A friend of mine pointed out a long time ago that obituaries are one of the most informative parts of a newspaper. For lesser known people, they often offer interesting insights into the times in which the deceased lived.
When internationally famous people like Fidel Castro pass away, there are a flood of obituaries, commentaries and historical reflections that appear in the days following. And since news services typically keep draft obituaries in the can for the most famous figures, many of them contain detailed information and more thorough preparation than the typical daily news article.
I usually don't do biliographic posts like this. But I'm making an exception this time. This is far from comprehensive. I'm grouping these by the source country, prefaced by these three video reports.
The Pope has been visiting Cuba over the weekend. That visit called to mind this song by Kate Campbell that references an earlier papal visit to the island.
This combination of images of two of the most famous Argentines is surely more jarring for an American audience than for Argentines. When I visited the Presidential Palace Casa Rosada) in Buenos Aires in 2012, the entry hall had two portraits prominently displayed together: Che Guevara and the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered by a death squad while presiding over Mass in a hospital. Pope Francis formally declared Romero a martyr this year and he's on the road to sainthood. I doubt any Pope will canonize Ernesto Guevara. Although there was and maybe still is a folk shrine to "St. Che" near the place in Bolivia where he was assassinated in 1967. I think a few miraculous cures have been reported there. Go figure.
The staunchly anti-Communist and theologically conservative Pope Juan Paul II also celebrated mass in Plaza de la Revolución on his visit to Cuba in 1998.
This was also an interesting part of the Pope's message: "At the end of the Mass, the pope appealed to Colombia's government and Marxist FARC guerrillas to ensure that nearly three years of peace talks in Cuba are successful in order to end their 'long night' of war." (Pope meets Fidel Castro, warns against ideology on Cuba tripBuenos Aires Herald 09/20/2015) Cuba has hosted peace talks to end that long-running conflict.
Darío Pignotti notes in Página/12 (Cuba se viste de blanco y amarillo por el Papa 19.09.2015) that the chatter in Cuba he heard before Francis' arrival included many mentions of the "Argentine Pope." (Pignotti goes a bit Tommy Friedman in this piece and reports on an interview with a taxi driver.)
How much of the Pontiff's worldview is actually consistent with that of a government like Cuba's?
Eric Bugyis in a post which,so far as I can tell, is supportive of Pope Francis, argues that there is a great deal of philosophical/ideological agreement It Is Marxism!Commonweal 09/22/2015:
In Bolivia, Francis called for "the just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor" saying that this is "about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right." Linking the fruits of labor to rights in this way suggests the "labor theory of value" that one finds in Thomas Aquinas and in the social encyclicals beginning with Rerum Novarum, but it is also the theory of value that one finds in Marx. It is the theory that says that those who work to produce goods and services, through agriculture or manufacture, ought to have a share in the ownership of those goods. It is a rejection of the wage slavery whereby workers are shackled by policies that seek to interrupt the worker's relationship with the fruits of his or her labor by turning this labor into a commodity itself. The price of this commodity, then, must be weighed against the expected profits to be gained through the sale of commodities owed by stockholders. On this account, it should be made clear, the stockholder owns both the workers (now often more honestly referred to as "human resources") and the commodities that these workers produce and profit to the extent that the stockholder (and the market) values the former less than the latter. Thus, when Francis talks about a "formal market" in which people are "exploited like slaves," what else could he be talking about but the alienation of workers from the means of production? And when he calls for governments to promote "the strengthening, improvement, coordination and expansion of forms of popular economy and communitarian production," what could he be referring to other than supporting the formation of unions (another thing endorsed by the social encyclicals) and empowering local commerce by limiting the monopolistic practices of transnational corporations? All of which, I assume, Mr. Langone would rightly identify as "Marxism." [my emphasis]
Now, I'm hardly allergic to Marxist perspectives, as any of my numerous posts about the Frankfurt School thinkers can illustrate. And I'm definitely in sympathy with the perspectives of the Pope described here.
But this just gets some history wrong. No St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) did not invent the "labor theory of value." Marx' version built on those of the distinctly modern philosophers and political economists Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772-1823). Marx also made a clear distinction between chattel slavery, where the workers actually are owned, and wage labor, which Marxists also call wage slavery, in which it is not the case that "the stockholder owns ... the workers," as Bugyis puts it.
