Fidel just biding his time
BY BRIAN LATELL
blatell@aol.com

In two lengthy commentaries disseminated by Cuba's media recently, Fidel Castro shot down hopes for a better relationship with the United States. In language both scornful and abusive, he described President Barack Obama as ''looking conceited'' in Trinidad and quoted extensively from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's 50-minute anti-American jeremiad in Port-of-Spain. Castro echoed the theme that it is the United States, not Cuba, that must change. He gave no ground whatever, intimating that, as far as he is concerned, Cuba can wait another four or eight years until after President Obama leaves office without progress in alleviating bilateral tensions.

Castro's intransigence is scarcely any different than it has been since the first months of his revolutionary regime and repeated with virtually every president since. First, he rejected overtures from Dwight Eisenhower, the first president he dealt with. In the fall of 1963 John Kennedy entered into exploratory diplomatic contacts with Cuba, but those contacts expired following his assassination.

In 1974, Richard Nixon authorized high-level diplomatic contacts with Cuba. They were undertaken by his successor Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975. Soon after his inauguration in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a similar effort. The three presidents and their advisors believed erroneously that Castro would see critical advantages in reducing bilateral tensions and that he would be willing to make important concessions toward that end.

U.S. a valuable enemy

Those efforts foundered, however, when it became clear that Castro placed a higher priority on supporting revolutionary internationalism in Africa and on retaining the American enemy to berate.

Bill Clinton's White House tried yet again, exploring means of improving relations behind the scenes and through intermediaries. He was deterred, too, when in February 1996 Cuban MiG fighters shot down civilian aircraft over international waters, killing American civilians.

The latest effort by President Obama with considerable fanfare and the best of intentions is possibly the most ambitious of all these presidential efforts to reduce or end the deadlock. But it appears that it is already suffering the same fate.

This time, however, Castro has new and compelling reasons for rejecting virtually all compromise with Washington. He is in a triumphant, unyielding mood. Believing that the correlation of international forces -- a term revived from classic Marxist lexicon -- is working overwhelmingly in Cuba's favor, he feels no need to compromise. With just a little more patience, perhaps even in his lifetime, Cuba, he believes, can win most of its goals in the stand-off with Washington through unilateral concessions.

And as usual, his calculus is derived from convincing evidence. Cuba's legitimacy with governments in this hemisphere has never been higher. Soon every country except the United States will have full diplomatic relations with Havana. A rump group of presidents led and fueled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has raised the volume and intensity of pro-Castro and anti-American rhetoric to unprecedented levels. President Obama endured insulting public doses in Trinidad from Chávez and Ortega.

No need to compromise

Regional demands for the end of the U.S. economic embargo, readmission of Cuba to the OAS and an end to the years of hostility have become deafening. Innumerable calls have also been heard from leading members of Congress, influential Washington think tanks and commentators of many stripes who argue that the time finally has come for the impasse with Cuba to end. From Castro's perspective at least, unilateral concessions by Washington, such as lifting the travel ban or all of the embargo, now seem within the realm of the possible. With so much now converging in Cuba's and his favor, Fidel sees no need to make compromises.

But his rejection of the most promising American overtures ever offered is likely to be unsettling to the many Cuban civilian and military leaders who genuinely had hoped for a better relationship with Washington. Most had come to believe that Raúl Castro, Cuba's president after all, was intent on moving in that direction.

But Fidel's snide commentary published on April 21 chastens and humiliates his brother. Now issuing almost one of these reflections daily, there can be no doubt that it is the infirm, cosseted, all-but-invisible Fidel, angry but triumphant, who is again the ultimate arbiter of Cuban foreign policy.

There may be no compromise by "Castro" himself but the tides are changing. With time the U.S. as well as Cuba with or without Castro will be forced to make compromises. Soon the defeated post revolution exile Cuban community and all there political rhetoric will be diluted into the farrago of what is the ethnic minority, only a few extraneous artifacts of what once was their powerful political arm will remain. With the absence of Castro the people of Cuba will awaken to a real change and thus will form a government that will be in the best interest of the people of Cuba in Cuba and not of the exiles, Washington, or Venezuela.

With or without USA, Cuba will regain full legitimacy and forge new trade relationships with the rest of the world and as Cuba provides preferential trade policies with these countries the US Business community feeling left out will increase lobbying for loosening trade restrictions. Reality is, this will happen regardless of the which party is at the helm( money talks and BS walks), so get get ready weather you like or not, it will happen. weather it will be with Obama or whoever.

Yes it will happen and on our terms with or without your heroes the Castro brothers The complexes about Puerto Ricans and Cubans cannot be concealed Envy and Jealousy rears its ugly head I cannot wait to hear the screams when in the next plebiscite the Boricuas vote for State hood

Why would the Dominican people, descendants of a people who fought tooth and nail to be an independant nation, envy Puerto Rican statehood? You understand nothing about the Dominican phsyche "Dobbs". The Dominican national phsyche does not have at its foundation an overwhelming envy of a neighboring nation as does the nation that you yourself stem from. Speak for the Canadians but don't speak for us.

Methinks thou doth protest to much as I observe from the Malecon which one? dreaming of my Viejo San Juan while drinking a Pina Colada invented in Old San Juan by the way The envy I refer to is well documented in the book Latino Crossings
By Nicholas De Genova, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas Look it up ciby if you dont believe me

And methinks you're a goddamn clown.

Sticks and stones ciby sticks and stones grow up now and quit trying to pretend you know everything you must be very unhappy Ciby you said "Why would the Dominican people, descendants of a people who fought tooth and nail to be an independant nation, envy Puerto Rican statehood?" this will be hard for someone like yourself to understand since you were born with the privileges you enjoy and did nothing to earn them no not fighting tooth and nail wise Ciby the word I am searching for is the reason they line up everyday at the Consulate and risk their life in Yolas .....I will think of it ....meanwhile you have wounded me mortally my pride has been crushed you have called me a " CLOWN " I am going to get my Mexican friend to call you a beaner .......so there pompous one

I can urinate without it hurting which is more than you can say. If you were in my skin you'd finally be worthy of being called a man and then just maybe you would finally be able to land a woman that likes you for just being who you are as opposed to where you're from or what you can do for them. Ouch.

Remind me never to cross you, EVER. That's what I'd call a knockout blow.

One more of the you know what type chirps in or someone who did not read what I said