Word: castro
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...have education and health care, but we don't have food or freedom. What can I give my child?" She feels caged and angry. "They control everything," she says, making the gesture of a hand stroking a beard, which is how Cubans silently refer to their supreme leader, Fidel Castro. The woman down the hall reports regularly to the local block committee about her, says Ana, "because I am not a conformist." She finds peace in her Bible, though her faith has earned her a black mark on the dossier that follows all Cubans from childhood to death...
...aren't Cubans in the streets demanding the downfall of Castro and communism? Last week the State Department called Cuba's future grim, "a prolonged, slow decline waiting for a catastrophe." In a still-classified warning to President Clinton in August, the CIA predicted that "tensions and uncertainties are so acute that significant miscalculations by Castro, a deterioration of his health, or plotting in the military could provoke regime- threatening instability at virtually any time." The CIA report sketches out "serious instability" and "the risk of a bloodbath...
After a rare, two-week visit by American journalists to the island, it is apparent the issue is not so simple. Already Fidel Castro's Cuba is no more. Whether he is leading the way or merely acquiescing to it, the socialist Utopia he built is sliding inexorably toward capitalism. But Cubans still believe that Castro's revolution has given them something too precious to lose. People understand their economy is in ruins, but they see no one who could lead them out of their present misery but Fidel. The struggle under way is between Castro and the forces...
Circumstance, not a change of heart, is the driving force behind Cuba's grudging transformation. If the collapse of the Soviet empire had not cut Havana's imports from $8 billion to $1.7 billion today, change would not be coming at all. Beginning in July, Castro announced steps to open up the economy. He legalized the use of the dollar, granted more autonomy to farmers, and allowed people in more than 135 small-time occupations, from shoe repair to haircutting, to work for themselves. "For 30 years we did not do anything like this," Fidel told a group...
...consensus says Castro is being forced to legitimize what the Cuban people are doing illicitly. "I think people push, and he eventually accedes," says a Western diplomat. "I don't see any fundamental decision by Fidel to change his ways of thinking." A foreign businessman exploring joint ventures is certain that Castro is simply showing the pragmatism of a smart politician: "He's not doing any of this because he likes it but because he will do whatever he has to do to survive...