Latins Warm to Castro’s Defiance

At a Caribbean Community summit in Jamaica this month, an entire floor of the plush Ritz-Carlton Golf & Spa Resort on Montego Bay was kept open for Fidel Castro in the hope that the Cuban lider maximo would grace the annual gathering with his presence.

A few weeks before, at the inauguration of President Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, the assembled political elite of Latin America greeted Castro’s appearance with the longest ovation received by any of the 13 visiting heads of state.

Even after Castro summarily sentenced 75 democracy advocates to long jail terms in March, half the nations in the Organization of American States refused to sign a U.S.-drafted statement of censure against the Cuban strongman.

Castro may be denounced as a dictator in Washington and criticized for human rights abuses in Europe, but he is still toasted as an icon of anti-imperialist liberation in many countries south of the U.S. border.

While his popularity among the leftist politicians who now rule much of Latin America is vexing to the Bush administration, some analysts see Castro’s enduring appeal as a consequence of Washington’s confrontational approach to Cuba -- the one country in the region that gets substantial attention.

“Castro’s popularity in Latin America is totally associated with his personality and his history, but not his policies,” said Jeffrey Davidow, who heads the Institute of the Americas, a Latin American-oriented research center at UC San Diego.

“There was a time 30 or 40 years ago when many Latin Americans saw him and Cuba as a model for the rest of the continent. But Castro lost that debate. There are no serious Latin American politicians today who, when confronted with a problem, would say, ‘Let’s think, how would they handle this in Cuba?’ ”

The 76-year-old revolutionary has endured as a folkloric symbol of defiance of U.S. power as well as a handy prop for any leader trying to cast himself as a man of the people, said Davidow.

“It’s a lot easier to obtain support on the left and forestall criticism if you allow yourself to be photographed hugging Castro than to do what the left really wants,” he said, referring to leaders who hail the charismatic Cuban while quietly pushing through unpopular market-oriented reforms.

Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an independent research organization in Washington, attributes Castro’s allure to “the sense of shame that has overtaken Latin America in the way it has had to bend at the knee at Washington.”

“Reaction to Castro has always been there in the streets, but now it is affecting presidential palaces, because of the heating up of the arrogance of power of the United States,” he said. He pointed to what he termed the veritable browbeating of regional presidents in a failed bid to drum up support for the U.S. war in Iraq.

Because Latin American economies need access to U.S. markets and Washington’s support for loans, the region’s leaders have tended to stifle their autonomous impulses, he said. But Castro has held out defiantly, refusing even the smallest concession to what many in the region see as a bullying giant.

“Castro remains a free-range chicken, while they are all boxed up in their coop,” Birns said of the costs to nations that comply with U.S. conditions for trade and lending.

Havana’s success in playing David to Washington’s Goliath has allowed populist energy to flow between Castro’s impoverished Caribbean nation and other states in the region.

In a message to the Caricom summit, where attendees waited in vain for his traditionally unannounced arrival, Castro said he would spare no effort to “defend the interests of small economies and demands for special and distinct treatment which until now have been ignored by the larger nations.”

That swipe at his powerful neighbor was the kind of push for solidarity that sustains his image as a champion of the downtrodden. Given that many Latin American states are mired in economic crises stemming from massive foreign debt and swollen state budgets, Castro is able to cast the halfhearted market reforms as evidence that capitalism has done little for the common people.

The 15 Caricom nations, which accord Cuba observer status at their meetings, distanced themselves from U.S. efforts to denounce Castro for cracking down on the dissidents. The group said only that it was “deeply disturbed at the severity of the sentences imposed” but appeared to defend the Communist leadership’s actions as a response to “threats against the state.”

Nor has the 34-nation Organization of American States been particularly riled by the crackdown.

At a May meeting of the OAS in Chile, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was unable to muster enough support to adopt a statement condemning Castro for the harshest crackdown on dissent in Cuba in a generation. Instead, 16 countries signed an expression of “concern.”

The high regard for Castro in Latin American leftist circles is hardly new; he has been celebrated among socialists since coming to power Jan. 1, 1959, at the culmination of a popular revolution. But some regional figures have actually tightened their embrace of Castro following the human-rights abuses.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has strengthened trade and collaboration with Cuba to forge what is probably Castro’s closest relationship in the region.

Venezuela provides Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil daily on a barter basis, allowing this cash-strapped government to partially fill the energy void left after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Chavez paid a visit to Castro last month, furnishing a stage for them to stand in unity against “U.S. hegemony.”

Also since the crackdown, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has proposed that Cuba be included in the Rio Group, a 19-nation regional cooperation forum.

Part of Latin America’s continuing drift into Castro’s orbit can be attributed to Washington’s inattention to the region as diplomatic energies are directed toward the Middle East. One metaphor for that neglect, analysts argue, is the failure of Congress to confirm an assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs for the last five years.

Both Republicans and Democrats have refused to approve the last four interim appointments, playing political football with the post for so long that Latin American policymaking has been taken over by the White House and the Treasury Department.

Cuban Americans occupy many influential positions in the Bush administration, accentuating a sense of neglect among other Latin American leaders and elevating Castro’s image of noble defiance.

“Castro simply says what he feels, with no bows to public relations,” said Birns. “That is pure oxygen to the rest of Latin America.”