A great undergraduate professor of mine, the late Howard Bavender, was my adviser on this now long-ago paper ("Just War Concept and American Churches in the American Antiwar Movement" 1974). As I was trying to sort through the relationship of Catholic theology to dissenting movements, he stressed that while the Church took strong positions on issues of social justice and the just war that at times were in accord with left political positions, the Church had never abandoned its criticism of Marxism on matters where it contradicted the Church's view of the nature of humanity.
In fact, what I wrote where I took his advice on that wasn't bad:
The Roman Catholic Church, in the United States and around the world, had been staunchly opposed to "atheistic Communism" before and after World War II. The American hierarchy continued to speak strongly against Communism even during the wartime alliance with Soviet Russia. Many Roman Catholic churchmen really believed that the United States was threatened by Communism, but they were also interested in acquiring American aid in their world-wide battle with Communist governments, particularly in Eastern Europe where the Soviet Urion attempted to break the political power of the church. ...
However, around the time of Pope John XXIII's ascendancy, Catholic attitudes toward international relations began to change. Pope John issued his encyclical Pacem in Terris, which many Catholics took to be "a clear call for total pacifism in a nuclear age." [1970 quote from Francine du Plessix Gray] Pope John stated in that famous document, as quoted above, that war was unacceptable in the nuclear era. The support of the Catholic Church for such projects as the Cold War against Communism was clearly decreasing, although the Church has never abandoned its opposition to those elements of Communism which challenge the Christian conception of man. This notable decrease in support nevertheless was to be an element in the future Catholic opposition to Vietnam policies in the United States.
It's also important to remember that when the Church has criticized capitalism or aspects of it, that also comes from centuries of theoretical development that has some of its roots in pre-capitalist concepts and economic arrangements, i.e., European feudalism. "Corporate state" arrangements like those in Mussolini's Italy or the Austrian Standestaat of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt von Schuschnigg were forms of government with which the Catholic Church of that time were generally comfortable.
The Catholic Church is a worldwide institution that has congregations within the entire spectrum of contemporary forms of government: secular ones and ones with established religions (Christian and otherwise); military and civilian; democracies and dictatorships, and varying degrees of both. The Catholic Church doesn't take the position of American neocons that they shouldn't even have formal conversations with governments they finding displeasing. On the contrary, they are interested in negotiating the best possible arrangements for the Church and its members even in countries hostile to the Catholic Church.
Eduardo Valdés, the Argentine Ambassador to the Vatican, notes that Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of La Habana, has played a key role in the current process of rapprochement between the US and Cuba which the Holy See has helped to mediate. (PremoniciónPágina/12 19.09.2015)
The Catholic News Service provides this description of Fidel Castro's view of Christianity as expressed in a 1985 book of interviews with Fidel in which he positioned himself as supportive of the views of liberation theology: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Christ, Marx and Che: Fidel Castro offers pope his religious viewsNational Catholic Reporter 09/21/2015. Pope Francis has views more friendly to liberation theology than his two immediate predecessors. John Paul II was a bitter opponent of it. Benedict XVI was known before and during his Papacy as generally reactionary on theological and political issues. However, both of them also took positions based on Catholic social teaching (feudal roots and all) that challenged politically conservative positions. They also took pacifist positions at odds with the normal power politics on which the world runs far too much.
Pope Francis gave Castro several books, including one by Italian priest Alessandro Pronzato and another by Spanish Jesuit Segundo Llorentea. The Holy Father also gave him a book and two CDs of his homilies, as well as his two encyclical letters, Lumen Fidei and Laudato si'.
In return, Castro gave Pope Francis an interview book entitled, "Fidel and Religion," written in 1985 by Brazilian priest Frei Betto. The dedication reads: "For Pope Francis, on occasion of his visit to Cuba, with the admiration and respect of the Cuban people."
The head of the Vatican Press Office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "familiar and informal," and the two men spoke about "protecting the environment and the great problems of the contemporary world."
Father Lombardi compared the private encounter to that which took place with Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, saying Fidel Castro asked Pope Benedict many questions, while Sunday's meeting with Pope Francis was "more of a conversation."
