The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution

By Daniel P. Erikson

There are few international relationships as intimate, as passionate-and as dysfunctional-as that of the United States and Cuba. In The Cuba Wars, Cuba expert Daniel Erikson draws on extensive visits and conversations with both Cuban government officials and opposition leaders-plus key players in Washington and Florida-to offer an unmatched portrait of a small country with outsized importance to Americans and American policy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781608192410

Daniel P. Erikson

Daniel P . Erikson is senior associate for U .S. policy at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, D.C. He has published more than fifty scholarly articles and essays and in publications including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Miami Herald. He is co-editor of Transforming Socialist Economies: Lessons for Cuba and Beyond, and recipient of a Fulbright scholarship.

Book preview

Praise for The Cuba Wars and Daniel P. Erikson

Winner, ForeWord Magazine’s 2008 Political Science Book of the Year Winner, 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist, 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards Nominee, 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize

"As a chronicle of 50 years of failed foreign policy, Daniel P. Erik-son’s new book should be studied by officials of the incoming Obama administration lest they repeat the folly of past U.S. governments . . . The Cuba Wars provides a valuable glimpse inside the U.S. decision-making process with regards to one of its oldest and seemingly most intractable international disputes." —Miami Herald

"With this fresh, astute, and compassionate exploration of the past two decades of U.S.-Cuban relations, Erikson emerges as a valuable new voice in Washington foreign policy circles . . . The Cuba Wars is an eloquent cry for more realistic, decent responses that help—rather than further punish—the long-suffering Cuban people."

—Foreign Affairs

Erikson, an analyst at the Washington think tank Inter-American Dialogue, diligently and dispassionately crafts a textured portrait of Cuba today in which the country’s drama- and tension-filled relationship with the United States frames nearly every aspect of economic and political life on the island. This does not mean that Erikson rationalizes the Castro regime’s autocratic tendencies or the country’s vexing underdevelopment, or that he attributes all of Cuba’s ills to the United States. His analysis of Cuba, and of Washington’s approach to Cuba, is far more sophisticated and subtle than that. He writes intelligently and fluently about the personalities, policies, and history of the U.S.-Cuba relationship; in doing so, he displays an ideal combination of the detached journalist’s perspective and the scholar’s intimate knowledge. He has written the most important book on Cuba in a generation.

—Current History

"The Cuba Wars thoroughly and perceptively analyzes the events of the past 20 years, examining both the evolution of U.S. policy toward Cuba and the implementation of the regime’s survival strategy . . . an intelligent, balanced and informative book."

—Americas Quarterly

Erikson succeeds in bringing the major pieces of this story together and documenting them in a way that only a dedicated Cuba analyst can. He captures an important period in history with great depth and understanding. —Cuban Affairs

Delves into the long and twisted political relationship between the United States and Cuba, both past and present . . . a well-written book that easily carries the reader through the complicated politics by telling the stories of its most interesting actors.

—Embassy Newspaper

Erikson’s aim in this latest book—to give a full account of the gamut of challenges in contemporary US-Cuban relations—is ambitious. But he delivers. —Survival

This is a must-read for students of Cuba and Latin America, as well as any reader interested in learning about the repercussions of power politics and the misled policies that often result.

—Journal of International Policy Solutions

An important and informative analysis.

—Booklist

An invaluable snapshot of a nation poised to ignite on the eve of the revolution’s 50th anniversary. Terrific background, keen insight and an evenhanded critical distance distinguish Erikson’s fine work.

—Kirkus Reviews

Demonstrates how policy and politics intersect, especially in a U.S. presidential election year, when the voice of Cuban exiles in Miami’s Little Havana, a community that has been pushing to keep the U.S. embargo against Cuba in place, sounds especially loud and influential.

—Publishers Weekly

Remarkable insight into the fate of Cuba after Fidel . . . Highly recommended.

