CivicActions

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080219/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/fidel_castro

What if Castro upstages Chavez as the pre-eminent leader of Latin America's 20th and 21st centuries by holding truly free and open democratic elections? Like a full-on, Khadafi style renunciation of his stubborn, axis-of-evil ways, and adopts an open, statesmanlike diplomacy that balances Latin nationalism with the "universal" truths of global interdependence, peace and justice?

A Castro-sanctioned true and transparent democratic election would be the ultimate FU to decades of strangulation from "compassionate" conservatives who have failed for so long (among so many other things), to view waterboarding as torture, or to abhor the moral vacuum that would permit it to be funny, much less condoned.

The people who've been castigating Castro will soon be the ones soon arguing to save the market, er, millions of poor, repressed Cuban people deprived of a full line of (extremely profitable) petroleum-based products and who've been anxiously waiting to play host to drunk yuppy Club Med hedonists a week at a time in perpetuity. Wooha!

Furthermore, Grampa Castro would forever obscure whatever remnants of legacy Bush exhumes in Africa in the next few months, that's for sure.

Not that I think Castro would do that, but one can only dream. And then blog about it, I guess.

I just watched Sicko last night and wondered how Cuba would change under free and truly democratic rule (I wonder if there is, actually such at thing?). Would the corporations swoop in and develop Cuba into a 21st century Mall of All Americas? (can I claim first commercial use by writing in the CA blog?) Would a unique culture be swept away in a wash of corn oil and plastic? (And why do we have an active naval air base on a sovereign country that despises us as much as "we" despise "them?")

I won't pretend to be an analyst about what's next for Cuba, but I think it involves the letters C, I, and A, as well as the words Civil and War. Younger brother Raul (76) will have to be significantly more ruthless (or stubborn) than Fidel (81), for Cuba to stay stable for very long. Unless... Castro invites Jimmy Carter to Havana to certify elections.

Sadly, democracy has granted citizenship to sprawling corporations whose powerful collective influence is now more or less permanently infused into the governance of the people. Which is, y'know, obviously scary and all kinds of wrong. And which is why I say sadly - because at the end of the day, what happens next in Cuba is going to be all about the money.