State Secret: Is Castro Dead?

NRO: Dead Or Alive, Cuban Leader's Reign Is Effectively Over

(National Review Online) 
Ricardo Alarcón: Currently president of the National Assembly, Alarcón is the most subtle and impenetrable of Cuba's current leaders. Elected head of the student federation in the early 1960s, he was the first major young technocrat produced by the Revolution. He quickly rose to become Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations, and then held a variety of senior posts at the United Nations itself. Tapped briefly as foreign minister in the early 1990s, Castro appointed him to preside over the National Assembly less than a year later. There has always been speculation whether this was a demotion. The move is probably better understood as Castro eliminating a potential competitor who may have proven less than loyal to the Revolution during the Special Period — when Castro came closest to losing his grip on power. A tireless opponent of the embargo, Alarcón has argued forcefully for access to international commerce and microfinancing — things that many of Castro's most inveterate enemies in Miami have advocated as ways to bring down the regime. He was not mentioned at all in Castro's will — nor, as a legislator, should he have expected it. Apart from reputation, it is not clear what his power base really is: He spent most of the first three decades of the Revolution living in New York, and since returning to Cuba has held a largely ceremonial post. But if in the tumult of succession, something terrible should happen to Raúl without a supreme leader formally in place, the National Assembly would then decide who leads— as Alarcón once explained in an interview.

Yearbook entry: Most likely to deal the Revolution its death blow while chanting its hymns.

It would be natural to expect that these four will rule as a committee under the nominal leadership of Raúl, but history suggests that such an arrangement will not be long-lived. Besides the internal power struggle that is now under way, there will be several sources of pressure on the new Cuban government. First, there are increasing signs that Cuba's dissidents are gaining renewed strength — especially around Osvaldo Payá's "Varela Project." Second, independent pro-democracy groups such as Cuban Consensus and Roots of Hope have sprung to advocate principles of dialogue and mutual respect that enjoy increasingly vocal support both in Cuba and in the United States. Third, the U.S. is now more likely to craft a Cuba policy that serves some interest other than political expediency — for pretty much the first time in 50 years. And finally, and most important, Cubans are simply sick of Communism — all of them, all the way up the chain of command. How all this plays out is something that common Cubans will ultimately decide.

Meanwhile, it is satisfying to see how perfectly and inevitably Castro’s life is coming to a Stalinesque end. It was on March 4, 1953, that the Kremlin announced that Joseph Stalin had suffered a stroke four days earlier, and that power would temporarily be held by a group of senior leaders. On March 6, it was announced that Stalin had died the night before. At his funeral, three of the new leaders made speeches, the order of the speakers marking the new order of precedence.

Less than two weeks after that, the new premier (Malenkov, the most senior party leader after Stalin) was forced to resign his most important post. By the end of the year, the second (Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police) had been secretly arrested and executed. Two years after that, the third (Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister) was named ambassador to Mongolia.

Out of nowhere, Nikita Khruschev had emerged to assume complete control of the Soviet Union. And of course, one fine day many years later, it was announced (and not by him) that Khruschev had resigned all political offices, due to old age and deteriorating health.… And on and on went the history of the Soviet Union, until the day it finally died, when a group of would-be coup leaders explained in a press conference that Premier Gorbachev had been taken ill, and some reporters just started laughing.

Mario Loyola is a former assistant for communications and policy planning at the Department of Defense.