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A worthy parable, but I suspect something more rapid and above the table will occur, like East Europe in 1989.

The driving forces are the Cubans on the island and the exiles. The island population is usually depicted as satisfied with communism or exhausted, but, due to their friendliness with visiting Americans, I suspect they are waiting for their moment, as East Europeans were. The exiles are energetic, restive, and wealthy, and are eager to push and pry at every seam and weakness.

The imponderable are how long the Castro brothers will live or keep their grip on things, and the degree and quality of violence that will attend the end of their regime. Will they die or become incapacitated before the end of the year, or linger for several years, with lessening repression to keep matters from boiling over?

Will there be riots, arson, or mass disobedience as in East Germany, or a coup d'etat by the security services as in Romania? Perhaps a bloody repression that requires US response? No doubt some would be reformers like Gorbachev or Deng are waiting in the wings, but will they even have a chance to gain the stage, or will events overwhelm their efforts?

The calendar is a regular thing, but History moves in fits and starts. At the this moment, in Cuba, it is lacing up its sprinter shoes.

"'Do you think that I couldn't get you out of there if I wanted to?" asked God, terribly irritated. Rabbi Nachman was afraid to answer. "It would be so easy. I wouldn't even have to break [the butter churn] open. All I'd have to do would be to put a thousand bees in it, just like that.'
"Rabbi Nachman shuddered.
"'All right. Stay there. Why are you afraid? Don't you like music?'
"'Yes,' peeped Rabbi Nachman, from deep inside the churn. 'I like music.'
"'Don't you like humor?'
"'Yes,' peeped Rabbi Nachman. 'As a youth, I was fond of humorous circumstances. I particularly liked wry expressions, mistaken identities, and circumstantial confusion.'
"'So why don't you like bees?'
"'I don't understand.'
"'Why don't you like bees?' God shouted, and the world was clapped by thunder.
"'I hear you, Majesty, I hear you,' said Rabbi Nachman, trembling.
"'I created bees the same day that I created music and humor. I made it so that bees are the visual manifestation of both. Transcribing symphonies into bees, and vice versa, is most amusing, and a good joke is nothing more than a bee in disguise. Can't you see that?'
"'I see that Sire,' answered Rabbi Nachman.
"'No, you don't,' sighed God. 'I'll have to invent a way.' And then God looked at the churn, which exploded from Rabbi Nachman, its pieces shattering into the silence of the universe. Rabbi Nachman found himself naked at the feet of God, and he had to shield his eyes because the light was too bright. 'Rabbi Nachman,' said God, 'you are now a bee on earth.'
"Suddenly, Rabbi Nachman found himself several feet above a mountain meadow, flying in a hill-hugging ellipse, looking for the brightest flower. He was a bee in Germany, in 1266. At this point, his wife rattled the top of the churn to tell him that it was dinnertime, but not before he felt with magnificent intensity what it is like to be a single living note in music; and to trace lines long ago predetermined in the air; and not before he realized that a coat of yellow-and-black fur, two lantern-like antennae, and buzzing wings are the basic materials of humor."
- Mark Helprin, Ellis Island & Other Stories