Usa Forum - After Fidel, What Will the "Exiles" Do for a Hobby?

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8/19/2006 2:22:00 AM

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After Fidel, What Will the "Exiles" Do for a Hobby?

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews)

The Miami Herald - Aug. 18, 2006
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/15...

Op-Ed:

Once Castro's gone, what then for exiles?

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

For some of us, Dec. 26 was the emptiest day of the year.

After weeks of anticipation, the calendar moving with glacial speed,
the big day -- Christmas -- had finally arrived in a blaze of tinsel
and plastic and wrapping paper. It was, for a child, the closest
thing to paradise.

The day after dawned like an afterthought, as if the sun itself had a
hangover. Dec. 26 always felt like the fairground after the fair, the
ballroom after the ball. There was always a sense of confetti waiting
for the push broom.

That's because anticipation had been shoved aside and reality had
reasserted itself like a toothache. You awoke from your happy daze to
an insistent question: Now what?

Something very similar will probably happen soon to the Cuban exile
community. News broke at the end of July that Fidel Castro, needing
surgery for a stomach disorder, had ceded power -- supposedly
temporarily -- to his brother Raúl. News of the dictator's ill health
prompted street parties in Miami.

Nearly three weeks later, Castro is said to be recovering. But in a
statement to the nation this week, the dictator did little to quell
the sense that his demise is near. He told his people to be
optimistic, but warned them to brace for ''adverse'' news. The recent
headlines have fueled speculation that a day the exile community has
awaited for decades, the day of Castro's death, may finally be at
hand.

DECADES OF TORMENT

That day will be Christmas for many of those who lost relatives or
years to his prisons, lost property to his government, lost their
country to his grasp. They fled, many of them, to South Florida and
built a community defined in large part by that loss, defined by the
wait for redemption, the wait for a monster to die.

It is that definition that occasions these words. Maybe Castro dies
next week, maybe he dies next year, maybe he dies before these words
see print, but the one sure thing is that he dies. And when he dies,
the exile community throws a party that makes Mardi Gras look like a
church picnic.

And then what? What happens on the morning after? The question is not
solely one of geopolitical pragmatism, though that's part of it.

As The Miami Herald recently reported, many in the exile community
are grappling with renewed urgency with the practical questions
Castro's death will raise. They are asking themselves what the role
of the exile community should be in the new Cuba, whether members of
the exile community will or should repatriate to the island, how the
exile community can help bring investment to the country.

Important questions. But, again, there's a bigger question: Can there
still be an exile community without exiles? When a people are defined
by opposition to something, what happens when that something ends?
Who will Cuban America be after Castro dies?

For so long, righteous hatred of this man has been the glue that held
the community together: It has been a generational hand-me-down; a
rationale for misguided attacks on free speech; a rationale for
keeping Elián González away from his father; a litmus test for
political hopefuls; a fuel for radio talk shows; a prism through
which to view sports, politics, life; a reason for being.

SEISMIC CHANGE FOR EXILES

Castro's death may or may not change Cuba -- where is the evidence
that his people will rise in revolution after he dies? -- but it will
definitely bring seismic change to the exile community.

It holds out the potential for still deeper assimilation into the
national mainstream and yet, paradoxically, also the potential for
dislocation and loss of mission.

In a real sense, much of the exile community has depended on Castro
for its sense of identity. No one can yet know what that identity
will be once Castro dies.

Therein lies its promise and its challenge. The party will be nice.
But the real story begins on the empty morning after.

*
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