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Even fading, Fidel captures headlines

I feel like a little kid in the family car on a long trip, asking once more: “Are we there yet?”

Except the question in this 50-year bumpy trip of expectations remains without a definitive answer.

Is he dead yet?

At 82, Fidel Castro has been dead for a long time in the minds of a lot of exiles. Some believe he hasn’t written one word in those regime-published “Reflections” purportedly signed by the comandante. Others think he’s dying not only from that “state secret”—likely intestinal cancer after surgery in 2006—but struggling with the effects of Parkinson’s, too.

Speculation has been intense in South Florida, but from Little Havana to Hialeah I find most folks really don’t care to spend any time contemplating Castro’s mortality. Been there, done that—since Cuba announced Castro’s surgery in June 2006.

We’ve had other headlines proclaiming Castro’s death throughout the years, with an uptick in August 2007. But nothing, nada, zilch.

Cuban government-controlled media produced photos and video of Castro glad-handing political pals after previous death conspiracies surfaced. This time, the last photo published of Castro with China’s Hu Jintao in Cuba ran Nov. 18, and the last “Reflections” column is a month old.

With the 50th anniversary of the revolution having come and gone, and Castro not showing up for his own party—even for one of those lovey-dovey interviews with Randy Alonso on the “Mesa Redonda” show on Cuban TV—something is up. The presidents of Ecuador and Panama visited and returned without having seen the dictator, and Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported that there were security and military movements after Castro suffered a “possible heart attack.”

Some speculate a coma.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez added fuel to the mix recently during his weekly radio and TV address when he said, “That Fidel in his uniform who walked the streets and towns late at night, hugging the people, won’t return. That will remain in memories.”

The Russian newspaper Gazeta’s headline the next day: Chavez buries Castro alive.

Or maybe he’s been a goner for months and the regime is preparing to announce it at an opportune time. That would follow a familiar script. Remember the crackdown on dissidents that took place in Cuba in 2003, just as the U.S. military went into Iraq so that the world’s attention was on the Middle East and not Cuba’s crimes?

Castro may be hanging on (on ice?) for Barack Obama’s inauguration Tuesday, hoping to compete for prominent play in newscasts and newspapers everywhere.

What’s more historic? A dead comandante who has ruled longer than any other in the world (the British queen doesn’t count, ducky) or the first black U.S. president?

It’s so anticlimatic now. Raul Castro is in charge in Cuba, continuing the family oligarchy, the caudillismo that has defined 50 years of power under the Castro brothers.

The regime has had 18 months to prepare Cubans for the idea that little will change after Castro dies. What change Raul has promised—making cellphones legal for Cubans to own, whoopie!—has come in spurts and stops. Nothing sweeping. Nothing dramatic.

The exile community is used to the roller coaster of emotions. Someday, we will get off this ride, clear our heads and find Fidel a goner.

If not today, there’s always manana.

Myriam Marquez is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may write to her via e-mail at mmarquezmiamiherald.com.