—Library Journal

The Cuba Wars

Fidel Castro, the United States,

and the Next Revolution

Daniel P. Erikson

For Eliza

Contents

Preface

1. Die Another Day

2. War of Nerves

3. The Dissenters

4. The Empire Strikes Back

5. The Community

6. Capitol Punishment

7. Spy Versus Spy

8. The Least Worst Place

9. Through the Looking Glass

10. The Capitalist Temptation

11. Chasing Chávez

12. The Next Revolution

Afterword

Map

Acknowledgments

A Note on Sources

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Preface

More than fifty years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the United States and Cuba remain locked in a long cold war that seems likely to persist, in some fashion, despite important leadership changes in both countries. The election of Barack Obama to the White House and the rise of Raúl Castro as the new president of Cuba have created some new possibilities, but these events have hardly ushered in the new beginning in U.S.-Cuban relations that many envisioned. Fidel Castro, the legendary revolutionary figure who took power in Cuba in January 1959, has bequeathed this battle to his successors, and they have signaled a readiness to continue the fight. The United States government, for its part, has internalized its allergic reaction to Cuban socialism to such a large degree that even well-meaning efforts to change course and seek a rapprochement with Cuba may be too cautious and incremental to bear much fruit. Despite the evidence of an emerging détente, the United States and Cuba have not yet demonstrated a convincing effort to break the cycle of mutual hostility that has long characterized their relationship, although the possibility remains that the U.S. may lift its embargo on Cuba if the island’s new government moves markedly toward democracy.

From Washington’s perspective, it had long been hoped that the difficulties in resolving the U.S.-Cuba conflict held the promise of an easy answer: the death of Fidel. This event, sometimes referred to inelegantly as the biological solution, was supposed to trigger major changes in Cuba that could pave the way for the return of democracy to the island and the normalization of relations with the United States. In the early 1960s, the United States actively sought to bring it about through covert operations against Cuba, but in more recent decades the U.S. approach was based on patiently waiting for Castro’s demise.

The actuarial timetables, it was thought, would bring about the desired result without the need for greater contact and engagement with Havana that was politically unpopular among Cuban exiles in South Florida. Recent events show just how flawed that thinking was. Fidel did indeed grow old and fall seriously ill in July 2006 at the age of seventy-nine, and his illness was a shock to Cuba’s political system.

But it also paved the way for his communist government’s rusty succession process gradually to swing into gear under the leadership of his younger brother, Raúl. Nineteen months later, when Fidel formally penned his resignation letter in February 2008, the Cuban government consummated a smooth leadership transition that left Raúl and other members of the country’s old guard fully in charge. Still, the temptation persists for the United States to wait until Raúl has passed away before shifting course or seeking to engage with the new government. Since there are other communist leaders poised to take charge after Raúl, this process could take a very long time indeed. Furthermore, while the death of Fidel will remain an extraordinarily significant political moment when it finally occurs, its impact will necessarily be diluted by the simple fact that he is no longer Cuba’s president.

As the presidency of George W. Bush recedes into history, its departure has been accompanied by a wide range of retrospective analysis on the legacy of his foreign policies, much of which focused on his handling of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Iraq. Much less has been written about Bush’s impact on Latin America, but there has been some renewed attention to Cuba, given the country’s leadership transition, its salience in U.S. domestic politics, and the potential for the Obama administration to act differently than its predecessors. It has also become clear that the policies of the Bush White House influenced Cuban perceptions of the United States at all levels, and not for the better. Bush’s declarations of a global war on terror deeply rattled the Cuban government, which has long been deemed by the State Department to be a state sponsor of terrorism, and Cuba was specifically accused by top U.S. officials of having a developmental biological weapons program. The Cuban people, like most citizens across the globe, were alarmed by the preventive war launched on Iraq, and some grew to believe their government’s claim that their country could be a potential future target. The Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, located on Cuba’s easternmost tip, became the ware house for suspected Al Qaeda operatives held beyond the reach of U.S. or international law. At the same time, the Bush administration’s decision to shelter Luis Posada Carriles, an aging anti-Castro militant accused of committing serious terrorist acts against Cuba, belied the seriousness of the U.S. anti-terror campaign. Meanwhile, new sanctions implemented in 2004 cut back sharply on the ability of Cuban Americans to visit their families on the island. In addition, the Bush administration allowed Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to evolve from a regional nuisance to a full-blown adversary of U.S. interests in the hemisphere, and become one of Cuba’s closest allies. These policies and outcomes are all part of the legacy bequeathed by President Bush to his successor in the White House.

