In Cuba, a struggle over history's march to democracy

Two recent events there underline the uncertainty that swirls around a post-Castro regime.

from the April 25, 2007 edition

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While Venezuela's Mr. Chávez idolizes Castro, nations such as Spain that may once have been friendly to the Cuban regime are expressing concern about its continuing clampdown and imprisonment of dissidents and would-be reformers.

Two former Polish presidents, Lech Walesa and Aleksander Kwasniewski, issued a letter in March to the Cuban people, drawing on Poland's experience of abandoning communism for democracy. Published in the Miami Herald, the letter said Poland's example was a "testimony to the victory of agreement over conflict, dialogue over quarrel, good over evil."

The letter said the "time of change is imminent. The breath of awakening democracy in Cuba can be felt even … in Poland. Be persistent and in solidarity, be patient and indomitable, ready to construct common future for all Cubans, so that your beautiful country can become a friendly home to all those of your citizens who today inhabit the island and those who have been forced to abandon it." That last phrase is an obvious reference to the large Cuban exile community in Miami.

In a trenchant challenge to the Castro regime, the letter reminded it that "the time of tyrants and running the country while following 'the only right line' is coming to an end. A triumphant march of democracy cannot be stopped. We in Poland know this better than anyone else."

The letter was timed for the fourth anniversary of a Cuban crackdown on dissenters called the "black spring," an event that the letter called "yet another blow against the democratic opposition."

Unless Cuba remains a startling exception to communism's march to democracy elsewhere, change will come to a post-Castro era. Cuban expert Julia Sweig argued in "Foreign Affairs" earlier this year that power in Cuba has already been successfully transferred to a new set of leaders "whose priority is to preserve the system while permitting only very gradual reform." "[T]he pace and nature of that change will be mostly imperceptible," she forecasts.

We must see how the vigor and determination of Cuban dissidents measures up to the vigor and determination with which Castro has imposed communism on Cuba for almost 50 years.

• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is currently a professor of communications at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

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