¿Piensa el cardenal Ortega que el proceso de normalización ya es irreversible? Está en camino a serlo, pero según él “Obama y Raúl tienen enemigos y hay que protegerlos a ambos porque los dos saben que antes de irse todavía tienen mucho que hacer”. Cuando habla de los retos a Raúl, Ortega describe el peso de lo que él llama “ideología”, o sea el resabio del modelo soviético y de la rigidez. Para el cardenal el efecto se nota aún en sectores del Partido Comunista Cubano, en los medios controlados por él, en la TV, la radio y la prensa escrita.
Contó un ejemplo. El periodista Amaury Pérez lo entrevistó para la tele cubana y en vez de la media hora habitual le dio una hora. Era el primer reportaje televisivo en 60 años. El director de TV se opuso. Quería revisar y cortar partes. “La entrevista se pasa sin tocar una coma”, le dijeron a Ortega que fue la frase de Castro. El diálogo se puede ver haciendo click en http://bit.ly/1JCqhe7.
[Does Cardinal think that the process of normalization is now irreversible? It's on the way to being so, according to him: "Obama and Raúl {Castro} have enemies, and we have to protect both of them because the two know that before they leave {the political scene}, there is still a lot to do." When he speaks of Raúl's challenges, Ortega describes the weight of what he calls "ideology," that is, the bad taste of the Soviet model and the rigidity. For the cardinal, the effect can be observed even in sectors of the Cuban Communist Party, in the media controlled by them, in TV, radio and the written press.
He gave an example. The journalist Amaury Pérez interviewed him for Cuban television and gave him an hour instead of the usual half hour. It was the first television report {featuring Ortega?} in 60 years. The TV director opposed it. He wanted to edit it and cut parts. "The interview will air with touching a comma," Ortega was told was the phrase {Raúl} Castro used.]
It's reasonable to assume that when Francis spoke about the problem of "ideology" in Cuba, his meaning was the same or similar to that in which Cardinal Ortega is using it.
In the TV interview referenced, Ortega recounts a conversation he had with Pope Benedict XVI, in which Benedict said that the Church is not in the world to change governments. It's in the world to spread the Gospel. Ortega says it in a context that makes it clear he agrees with that perspective. And he also says that is the perspective of Pope Francis.
Granovsky continues to report on Church-related consequence of the long-standing embargo:
El desafío para la Iglesia es ganar feligreses, sobre todo entre la juventud, y conseguir fondos propios para ayuda humanitaria. Por el bloqueo la Iglesia no puede recibir dólares porque los aportes de afuera son interferidos en algún punto de su curso por Estados Unidos. Ocurrió con fondos regalados por Los Caballeros de Colón, por la Isla de Malta y por grupos irlandeses. Llegaron a Cuba tras operaciones clandestinas e incluso algún obispo debió recorrer el mundo con 200 mil dólares ocultos en una valija. En La Habana no hubo problemas.
[The challenge for the Church is to win parishioners, above all among youth, and obtain its own funds for humanitarian support. Because of the {US} blockade, the Church is not able to receive dollars because donations from outside are intercepted at some point in their course from the United States. That has occurred with funds donated by the Knights of Columbus, from the island of Malta and from Irish groups. They arrived in Cuba after {via} clandestine operations, including one bishop who has said to have traversed the world with $200,000 hidden in a valise. In Havana, he had no problems.]
Meanwhile, columnist George Will prior to the Pope's arrival in the US is griping about the Jesuit Francis defending science on the topic of climate change. (Anthony Annett, On Fact-Free Flamboyance: George Will vs. Pope FrancisCommonweal 09/21/2015) Awesome.
The Argentine paper Clarín recalls a cynical comment by Cuban leader Fidel Castro that turns out now to have been coincidentally prescient (Fidel Castro y una asombrosa predicción en 1973 23.07.2015:
"Estados Unidos vendrá a dialogar con nosotros cuando tenga un presidente negro y haya en el mundo un Papa latinoamericano".
("The United States will return to having a dialogue with us when they have a black President and there is an Latin American Pope in the world.")
"Venezuela is Latin America's biggest exporter of crude oil and has the world's largest petroleum reserves." - Brian Ellsworth and Andrew Cawthorne, Venezuela death toll rises to 13 as protests flareReuters 02/24/2014
.... another issue Cuba has raised with Washington could have even more important implications for the region. It is now apparent, as I first suggested a month ago, that the Cubans made it clear to President Barack Obama that normalization of relations would be limited if Washington was unwilling to normalize relations with Venezuela. This is important because U.S. hostility toward Venezuela, especially Washington’s support for regime change there, has poisoned relations with Latin America even more than the embargo against Cuba.
