This is not how a dictatorship is supposed to work. According to tradition, dictators die in office, as Stalin, Mao, Franco and Tito did. Or they are removed violently, as in the cases of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Nicolae Ceaucescu in Romania and Samuel Doe in Liberia.

KEEBLE McFARLANE

Sometimes, they are elbowed aside by more ambitious colleagues, as happened when Nikita Khrushchov outmanoeuvred his colleague Nikolai Bulganin for the top office in the old Soviet Union or even more viciously, by Saddam Hussein as he laid waste through the ranks of the Ba'ath Party as he clawed his way to the presidency of Iraq from the late 1960s on.

Many people were surprised when word came early on Tuesday morning that Fidel Castro was giving up as head of the government he brought to power 49 years ago. Twenty months ago there was even more startling news - Fidel had relinquished power to his brother (and brother-in-arms), Raúl, after undergoing a serious abdominal operation. Since then he has not appeared in public and there's been no official word about the exact nature of his illness. But his presence has been acknowledged by a constant stream of "reflections" he has written, and by periodic video appearances with visitors such as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Lula da Silva of Brazil.

He had to make the announcement this week because there was an election last month for a new National Assembly, and that body begins sitting tomorrow. The first order of business is to choose the State Council, the president of which is the country's head of state. Castro's months of recuperation and reflection have shown him definitely that after a lifetime of robust good health and considerable energy, he is no longer up to the physical demands of the job. And, crafty old tactician that he is, he calculated that by lying low and letting his associates get on with the job, he was preparing his compatriots for the inevitable day when he would no longer be driving the bus.

Observers generally assume that the assembly will formally choose Raúl for the job, but even that is not a certainty. They could instead select the quiet, competent technocrat, Vice-President Carlos Lage Dávila, who is in his 50s, or even the foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque who is a decade younger. Anyway, it doesn't matter whom they choose, since the Cuban leadership is by no means monolithic and is determined to ease the country's constricted economic performance.

They have watched the disorder and chaos which racked Russia after the implosion of the Soviet Union, while China has been bursting out with exponential economic growth and the concomitant alterations to its social structure. Above all, they want a gradual and orderly transition from the rigid society they have had for years to a more free and open one. Only the most rabid anti-Castro faction in the United States could want anything else.

Cubans have taken the news of his retirement in their stride, and even the Miami exiles have been largely subdued in their reaction. There have been the usual noises, to be sure, with George Bush setting the tone on his whip-round in Africa. "This transition ought to lead to free and fair elections. And I mean free and I mean fair," trumpeted the man who was installed in the White House courtesy of dubious voting practices in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, cemented by a tame Supreme Court.

Castro's revolution is one of five remarkable ones to have taken place in the Western Hemisphere. The first was by a bunch of fledgling British colonies in North America which shook off the stifling constraints of a colonial master 231 years ago and is still a work in progress. Then there was Haiti, where enslaved Africans overthrew the French colonial bosses and their local land-owning representatives just over 200 years ago, only to be cut off at the knees by France and, of all people, the Americans. The Mexican revolution began almost a century ago, and lasted for 30 years before things settled down.

This one wrested power and economic advantage from the elites and distributed it to the emerging middle classes, labour groups and urban dwellers. It even took on the powerful Roman Catholic church, which objected to many of the aims of the revolution. And while Castro and his comrades cooled their heels behind bars after their disastrous attack on a military barracks in Santiago, the United States stifled a progressive revolution in nearby Guatemala by Jácobo Arbenz Guzmán, beginning an orgy of repression, slaughter and misery.

Castro's revolution is based largely on the lessons of Cuba's history and its struggles since the mid-19th century to throw off the Spanish colonial yoke. It echoes the sentiments of social justice, radicalism and nationalism as expounded by the poet, philosopher and revolutionary, Jose Martí. Even as Spain's grasp on the island loosened, that of its powerful neighbour, the United States, grew firmer.

The US, rebounding after its extremely costly civil war, hijacked Cuba's war for independence and supplanted Spain as the dominant power. Castro is a direct product of its arrogant, patriarchal stance towards Cuba, which has grown stronger and more entrenched in the half-century since, complicated by the strident voices of the large and influential exile community in Miami and elsewhere.

Nine presidents have done their utmost to try to get rid of Castro, but every action has succeeded only in being totally counterproductive. Shortly after Raúl took over as acting president, he offered to open dialogue with the US.

Washington responded with its usual argument that it can't talk to anybody from a government led by the Castro brothers and that the US is willing to talk to Cuba only after it holds free elections, etc, etc. But the US now enjoys good relations with China and Vietnam, both of which it adamantly refused to deal with for years. Just recently we were treated to pictures of George Bush holding hands with the doddery leader of one of the world's bastions of democracy, free speech and human rights, Saudi Arabia. We heard no demands here, nor upon other allies such as Kuwait and Egypt.

Whatever changes happen in Cuba have to be initiated and managed by Cubans, and by no one else. Outsiders can urge them to open up, and in fact, have been doing so, but quietly and respectfully, not as adult to rebellious teenager, as is the habit in Washington. Otherwise, the entire history of the past century will have been flushed down the drain.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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