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The Last Caudillo
| Article
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18488 |
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Section : |
EDITORIAL
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1999 |
1,032 Words |
| Author
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Morton A. Kaplan
Editor and Publisher |
The June Special Report in Current Issues is on "Castro's Cuba at 40." Castro, who is still lionized by the Left and by our Hollywood celebrities, is a typical Latin American phenomenon. He is a caudillo, ruling despotically over a controlled population. He differs from other caudillos only in the rationale he uses to excuse the tyrannical power he exercises.
The caudillo is usually a member of the ruling class in a backward society. In the postwar period in which the myth of socialism appeared to many to be invincible, proto-caudillos sought to ride this wave of the future, which promised in addition the tool of the most efficient control apparatus then known, the Leninist party.
Castro came from one of the wealthy families of Cuba, as Daniel Ortega did in Nicaragua. Indeed, this was the pattern throughout Latin America. These scions of the wealthy ruling class were never severely punished by the authorities for the crimes they committed. The caudillos cozied up to their wealthy compatriots,,, even when their scions were revolutionaries.
Thus, the young revolutionaries could be observed speeding through their capital cities in the same sorts of fancy and expensive sports vehicles that were later acquired by the drug lords. And it is really no accident that Cuba became a haven for at least some refugee drug lords under Castro or that his regime and the Sandinista regime were involved in the drug trade--indirectly in the former case and directly in the latter.
Despite his fatigues, Castro lives in splendor. And even Ortega, despite
... (1997 of 6235 Characters)
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