These include well-calculated timing -- in this case, amid a major world crisis that distracted international attention; knowing where to draw the line, such as avoiding the arrest of Cuba's best-known dissident, Oswaldo Payá; and taking actions that can later be reversed, to portray the government as lenient. ''Castro is a master of international theater,'' said Steve Johnson, a policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. ``This is all part of a calculated effort to keep people cowed.'' ''But it's a kind of reversible measure that can be taken,'' he said. ``It strikes fear and will always work to their advantage to lighten up and let people out later because then it shows some progress.''***
Another group of critics of current U.S. policy focuses on the electoral aspects of the issue, particularly the fact that President Bush's brother, the governor of Florida, draws votes from the Cuban-American exile community in Florida, some of whom still hold the Democrats responsible for what they consider to be the selling down the river by the Clinton administration of Elian Gonzalez in 2000.
Then there are the tourists and those in the travel industry who profit from Americans' visits to Cuba. Cuba is, in fact, an interesting and attractive Caribbean destination, perhaps competitive in charm and cost with Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other tourist spots.
What the "Fidel Castro is really a cuddly agrarian reformer" group may have missed is that over the past week or so the Castro regime has arrested as many as 75 economists, librarians, journalists and human rights activists -- in sum, pretty much the active opposition to his regime. Some of them were arrested for being too much in communication with the wrong Americans, officials of the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Cuba, where American diplomats are based absent U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba.***