No foes, more power

Carlos Alberto Montaner

In the '90s, it was said that Carlos Lage would lead the transition in Cuba. The first vice president was a tranquil and polite man in the midst of a usually frenetic tribe beset by a flagrant case of machismo. I heard Carlos Salinas de Gortari say it, when he was president of Mexico: ``Lage is the future.''

At that time, the Soviet Union was gone, Cuban communism teetered. It appears that when Lage talked with foreign politicians in private, he flirted with democratic ideas and sold himself as the Caribbean Adolfo Suárez, the Spanish leader who successfully led the political transition following the death of Francisco Franco in the 1970s.

At the start of the 21st century, the role of the Dauphin was played by Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, an engineer who (like Lage) came from Fidel Castro's entourage. He had been a sort of first assistant to the comandante, so when Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina was expelled from his post, Fidel himself anointed Pérez Roque as a substitute because ''he was the person who best interpreted his thinking.'' Pérez Roque's apotheosis came in December 2005: He delivered a master class before Parliament, and everybody, including the Financial Times, declared him heir to the throne. At that moment, he had the reputation of being a hard, inflexible ``Taliban.''

Draw up charges

A few months later, in July 2006, Fidel Castro fell ill and had to leave the government precipitously. With the arrival of Raúl Castro to the presidency, both Lage and Pérez Roque were discreetly sidelined.

The two were cadres selected by Fidel for a hypothetical political succession, but Raúl did not trust them and had his own ideas about how and with whom to organize an economic reform and the transmission of authority. So, Raúl asked Gen. Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, his soul brother and ultra-powerful minister of the interior, to draw up a good set of charges to remove them from the game in a flash, along with the other pesky functionaries he wanted to eliminate.

And that's what happened. Cuba's formidable espionage apparatus has accumulated proof of petty corruption, continuous nepotism, negligence, counter-revolutionary behavior by relatives, personal ambition and (most grave) conveying to foreign politicians and visitors false expectations regarding purported political changes.

Pérez Roque, who in the opinion of many foreign politicians and diplomats had been a Taliban in the early days, had turned into a ''reformer.'' So thought Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, who was betting on Pérez Roque for the transition.

Once the two targets had been duly ''set up,'' and armed with voluminous reports from the intelligence services, Raúl, an expert in the art of decapitating foes, began his methodical task as executioner. He easily convinced Fidel of the basic disloyalty of the subjects, summoned the Political Bureau, confronted the accused with proof of their ''immoral and miserable'' behavior, crushed them emotionally, warning them that their deeds bordered on treason, for which they deserved to be executed (if the Revolution weren't so generous) and prepared the conditions for a public announcement.

This time, however, he had to perform a bothersome task: It was necessary to explain to dimwit Hugo Chávez what was going to happen, because Lage and Pérez Roque were his favorite interlocutors, and it wouldn't be fair to surprise him with their elimination. Insufferable though the Venezuelan may be, he is the man who feeds Cuba and must be treated like a fine parrot.

A better life

With these and other personages hors de combat, Raúl feels that he has cleared the way to the Sixth Party Congress, due in the fall, at which he will arrive with all his trusted people in key positions, so nothing may escape his control. Meanwhile, total despondency spreads through the revolutionary ranks, and any illusion of change vanishes. Singer Silvio Rodríguez is going to live in Argentina, Pablo Milanés is definitely settling in Galicia, and the children and grandchildren of the nomenklatura are stealthily departing for any place where there's a hint of a better life. In Cuba everybody knows that's not going to happen.