Obama appears to have gotten the message. He met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro at the Summit of the Americas on April 11 and backtracked from his executive order that declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat” to U.S. security. Obama has sent a top State Department official, Tom Shannon, to Caracas twice since April 7 to make peace. A career diplomat and an assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, Shannon is considered pragmatic in Washington circles. In the context of Venezuela, this means someone who favors support for groups that want to get rid of the government mainly through electoral means rather than through violence or a military coup. [my emphasis]
Venezuela, especially because of its oil resources, will remain a major target of the neocons and "Miami," the anti-Communist Cuban activists.
Obama has been willing to give them a large voice on some issues during his Administration, including regime change actions in Ukraine, Honduras and Paraguay.
Weisbrot notes:
The pattern is clear and easily understandable: There are many people in the Obama administration and Congress who do not want to normalize relations with Venezuela. (As was noted in the press, the same is true to a lesser extent for normalizing relations with Cuba. Obama kept top State Department officials in the dark for more than a year of negotiations.) So it was not surprising to see a 2,500-word Wall Street Journal article on May 18, with a far-fetched allegation that the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, was the chief of a drug cartel.
And he makes an important point in closing, "Obama has proved quite tough when he wants something. He has faced down formidable opposition, including from one of America’s most powerful lobbying groups, the Israel lobby, in order to pursue a nuclear deal with Iran. He can do the same for Latin America, if he so chooses."
The big world news from the Summit of the Americas this weekend in Panamá was the unquestionably "historic" meeting between Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro.
"As we move towards the process of normalization, we'll have our differences government to government with Cuba on many issues. Just as we differ at times with other nations within the Americas, just as we differ with our closest allies," Obama said today.
Apart from a couple of brief, informal encounters, the leaders of the United States and Cuba have not had any significant meetings since Castro's older brother Fidel Castro toppled US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in a 1959 revolution.
"The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past," Obama said.
One of the historical tidbits that Raúl Castro revealed in his speech was that John Kennedy had been scheduled to have a telephone conversation with just sent Fidel Castro a message asking to resume conversations around November 22, 1963. Which never occurred, for well-known reasons. (“Tenemos muchas diferencias pero vamos a avanzar”Página/12 12.04.2015) The English-language text in the Cuban paper Granma presents the statement from Raúl Castro's speech in an indirect quote, "President Kennedy was assassinated precisely at the moment when the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, had received a message from him looking to initiate a dialogue." It's not clear how close to the date of Kennedy's assassination this occurred. (Raúl: We came to fulfill the mandate of Martí with the freedom won by our own handsGranma 04/12/2015)
Her speeches are often substantial. But this one seemed to be a bit more reflective than others of hers I've read or heard.
She talked some about the historically bad behavior of the United States in Latin America, and more generally about the need to understand history to understand the presence. She expressed particular concern about the current fashion of "soft coups" (“los golpes suaves”) in which a wider variety of political and economic measures are used than with a more traditional military coup, of which Argentina has experienced several since 1955. The difference is a matter of emphasis, perhaps an emphasis which forms a qualitatively new approach. All military coups are to some extent military and civilian-political at the same time, a quality very much on display during the Pinochet coup of 1973 in Chile and the Argentine military coup of 1976.
Cristina notes of a golpes suave that they "siempre encuentran su origen en nuevas organizaciones bajo el nombre de ONGs" ("one always finds its origin in new organizations under the name of NGOs"), a reminder of the extent to which NGOs have been coopted by overtly political forces and governments to push for extra-constitutional regime change.
She called the Union's victory in the US Civil War "the basis of the greatness of the United States" because it resulted in freeing the slaves. She recalled "true patriots" like Lincoln, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
And she talked about something basic in religious terrorism. She notes that when the "end of ideologies" was declared - apparently referring to post-Soviet end-of-history narratives but also echoing the ill-fated "end of ideology" phrase associated with Daniel Bell in the 1960s - fundamentalism appeared as an ascendant threat. She says that "with ideas, one can combat them with ideas. But when someone says they are killing in the name of God, it's much more difficult to give battle and combat him."
