Word: cubanism
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...Castro, who turns 80 August 13 and is, say official communiques, recovering from major intestinal surgery, last week handed provisional power to his younger brother and defense minister, Raul Castro. At first, Miami's politically potent Cuban exiles exulted in the streets of Little Havana. But when the reality sunk in that Fidel is most likely still alive - and that his communist dictatorship may well endure under Raul even if he's not - it also reminded many Cuban-Americans that their once ardent hopes of reclaiming confiscated property could be, as one Pentagon analyst says, "a pipe dream." A report...
...years later, as Cuban-Americans continue to clutch yellowing deeds and titles, the likelihood of ever recovering the actual properties has dimmed like a Havana brownout. No one knows how many houses in Cuba are still claimed by exiles; but more than one family often occupies each home there, especially since housing construction in impoverished Cuba is light-years behind the island's population growth. If Cuban-Americans show up in even a democratized Cuba demanding those dwellings, they're likely to face the wrath of Cubans who tend to resent imperious exiles as much as they disdain Fidel. Says...
...That issue could be moot anyway. Cuban-Americans a generation ago may have waxed romantic about their gorgeous and breezy casas in Havana neighborhoods like Miramar. But today, says Elena Freyre, head of the Cuban-American Defense League in Miami, "90% of them no longer desire to go back and live there. Their roots are too deep in the U.S. And when they go back and see the sad reality of what Cuba is now, a lot of them will be on the first flight back to Miami...
...Compensation is especially important to Cuban-Americans who lost large holdings - like the De la Camaras, whose patriarch Jose Ignacio was actually locked in a room by Che Guevara in 1960 and forced to sign over the assets of the oil company they co-directed. Today the family is trying to get the Bush Administration to pull the U.S. visas of execs from the European, Canadian and South American oil firms that operate on their property today, hoping to leverage some financial settlement from them. With billions of barrels of potential new Cuban crude reserves being discovered now, that effort...
...Even U.S. intelligence officials caution that the jubilation in Miami1s Cuban exile community over Castro's imminent demise is "way too premature," says one. "At this point there's no reason to doubt what the Cubans themselves are saying about his condition." Pentagon and U.S. intelligence officials tell TIME they believe that Castro's operation occurred late last week - perhaps on Thursday or Friday - and that the Cuban government would not have announced the temporary transition arrangement unless it was sure that the dictator would pull through. Castro will have a lengthy convalescing period, these officials believe, during which...