POLITICS-CUBA: Castro Turns 72 Amidst Talk of Assassination Plot

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 12 1998 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro turns 72 Thursday amidst talk of yet another assassination plot.

Castro, who seems to disregard “bad omens,” has been in power in this Caribbean island nation since January 1959, in spite of an ongoing U.S. offensive against his government, the collapse of European socialism, the worst economic crisis since the triumph of the revolution and any number of assassination plots and attempts on his life.

The latest was unveiled Sunday by the Miami Herald, which reported an aborted plan by Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles to kill Castro during his visit to the Dominican Republic scheduled for Aug. 20-22.

Posada Carriles has been identified as the mastermind of a 30- year campaign of bombings and violence against Cuba, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane which killed 73 people and 12 explosions in Havana last year, one of which claimed the life of an Italian tourist.

“The plan was to kill him (Castro) any way we could: explosives on the road, grenades in a meeting, shots in the street – we would have strangled him if necessary,” said one of those implicated in the plot reported by the Miami Herald.

Castro plans to visit the Dominican Republic this month as part of a series of visits throughout the region which took him to three neighbouring islands late last month and is aimed at restoring Cuba’s ties to the rest of the Caribbean.

Born in 1926 in the eastern Cuban town of Biran, Castro studied at a Jesuit school, graduated as a lawyer, headed a guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra mountains against dictator Fulgencio Batista who had taken power in 1952 through a coup, and marched triumphantly into Havana on Jan. 1, 1959.

In 1994 he told Tomas Borge, a founder of Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), that he wished that “others could do his work.” But he added that he would always be ready to act as long as his companions needed him.

Close associates say Castro has no plans to abandon his posts as president of the councils of state and ministers, top secretary of the Communist Party and commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

The last seven years of the charismatic leader’s life have been marked by the collapse of socialism in Europe and the country’s need to survive at any price.

In 1990 Cubans began to see their living standards plunge and social inequities emerge, while the government admitted it had committed economic errors. But they also witnessed the government’s efforts to preserve “the conquests of the revolution” in health, education and other areas.

The crisis exacerbated the division in Cuba between those who love Castro, those who justify his actions arguing that he is unaware of the gross errors committed, and those who blame him for everything.

Dissidence is illegal in Cuba, although clandestine groups exist. There is also the case of influential opponent Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which advocates a transition to democracy with Castro in power.

Although there are no statistics measuring popular support for the government, official sources say 98.35 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in January’s presidential and provincial elections, while only 3.36 percent of ballots were blank. (A blank vote is interpreted by analysts as opposition to Cuba’s single- party electoral system).

Cuba seems to be slowly pulling out of the crisis, with 4.5 percent growth in the first quarter of the year. But the incipient recovery has been based on reforms that have upset many leaders, such as opening up to foreign capital, increased tolerance of private initiative, self-employment as an alternative to unemployment, the creation of taxes and a dual U.S. dollar-Cuban peso economy.

Observers point out that growing interest in the Cuban market among foreign investors, mainly from Canada, Spain, France, China, Russia and Mexico, in spite of U.S. dissuasive pressure, has also contributed to economic recovery.

The Helms-Burton law, which stiffened the nearly four decade- long U.S. blockade against Cuba, seems to have actually pleased Castro, who has survived eight U.S. administrations, by tipping the scales of world opinion in favour of Cuba in the conflict with Washington.

Nor was the United States able to block Cuba’s victory in the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which in April voted down a resolution against the Caribbean country sponsored by Washington since 1991.

In the past few months, the U.S. government has eased sanctions by re-authorising direct charter flights from Miami to Cuba, money remittances to relatives in Cuba and shipments of humanitarian aid, while expediting sales of medicine and medical equipment and allowing Cuban aircraft to overfly U.S. territory.

But Washington is opposed to Cuba’s reinsertion in the Caribbean, and has even threatened to cut off economic aid to countries in the region that open their doors to Cuba.

Castro, meanwhile, has launched a global offensive in favour of “socialist globalisation,” arguing that the world needs globalisation but of the kind proposed by the creators of Marxism, based on development of the productive forces.

“What the U.S. wants is to dominate the world, make its currency universal, dominate air and shipping routes, commercial chains and TV networks, telecommunications and the cinema,” Castro maintains, while urging Latin American and Caribbean governments to foster regional integration as the only way to survive amidst a globalisation process that he likened to the law of gravity.

This “socialist globalisation,” like the foreign debt in the late 1970s, seems to be one of the chief concerns today of a man obsessed with his aims, who refuses to admit defeat under any circumstances.

Reknowned Colombian writer and Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Castro’s personal friend, wrote in 1988 that “whereever he is, however he is and whoever he’s with, Fidel Castro is there to win.”

Castro himself corroborated those words in 1990, when Cuba’s future was more uncertain than ever, declaring that “if one day I’m told I’ll be left all alone defending the ideas of socialism, I’ll keep fighting.”