Word: fidelitys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Raùl Castro is a master of mixed signals. Cuba's interim President recently agreed to allow representatives from the United Nations Human Rights Council to visit the island next year to inspect its notorious prisons and address its dearth of free expression. It was a concession Fidel Castro had long sneered at, and to many it was a sign that Raúl, who has ruled Cuba since major intestinal surgery sidelined his elder brother in 2006, might be willing to break with family tradition. But even as Raúl reached out to the U.N., his state security agents were arresting...
...Raúl Castro a reformer or a reactionary? Now that Fidel, 81, has officially resigned as President, leaving Raúl, 76, to most likely be named his successor, that question has gained greater significance than ever--in Havana, Miami and Washington. The elder Castro's exit barely registered in those cities; a half-century after he arrived on the world stage with a bang, Fidel left with a whimper. There was no overwhelming sense of sorrow in Cuba nor exultation across the Straits of Florida. There was only a collective shrug. "It's O.K.," said Yanelis, a young Cuban woman in Marianao...
With Raúl in charge, there's reason for some cautious hope. Compared with the flamboyantly inflexible Fidel, the beardless and bespectacled Raúl is an earthier, more pragmatic figure, who has nudged his country's ossified economy toward capitalism and encouraged some discussion about liberalizing its repressive politics. That's quite a turnaround for Raúl, who has been Cuba's military chief since Fidel took power in 1959 and was known as his brother's political enforcer, a ruthless ideological hard-liner. But after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's economic benefactor, it was Raúl who persuaded Fidel...
...have the power to fix that dysfunction. Fidel's full-blown retirement "really does free Raúl to do a lot more than he could in the provisional role," says Brian Latell, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami and author of After Fidel. "Now I think we'll see significant changes, not just in style but in policy." Bernardo Benes, a Miami banker and prominent Cuban exile who played soccer with Raúl at the University of Havana and was an emissary to Cuba for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, agrees: "I do expect him to free himself from...
...Here's another: failing to do so might risk buoying the very Fidelista hard-liners whose power Raúl has worked to undermine in the past year and a half. Not so long ago, it seemed the next generation of Cuban leaders would be an ideological cohort fiercely loyal to Fidel, known as los Taliban and led by Foreign Minister Felipe Peréz Roque, 42. But since Raúl took over as interim President, the likes of Peréz have seen their power checked while pragmatists like Vice President Carlos Lage, 56, who share Raúl's less dogmatic economic-policy vision, have...