Castro Steps Down

by

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“Fidel Castro stepped down Tuesday morning as the president of Cuba after a long illness, according to Granma, the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party. His resignation ends one of the longest tenures as one of the most all-powerful communist heads of state in the world.

In late July 2006, Mr. Castro, who is 81, handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raúl Castro, 76, and a few younger cabinet ministers, after an acute infection in his colon forced him to undergo emergency surgery. Despite numerous surgical procedures since then, he has never fully recovered, but he has remained active in running government affairs from behind the scenes.

Now, just days before the national assembly is to meet to select a new head of state, Fidel Castro resigned permanently in a letter to the nation, and signaled his willingness to let a younger generation assume power. He said his failing health made it impossible to return as president.

“I will not aspire to, neither will I accept — I repeat I will not aspire to, neither will I accept — the position of President of the Council of State and Commander in chief,” he wrote.

He added: “It would betray my conscience to occupy a responsibility that requires mobility and the total commitment that I am not in the physical condition to offer.””

It is unclear how much will change immediately:

“Mr. Castro also indicated that he is not fading into the sunset, but would continue to be a force in Cuban politics through his writings, just as he has over the last year and a half. “I am not saying goodbye to you,” he wrote. “I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.”

That statement raised the possibility that little would change after Sunday’s vote, that Cuba would continue to be ruled in essence by two presidents, with Raúl Castro on stage while Fidel Castro lurks in the wings. At times over the last year and a half, the current government has seemed paralyzed when the two men disagreed. For his part, Mr. Castro has sent several signals in recent months that it was time for a younger generation to take the helm. He said in December, for example, “My primary duty is not to weld myself to offices, much less obstruct the path of younger people.””

But change has begun.

14 thoughts on “Castro Steps Down”

  2. Is Communist Cuba still more liberty-hating than Communist China?
    Yes, under the “ZOMG THERE BE COMMUNISTS AT MEES DOORSTEPS!!!!!” principle.

  3. Don’t forget this either, as Erick Erickson reminds us at Redstate:
    American media props up Castro and Castro-loving America-haters are in for a world of hurt.
    And with that, ladies and gentleman, I will no longer read or refer to Erickson, because how many times, even to a guy like me who can work a joke to death, can the crazy, drunken neighbor firing automatic weapons into his ceiling in the middle of the night stop being amusing before you just call the cops and move away.

  4. Nothing will change. Raul is as much in charge now as he was 19 months ago, and there’s no reason to imagine the uprising that the Cuban exile community so fervently hopes for will come to pass.

  6. there’s no reason to imagine the uprising that the Cuban exile community so fervently hopes for will come to pass

    Especially since the uprising they hope for is one in which the people who’ve been living in Cuba all along welcome back with open arms the people who left more than 40 years ago and selflessly sacrifice their own economic position to restore the wealth that the exiles lost.

  8. “‘All-powerful’? WTF? Have they never heard of, I dunno, Hitler or Pol Pot or Mao or… sheesh.”
    They were each vastly more murderous than Castro, by several orders of magnitude, of course.
    And Mao reversed course, and came up with more eccentric policies than the the other two, for various reasons, including more time and more people under his control, although the other two certainly took a good shot at the wackiness award.
    But in terms of being able to say “here’s how I want things to be” in his own land, after a couple of years of rule, Castro was certainly in the top rank of having that done, as leaders of the past one hundred years go, although along with a bunch of other company, to be sure.
    Off-hand, a claim that he had more personal authority and fewer complications, after five years in office, than Godwin’s Object, is pretty defensible, I think. Hitler wasn’t quite as unconstrained as a lot of people think.
    It’s a label that’s arguable, to be sure, but it doesn’t seem as off-the-wall to me as it seems to to you.
    I would, to be sure, certainly say that the murderousness of all three other named leaders was vastly greater than Castro’s, and thus that they were far far worse for their people and the world than Castro has been.

  10. NYT: He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. He weathered an American-backed invasion and used Cuban troops to stir up revolutions in Africa and Latin America.
    Wow. Just wow.
    Not a word about the many U.S. attempts to assassinate Castro that preceded the missile crisis.
    The revolutions in Latin America were “stirred up” by the same conditions that led to the Cuban one, and by the Cuban example, not Cuban troops. (Once underway, most of those revolutions received training and logistical rearguard support in Cuba, but almost none had the involvement of Cuban troops.)
    Cuban troops in Africa in the 1980s played a heroic role, without which the anti-apartheid struggle would have been much longer. They were a vital support to frontline African governments under assault from U.S.-backed mercenaries. The National Security Archives site has an exemplary sum-up of that history with supporting documents.
    Times articles like this are why the NSArchives is a necessary organization.

  11. “The National Security Archives site has an exemplary sum-up of that history with supporting documents.”
    I’m guessing you’re referring to the “National Security Archive,” singular, and here.
    One colorful CIA report quote from 1967:

    The report begins by bluntly stating, “Brezhnev thinks that Castro is some sort of idiot, and Castro probably isn’t too fond of Brezhnev either.”

    Incidentally, Nell, while I sympathize with some of what you say, the Times piece is, after all, about Castro, not about U.S. policy towards Castro.

  13. Hilzoy,
    Take a look at this organizational chart. you’ll see that Fidel held three offices. He only stepped down from one, although he’s admittedly signaling that he’s stepping from all three. very well.
    but the significance of this election, which Raul won today, was lost on most people. It was an affirmation of the Communist Party running the government. Cuban politicos said nice job on the electricity thing.
    And probably, go ahead an let Lage expirement with some other foreign investments.
    On the other hand, if they had voted for Alarcon, they would have been saying we want multiparty elections.
    But no matter who won, the internal security was not at issue. As long as either Castro in charge of the Revolutionary Army, and as long as official US policy is to subvert the Cuban government, RAF will give the Ministry of Interior the green light.
    we have to stop mucking with them, i.e. if we truly want to see greater liberty on the island.

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