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Since two weeks ago Fidel Castro fainted while delivering one of his endless speeches under the Havana sun, lots of people-among them Cuban exiles in the United States and elsewhere-have been busy speculating whether the Cuban dictator is sliding toward the end of his sojourn on earth.
The Bush administration is far more interested about reports suggesting China had been shipping arms and explosives to Cuba over the last few months. James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, said the administration was "very much concerned" by the apparent sale of arms, which could trigger U.S. sanctions on China, and puzzled by what might be behind it.
However, while finding out what's behind China's arms sales to Cuba is a job for U.S. intelligence, speculating about a Fidel-less Cuba is a game at which everybody can play. And play they do, both outside and inside Cuba.
For a man who is going to be 75 years old next August 13 and has led a rather stressful life, Castro appears to be in reasonably good shape. But ever since he fainted while addressing a rally, Cubans have been coming to terms with something they knew deep down but until now did not have to face: the inescapable mortality of their "maximum leader."
Several hours later, Castro was seen in a Cuban state television studio to finish his speech. He joked with journalists that he had simulated his death to see what his funeral might be like.
Cubans didn't get to se how his funeral would look like, but they certainly got a taste of how the state security apparatus would react if Castro were to die. The political police immediately spread around the homes of known Cuban dissidents and warned anybody found in the streets that they would be jailed if State Security detected they we making fun of Castro or were celebrating his fainting spell. This was interpreted as showing the existence of a plan to neutralize dissidents in the event of Castro's death.
But dissidents have no material power to upset the line of succession established by Fidel himself, led by his 70-year-old brother Raul, the armed forces chief. So the question is whether State Security, itself an army and reputedly better equipped than the regular army for street fighting, has other plans for the event of Fidel's death that go beyond containing the rather harmless political dissidents and might be able to deal with other forces which might want to upset the succession Fidel established.
Apart from the fact that the question arises of who would control the security apparatus in the event of Castro's death, its plans can only deal with an emergency triggered by his sudden demise, natural or otherwise. But, what if he doesn't die suddenly, falls seriously ill and remains in power for a long time while progressively incapacitated? What if General Alzheimer takes over, as Cuban vice-president Carlos Lage is reported to have said? Who will dare to order that life-support equipment be disconnected or to have the "maximum leader" certified as "non compos mentis," not of sound mind? Surely it would be difficult for his brother Raul, who recently was quoted as saying "We'd obviously all like him to live forever," to do either.
There are no examples in recent history as to how this Gordian knot can be cut. The closest is that of another dictator, Spain's Francisco Franco. He lived to be 83, and for the last few of those years he was more dead than alive. But 28 years earlier he had declared Spain a monarchy, with him as a sort of regent for life, and six years before his death he had designated Prince Juan Carlos, grandson of Spain's last king, Alfonso XIII, as his official successor. In 1973 Franco relinquished his position as premier but continued to be head of state. At Franco's death in 1975, in a smooth transition Juan Carlos became king.
Whatever the dimension of his ego, Castro has not seen fit to declare himself to be Cuba's king-and therefore his brother is not the crown prince. Supposedly, there are three high-level members of the regime who would be in charge of engineering the transition: the aforementioned Lage; Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the National Assembly, and Felipe Perez Roque, the young foreign minister and Castro favorite.
But this is mostly wishful thinking. Each one of them has widely different shares of power-Alarcon the most, Perez Roque the least-and there is no indication that they would join in any common effort to resolve a thorny transition of power.
The Armed Forces of the Revolution may well be the providers of a solution, and its nominal chief, Raul Castro, may emerge as the beneficiary, even though he is not believed to be really secure in his leadership.
During the years it received Soviet aid, the Cuban military was a large, capable force that sought to promote communism abroad by contributing troops to conflicts in Africa and Latin America. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Cubans lost $5 billion a year in subsidies. This triggered profound economic problems that forced dramatic cutbacks in every sector, including the military. Today its activity is focussed primarily in terms of domestic activities, running industrial enterprises and, largely, the tourism industry.
In effect, it looks as if the armed forces are the only institution in Cuba that could fill the vacuum created by Fidel Castro's death, particularly if it were not sudden but the result of a drawn out period of deterioration of his health.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com