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Time - Man of the Year
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REVIEWS, Page 65BOOKSThe Last Communist
By CATHY BOOTH
TITLE: CASTRO'S FINAL HOUR: THE SECRET STORY BEHIND THE
COMING DOWNFALL OF COMMUNIST CUBA
AUTHOR: Andres Oppenheimer
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster; 461 pages; $25
THE BOTTOM LINE: This well-reported, entertaining read
shows, despite the title, why Fidel remains in power.
Reporting from a paranoia-mad communist country has never
been easy, and these days Cuba is a more difficult assignment
than ever. Most journalists do the prescribed, unenlightening
rounds of officialdom in Havana, sneak off to see a few
dissidents, then interview cab drivers or disgruntled locals in
food lines. Honesty is like bread -- a commodity on rations.
Oppenheimer, a Pulitzer-prizewinning correspondent for the Miami
Herald, found a way around this difficulty: he carried letters
from Cubans in Miami to relatives on the island, thus gaining
their trust. As a result, he captures a truer, if sadder,
portrait of Cuba today.
His tale of a nation of "zombies" waiting for change makes
it hard to gloat over the fall of communism. What he found was a
Cuba that still respects Fidel as a well-intentioned
grandfather who tried to bring equal rights, education and
health to the island but is now behind the times. Oppenheimer
was exhaustive in his research, which spanned two years,
including five months on the hermetic island. He interviewed 500
people, from Castro's own disaffected daughter Alina to Cuba's
"yummies" (young upwardly mobile Marxists). Especially telling
is the contrast between Che Guevara's eldest grandchild, Canek,
a vocally unhappy heavy-metal rock fan, and Armando Hart, the
Minister of Culture, who protests "I am a hard-liner!" when
complimented for being an open-minded member of Fidel's circle.
Oppenheimer, who somehow obtained secret Communist Party
documents, reveals how close reformers came to approving a plan
to ease Fidel into a Prime Minister's job and ease out socialism
at the October 1991 Party Congress. His reporting is solid and
engrossing, especially on the Ochoa-De La Guardia drug scandal
and Cuba's involvement with Panama's now deposed Manuel
Noriega. Oppenheimer claims that Cuba was set to begin running
Panama's intelligence apparatus just before the 1989 U.S.
invasion. He also deals with Cuba's silent issue, the black
majority who are not eager to see the white exiles of Miami
return. Though he adds few fresh observations, he offers a
detailed description of the business ties of President Bush's
son Jeb to the Cuban exiles in Miami and of Jeb's influence on
U.S. policy toward the island.
There are funny passages (about the made-at-home shampoo
that attracts flies) as well as depressing ones (Ping-Pong
paddles used for oars by desperate rafters fleeing to Miami).
The author's encounter with the grouchy Cuban TV chef Nitza
Villapol, who teaches a country without food how to cook, is
deliciously absurd. Oppenheimer adroitly picks up nuances: for
example, how in a country with no food, everybody's main concern
seems to be getting deodorant and toothpaste. From Jose, a
welder in Cienfuegos, he learns the sign language used when
discussing the forbidden subject of Fidel: an imaginary beard
drawn with the hands from the chin.
What is missing from the book is Fidel. As in real life,
he pulls the strings offstage, but he is rarely glimpsed up
close. He appears for gloomy late-night ruminations with author
Gabriel Garcia Marquez at a protocol house outside Havana and
in a visit with children ages 6 to 14 where he drones on for
three hours about the dialectics of Che. In the end, Oppenheimer
doesn't make a convincing argument that Fidel is in his "final
hour." His reporting, in fact, illustrates precisely how Castro
remains in power: through a combination of personality, national
pride and paralyzing fear.