Cubans Wonder What's Next
This report was written by CBS News Havana Producer Portia Siegelbaum.
Not so long ago, Cuba President Fidel Castro said he would not cling to power if his health interfered with his leadership. "I'll call the [Communist] Party," said Castro, "tell them I don't feel in condition" and that someone else should take over.
And that's what he's done, at least temporarily. In a Monday night announcement that took people totally by surprise, the longtime Cuban leader said he is temporarily handing over power to his younger brother, the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Second Secretary of the Communist Party, and other government and Party officials.
In a letter read on national television at the end of the evening newscast by Presidential Secretary Carlos Valenciaga, Castro said he had undergone "complicated" surgery for "sustained" intestinal bleeding that "obligated" him to rest for several weeks.
He blamed his illness on stress due to his heavy schedule including his recent visit to Argentina for a MERCOSUR trade bloc meeting, a side trip to the Argentine hometown of his former comrade in arms, the late Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and participation in the "People's Summit" at the University of Cordoba in Spain.
These travels, says Castro in the announcement read on television, were followed immediately by two speeches in Cuba last Wednesday, the last time he was seen in public. The missive describes those dates as "days and nights of continuous work with barely any sleep."
It was precisely this high visibility in recent days that made Monday night's announcement so unexpected, according to many Cubans. The previous week Miami's Cuban exile community had again been awash in rumors of Castro's demise, rumors that filter through to the island. But his trip to Argentina put a stop to the gossip. Monday night's news refueled it.
"Is this the beginning of the end?" asked Nidia Alfonso in a tremulous voice. The economics professor at the prestigious CUJAE College of Engineering expressed a fear voiced by several other Cubans with whom I spoke immediately after the announcement was made.
The half dozen or so Cubans I spoke to Monday night were most unsettled by Castro's handing over power - even if only provisionally - to Raul Castro, the man who has long been designated as successor to Fidel.
They take it as a sign that his condition is serious – creating uncertainty about the future. "We just had to take my neighbor to the health clinic. Her blood pressure went up after hearing the announcement," said Matilde Velasquez, a secretary and Castro adherent.
Official policy in Havana is never to discuss the personal lives of government or Party representatives, and there is a total taboo on discussing Castro's health. We don't even know for sure which hospital the Cuban leader is being treated at, or exactly what is wrong with him. Some people told me that based on what the letter signed by Castro said, they think he must have had a perforated ulcer.
Only after Castro fainted two hours into a speech under a blazing Havana sun in June 2001 did people begin to speak about his vulnerability. Although he fainted, the Cuban president was out of action for only a few minutes. Castro revived and took the podium to insist he was fine and had just been temporarily overcome by heat and overtiredness.
Even when he tripped in Santa Clara and broke his left knee and fractured his right arm in October 2004, Castro - clearly in pain - insisted on taking the microphone to tell people he what had happened. According to him, he refused general anesthesia during the three-hour operation and remained in full command of government affairs.
All this makes the present situation highly unusual. The letter read on Cuban State Television last night asks organizers to postpone his 80th birthday celebrations, scheduled for August 13th.
The announcement also implies that he will not be able to participate in the Summit of the 114 member Non-Aligned Movement, scheduled to be held in Havana September 11 – 16. As head of state of the host country, Castro is expected to take on the leadership of the Movement for the next three years.
A Cuban government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he hadn't been authorized to comment, shrugged off Castro's setback as a temporary thing. "Yes, he'll have to recover and take it easy for a long but I think he will bounce right back afterwards."
Castro has been in power for nearly fifty years, despite the ongoing hostility of ten United States Presidents. His regime survived the U.S. economic blockade, the collapse of its main trading partners, the ex-Soviet Union and the former Eastern European socialist states and its economy has recently received a shot in the arm because of close relations with oil-rich Venezuela and increasing trade with China.
AP reports the news of Castro's at least temporary transfer of power has received a warm reception in the Cuban émigré community in Miami.
But Fidel Castro's opponents are quick to make one other point: handing over power to Raul Castro is not the transition to democracy that they and the Bush Administration have in mind.