For Art Basel 2008 coverage, visit Buildings and Food.
Tuesday February 19, 2008
Big news of the morning: Fidel Castro has officially resigned as dictator of Cuba. Three quick things: (1) Obviously this is to lessen the political turmoil that would otherwise have been caused by his (imminent?) death. (2) What happens in Cuba now? My optimistic predictions from 2005 still hold. (3) I’m offended by the opening sentence of Frances Robles’ article: “Saying he is no longer healthy enough to hold office, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not seek reelection after 49 years in power and nearly 19 months sidelined by illness . . .” When elections are universally believed to be a travesty, why mention them in the opening paragraph about a leader’s resignation? At least put quotes around “seek reelection” so we know you’re in on the lie. Update: What timing!: A map from the revolution, hand-drawn by Castro in 1953, is up for auction. Update: Val’s thoughts.
Tags: cubans · Comment feed: RSS, atom
This is going to be a very interesting year. A major change needs to take place.
Alesh he resigned as president of Cuba, but no major changes should come out of this, he is still running the country through his brother Raul, so in a way, all these past 18 months he has been running the country and probably still sill run the country until the day he dies through his brother or through some other character that is loyal to him in the government. He is no longer healthy , but hasn’t been in the past either and the country has not had any major changes.
I’m not convinced. I find it peculiar that such a monumental announcement would debut by way of the Digital Granma. Given Fidel’s proclivity to pander in front of as many “dearest compatriots” as possible, why not hold an old school press conference?
The signature at the bottom of his e-letter looks just like the cut-and-paste job I use for form letters! I am seriously left questioning if I just witnessed the birth of the next celebrity postmortem, catapulting Castro to the immortal fame of Elvis and made complete with occasional sightings in rural strip malls. I predict ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel’ will drop with Tupac album frequency and Terror Alert timing.
Though surprised by Castro’s claim that Cubans average a twelfth grade education, his frequent meetings with student leaders is a lesson our administration could benefit from. Instead, we are left with a President that surrounds himself with people like White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, who when asked about the Cuban Missile Crisis responded with “I really don’t know about…the Cuban missile crisis” and deduced this salient fact: “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”
Biscayne~
If I understand you correctly you’re saying you believe Castro is dead??
In my humble opinion, the main thing that has kept Castro in power for all these years is the US embargo. Castro has been able to justify the squalor that most Cubans live in on that island by blaming the US and its policies of exclusion. The embargo has proven after 40+ years that 1) it doesn’t work to effect a regime change and 2) it inflicts suffering on the Cuban people and not on the government there. It’s about time we all wake up to these sad facts and change our ridiculously ineffective policy towards Cuba. Until then, whether Fidel resigns for real or just for show, we can expect that Raul and the other apparatchiks of this dictatorship will be around a lot longer than any of us wish!
Or cryogenically frozen.
i saw fidel yesterday, in a donut shop in Michigan. he was looking a little starched. Like El Cid.