Word: fidelitys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Although experts like García see Raúl as more naturally open, a lot will hang, then, on how long Fidel survives. "On his own, I think he would want to make some timid economic reforms, some timid steps toward openness," says García. "Raúl has a greater awareness that there's paralysis in Cuban society today, a dangerous sense of immobility...
...least one person who knows the two brothers personally doubts that, even with Fidel gone, Raúl will initiate change. Idámis Menéndez, Fidel's former daughter-in-law who has lived in Barcelona since 2001 and is no longer permitted to return to Cuba, says, " Raúl thinks very differently than Fidel. But he's lived his whole life in his brother's shadow, and the ministers and everyone else in the government are still the same. Raúl's not going to do anything now that would jeopardize his own interests...
...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...