Raging at a Lion in Twilight

On Aug. 13, Fidel Castro turned 76. Across the Florida Straits on the same day, Castro’s most zealous foe, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, had a birthday as well.

The two are joined by more than a birthday--and they are divided by more than ideology. Diaz-Balart is Castro’s nephew by his first marriage and the son of his former best friend, Rafael Diaz-Balart. In 1953, Fidel Castro declared war on his powerful in-laws when he attacked the Moncada garrison in Santiago de Cuba, became a national legend and eventually sent them fleeing the country. “I may not live to see the end of him,” Rafael Diaz-Balart told me recently, “but my sons certainly will.” And we are reminded that this nearly half-century, high-stakes showdown is, in some respects, a bitter family feud.

It’s hard to say who has the upper hand in the feud. The last few weeks have been tough for Castro, Cuba’s ruler for life. First, 23 young Catholic Cubans defected in Canada during a pilgrimage to see Pope John Paul II in early August. Then, a former high-level official, Alcibiades Hidalgo, washed up in Miami and told reporters that despair drove him to flee Cuba on a raft. Word then slipped out that Roberto Robaina, the former foreign minister and Castro favorite, had been tossed out of the Communist Party in May, followed by a videotaped tongue-lashing from Castro’s brother Raul.

Moreover, Castro faces off against his 10th U.S. president, one who has placed more Cuban Americans in key positions of power than any other. All of President Bush’s Cuban appointees--from Mel Martinez and Frank Jimenez at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to Otto J. Reich at the State Department to Emilio Gonzalez at the National Security Council--are exiles of the hard-line persuasion, hellbent on maintaining and bolstering the 40-year-old trade embargo, along with the travel ban.

But Castro has always thrived--almost perversely--on adversity, and the kind of U.S. intransigence favored by Diaz-Balart and his allies has always been good news for him. Ironically, he will confront far more daunting challenges when Congress abolishes the failed embargo and overrides a promised presidential veto--an event that could happen as early as next month. At that point, forced to abandon his role as the beleaguered David staving off his nasty northern Goliath, the indomitable Castro will truly have to reinvent himself.

In the meantime, he has had plenty of good material to demonize his northern nemesis. Calling U.S. corporate scandals “bald-faced robbery” and “criminal swindling” recently, Castro’s implicit message is that capitalism has fallen on the heels of communism--and so, surprise, Fidelismo is the answer.

Castro continues to assault the day with the energy of an adolescent. Lately, he has been telling friends that he hasn’t felt so well in years. An eccentric hypochondriac, Castro maintains a program of rigorous exercise. Hoping to extend his life--and his reign--he has recently adopted a strict macrobiotic diet under the tutelage of one of the medical wizards in the Ministry of Health.

Castro’s most bedeviling challenges, which will exponentially expand once the embargo is lifted, are not with his health, but with his people. In his efforts to upstage the Bush administration, Castro indulged Jimmy Carter when the former president met with dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Elizardo Sanchez and endorsed their reform initiative, the Varela Project, on live Cuban television. Heeven sat through a thrashing of Cuba’s human rights record from Carter. But the Varela Project, with its 11,020 signers urging democratic reforms, clearly hit a tender spot for the Cuban leader.

The petition hoped to qualify its proposals--free elections, freedom of speech, the right to own a business and amnesty for Cuba’s political prisoners--in a national referendum to be scheduled by the National Assembly.

The petition has never been acted upon. Instead, Castro has sought to stamp it out with a vengeance normally reserved for infectious diseases and plagues. With Carter safely off his island, he hammered through an amendment to the country’s constitution, holding a massive signature-gathering campaign in which he claims 99% of the Cuban electorate called for making socialism in Cuba “eternal” and “untouchable.” The Varela Project, meanwhile, has become virtually unmentionable--so much so that law students at the University of Havana who recently requested a copy for academic study were refused.

But Castro’s overkill may come back to haunt him sooner rather than later. Over drinks a few weeks ago in Havana on a trip for the American Journalism Foundation, I heard fury from a source I had long regarded as an unwavering Fidelista. “I have always regarded myself as an authentic person, so this is the first time I have done something I do not believe in,” he said, explaining why he signed Castro’s petition. “I waited until the end of the third day--the last day of voting. Then my daughter visited me and said it could cost her husband his job, and I knew the CDR [Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) was waiting for me to vote, and I was afraid of the consequences.”

His belief that only a minority of Cubans think Castro should leave the stage further dejected him, he said. “I think we are only about 35% of the country,” he said plaintively.

Many Cubans, he said, are worried about losing their health and education benefits--as happened to their former patrons, the Russians. “We also have a history with the Mafia, and no one wants to go back to that,” he said. “You see, Castro is the devil we know.” Still, he said, Castro’s action had helped the dissidents’ cause. “Now everyone in the country knows about the Varela Project.”

Some of Castro’s dilemmas are of his own making.

Having ushered in the highest literacy rate in the hemisphere, he must now cope with the inquisitiveness of a population with a superior education. Many Cubans now have access to the Internet, and cybercafes have sprouted up around the capital. Fearless and natural entrepreneurs, Habaneros have somehow secured an estimated 20,000 illegal satellite dishes this year delivering images from beyond Cuba’s borders into virtually every neighborhood in this city of 2 million. Dishes have even found their way into the provinces, and those who can’t afford them make their own antennas of mop handles and used kitchen and car parts. There are sporadic sweeps to seize the offending saucers, but the genie won’t be easily returned to the bottle.

Diaz-Balart has now appropriated the David role for himself in his fight to stop the erosion of the U.S. embargo. Mentored by his father, who has hosted a show on Radio Marti, the U.S. tax-funded propaganda station, Diaz-Balart has been brought up to want vengeance--perhaps even more than victory. Castro must not be allowed to simply slip away: He must be brought to his knees, punished and humiliated.

For 40 years, the Diaz-Balart family has argued that the embargo is an essential component of American policy toward Cuba. But like King Lear, they have been blinded by their rage. Clearly, the winds of discontent in Cuba could well turn into a gale once the island nation is opened to U.S. markets and culture. But the angry men of Miami, like the old man in Havana, cannot bear to admit that they made a mistake.