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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (93412)	4/14/2003 10:09:12 AM
From: Doc Bones	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

CUBAN TOM-AND-JERRY ANTICS BURIED IN MIDEAST WAR NEWS GG is a Castro expert; wrote a book on him long ago. - Doc Georgie Anne Geyer Apr. 8, 2003 WASHINGTON -- It's sort of a "when the cat's away, the mice will play" story. In this version of the drama, premiering in the Western Hemisphere while the world's eyes are focused far to the east, the United States is the cat and Fidel Castro is the big Cuban mouse who is getting into more trouble by the hour. Buried on inside pages of the newspapers, if at all, are details of incredible moves in Fidel's long march to keep total power forever. Over the last three "war weeks," the Machiavellian caudillo has arrested 80 Cubans -- indeed, nearly all the leaders of the Cuban opposition centered around the Varela Project, which was finally opening a few windows in that closed land. Many of them were expected to be sentenced this week, some to life imprisonment. At the same time, Castro has melodramatically orchestrated several hijackings -- two planes and one ferry, at last count, trying to make it to the United States -- which is also keeping him securely in the international eye. It is easy for those of us who have known and studied Castro to see the events of these last few weeks as more of the "puro Fidel" that we have witnessed since he was a struggling revolutionary in the 1950s. He creates images of liberalization and greater freedom in Cuba -- and then suddenly swoops down and destroys them, his enemies having innocently revealed themselves to him. And of course, he lives for posturing center-stage. Yet this time it seemed that there might be hope for at least a slightly different outcome. Castro is 77 now, and the world around him is changing. The young Varela Project was only a movement, backed by 11,000 signatures (an amazing number for Cuba), calling for a referendum on greater basic liberties. But there wasn't hope after all. Fidel remains Fidel, and that means pitting himself against his historical nemesis, America. The arrests, the police's descent in the middle of the night on those who dared to criticize the regime in any way, the trials of this last week, with Fidel watching from behind a two-way mirror: All are classic hallmarks of the man. But there is something different: His desperation is growing exponentially. It was one thing, several months ago, when Castro was chastised by the European Union for not ever bothering to pay his bills; it was another when Canada, long Cuba's closest friend among the democracies, froze its investments on the island lest it lose still more money there; but this March, the Venezuelans announced that Castro owed them $144 million in oil debts, and they expected to get paid. (And good luck, Caracas!) With Castro's bet on appearances of democratization or liberalization last year, he wagered that such largesse would force the United States to react favorably toward him and lift bans on both tourism to Cuba and business with American agricultural firms. But this did not pan out, and the mass arrests and Stalinist trials of this last week can surely be tied to his grand failure here. Once again, Fidel is thumbing his nose to the world. And once again, he is faced with an economy that grows sicker and more hopeless by the day -- the sugar harvest, Cuban's major crop, is down to an pathetically low 2 million tons this year, to name only one indicator. But there may be one new trick in Fidel's bag. There are currently five Cuban spies in American prisons from the ring recently apprehended in Florida, three of them sentenced to life imprisonment. Watch the next chess move: Castro will try to exchange those spies for some of the Cubans he has been so eagerly imprisoning. uexpress.com