Barack Obama, by contrast, won the presidency on a mandate of change, and to some degree, his promises of a different approach to foreign policy have filtered down to the Cuba issue. The Obama administration has restarted low level diplomatic dialogues with Cuba, approved a path for Cuba’s readmission into the Organization of American States, authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to do business with Cuba, and dramatically expanded the ability of Cuban Americans to visit and send money to their relatives on the island. One of Obama’s first acts upon taking office was an order calling for the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay to be closed within one year, although the base itself will remain under American control for the foreseeable future. In other areas, however, the Obama administration’s approach to Cuba is indistinguishable from that pursued by President Bush. Under Obama, the State Department has reaffirmed Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, and pledged to maintain the U.S. embargo of Cuba until the Castro government undertakes democratic reform. The anti-Castro broadcasts of Radio and TV Martí continue, as do the flows of official assistance to groups charged with building an opposition movement within Cuba. In short, the Obama administration’s more diplomatic approach to Cuba has been coupled with remarkable stability in terms of the substantial aspects of U.S. policy. Unless the U.S. Congress succeeds in inserting itself into the Cuba debate by repealing aspects of the embargo, a prospect that is doubtful but not impossible, then the forces for continuity in U.S. policy will remain very strong indeed.

Raúl Castro faces his own set of limitations on his abilities to chart a new course for Cuba, which means that the people on the island struggling for more political space and greater economic relief are unlikely to see their hopes fulfilled anytime soon. During his final years in power, Fidel Castro engaged in numerous actions that were severely detrimental to both the people of Cuba and the U.S.-Cuba relationship. At home, he maintained his staunch resistance to economic reforms that could have improved the livelihoods of Cuba’s struggling citizens, who were attempting to make ends meet in a climate of pervasive scarcity. In 2003, he implemented a sweeping crackdown on internal dissent that dramatically expanded the number of political prisoners held in Cuban jails. He supervised acts of espionage against the United States that extended to a top official in the Pentagon and a spy network, including the Cuban Five, intended to keep tabs on exile groups in Miami. His mentorship no doubt played an important role in turning Chávez against the United States, and he remained a fierce critic of what he termed the American empire in all its forms. Raúl Castro played a crucial supporting role in building this legacy, and now he has been left to contend with the consequences.

In South Florida, the Cuban American community has held enormous sway over U.S.-Cuba policy, and in recent years, it tightened its grip on both the executive and the legislative branches of the U.S. government. Strongly supported by President Bush, heavily influential on Capitol Hill (with the help of two Cuban American senators, four representatives, and one of the best lobbying games in Washington), and a political and financial force in Miami, the Cuban exile community reached new heights of political power during the Bush years. Now that the balance of power has shifted to the Democrats, anti-Castro advocates have adjusted their strategies accordingly, donating heavily to the new ruling party and positioning prominent Cuban American Democrats as the embargo’s new gatekeepers. Yet the Cuban American community will remain powerless to achieve what it claims to seek—a transition to democracy in Cuba—until it is fully ready to embrace the diplomatic tools and economic leverage required to meet that objective.

The obvious shortcomings of current U.S. policy has prompted some leaders in Miami to question anew whether the United States’ commitment to sanctions, federally funded broadcasts of Radio and TV Martí, and democracy assistance programs can ever achieve the democratization of Cuba. The bad news is that there is little evidence to suggest that this approach will ever succeed. The good news is that Miami’s Cuban exile groups have largely rejected the idea that armed intervention against Cuba will lead to anything positive. The vast majority of the community’s elected leaders still believe that the road back to Havana leads through Washington, but a growing chorus of grassroots organizations are fighting to get U.S. restrictions out of the way and put concepts like political dialogue, economic engagement, and cultural exchange back on the table. More broadly, the same dynamic is true for the American people, who are ready to trade with, travel to, and engage with Cuba as soon as their government will let them.

It has become a truism in U.S. foreign policy circles, and even among Cuba experts, that Cuba is not important. It is, after all, a small island nation of eleven million people, crippled by the twin (and related) scourges of poverty and communism, that matters little in the global economy and only occasionally makes a splash in the world of international diplomacy. True, it produced in Fidel Castro one of the great icons of the cold war, and its famous exports include fine cigars and rum and world-class music and baseball, but that is about as far as it goes. In foreign policy terms, Cuba is an afterthought or a punch line, or maybe a political football: interesting perhaps, but it does not intrinsically matter. This line of argument is seductive, and it reflects a certain logic, but it fails on the merits. The truth is that Cuba matters a great deal, and it should matter a great deal to the United States.

