Fidel Castro is dead, but Donald Trump could give Cuba's dictatorship new life
By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer November 28 at 7:33 PM
At long last, Fidel Castro is dead. Now the oppressive system he installed in Cuba can wither and die, too — unless Donald Trump reverts to Cold War policies and gives Cuba’s failing dictatorship new life.
It is tempting to see Castro’s death as little more than a formality. After all, his brother Raúl has been running the country for nearly a decade, ever since ill health forced Fidel to step aside and kept him from reassuming command. But the very fact that Fidel still drew breath served as a limiting factor in the program of economic reform Raúl has been trying to enact.
According to The Post, Raúl Castro gave a speech in April in which he joked that “we have two parties here, just like in the United States — Fidel’s and mine.” Fidel’s is the Communist one, he added, “and you can call mine whatever you want.”
There is considerable truth in those words. Raúl has been trying to move his country toward the Chinese model of authoritarian one-party rule combined with some degree of free-market economic development. Fidel, a true believer in the brutal communist experiment, has consistently tried to slow, derail or reverse any meaningful economic change.
Fidel was reportedly appalled at the way Mao Zedong’s China was transformed by Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. He saw the society dividing into haves and have-nots. Worse, in his mind, he saw the Chinese Communist Party potentially sowing the seeds of its own demise by allowing the accumulation of private wealth and the development of civil society. He was determined that the Communist Party of Cuba would not make the same mistake.
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