03-24-06,9:42am
Fidel Castro’s physical demise and the long aspired “democratic transition” in Cuba continue to be an obsession in US circles of power and within counter-revolutionary factions on and off the island.
Certain members of the foreign press have ceaselessly broached this theme, taking advantage of each and every opportunity to annoy the Cuban leader with questions about his succession and the continuity of revolutionary power.
A recent news article, published in the New Herald, reported that the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) decided to include Cuba on a list of nations at risk for longer-term instability (defined as two to five years) due to recent concerns about the Cuban leader’s health.
The decision surprises no one. For more than 40 years, Fidel has been in the crosshairs of successive US administrations and their intelligence agencies. Cuban investigations reveal that 634 plots and conspiracies were organized against him up until the year 2000; of those, 168 were set to be carried out, but were thwarted by Cuban security.
Unfortunately, the 1823 “ripe fruit” thesis of John Quincy Adams —that the island, due to its geographical location, should fall into the hands of the US— is a notion that lives on up to today.
Washington has never abandoned the long-held desire of the late US president of applying the presumptuous theory of political gravitation in the case of Cuba.
Ways and means to fulfill this subversive dream have been diverse, just as have been the host of moments and circumstances in which this political obstinacy has rekindled old desires for the island’s annexation.
Old fantasies are reemerging which claim the finite character of the Revolution, as if it were born on January 1959.
Along the course of the maturation of our emancipation struggle —generation after generation, with worthy and able leaders at each stage— we have continued the monumental work of the revolution which started in 1868. Why then are they dreaming in vain of the Revolution’s collapse due to its main leader’s physical death?
We rely on people of keen political awareness and a strong party to guarantee the revolution’s continuity; our forces are united not only internally, but with the masses and young leaders trained under Fidel’s guidance.
Melanie Anderton, a spokesperson for the new Coordination Office for Reconstruction and Stabilization (CRS) of the US State Department, stated that she will use NIC’s list to help establish priorities, get in contact with other government agencies, make plans for contingencies and concentrate capacity to handle external crises – so as to avoid the errors made in Iraq.
The illusory planning of Cuba’s future has reached just such a point with CRS officials, who have the additional mission of coordinating the new round of meetings of the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, expected to take place in May. As the Herald noted, this body has the goal of reporting on steps to take during the first 18 months after the death of the Cuban president, as a supposed means of speeding up the government’s end.
The Herald article goes on to note that recently the Institute of Cuban Studies and American Studies of the Miami University held what could be called the first Post-Castro leaders meeting to explore contingencies.
Ignorance of the true Cuba sometimes approaches madness. A return to capitalism is hardly in the plans of the overwhelming majority, people who live with passion and pride for this land.
