Regime and Cuba's Next Leader.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16197573.htm