She concludes this portion of her speech by saying this means we have to face the specific challenges of the 21st century and we need new theoretical perspectives for understanding them. That's a very general statement, but in the context of her politics and foreign policy, she's defending the anti-neoliberal policies of "popular governments" like her own in Latin America. And more specifically her Left Peronista perspective.
"Left Peronista" is the construction I'm using in English to describe her approach, known as kirchnerismo, which is essentially assertive social-democracy of a kind major Social Democratic Parties in Europe no longer practice, besotted as they are with Angela Merkel's Herbert Hoover economics. Her Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ), which is the original Peronist Party, is ideologically very diverse.
But, no, she did not say the United States is Exceptional. She did say we are "lucky."
Mark Weisbrot in How Not to Win Friends in Latin AmericaUS News & World Report 03/18/2015 explains how the Obama Administration's confrontational, pro-regime-change position toward Venezuela may not be as contradictory to the more accommodating policy toward Cuba as it appears on the surface:
It is only inconsistent if one sees the opening to Cuba as the beginning of a change in overall U.S. strategy for the region, one that seeks to reconcile with the huge hemispheric political shift that has taken place in the 21st century, and is sometimes known as Latin America’s “second independence.” President Rafael Correa of Ecuador succinctly expressed the regional governments’ disgust with the latest sanctions, saying that it “reminds us of the darkest hours of our America, when we received invasions and dictatorships imposed by the imperialists.” He then asked, “Can’t they understand that Latin America has changed?” The short answer to his question is no. Washington is still some ways away from the hemispheric equivalent of Nixon’s trip to China in 1972, which was not just about beginning a process of opening diplomatic or commercial relations but also about coming to grips with the new reality that an independent “Communist China” was here to stay.
Even as the normalization of relations with Cuba proceeds, the White House plans to continue funding “democracy promotion” programs within the country – as well as numerous others in the region. [my emphasis]
It really is remarkable how confident American policymakers still are about the American ability to stage "regime change" operations, despite their actual record. John Prados' Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (2006) describes how bumbling many of them have been and how even the two postwar regime-change operations considered big successes at the time - in Iran and Guatemala - were successful in large part through dumb luck.
And, of course, we're still wrestling with the consequences of the "successful" regime change operation in Iran. President Obama's decision to lift the embargo against Cuba is also a recognition of how poorly our regime-change efforts in Cuba worked. Poorly, as in total failure in Cuba's case.
I was reading an interview with German writer and political activist Günter Grass, in which he mentions in passing the democratic revolution in Portugal of 1974. (Andrej Ivanji, Günter Grass: "Der dritte Weltkrieg hat begonnen"Der Standard 20.12.2014) Henry Kissinger was then Republican President Gerald Ford's Secretary of State. And as Grass reminds us, he regarded the revolution much as he regarded Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile and wanted to handle it the same way, i.e., to overthrow the democratic government and substitute and authoritarian dictatorship. As Grass says, Willy Brandt was then head of the Socialist International, the international organization of social-democratic parties, and the SI had much more significance as a leadership group than it does now. (It has very little at all now.) But, in Grass' account, Brandt in particular along with other social-democratic leaders, blocked Kissinger's regime-change aspirations for Portugal.
The American record on regime change hasn't improved much since 1974.
Pat Kennelly reports on the status of one of our more recent regime-change adventures in The Unspeakable in AfghanistanTruthout 12/21/2014:
2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues. Thirteen years into America’s longest war, the international community argues that Afghanistan is growing stronger, despite nearly all indicators suggesting otherwise. Most recently, the central government failed (again) to conduct fair and organized elections or demonstrate their sovereignty. Instead, John Kerry flew into the country and arranged new national leadership. The cameras rolled and a unity government was declared. Foreign leaders meeting in London decided on new aid packages and financing for the nascent ‘unity government.’ Within days, the United Nations helped broker a deal to keep foreign forces in the country, while simultaneously President Obama declared the war was ending—even as he increased the number of troops on the ground. In Afghanistan, President Ghani dissolved the cabinet and many people are speculating the 2015 parliamentary elections will be postponed.
