HISTORY OF CUBA

After 50 Years of Castro's Cuba, an End to the Cold War?

Tim Padgett –
Tue Dec 30, 2008
Time.com

It's good that the Cuban Revolution's 50th anniversary falls on Jan. 1. That's the day for New Year's resolutions, and it's time for Washington and Havana to make some big ones.

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 entire 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 and a bleak human rights record - overshadowed those achievements. Felicidades!

So, fittingly, don't expect much of a charged observance on either side of the Florida Straits this week. It looks unlikely that the ailing, 82-year-old Fidel, who ceded Cuba's presidency to his younger brother Raul this year, will even be fit enough to attend the celebration in Santiago de Cuba. In Miami, exile hardliners 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-war time warp, enter the 21st century - and cease being an impediment to a hemisphere that's trying to do the same. (See the Top 10 News Stories of 2008.)

Fortunately, the signs are looking better as U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration nears. Obama, who has said he's willing to talk with Raul Castro, is poised to end the Bush Administration's restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba. That could (and should) be the first step toward dismantling the ill-conceived, 46-year-old embargo (which Obama surely knows is also the aim of many pro-business Republicans in Washington). Either way, such gestures make it harder for the Castros to rail against gringo imperialism. For his part, Raul Castro recently told actor Sean Penn in an interview for The Nation magazine that he and Obama "must meet" in a neutral place "and begin to solve our problems."