Cuba is one of the world’s last remaining communist strongholds, located merely ninety miles from the shores of Florida. The U.S. embargo of Cuba is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, and long-lasting policy of its kind in the world. Since Castro took power, more than one million exiles have fled Cuba to make new lives in the United States, and they have left an indelible imprint on the life and politics of our nation. Thousands more have perished attempting to cross the Straits of Florida, and hundreds of political prisoners remain in Cuban jails. The domestic political impact of Cuba policy reverberates deeply in Florida, with the potential to shift U.S. presidential election outcomes via this pivotal swing state. Cuba has born the brunt of soaring American rhetoric about democracy and human rights even as it served as the involuntary host for the globally condemned Guantánamo Bay detention facility. Over fifty years, U.S.-Cuban relations have become a densely knotted web that encompasses issues of communism and democracy, domestic politics and foreign policy, and diplomacy and security. The scope, intensity, and duration of the standoff reveals a great deal about both nations.

There is a reason this book is titled The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution.The Cuba wars are the intersecting conflicts that drive the United States and Cuba apart even as they are bound together by political, economic, and cultural linkages that are a fact of life for both countries. Fidel Castro and the United States are the two great adversaries who suspiciously eyed each other across the Straits of Florida for the past half century. The next revolution will be the revolution of expectations that is slowly being unleashed in Cuba by the unfolding leadership transition, which has been matched by rising expectations for a change in U.S. policy now that Barack Obama—the eleventh American president to confront a Castro at the helm of Cuba—has stepped into the White House.

Today, U.S.-Cuban relations have arrived at a pivotal historical juncture that presents an auspicious moment to reexamine this contentious relationship. After a half-century of antipathy, it is clear there is no magic solution that will yield a Cuba that is prosperous, democratic, and treated as a valued partner by the United States. But there are steps that can be taken by both sides. In order to envision a more promising future, we must first understand the present, and that will require taking a hard look at the reality as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Daniel P. Erikson

August 10, 2009

Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER 1

Die Another Day

Fidel Castro was accustomed to keeping his country immersed in a state of feverish speculation, but now the time for a decision loomed. Nearly nineteen months had passed while he tried to battle back from the illness that had forced him to relinquish power in July 2006. His health had collapsed during the early months, leaving him at death’s door, but he had been gradually gaining strength and weight, and it was possible that he would live for some time more. His brother Raúl, who had assumed the provisional powers of government in Fidel’s absence, had proved to be a competent administrator, but he was also growing restless. Moreover, Fidel was aware that his precarious health had ushered his nation into a strange twilight zone that had left him at the mercy of his successors, not the other way around.

Fidel had not been seen publicly in Cuba since his health crisis began, but he remained a prominent voice by writing periodic reflections in the national press about international issues that grabbed his attention. His first essay, published on March 28, 2007, attacked a new ethanol initiative planned by President George W. Bush and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which Fidel decried as a sinister plan for turning foodstuffs into fuel that would leave more than three billion people condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst. A steady stream of more than fifty op-eds followed, pondering topics including global warming, the price of oil, the political travails of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the recent death of Raúl’s wife, Vilma Espín, and the complicated legal dramas of Luis Posada Carriles and the Cuban Five. The most important function of these reflections, however, was to signal that Fidel Castro was still alive.

In the waning weeks of 2007, though, Fidel began to drop hints that his days as the formal president of Cuba were drawing to a close. On December 17, he sent a message to be read aloud on Cuban television by the host of the political discussion show Mesa Redonda (Round Table). My deepest conviction is that the answers to current problems in Cuban society, Fidel wrote, require more varied responses for each concrete problem than the contents of a chessboard. He then added, My essential duty is to not cling to posts, much less block the way for younger people, but to contribute experiences and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era in which it was my destiny to live. I think . . . that one must be consistent until the end.

Eleven days later, Fidel conveyed a similar message at the ritual yearend session of Cuba’s National Assembly, even though the Cuban leader himself was nowhere to be seen. It was December 28, 2007, and Raúl presided over the meeting while seated next to a chair left empty in honor of his ailing brother. He read aloud from a letter Fidel had written to clarify his position further. Referring to his past as a utopian socialist, Fidel reflected on the fact that what the foreign press in Cuba have most reported in recent days has been the phrase where I expressed . . . that I am not a person who clings to power. I could add that I was once, for the excesses of youth and lack of conscience. What changed me? Life itself. When Raúl finished reading the letter, the more than five hundred Communist Party delegates present rose and burst into applause. Still, Raúl insisted that his brother remained politically viable, noting that Fidel had been exercising, gaining weight, and meditating and writing regularly. His powerful mind is healthier, Raúl said as he scoffed at the chances of political reform. We could say in Cuba we have two parties: one led by Fidel and one led by Raúl. What would be the difference? he asked. That’s the same thing that happens in the United States . . . both are the same. Fidel is a little taller than me; he has a beard and I don’t.¹ It had long been thought that Raúl Castro would be a short-lived transitional leader in Cuba—a simple man who played checkers whereas his brother, the master strategist, played chess. In those terms, Fidel Castro was now paradoxically both one move away from being checkmated and still in full control of the chessboard.

