Hoping for Castro's exit, exiles plan transition

BOGOTÁ -- After an ailing Fidel Castro ceded power last week to his younger brother, Raúl, reinvigorated foes of the legendary revolutionary returned to their situation rooms in Washington and Miami to strategize about how to bring about a democratic transition on the island 90 miles south of Florida.

The so-called transition plans range from a Bush administration vision of rebuilding the island and a congressional effort to fast-track $80 million to dissidents in Cuba, to independent efforts such as Peace Corps-style humanitarian brigades, and schemes by militant exiles to send boatloads of Cuban-Americans to foment revolution.

Yet all of the plans depend on a crucial, and not-at-all foregone conclusion: that Cuba's military officers, bureaucrats, or ordinary citizens will rise up in a post-Fidel era to demand democracy and free markets. The transition plans, many Cuba watchers say, have scant hope for success if Fidel Castro's passing from power results in a long-planned succession to his 75-year-old brother and revolutionary comrade, the defense minister.

``They're all pie-in-the-sky plans," said Wayne Smith, a former top US diplomat in Havana and director of the Cuba program at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. ``The Bush administration's new plan is to . . . insist on a transition government acceptable to the US. Are the Cuban people going to rise up and make that happen? How can they?"

For nearly half a century, the White House and Cuban exiles have plotted and prepared for a post-Fidel Cuba. Yet despite every conceivable pressure -- from the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, to diplomatic and economic isolation from an embargo that began in 1962, to hundreds of shadowy assassination attempts and propaganda drives -- Washington's wily nemesis has survived , and brutally suppressed dissent at home. Now Castro's opponents in the United States think they have a unique opening to try again.

Since 2003, the Bush administration has been working on a plan to hasten the end of communism in Cuba. The first report by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a controversial 423-page document released in May 2004, advocated tightening the embargo and travel ban, and limiting family contacts and remittances to deprive the regime of currency and bring about Castro's demise. Critics say the measures have cut exiles off from their families and closed down back channels to influence the regime, while failing to weaken Castro.

The report envisioned that after Castro, Cubans would appeal for help and Washington would respond with 100,000 tons of food, as well as water, fuel, vaccines, and medical equipment. Under the scenario, US advisers and nongovernmental groups would establish democratic institutions and free elections, American technicians would rebuild the nation's infrastructure, and financial specialists would establish banks, a tax system, private property, and small businesses.

The report was bitterly denounced by the Cuban government, which questioned why a country with universal healthcare and one of the world's lowest illiteracy rates would need humanitarian aid from its archenemy.

``How dare they talk of `transition.' Our transition occurred 47 years ago with our revolution. Why would we want to go back to how it was before, with a few people controlling everything, with private healthcare, private education?" a Cuban diplomat said on condition of anonymity last week.

Lisandro Pérez, a sociologist and founder of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, called the Bush administration report ``a thinly disguised plan to create a US protectorate under a presumed scenario of chaos."

In a telephone interview, Pérez complained that the administration and many exiles assume that Cubans are waiting for salvation from the outside world.

``A lot of these plans and people advising the US government haven't been in Cuba in more than 40 years. There's language in the report about getting in vaccines, helping the starving masses, keeping schools open that leads you to believe these people think Cuba is like Sudan," he said.

The commission's 93-page follow-up report last month, which includes a classified appendix purported to address a US response to a post-Castro emergency on the island, conditioned its offers of assistance on the wishes of Cubans .

On Thursday, Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, introduced a bill dubbed the Cuba Transition Act to speed the report's recommendation to disburse $80 million to members of the small and besieged dissident community.

But several dissidents on the island worried the money would give Castro ammunition to discredit them as US-funded mercenaries. ``Those are 80 million arguments for the Cuban government" to portray us as US lackeys, said democracy campaigner Manuel Cuesta Morúa.

The White House has sought to cool emotions in Florida, where more than a dozen exile groups across the political spectrum were refreshing their action plans. The most radical said that they were preparing flotillas of boats and planes to send exiles to the island to unite internal opposition or foment rebellion.

Coast Guard officials said boats trying to make the illegal crossing would be stopped and sent home.

Francisco Hernández, president of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation, an influential exile group that collaborated closely on the US government report, said his organization has had its own transition plan for 14 years, ``but it is changing almost every day."

The foundation's vision is of a civilian-military transition government that would release political prisoners, call for multiparty elections, and permit foreign governments and exiles to participate in reconstruction.

With some 800,000 Cuban-born Americans, including entrepreneurs who represent 52 of the richest 100 Latinos in the United States, according to Forbes magazine, ``We have enough wealth to take on a substantial amount of reconstruction that's needed," Hernández said.

Olga Nodarse, founder of Cuba Corps, a Florida-based initiative to train 700 volunteers as a Peace Corps-style brigade, said her group has sent books and assistance to 79 civil society groups on the island, from independent libraries to clandestine democracy campaigners. The Corps' plan is to send volunteers ``when relations are reestablished and the State Department says it is OK."

Eric Driggs of the University of Miami's ``Cuba Transition Project," cautioned that while many exiles have been ``looking at Fidel's incapacitation or death as the starting point for transition, I don't think that's happening." While some analysts predict that the younger Castro may take steps toward Chinese-style mixed-economy changes after consolidating his power, no one suggests he will move away from one-party rule.

Whatever scenario plays out, Driggs said, ``the exile community has really matured. Twenty years ago, they wanted to go back and relive the Cuba they knew. The majority now realizes their role is secondary, a support role."

Some have gone even further, shifting their position from demanding the violent overthrow of Castro to calling for an end to the US embargo and engagement of the communist regime, much like President Nixon engaged Mao Zedong in China.

Alfredo Durán, a prominent Bay of Pigs veteran, dismisses transition plans cooked up in Washington and Miami as ``unrealistic" and ``counterproductive," rooted in Washington's ``historical arrogance over why Castro hasn't given in."

The United States would be wise, said Durán, a board member of the Miami-based Cuban Committee for Democracy, to allow succession to run its course. Most Communist Party central committee members are younger and well educated, he said, and ``know Cuba has to get into the 21st century, which will require changes in politics, economics, and social structures."

If the US government or exiles interfere in what he and many academics see as an inevitable opening, ``hard-liners in Cuba will get into their bunkers and say they're under threat, and moderates willing to make a transition will be unwilling to be seen as traitors," Durán said. ``We need a silken hand to wait this process out before we make any rash decisions."