While the exact role of the US in the change of regime in Ukraine earlier this year is contested, it's very clear from what's in the public record that neocon US Ambassador to Ukraine Victoria Nuland and the neocon-run and Congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) were actively and recklessly working for regime change against the elected pro-Russian government that was overthrown by the rebellion earlier this year. (See for instance: Angela Merkel: Victoria Nuland's remarks on EU are unacceptable; Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leak1ed Nuland-Pyatt callBBC News 02/07/2014; Ed Pilkington and Luke Harding, Guardian 02/07/2014)
The Institute for Policy Studies' Right Webinformation page on the NED (updated 03/02/2014) includes the following:
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s to push democratic reforms and roll back Soviet influence in various parts of the globe. In his 1983 speech inaugurating NED, President Ronald Reagan said: "I just decided that this nation, with its heritage of Yankee traders, ought to do a little selling of the principles of democracy."[Ronald Reagan, "Remarks at a White House Ceremony Inaugurating the National Endowment for Democracy" NED, 12/16/1983]
The private, congressionally funded NED has been a controversial tool in U.S. foreign policy because of its support of efforts to overthrow foreign governments. As the writers Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld remarked in the January/February 2007 NACLA Report on the Americas: "Since [1983], the NED and other democracy-promoting governmental and nongovernmental institutions have intervened successfully on behalf of 'democracy'—actually a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics—in countries from Nicaragua to the Philippines, Ukraine to Haiti, overturning unfriendly 'authoritarian' governments (many of which the United States had previously supported) and replacing them with handpicked pro-market allies."[Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld, "Benevolence or Intervention? Spotlighting U.S. Soft Power" NACLA Report on the Americas Jan/Feb 2007] ...
Allen Weinstein, a member of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) working group known as the Democracy Group, which first proposed the formation of a quasi-governmental group to channel U.S. political aid, served as NED's acting president during its first year. Talking about the role of NED, Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."[David Ignatius, "Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups" Washington Post 09/22/1991 September 22, 1991]
One might hope that Fidel Castro's announcement that he is stepping down as Cuba's leader would inspire a little vision and maybe even a tiny bit of courage on the part of our Presidential candidates. But one would be wrong. Surely, you say, that bold Maverick McCain would take the opportunity to break with Republican orthodoxy? (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Most independent Cuba experts contend that Fidel’s formal departure will make a difference in Havana.
His resignation "is a signal that there will be more space for others," said Julia Sweig, a Cuba specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations who predicted that Raul is likely to promote reforms in agriculture and small business in ways designed to reduce the role of the state in the economy -- a process that, during Castro’s illness, he had already initiated.
Chancellor Felipe Pérez
Raul’s stewardship has also seen the recent release of four prominent political prisoners, as well as a number of members - for reasons of health - of the so-called Group of 75 dissidents rounded up in 2003.
To many Cuba specialists, Washington should use Castro’s resignation as an opportunity to reach out to the new regime, if for no other reason, according to Sweig, than it "would get an enormous boost globally and in Latin America especially."
National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón
"Raul Castro has said now three times that he’s interested in talking with the United States unconditionally to try to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries," noted William LeoGrande, a veteran Cuba specialist at American University and dean of its School of Government. "The Cuban leadership is in the process of considering some sign of economic changes, and it would make sense for the United States to be able to influence that in a positive way. You can’t have any influence if you don’t have any contact."
Fidel and Hugo Chávez
Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, as we might expect, had his own take on matters: "¿Cuál renuncia?, Fidel no ha renunciado a nada. (What renuciation? Fidel hasn't renounced anything.)" Say what? Actually, he went on to acknowledge that Fidel's physical weakness made it impossible for him to continue as Cuban President. But, he said, Fidel will continue to be a leading figure "en la batalla de la revolución cubana y la revolución en América Latina (in the battle of the Cuban revolution and the Latin American revolution)". (Hugo Chávez dice que Fidel no ha renunciado a nadaEl País 19.02.08)
Vice President Carlos Lage
One of the effects of the ascent of Raúl Castro may dampen relations with Venezuela somewhat, as Raúl is thought to be more "pragmatic" and less ideological than his brother.
Rodrigo Pardo of Cambio suggests that leaders like Vice President Carlos Lage, National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón, and Chancellor Felipe Pérez are likely to be prominent in the Cuban leadership for the immediate future along with Raúl.
