In the sixties, it was Kennedy and Castro. Five decades later, Cuba has a new Castro and some say America has a new Kennedy. What next?

Ever since Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba on January 1^st, 1959, the idea of a Cuban Revolution has always been somewhat of a misnomer. As it turns out, reconciling the impasse between Fidel’s brash, selfish cult of personality and the supposedly universalist, national uprising of the guajiros (Cuban peasants) has not been an easy task. Many revolutionaries have suffered for coming down on the wrong side of this debate, choosing to back the popular revolution over the supreme leader and his style of rule. One was Húber Matos, a prominent Major of the Rebel Army who, after resigning his commission out of fear that Communists were taking over the new regime, had his suspicions confirmed when an infuriated Castro ordered his arrest and brutal incarceration. On December 31^st, 1971, in the middle of a twenty-year sentence at Havana Prison (he was released in 1979), he wrote to his wife that, “The least that can be done with the coward who under an apostle’s cloak rages against unarmed men and women, making their lives impossible in their cell blocks, cells, dungeons, and other putrefied places, is to unmask him before the whole world.”

Another victim was a close revolutionary friend of Castro’s, the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whose wanderlust led him from post to post in the Castro government and then on to sponsor guerrilla uprisings in Africa and South America. In 1967, he tried to bring revolution to Bolivia, but was cornered by the CIA and gunned down by the Bolivian military. Guevara wrote in his diary that Castro had abandoned him. And although Castro had let his erstwhile comrade die a martyr’s death in the Andes, for the Maximum Leader this was not an abandonment of revolutionary idealism, but an assertion that Fidel, and only Fidel, could be the prophet of this radical movement.

Looking back on these fifty years of the Cuban Revolution confirms one reality: Fidel Castro, through political skill and harsh punishments, has withstood challenges to his personality from center, left, and right, establishing a socialist dictatorship in the process. His rule has been synonymous with Communist Party control, and it is hard to see how this has been good for Cuba. If the cases of Matos and Guevara prove anything, they demonstrate that this was always Castro’s revolution from the beginning.

Having resigned from his position as president about a year ago due to health reasons, Castro is the only major figure in Cuba that inspires any sort of national enthusiasm. At Cespedes Square in Santiago de Cuba during ceremonies commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, when his brother Raúl paid tribute to the “Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro Ruz,” the crowd cheered and shouted wildly. But what were they cheering for? As Professor John Carey, who studies Latin American politics, points out, Castro’s leadership produced marginal benefits in access to education and healthcare for Cubans, but as far as “providing people access to a variety of basic goods, rewards for initiative, the ability to express themselves freely, to travel, to communicate, and have access to competing ideas—Cuba is a disaster.”

If there is one thing that Castro was particularly savvy about, it was his recognition that Cuba reaped vast benefits solely because of virulent anti-Americanism: this secured him subsidies from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and won him the friendship and financial support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in recent years.

Because of its history, Cuba is not only a symbol of how a tiny country can resist the hegemony of the United States, but it also represents the moral ambiguities associated with American power. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 seemed to show the world that the Castro regime was too secure for the Americans to overthrow, but at that time Cuba was far from cohesive. According to Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Cuban refugee and author of Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution, Castro had planned for the notorious Isle of Pines prison—which held ten thousand political prisoners at the time—to be dynamited in the event that the invaders secured a foothold in Cuba. Indeed, the escalating tensions between the US and Cuba throughout the height of the Cold War allowed Castro to justify both the murder and torture of political prisoners and the rotten living conditions in Cuba itself. When the US placed an embargo on Cuba in 1962, Castro was ready to blame the American imperialists, not his inexperienced government, for the food rationing that became necessary despite an earlier prediction of economic growth.

Even more ominously, the one true success of the Cuban Revolution—the creation of a large Cuban military complex—ought to serve as a warning to the United States of the dangers of revolutionary imperialism. Under Castro’s leadership, the Cubans grew up thinking that their armed forces could defeat a multitude of countries—first it was the US in 1961, then South Africa in 1975, and Somalia in 1976. Cuban imperialism, concentrated mostly in Africa during the 1970s, sought to prop up Communist regimes no matter the cost. The problem with this military hubris, then and now, is that in the hands of fanatics, it persuades a leader that he can defeat anyone at any time. And during the Cold War, American leaders were quite willing to endorse such extremism so long as it was anti-Communist.

Even if the US and Cuba have always been on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, their respective foreign policies have both managed to cultivate deadly fellow-travelers. The American support of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s happened to bolster Osama bin Laden’s goal of repelling the atheistic Soviet Union. At the time, the CIA thought little of the man who would one day be the world’s most infamous terrorist. Similarly, Castro’s militant anti-Americanism grabbed the attention of one disaffected American Communist who later shot John Kennedy in 1963. Speaking to a British reporter in 1967, Castro said, “Yes, I heard of Lee Harvey Oswald’s plan to kill President Kennedy. It’s possible that I could have saved him, but I didn’t.” Cuba stands as an example of how becoming increasingly radical in foreign policy, whether the leader is motivated by anti-Communism or Communism, peace or war, secularism or fundamentalism, ultimately attracts fringe parties who can wreck the noblest intentions. A well-informed policy is nothing without the moderate application and restriction of that policy.

It is inevitable, then, that Raúl Castro, having succeeded his older brother, will have to tone the revolutionary rhetoric down a bit. Although it is hard to tell how he will rule, several recent policy changes indicate that Raúl is willing to be pragmatic, but with plenty of caution. In 1991, after Cuba entered an economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its abundant aid money, Raúl got behind the idea that a little capitalism could go a long way: farmers were allowed to get a profit on some of their produce. Since he has assumed the Presidency, further incremental reforms are being implemented to allow Cubans greater freedom in visiting tourist hotels and in buying cell phones and computers—goods hardly affordable by the entire Cuban population. And still there remains the onerous lack of political freedom, no matter how much Raúl is willing to implement economic reforms. Raúl certainly would like Cuba to modernize slowly in this regard, but without Fidel’s iron will to hold the population in check, he may find foundational cracks forming in the house that Fidel built. For although Fidel Castro has loomed large over Cuba’s history, his anti-Americanism and harsh personality have only covered over the deep problems brought about by the state’s domination of political and economic life. As Raúl is quickly discovering, Fidel’s charismatic leadership over the past fifty years sidelined, and even demonized, an unbiased analysis of events in Cuba since the Revolution.

When exactly true political change will happen, and if the US will respond by reexamining tough issues like the longstanding embargo, is wholly up to speculation. Yet it is important to remember that during their trials in the Sierra Maestra, struggling bravely against the Batista regime, many rebels thought that Cuba's new government would be quite different from what it turned out to be under Castro. And fifty years later, Fidel’s abrasive political maneuvers are gradually becoming discredited. The Cuban Revolution, on the other hand, remains as vague as it was in the guerrilla camps of 1959. One can only hope Raúl Castro realizes that the Revolution’s promise of freedom is more worthy of commemoration than its historical despotism.