Word: fidelity
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...closest you'll get to a YouTube moment in communist Cuba - and perhaps a harbinger of the post-Fidel Castro era. Earlier this month a video surfaced on the island showing a Havana university student, Eliecer Avila, peppering National Assembly leader Ricardo Alarcon with the kind of public questions that usually get Cubans tossed in jail. Why does a worker have to toil two or three days just to be able to buy a toothbrush? Avila, a computer science major, asked the visibly flummoxed Alarcon, who was visiting Avila's school outside Havana. Why can't Cubans freely travel abroad...
...which indicates that the youthful outburst may not have been the spontaneous Havana Spring it was widely billed as, but rather a part of something quietly sanctioned by Cuba's interim President, Raul Castro. Since being tapped by his older brother, Fidel Castro, as the country's provisional leader in the summer of 2006 after Fidel underwent major intestinal surgery, Raul, 76, has pushed a more pragmatic, even reform-minded agenda that has encouraged limited public debate - and, just as important, worked to undermine hard-line fidelistas like Alarcon. The Avila episode was yet another sign of how firmly Raul...
...Fidel's exit was hardly unexpected, and the streets of Havana today are reportedly calm. Seriously incapacitated by his stomach condition, the 81-year-old comandante, who has ruled Cuba and roiled the U.S. since taking power in 1959, has not been seen in public for a year and a half - even failing to appear at the podium last July 26 for the anniversary of the launching of his communist revolution. In December he released a letter saying he didn't want to "cling to power," which analysts like Latell called his de facto resignation. In his statement today, released...
...question now is whether that letter means carte blanche for Raul, Fidel's longtime Defense Minister, to accelerate at least the economic if not the political reforms he's been hinting at in a series of speeches and minor policy adjustments over the last 18 months. As long as Fidel "is breathing and aware," says Latell, "Raul is still going to be somewhat constrained in what he can do." At the same time, he adds, Fidel's full-blown retirement "really does free Raul to do a lot more than he could in the provisional role. Now I think...
...Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Perez, 42, once considered a leader of the youthful fidelista hardliners known as los Taliban, has seen his stature particularly reduced under Raul - to the point that he was compelled late last year to endorse Cuba's acceptance of an international human rights accord, something Fidel had criticized as a violation of the island's sovereignty but which Raul had decided was necessary to begin thawing relations with the U.S. and the European Union. (Lest anyone think the move means greater respect for human rights in Cuba, however, consider that, shortly after the move, a group...