In February 2008, the National Assembly was scheduled to meet to ratify a new Council of State, which is the island’s highest governing body. The president of the Council of State is the top role in Cuba’s government—and the person who holds the position is also the president of Cuba—although it is arguably a less powerful post than the head of the Cuban Communist Party, which is described in the constitution as the highest directing force of the society and state. The meeting to choose a new Council of State takes place every five years, and in the past Fidel’s selection as president was a foregone conclusion. The Cuban leader’s poor health and cryptic writings had raised the possibility that he would seize the opportunity to formally pass the presidency to his brother and end the provisional arrangement that had endured since the summer of 2006. Still, many doubted that Fidel Castro, the most Machiavellian leader in Cuban history, would relinquish his grip on power before he drew his last breath.

On February 19, 2008, he delivered his verdict. The Cuban newspaper Granma published a message from Fidel that rendered his decision in no uncertain terms. There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raúl Castro Ruz, was final, Fidel wrote. Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs . . . When referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery ‘was not without risks.’ My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s all I can offer. Fidel concluded with the words that, after forty-nine years, brought his tenure as Cuba’s unrivaled leader to its much-anticipated end. I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief. Fidel Castro’s long reign as Cuba’s supreme ruler was over.

Five days later, on February 24, the National Assembly confirmed Raúl Castro as the president of Cuba. The awkward provisional arrangement that had been speedily implemented in the summer of 2006 was no more. Cuba had a new leader, but also a familiar one, who had been joined at the hip with his older brother since their initial triumph in the Cuban Revolution in 1959. It was both a historic moment and a strangely anticlimactic one. Raúl’s ascension merely finalized the transfer of power that had occurred many months earlier. Not only was Fidel still alive, defying the gloomiest predictions about his health, but he even retained his seat in the assembly and the powerful post of executive secretary of the Communist Party. While the event received significant media attention overseas, there were no celebrations in Miami, as had occurred when Fidel’s sickness was first reported. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department merely dismissed the change as a transfer of authority and power from one dictator to a dictator-lite, from Fidel to Raúl. Bush, who was caught off guard by the news while on a stop in Rwanda during a tour through Africa, announced that the United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty and voiced his support for the U.S. embargo. Even without Fidel Castro at the helm, the struggle between the United States and Cuba showed few signs of fading.

I die just about every day, Fidel Castro told a television interviewer several weeks before reaching his eightieth birthday in 2006. But it’s really a lot of fun for me, and it makes me feel healthier. Indeed, the aging bearded leader who had ruled Cuba for decades appeared to be in fighting form during that long, hot summer. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution to see him speak at the country’s annual May Day celebrations, where he peppered his remarks with statistics about Cuba’s health, education, and energy programs and sarcastically thanked the United States for its long-standing embargo of Cuba. After more than forty-seven years in power, Castro still provoked deep and conflicting emotions within the Cuban population, where he was adored, feared, and despised—sometimes all at once. But no one doubted that he remained fully in charge of his country, a picturesque island just off the coast of the United States that was one of the world’s last remaining communist regimes.

Castro loved to bask in the limelight, and controversy followed him throughout the spring and summer. In May, he became entangled in a surreal sparring match with Forbes magazine, which featured him in a special survey of the world’s richest Kings, Queens and Dictators and ranked him as the seventh richest, with an estimated wealth of nine hundred million dollars, nearly double the estimated wealth of the queen of England. The claim sent Castro into a state of apoplexy, prompting him to make a special appearance on Cuban television in which he pounded the table and denounced his presence on the Forbes list as repugnant slander. The magazine admitted its back-of-the-envelope calculations were more art than science, but Castro was incensed. Accusations of illicit wealth threatened to undermine his carefully cultivated image as an international defender of the downtrodden and dispossessed, and he dismissed the Forbes statistic as a smear campaign engineered by the Bush administration and the Central Intelligence Agency. Castro then issued a challenge: If they can prove that I have one single dollar, I will resign from all my responsibilities and the duties I am carrying out. They won’t need any more plans of transitions!²

