Cuba mulls a future without Castro

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HAVANA: Time has stood still here. The same Chevrolets, Studebakers, Dodges chug along the streets. The tall buildings here are mostly from pre-Fidel days. Old Havana looks just as quaint as it did 20 years ago when this reporter was here. Western fashion has still not gripped popular imagination. Nor has cable TV reached Cuban shores.There are only five state channels. And mobile phones and Internet are rare.
Check out this wonderful time warp if you can. Get a taste of it, for, it won't last very long. Fidel Castro, the 80-year-old Cuban icon who has now ruled the island for 47 years, can't live forever. In fact, he's in hospital, trying to recoup from an intestinal surgery that's left him so weak that the feisty leader failed to put up an appearance at the 116-nation NAM conference, an opportunity he would probably give his left arm to seize.
So, what will happen after Fidel? The question has been asked so many times since he took sick that it has sprouted a tribe of insta-pundits ready with several definitive post-Fidel scenarios. There will be a power struggle. No, the communist party will vanish and Americans will finally prevail over Cuba. Nonsense, the spunky Cubans will never yield to Yankee overlordship.
There might be truth in each of these assertions. But the truth is Cuba can't remain the same. It's unreal. Fidel has given his people good education, medical care, housing, and above all, a sense of worth. This, in turn, has created a bindaas spirit of making do with what you have. The music's great, the rum's heady and living is free of crime. But that's as far as it seems to go.
Beyond providing social security and human worth, when a regime tries to regulate and control people's life there is usually stagnation. That's precisely what's happened here, although from a touristy point of view, it provides a delightful vista to a bygone era. Celia, a 23-year-old university student and a party member, dramatically drew a line from her forehead to her navel with her forefinger to indicate that she's cleaved about the future.
"I love Cuba and respect Fidel," she clarifies. "But there are good things and bad things. The government is unresponsive to suggestions. My parents say it wasn't so. Fidel, too, is removed from us. I have never seen him in flesh; only on TV. He's a good man. If he got to know our problems he would probably solve them. But we can't get to him."
What's her problem, though? "Things small and big," says Celia. "Computers have come to schools but not the university. I am studying architecture. Do you think its possible to make models without computers?" And the big problems? Celia keeps quiet. Uncertainty takes over despite two mojitos (a white rum-based cocktail). There is always uncertainty as you never know how much you can talk freely.
Will she be sad when Fidel goes? Celia nods. It's safe to assume the Cuban people as a whole will grieve. Fidel has been for them their collective identity -- self-respecting and proud, prepared to live a gritty life marked with shortages rather than giving in to the Big Brother only 90 km away. They are convinced, even if out of ignorance, that Cuba is not the American backyard; it's the American garden.
But when Fidel goes, this identity is likely to be shattered. There will be grief, perhaps a power struggle and celebrations in Miami. But beyond all of this, there will a chaos born out of an identity crisis, finally leading to who knows? An outbreak of creativity that's been long suppressed.