Cuba: Semper Fidelis?

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The people who specialize in assessing the actions of Fidel Castro are quite aptly called Castrologists, for on the basis of their past record their chief tool seems to be stargazing. Last week they looked up from their horoscopes again to proclaim that Fidel's future looked dim. The reason: for the past seven weeks he had not been acting as they thought he should be acting.

Not since May Day had he given a major speech. He had not taken visible leadership of last month's Guantánamo crisis; admittedly, he had signed the communiqué charging that the U.S. was planning an invasion, but he left it to his brother Raul to preside at the funeral of a Cuban soldier killed in a shooting in cident on the Guantanamo border. And where was Fidel, an inveterate hurricane chaser, when Hurricane Alma hit the island? There was no evidence that he was even near the disaster areas (nor was there evidence that he was not). Furthermore, it was President Osvaldo Dorticós, not Castro, who delivered the last foreign-policy address, and Dorticos again who presided over a joint meeting of the Cabinet, party chiefs, and farm and labor leaders.

What did it all mean? One theory was that Fidel was ailing; another that he was undergoing shock treatments. Still another, more widely subscribed to, was that Moscow had finally decided to put Fidel down and replace him with a less mercurial leader such as Dorticos. Were the Castrologists really on to something this time? Perhaps they were, but only astrologists would know.