In July, Castro remained an active force in Cuba, presiding over high-level government discussions, approving a series of new joint ventures with Canadian and Spanish companies, and overseeing plans to celebrate his eightieth birthday on August 13. Toward the end of the month, Castro made a snap decision to attend a South American summit meeting in Argentina at the invitation of his close friend and ally Hugo Chávez. Castro always enjoyed the element of surprise, and it was his custom to leave his travel plans unannounced until the last minute, in part for security reasons. Some of the most brazen assassination attempts against him had occurred at international gatherings in Latin America, and this trip marked his first overseas venture since a short visit to Barbados the previous December.

Besides, Castro was a popular figure in Argentina, a country still suffering from the scars of a brutal economic collapse in 2001 triggered in part by the neoliberal economic policies that the Cuban leader never tired of railing against. Castro had been greeted like a rock star during a visit three years earlier, and cries of Viva Fidel! followed him as he arrived in the country anew on July 21. Sometimes I have to misinform even my own friends. Not even I knew I was going to come, he told a crowd at an anti-imperialist rally in Argentina’s second city, Córdoba. He joined with Hugo Chávez the next day to visit the boyhood home of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine medical student who went on to become one of the most iconic figures of the Cuban Revolution. It was an emotional event for the two leaders, especially Chávez, who explained, Fidel invited me to come and get to know the house. For me, it’s a real honor being here. Their celebrity tour left some nearby neighbors reeling from the experience, including one Argentine housewife who commented that the uproar has thrown the whole city into a state of shock.³

Castro’s Argentine tour ended on a sour note, however, when an enterprising journalist provoked him into an angry tirade by asking about a sensitive case involving one of Cuba’s most noted dissidents. Hilda Molina was one of Cuba’s top neurosurgeons and had been a medical superstar until the island’s economy started to unravel following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. During the resulting crisis, Cuban medical care facilities were ordered to turn away needy Cubans and instead set aside beds for foreign patients who could pay in hard currency. Molina protested the new policies, which ended her glittering career in the communist system. In 1994, her son fled abroad to Argentina, but the Cuban government refused to allow her to leave, arguing that your brain is the patrimony of the nation. Molina was unable to even meet her grandchildren, who were later born in Argentina, a situation she decried as supreme cruelty. The plight of a grandmother separated from her grandchildren turned the case into a cause célèbre, and Argentine president Néstor Kirchner had repeatedly tried to use his cordial relationship with Castro to help Molina gain her coveted exit visa, to no avail.

In Argentina, Juan Manuel Cao, a Cuban American television reporter from Miami, dogged the official Cuban delegation with questions about Molina. When Castro joined the South American presidents at the summit for an official photo ceremony, the scene consisted of barely constrained chaos as photographers, journalists, and spectators jockeyed for the best view of the Cuban leader. Sensing his opportunity, the Miami reporter cried out to Castro, Why don’t you free Dr. Hilda Molina? Why don’t you let her come see her grandchildren? Fidel Castro immediately fixated on the journalist, asking, What’s your name? Who is paying you to come and ask questions like this? The reporter volunteered that he was from Cuba, and Castro nearly flipped with rage. I already asked you who paid you, he shouted. Why don’t you look for Bush and ask him about Posada Carriles and the crimes they have committed in his country? Cuban?! You are not Cuban. Che is Cuban. You are an intruder that is living like a mercenary. That’s what you are. Most of the exchange was captured on videotape, with photographers’ flashbulbs erupting in rapid succession. The stray question had clearly provoked Castro. The fearsome Cuban dictator was getting pretty thin-skinned in his old age.

Castro arrived back in Havana on July 23, and several days later he traveled down to Bayamo, a sleepy provincial capital located about seventy miles west of Santiago de Cuba, his hometown and the city where his initial assault on the established order of Cuba unfolded on July 26, 1953. On that date, Castro led a group of 150 rebels in a surprise attack on a military garrison in Santiago with the intention of igniting a movement to unseat the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a military debacle that resulted in the deaths of dozens of rebels, but it succeeded in launching Castro as a major national figure at the tender age of twenty-six, and he later defended himself in a famous speech titled History Will Absolve Me. He spent nearly two years in a Cuban prison before winning early release in 1955 and leaving for exile in Mexico, and in December 1956, he captained a barely seaworthy vessel named the Granma from Mexico to the southern shore of Cuba to relaunch the revolution that would eventually bring him to power on January 1, 1959. Castro christened his revolutionary organization the 26th of July Movement, in honor of the date that marked his first military excursion. As president, he made that date a national holiday in Cuba, and he commemorated it with a major speech annually.

