Took you long enough, cabron.

[wombat_socho]

Castro's Confession - IBD - Investors.com:The Left: Fidel Castro stunned the world this week by admitting socialism had failed in Cuba. The implication of the dictator's statement is unclear, but one thing isn't: Castro's sycophants have some explaining to do

Comments

[therevdrnye]

At least he didn't wait to die without coming clean. There may be hope for Cuba if Castro's admission that communism has failed in Cuba is accepted by the current Cuban leadership.

Of course, where they are going to turn if they do so will be problematic. I'm sure that wealthy interests from all over will want to help Cuba build up new industry - tourism in particular - but the strings that people will want to attach to such aid will put Cuba back in the pre-Castro days. It won't matter whether the money men are org crime types or not; the way corporations are run these days, the only difference will be that the new owners will not be connected to any of the traditional types of racketeering.

[wombat_socho]

"Sixteen tequilas later, we had a deal. Havana goes back to the Mob, and Fidel and I open a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken stores. Ain't life sweet."
- Was/Not Was, "I Feel Better Than James Brown"

I might be as cynical as you (and Don Was) are about this except for the presence of the Cuban-American community. A lot of them just want to go home, so long as home is more free and capitalist than Castro's failed Communism, and I think they won't be eager to see a return of the conditions that made Cuba ripe for revolution in the first place.

[haikujaguar]

Unfortunately, a lot of those people are dead or very close to dying. My parents were children when they were exiled, and my father is now in his 70s. Their parents are dead (except for my grandfather, who's in his 90s).

The second wave of immigrants left for different reasons, and may not want to go back.

[wombat_socho]

Unfortunately, you're right. On the gripping hand, while they may not want to go back, am I wrong in supposing that their children would be a force for helping Cuba get back on its feet with preferential treatment from Washington, in the same way that they've helped keep the hammer down in Fidel's regime?

[otherles]

Here's a disturbing question.

What if a post Castro Cuba, under the influence of some returned emigres, petitions for annexation to the US -- how many new states of the union would that make?

[wombat_socho]

I don't see that happening at all. It's not just the memetic damage done by 50 years of "little bitty us versus the Evil Yankees" but some serious ethnic divisions between the Cuban exiles (many of whom are dead or really really old anyway, as haikujaguar already pointed out) and the regular Cuban in the street, who is more Afro than Hispano in their ancestry.

[otherles]

Well, it was a silly idea.

[wombat_socho]

Yes. Our Manifest Destiny was always to the West, not the South. Never too late to conquer Japan properly, you know. ;)