Word: fidell
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They can start by acknowledging that after 50 years of communist revolution in Cuba and counter-revolution from the U.S., both sides can claim only partial victories. Washington and Miami's Cuban exiles can say they kept the U.S. trade embargo against Havana intact. Yet they failed to dislodge Fidel Castro and his government and instead succeeded in alienating the rest of the hemisphere. Congratulations! The Castro regime can say it stood up to a half-century of yanqui aggression while proving that quality universal education and health care are doable. But the price - a basket-case economy...
...fittingly, don't expect much of a charged observance on either side of the Straits of Florida this week. It looks unlikely that the ailing, 82-year-old Fidel Castro, who ceded Cuba's presidency to his younger brother Raúl this year, will be fit enough to attend the celebration in Santiago de Cuba. In Miami, exile hard-liners are wrestling with a new Florida International University poll showing that a majority of Cuban-Americans there think the embargo should end. The question now is whether Washington and Havana can smell the cafe cubano, leave their cold...
...point is that both sides have got to learn to give a little. Last year, when TIME put Raúl Castro on its list of the world's 100 most influential people - because he had taken over for Fidel Castro as interim President and looked to be moving Cuba in a more pragmatic direction - the magazine got scorn from U.S. officials. This year, when TIME put Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez on the list - for the impact she's had on political blogging around the world - Cuban officials complained in turn. They're entitled to their opinion, but both camps...
...days later, Soderbergh and his star, Benicio Del Toro, presented Che at the Havana Film Festival. The authorities had warned they would not allow the picture to be shown if it was critical of Fidel Castro, and they found nothing objectionable. (One scene included in the original Cannes Film Festival version of Che, showing Castro the commandante in an ambiguous light, was apparently cut.) "The Cuban public gave its endorsement with a strong ovation," reported Granma, the island's official Communist Party newspaper, which hedged its bets by observing that the Castro character (played by Demian Bichir) lacked "charisma...
...critics, of course, fear that if he's allowed indefinite re-election, he'll simply morph into another Fidel Castro. Despite - or because of - the Cuban leader's longevity in power (or the record of other would-be rulers-for-life), Latin Americans look askance at lifetime presidencies. That's why even voters next door in Colombia look set to deny their remarkably popular conservative President, Alvaro Uribe, a third term when his second expires in 2010. Chávez does have an authoritarian streak and is indeed a gushing admirer of Castro, and with the legislature and judiciary firmly...