Book offers look at Raul-Fidel alliance

Posted on Thu, Oct. 27, 2005

CUBA
Book offers look at Raúl-Fidel alliance

BY MARIFELI PEREZ-STABLE
marifeli@starpower.net

We'll be talking about him long after he's gone. He doesn't know when to
let go and we, in turn, can't let go of him. I try my darnest not to
mention him -- that's really the most stinging dart -- but, sometimes,
Fidel Castro must be named.

After Fidel is Brian Latell's newly published book on Castro. A 35-year
CIA veteran, Latell-- now retired -- knows el Comandante well, and it
shows, page after page. The book is excellent: for the author's
sometimes disarming honesty, always crisp prose and judicious
psychological profile of his subject. Actually, subjects: Fidel and Raúl
Castro are the protagonists, albeit the elder is ever dominant.

Latell's central claim -- that, from the start, Raúl was as
indispensable as Fidel -- may not be so controversial. But, if Raúl
outlives his brother, the regime might not necessarily go poof! after
the wake. Succession could be a reality, for a while. What kind of
leader would Raúl be? Cruel and implacable? Forgiving and generous?
Latell gives the ''gentler'' Raúl slightly better than even chances of
prevailing. After Fidel is full of instances of Raúl's two sides, one of
the reasons it is a must read.

The Castro brothers were outsiders. In the early 20th century, Oriente
-- their birthplace -- was Cuba's frontier. Patriarch Angel Castro
towered over his brood, fathering Fidel and six other children with Lina
Ruz before marrying her. Violent and unpredictable, Angel favored Fidel
and scorned Raúl who, perhaps, was not even his son.

Outsiderdom left different marks on Fidel and Raúl: in one, supreme
self-confidence, merciless imperiousness and chilly detachment; in the
other, an awareness of his limitations, for which he compensated by
often ruthless order, Spartan discipline and un flinching submission to
Fidel in public while nurturing caring relations in his private life.
Mirror images, the brothers.

That they are orientales highlights the long-standing tensions between
Oriente and Havana. The East defied Spain as the West wavered. Later,
habaneros prospered while orientales languished. After 1959, the gaping
differences narrowed but have glaringly reemerged in the past 15 years.
Havana's policemen -- disproportionately orientales -- are known as
palestinos, a term meant to denigrate. Just last week, youths from
Oriente descended on Havana gas stations in a tragicomic attempt to
stanch the black-market flow. After Fidel, who knows how regional
dynamics might play out?

The Castro brothers are also the product of a violent Cuban past. The
War of 1895 -- the second against Spain to wrest independence -- was a
most brutal affair. The Liberation Army handily dispensed ''justice''
against real or imagined traitors and collaborators. During the war,
deaths -- from combat, disease, hunger and Spanish concentration camps
-- were higher relative to population than in the U.S. Civil War.

In 1912, the army crushed a black uprising in Oriente by going on a
murderous rampage that took the lives of some 5,000 blacks. Today we'd
call it ethnic cleansing. Political violence flourished from the 1930s
through the 1950s.

Nothing justifies the violence of the past 47 years. Yet, if Cuba's
future is to bring peace, we must come to terms with our past. Soviet
tanks didn't bring us the revolution: Fidel and Raúl are ours. Cuban
history also has strands of civility, compromise and democracy that we
must rescue and enthrone. The Constitution of 1940 is our shining moment
of political inclusion.

Today's opposition offers light and courage against a regime that needs
darkness and fear. Many within official Cuba will eventually step out
into the sunshine to broker a transition. That's the road map if we want
a truly new Cuba.

Fidel is certain that history will absolve him. I'm not -- and still
we'll be talking about him. Raúl is another story. Might he not be the
first to sigh in relief upon his brother's passing?

Having lived in his shadow, might he not seize the opportunity to go
down in history independently? Just a possibility, I know, but if Raúl
does set the stage for a peaceful transition, history would not totally
damn him. Sibling justice, if you will, for Raúl would then have helped
us all to let go of Fidel.

Marifeli Pérez-Stable is vice president for democratic governance at the
Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C.

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