As Cuban leader Fidel Castro put it recently, the revolution will no longer allow any blandenguería -- wimpiness -- at home to go unpunished.
More and more, the Cuban government is tightening its political and economic controls -- from ordering tourism workers to spy on clients to canceling foreign companies' checkbooks -- in what analysts believe is a campaign largely designed to prepare the island for Castro's eventual death.
''This is a very well thought-out policy. In the long term, it sets up the state for succession,'' said Hans de Salas del Valle, a researcher at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
''It works like this: They tighten the screws politically, improve the economic situation slightly and, thereby, ensure control'' when Castro passes on, de Salas added. The 78-year-old Castro, who has ruled Cuba for 46 years, has suffered a couple of fainting spells in recent years and a fall in which he shattered a kneecap and broke an arm.
The new restrictions hark back to the Cuba of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when the central government controlled virtually everything, took a dim view of foreign tourists and investors and outlawed the holding of U.S. dollars.
The end of the Soviet Union's massive subsidies forced Havana to open its economy somewhat in the early 1990s, legalizing the dollar, encouraging foreigners to visit and invest and giving managers of state enterprises more leeway to grow profits.
BENT ON CONTROL
But now Castro is bent on regaining control of a population and government agencies that grew accustomed to a measure of independence -- and on cracking down on the widespread corruption and black-market activities that the economic reforms fueled.
Castro emphasized those points in a recent six-hour speech to economists in which he asserted that the Cuban economy had finally come out of its post-Soviet abyss -- in essence arguing that the 1990s reforms were no longer needed.
The U.S. dollar had been recently ''dishonorably discharged'' from circulation -- shops no longer accept them from Cubans -- and control of the economy was shifting back to the the hands of central government planners where it belongs, Castro said.
Cuba's economic ''motor,'' he added, would be revved up not by open-market reforms but by deals with China and Venezuela -- the former ruled by the Communist Party, the latter by President Hugo Chávez, Castro's top ally and a regional economic powerhouse while oil prices remain high. ...***
In Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, author Humberto Fontova reveals for the first time how Dan Rather's "60 Minutes" interview with Juan Miguel (Elian Gonzalez's father) was stage-managed by former Clinton lawyer and friend, Gregory Craig.
According to a Cuban-American translator from the U.S. Treasury Department: "The questions for Juan Miguel were actually fed to Dan Rather by Gregory Craig. After a taping session, Craig would call Dan over, give him some more instructions and exchange papers with him. Then Dan would come back on the set and ask those."
The book reports that during the interview Craig acted like the movie director and even got a bona fide dramatic actor to translate and mouth the responses of Miguel.
Once again, Rather's "reporting" is nothing but elaborate deception……………..***