On July 26, 2006, Castro arrived in Bayamo, which is located in the province of Granma, named after the boat he piloted back from exile. The two-lane road to the city is marked by a billboard featuring a sketch of his beloved boat next to the words WHO COULD WRITE THE HISTORY OF CUBA WITHOUT THE HISTORY OF GRANMA? That day marked the fifty-third anniversary of his first attempt to seize power, and Castro’s rousing address lasted nearly three hours before one hundred thousand flag-waving Cubans. Dressed in his trademark olive uniform, he boasted of how Cuba’s health care system resulted in long life expectancy. I don’t know how many thousands of citizens of this nation have even reached their one hundredth birthday, Castro declared, but our little northern neighbors shouldn’t get scared: I’m not thinking of working at that age. Castro meant it as a joke, but he was in fact delivering his final public speech.

On the verge of his eightieth birthday, Castro turned in a bravura performance, riveting international audiences, antagonizing his foes in the United States, and demonstrating his unrivaled dominance at home. But on July 31, he finally granted the wish that many had long hoped for both inside and outside of Cuba: He gave up power. It was a sweltering Monday evening when Castro’s thirty-two-year-old executive assistant, Carlos Valenciaga, appeared on Cuban television to break the historic news. Valenciaga, a bespectacled former student leader, bowed his head and haltingly delivered the somber message. Days and nights of continuous work with hardly any sleep have caused my health, which has withstood all tests, to fall victim to extreme stress and be ruined, Castro wrote. This has caused in me an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that has obliged me to undergo a complicated surgical operation. All the details of this health accident can be seen in X-rays, endoscopies, and filmed material. Then came the bombshell news that Cuba’s most power-hungry leader since independence was going to step back from the levers of government: The operation will force me to take several weeks of rest, away from my responsibilities and duties.

While Castro’s dominating and charismatic personality held the key to his long rule in Cuba, he also formally occupied all of the top posts in the country’s multiple, overlapping power structures. He was president of the Council of State (the 31-member ruling leadership group), president of the Council of Ministers (the executive leadership and cabinet), executive secretary of the Politburo (the top committee of the Cuban Communist Party), and the commander in chief of the Cuban military (known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces). Castro also represented Santiago as a delegate in the 614-member National Assembly, which basically served as a rubber-stamp parliament to ratify his decisions. His sudden absence would leave a gaping hole at the top of the Cuban power structure. Now faced with disabling illness, Castro stopped short of abdicating his role at the helm of Cuba’s government. Instead, he issued an edict authorizing a provisional transfer of power that left him with the option of reassuming his duties once his health had stabilized. As jaws dropped across Cuba, Castro’s letter reader announced on national television the bureaucratic reshuffling that would accompany the leader’s respite from power. In the space of six neat bullet points read out over a few minutes, Fidel Castro created a set of winners and losers, determining who would wield power during this new transitional phase.

Raúl Castro quickly emerged as the biggest winner. Having fought alongside Fidel during the Cuban Revolution, Raúl had been appointed the head of the army during the government’s earliest days. During his decades of service as Fidel’s right-hand man, he had accumulated an impressive array of titles, including first vice president of the Council of State, vice president of the Council of Ministers, and second secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. Most important, he was the head of Cuba’s powerful military and had earned the peculiar honor of being the world’s longest-serving minister of defense. Now the seventy-five-year-old heir to the throne quickly racked up an expansive new set of responsibilities previously reserved for Fidel, including the presidencies of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, head of the Communist Party, and commander in chief of the Cuban armed forces. Still, his older brother had pointedly described the promotion as provisional. Even in the grip of the most serious health crisis he had ever faced, Fidel left the door open for his future return to power.

