Gwynne Dyer, Contributor
( L - R ) CASTRO AND CHAVEZ
"IT WOULDN'T be outrageous," said Ana Faya of her suspicion that Cuba and Venezuela might unite one of these days. After all, the senior analyst at the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) in Ottawa pointed out, the idea of uniting Latin American countries has been around since the revolutions of Bolivar and San Martin against Spain almost two centuries ago. And she certainly knows how Cuban Communists think: for ten years, until she fled to Canada in 2000, she was an official of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.
The Cuban regime's biggest problem by far is: who succeeds Fidel Castro? The official answer is his youngest brother Raul, currently vice-president and defence minister, but ideologically committed Cuban Communists still have problems with the idea that political power can be inherited. They also suspect Raul of being soft on capitalism.
Fidel Castro has had a remarkably rapid recovery from a fall last October that broke his arm and shattered his kneecap in eight places, but he will turn 80 next August. He has ruled Cuba for 46 years, but he will soon have to be replaced. If the revolution is to survive, his replacement had better be a man with contemporary revolutionary credentials, a man with the charisma and resources to keep the show on the road. A man, perhaps, like Hugo Chavez.
UNFORTUNATE DIVISION
Chavez is Venezuelan, not Cuban, but that may not be as big a problem as it seems. Many people on the left in Latin America, including 'Bolivarians' like Chavez and most of the Marxists, have always seen the division of the region into more than a dozen Spanish-speaking countries as a misfortune, not a law of nature. Cuba and Venezuela are already closely tied economically and politically, and Chavez, though neither a Communist nor a dictator, shares Castro's social goals and his hostility to the United States. It just might work.
As an analyst, Ana Faya monitors what senior people in the Cuban regime and in the governments of neighbouring countries are saying in public, because it probably bears some relationship, however distant, to their real intentions. And here is what she has been hearing recently.
On October 5, 2005, at the signing of the 6th Joint Commission on the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement between Cuba and Venezuela, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage Dávila said: "Our country has been accused of not having a democracy, but in events like this one we realize that we are one of the most democratic countries of the world, because we have two presidents, Fidel and Chávez." And Chavez replied: "Cuba and Venezuela have joined together, and at this point, the world should know that our fate is sealed, that these two homelands, which deep down are one, are opening a new road at whatever cost."
IMPRACTICAL VENTURE
It could be just the usual windy rhetoric, but suppose it isn't. Suppose there actually is a plan to unite the two countries, with Chavez and Castro as co-presidents, and to leave Hugo Chavez in power over both countries when Fidel, thirty years his senior, finally dies. "Castro has the power and the credibility," Faya noted. "It's a real possibility." But, she added, "It should take place while (Fidel) Castro is still in charge." It's certainly not a plan that would appeal to Raul.
Impractical, hopelessly idealistic stuff, in the sense that Cuba and Venezuela would be only 35 million people together, totally outmatched by the almost 300 million people and 20-times bigger economy of the United States, but Washington is severely distracted by its faltering Middle Eastern adventure at the moment.
History is full of surprises, and this could be one that really overturns normal expectations. Uniting with Venezuela would not preserve Castro's system unchanged after his death, for it is old, authoritarian, and out of tune with the times. But it might win Cuba enough time to make a peaceful transition to a demo-cratic system that retains the main gains of his revolution in terms of equal access to educa-tion, health care and social support. Chavez will never be a Cuban and he cannot rule that island in the long term, but in the short term, he could save it a great deal of misery.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
