We’ll Always Have Fidel
EARLIER THIS YEAR, an elderly widow died in Havana. Her death, at 88, after a long decline from Alzheimer’s, was unremarkable except in one respect: Angela Castro Ruz was the eldest living member of the most enduring political dynasty in the history of the Western Hemisphere.
This year has brought many milestones for the Castro family. Angela’s most famous sibling, Fidel, the Maximum Leader of Cuba since 1959, turned 86 on August 13. October marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the fate of the world hung on the threat and promise of “mutually assured destruction.” In June, Fidel’s brother and political heir, Raúl, turned 81; the Caribbean nemesis of the United States is now squarely in the hands of octogenarians. The death of Angelita Castro no doubt brought grief to her brothers and perhaps also a grim musing on the poet’s words “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Since his famously close brush with death in July 2006, Fidel has endured multiple surgeries and hovered between life and death, but El Comandante has eked out a recovery worthy of Lazarus. Certainly, if vengeance were the fuel of eternal life, Castro would live forever. Or as the weary wags of Calle Ocho, the Miami mecca of Cuban exile life, lament, Castro “is immortal until proven otherwise.”
Yet the Cuban titan will never again be the man he once was. Even his famously loquacious speeches have been supplanted of late by rapid-fire Reflexiones, some barely longer than a tweet. Such brevity has inspired fevered prognostications from both sides of the Florida Straits: In a post-Castro world, who will lead the Caribbean’s largest island and country? The likely answer, to the chagrin of Washington and Miami, is—more Castros.