In addition to Raúl, a team of six other ministers were explicitly named to take on new responsibilities in Fidel’s absence. All of the men chosen by Fidel were part of his inner circle, but their ages spanned nearly three decades, and they came from diverse backgrounds. Seventy-four-year-old health minister José Ramón Balaguer and seventy-six-year-old vice president José Ramón Machado Ventura had both fought with Fidel’s rebel army in the late 1950s. Now they were responsible respectively for Cuba’s health and education programs. Esteban Lazo, the sixty-two-year-old vice president, the chief of ideology for the Communist Party, and the highest-ranking black man in the Cuban government, was also tasked as a chief promoter of education. Carlos Lage, the fifty-four-year-old doctor who served as vice president and economic czar, was among the few potential reformers who had remained in Fidel’s good graces. He was charged with supervising the island’s energy programs and overseeing cooperation with other countries in this field, and thereby elevated to key point man in managing Cuba’s crucial relationship with Hugo Chávez in oil-rich Venezuela. In addition, Fidel named a troika of individuals to administer state funds: Lage; the sixty-two-year-old president of the Central Bank, Francisco Soberón; and the forty-one-year-old foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque. One name that was notably missing was Ricardo Alarcón, the sixty-nine-year-old president of the National Assembly, who was a major public figure both in Cuba and abroad. The absence of Cuba’s top legislator may simply have resulted from a desire to preserve the fiction of a separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. In practice, most top government officials were also National Assembly delegates, and Alarcón remained a prominent voice in the months ahead.

The torch of power in Cuba had been passed, if not to the next generation, then at least to a group of men whose average age was more than a decade younger than Fidel’s. The Cuban leader also decreed that his August 13 birthday celebrations would be postponed until December 2, 2006, the fiftieth anniversary of the day Fidel’s ragtag band of youthful revolutionaries came ashore at the island’s eastern tip aboard the Granma. He concluded with a pugnacious sign-off: I do not have the slightest doubt that our people and our revolution will fight to the last drop of blood to defend these and other ideas and measures that are necessary to safeguard this historic process. Imperialism will never be able to crush Cuba.

Fidel’s sudden illness that summer was more than just a shock to Cuba’s political system. It also posed a direct challenge to a series of assumptions that had, over the years, become the bedrock foundation of U.S. policy toward Cuba. Almost like a religion, the U.S.-Cuba relationship was guided by several central tenets that had been widely accepted on faith: The death of Fidel Castro would trigger major changes in Cuba. Raúl Castro was incapable of maintaining his grip on power without embracing major reforms. Cuba’s political opposition figures would be at the vanguard of a democratic revolution in Cuba, and once Fidel was dead, his legacy would be repudiated by the Cuban people, who were longing to be free. Cuban exiles in the United States would rush back to the island to reclaim their expropriated properties. Deprived of its number-one bogeyman in the hemisphere, the United States would tilt toward a process of engagement in Cuba and inevitably play a major role in the island’s future as the two countries’ long cold war drew to a close. Fidel’s surprise handoff of power was about to subject Washington’s untested assumptions about Cuba to a harsh reality check.

The revelation that Fidel Castro was gravely ill hit Miami like a bombshell. Minutes after the announcement was televised in Havana, the news traveled across phone lines from Cubans on the island to their relatives in South Florida. Castro’s declaration would be the lead news story in the United States the following day, preempting the round-the-clock coverage of the military conflict in Lebanon and news of Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic escapades in Hollywood that had dominated the airwaves in the final days of July. U.S. newspapers anxiously dusted off and updated obituaries for Castro that had been drafted long ago. In some cases, reporters found themselves revising work first written by journalists who had already died years before, even as Castro lived on.

In Washington and Miami, the BlackBerries of Cuban American power brokers buzzed with alerts that the moment they had long been awaiting appeared to have arrived at last. Within hours, crowds of people gathered to celebrate in Miami’s Little Havana, the cultural epicenter for the more than one million Cuban exiles who had fled Castro’s rule for a better life in the United States. The city’s Spanish-language radio stations were flooded with elated callers, including one woman who exclaimed, This is the happiest day of my life! Carlos Alvarez, the Cuban-born mayor of Miami-Dade County, urged residents to indulge in their merriment safely: It is a cause for celebration. We certainly don’t want to hinder in any way, shape or form the enthusiasm we all feel.⁴ Outside, the cars continued honking as people banged pots and pans, waved Cuban flags, and came together to cheer, sing, and dance on Fidel Castro’s proverbial grave. Television cameras swarmed around the ecstatic crowds. One sweaty celebrant bluntly summed up the prevailing mood: We hope to God that bastard is dead!

This sense of enthusiasm was echoed in Washington by the several Cuban American members of Congress who represented South Florida. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, their most senior member in the House of Representatives, proclaimed a great day for the Cuban people and their brothers and sisters in exile, adding that "Fidel