Florida Abuzz With Talk Castro May Be Near Death

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The New York Sun

Speculations whipping around South Florida that the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, is near death reached fever pitch this week as federal emergency officials ran “post-Castro” drills in preparation for the death announcement.

Officials described how the demise of the communist dictator could spark their worst nightmares — either a flood of Cuban refugees heading in makeshift boats toward Florida’s beaches or a flotilla of Cuban exiles taking off to help liberate Cuba. Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans began planning champagne parties, while local police prepared to close thoroughfares in the event people began to dance in the streets.

The expectation of Mr. Castro’s imminent death has been building for months, ever since the Cuban leader, who is 80, underwent abdominal surgery for an undisclosed condition in July and missed two separate parties celebrating his own birthday. All Cubans have seen of him is a handful of photographs and snippets of video footage. A detective in the Miami-Dade County Police Department, Nelda Fonticella, said officers are fielding dozens of phone calls each day with people asking, or offering tips, about the timing of Mr. Castro’s death.

“It seems like every other week we get a frenzy of them,” she said. “Now, it’s increasing. We’re constantly checking with the feds.”

On Tuesday, the day of the “post-Castro”drill, a popular anti-Castro radio host in Miami, Ninoska Perez, told listeners to call in about what they planned to do at the moment the death was announced.

“It was kind of cathartic. People were saying, ‘This is something I’ve waited for all my life,'” Ms. Perez said. “This is the one day you think of your parents. You think of how this man has changed your life. … It’s a death that I will celebrate.”

But even as some prepared for chaos and celebrations, other Cuba watchers pointed to a quieter transition in the island nation and in a new relationship between America and Cuba that may already be underway, suggesting that Mr. Castro’s end may evoke more of a whisper than a bang.

“I think Cuba is already in the hands of a new group of leaders,”a member of ENCASA, which advocates improved American-Cuban relations, Silvia Wilhelm, said. “It’s going to change very slowly.”

The dictator’s less charismatic but possibly more pragmatic younger brother, Raul Castro, has been at the country’s helm ever since Fidel Castro’s surgery. Some expect Raul Castro to lead the country the way of China, by gradually easing restrictions on Cuba’s economy and its people.

A bipartisan congressional delegation led by Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona is traveling to Cuba today to meet with the Cuban government, although the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 forbids normalizing relations with Cuba while either Raul or Fidel Castro is still in power. A spokeswoman for Mr. Flake said the delegation was hopeful that a bill Mr. Flake has repeatedly introduced to lift some of the embargo on trade and travel to Cuba could pass in the new Democrat-controlled Congress — and that it might survive a veto by President Bush.

The group’s efforts to change American policy toward Cuba could be aided by this month’s General Accounting Office audit of millions of dollars in federal money to aid Cuban dissidents — funds that may have been mishandled, with some of that money paying for crab meat and cashmere sweaters, the report said.

The current confusion about Mr. Castro’s health is a good argument for normalizing relations in order to allow more information to flow between the two countries, a Miami-based radio host and political analyst, Francisco Aruca, said. He argues that Mr. Castro’s quiet departure from power, under the guise of his illness, could partly be a move to avoid a chaotic regime change or rebellion in Cuba that has long been awaited by Cuban exiles in Florida and elsewhere.

“Part of what is happening in Miami … is they are being caught off guard,” he said, pointing to the calm in Cuba over the past several months. “Our policy called for, once Castro died, there was going to be quite a bit of upheaval, and that is not what is happening.”

But many anti-Castro exiles are nothing if not patient. Silvia Iriondo, who fled Cuba in 1960 when she was 15, said Mr. Castro’s death will mark — if not the end of Cuba’s communist regime — at least the beginning of the end.

“I really believe that on the day we hear about his inevitable death, on that day there certainly will be celebration,” she said.


The New York Sun

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