Castro's game
FIDEL CASTRO, an acute student of US public opinion, knows that the Iraq war provides a timely smokescreen for a crackdown on political dissent. But the same repression that throttles free speech also hobbles the economy, and the recent hijackings from Cuba show that Castro's tyranny is exacting an enormous toll on the Cuban people.
Castro's security forces arrested 78 dissidents last month while leaving Oswaldo Paya, the most prominent critic of the regime, untouched. Paya has gained international renown for his petition campaign to force the Cuban Assembly to consider a constitutional amendment that would allow political and economic freedoms. Although 11,000 courageous Cubans signed the petition - the minimum needed for consideration - the Assembly has refused to take it up.
Still, the petition has Castro worried to the point where he staged huge rallies in defense of his revolution last summer and had the Assembly declare that Cuban-style socialism would forever be the governing ideology on island. And just to make sure that Paya's initiative would not evolve into a broad-based opposition, the recent wave of arrests silenced the organizers who were responsible for signature-gathering in provincial cities.
Castro, a master at politics, is less adept in economics. He bet heavily on government-dominated tourism, which has slumped following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. His disdain for small business has throttled independent economic activity. No wonder so many want to leave. In the last two weeks, two Cubans hijacked airplanes to Florida, and others tried to divert a Havana ferry there. The vessel ran out of fuel and ended up in Mariel - scene of the 1980 boatlift - where Cuban security forces overpowered the hijackers and freed 50 hostages last Thursday.
The US government warns that all hijackers will be prosecuted if they reach the United States. And it wants no repeat of the boatlift, when, in another economic crisis, Castro allowed 125,000 Cubans to leave. But the United States also guarantees that any Cuban who reaches US soil will not be returned to the island, and this policy encourages hijackers.
The United States needs to figure out a better policy toward Cuba - one that allows controlled immigration, encourages opposition to repression, and seeks to improve the economic lot of the people. One step to this goal would be to lift the economic embargo and allow unlimited visits by Americans.
Castro knows that this increased economic activity would provide some relief to the Cuban people while exposing his policies as the real reason Cuba has endured a long-running depression. The crackdown on dissent has a double benefit for him: It discourages domestic opposition and makes it more unlikely that the United States will lift its ineffective trade embargo.
