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 News from Around the Americas | August 2006 
Castro's Star Shines in Latin America
 Colin McMahon - Chicago Tribune
| | A man holds up a dove as people attend a religious cereremony praying for Fidel Castro's quick recovery in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. Cubans are drawing on a wide range of spiritual traditions, calling out to the African gods of Santeria, the saints of Roman Catholicism and the Christian God of Protestant faiths in prayers for ailing leader Fidel Castro's health and peace on the island. (AP/Javier Galeano) |
During his visit last month to a Latin American trade summit in Argentina, Fidel Castro was treated with respect that bordered on reverence.
Though Castro spoke far longer than the other heads of state, no one complained. His small jokes got big laughs. And his random, sometimes rambling, detours taking aim at the United States and other critics brought hearty applause and approving smiles.
Castro has passed through many phases in becoming the most famous Latin American icon of the last century: Guerrilla fighter. Social reformer. Instigator. Autocrat. Relic.
But the phase Castro now enjoys in Latin America, which ironically comes as illness has forced him to cede power at least temporarily, ranks as one of the more triumphant periods in his career.
Despite nearly five decades of constant U.S. efforts to topple Castro; despite the collapse of his patron, the Soviet Union; and despite a worldwide disavowal of the communist principles Castro holds so dearly, Cuba's maximum leader has more than merely survived.
Against long odds, Castro has helped guide a revival of the political left in Latin America.
"Fidel has kept the revolution in force into the 21st Century, and he remains allied with all the progressive leftist movements," said Adalberto Santana Hernandez, a Latin America analyst at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "He is the great leader of Latin America."
Castro critics abound in the region, and even some established leftist parties have rejected his regime's political authoritarianism. But with many Latin Americans disenchanted by the vagaries of the free market, Castro's standing is higher today than in decades.
"He has always been valued by the left despite the authoritarian government," said Ignacio Labaqui, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires. "They prefer to ignore the imprisoning of dissidents, the prohibition on residents leaving the island, the refusal to hold elections.
"It's curious," Labaqui said. "They look at 1959 and not at the 40-plus years since."
Countries that once embraced U.S. efforts to isolate Castro now embrace him. At the Argentina summit last month, the South America trade bloc Mercosur signed a new deal with Cuba. The agreement had been languishing for years before Uruguay, under its new socialist president, dropped its objections.
Meanwhile, countries that during the 1990s opened their markets and followed the U.S. lead on economic matters are mimicking some of Castro's policies and reasserting state control. Venezuela is reversing privatization. Bolivia is nationalizing the energy sector. Argentina is imposing limited price controls.
While Cubans wonder what will happen on the island without Castro at the helm, Latin Americans ponder what impact Castro's eventual exit from the scene, or at least a lower international profile, might have on the region's leftist movements.
Many see Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stepping into Castro's shoes.
The former military officer does not have the same command, charisma or loyalty that Castro used expertly to parry the United States and stay in power for 47 years. Some analysts also suggest that Chavez's popularity in the region has peaked, and that without Castro's guidance, Chavez would overplay his hand.
Yet even many critics are coming to regard Chavez as a brilliant politician and an estimable strategist.
"Chavez is the natural heir to the Castro crown," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based policy group. "He is the mayor of the mean streets of Latin America.
"He does not carry many of the liabilities that Castro does," Birns said. "No one can prove that he is a dictator. ... There is nothing dark about him. He is a full-time needler."
What Chavez must do - and given Venezuela's oil riches, what Chavez has the resources to do - is convert some of his reforms and revolutionary ideas into reality, Birns said.
That would give Chavez credibility he lacks in some quarters - credibility that Castro won in the 1960s when his social, health and education programs gave many Cubans gains far exceeding those seen in other poor countries of Latin America.
Among Latin American leftists, those achievements insulated Castro against criticism. And they helped Castro cast a shadow over Latin America exceeded only by that of the U.S.
Castro fomented revolutions. He sent doctors, teachers, military advisers and spies across the region to counter U.S. attempts to exert influence. And he gave ideological, spiritual and financial aid to leftist groups in a host of countries.
"The importance of Fidel and Cuba in Latin America was not only that a country could carry out a leftist revolution within the sphere of influence of the United States," said Labaqui, the Argentine political scientist. "They showed it was possible to maintain the revolution."
Even in countries where communists rejected Castro's authoritarian ways, right-wing or military governments used the specter of Castro to crack down on the left, often bloodily.
Leftist groups were crushed or co-opted across Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. Then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Over the next several years, the hard left shrunk in Latin America and the moderate left moved toward the center. Analysts wrote obituaries of the Latin American left. Castro's fall was considered imminent.
But free trade and more open economies failed to bring the growth, jobs or rising standards of living to Latin America that proponents predicted.
The left regrouped, in some places reformed, and then rebounded. Castro held on, somehow, and waited for vindication.
Chavez won the presidency of Venezuela in 1999 with a leftist vision underpinned by populist promises. Then over the next several years, left-of-center leaders won elections in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.
Chavez and President Evo Morales in Bolivia are Castro acolytes. But even those leaders skeptical of Castro and his ways know better than to openly challenge him and risk losing the support of their leftist base.
Now with a giant assist from Chavez and his oil riches, Cuba is reintegrating into Latin America.
In his weekly TV and radio show Sunday, Chavez said Castro was not only out of bed but even tuning in to the Venezuelan president's program.
"A hug for you, friend and comrade," Chavez said. "I know you are getting better." |
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