Will cancer render justice?
The first confirmation came from Lula da Silva: Fidel Castro has cancer. Later, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry denied the president’s statement, but it was accurate. The Comandante bled, the surgeons opened him up and found a cancer that had spread and was incurable. Nothing strange in an 80-year-old man, of course. The prognosis is that he will die shortly. Nobody dares to predict a date. But European diplomats in Cuba say sotto voce that he will not see New Year’s Day 2007, although they then qualify their opinion: “At that age, cancer advances slowly.”

Curiously, Castro’s calculations did not include that type of death. He foresaw his disappearance as something heroic, something like a sudden heart attack or stroke that would take away his life. He never expected that he might fade away slowly in bed, in the deepening torpor induced by a merciful morphine drip, incapable of deciding whether he should — or should not — prolong his existence with uncertain and devastating doses of chemo or radiation therapy, measures that would surely remove the beard that has served him as a trademark for half a century.

Faced with such a desperate situation, Fidel became depressed. It happens. It is very sad to be dying and, on top of that, be visited by Hugo Chávez. Suddenly, Fidel stopped being one of the world’s most powerful men and shriveled into a frail and defenseless old man, as the imprudent Venezuelan, spouting a stream of sweet nothings, held his hand, enraptured, thinking that he comforted the patient when he was really inflicting upon him a dark form of condescending humiliation. Raúl sensed this but couldn’t stop it.

When the word comes out that Castro is out of power permanently the Cuban community in Florida will be dancing in the streets again in celebration.

It’s hard to believe this dictator has been in power and starving the people of Cuba since the Presidency of JFK. Maybe one day soon there will be an opportunity to travel and trade again with that beautiful country.