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So goes Fidel

Even though increasing fragility forced him to effectively retire almost two years ago, the formal announcement of the long-anticipated end of the Castro era has understandably sparked sharp speculation, perhaps more so in capitalist Western capitals than Cuba itself about the direction the country will take from hereon.

The most likely successor, little brother Comrade Raul, has betrayed little intention of introducing pronounced change in the time he has been taking care of business in Fidel’s absence. He has widely stuck to big brother’s ideals just like he did in the fateful summer of ’53, when rebels attacked the Moncada barracks and sparked the revolution that ultimately broke Fulgencio Batista’s corrupt government. And while Raul’s official ascent to the top as well as confirmation of his suggested structural economic diversification remain to be seen, there is little reason to expect practical realisation anytime soon of hopes of transition to democracy coming from Washington and London.

Of course, it is not possible to chart Cuba’s road ahead without taking into account how far it has come under one of the longest serving rulers the world has seen. He is rightly held responsible for pushing his people into isolation, especially since the fall of his Soviet patrons. There can be no denying that his personal vision stopped benefits of economic integration and globalisation dead at Cuba’s borders, while the rest of the world ventured into exciting through controversial experiments with wealth augmentation and distribution.

But to his credit, he did make sure that the basis of his revolution, egalitarian socialism, was kept from collapsing, even if its most powerful subsidisers did. He raised his country’s fortunes from a corrupt non-entity to one of the most geo-politically significant states in the world. And most significantly, while the rest of the world flirted with economic models, his outshined many in that it ensured that not many Cubans went to bed hungry and few, if any, remained deprived of life’s basic necessities.

There is no denying that the road ahead needs to be different from the one behind, even though the two will forever remain tied. Under Castro, the Cuban nation proved beyond doubt that it can stick to what it believes in, and survive. But now, in order to thrive, it must embrace political and economic norms that set the pace for progress in today’s fast-developing world, lest what has been achieved in the last half-century is allowed to go waste.