Caribbean & Central America - May 2007 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Rumours that Fidel Castro was to make a much-anticipated public appearance at the Workers' Day march in Havana on 1 May were proved wrong, and the day came and went with no sign of the Cuban leader. Instead of the speech-making for which he is famed, Castro is now communicating with the Cuban people through articles in the state press. With seven missives printed to date of around 1,200 words each, he is proving himself to be as prolific a writer as he is a speaker.

The focus and tone of the articles give clues as to the sort of role that Castro may now play in the Cuban regime. They are resolutely international in scope, and deal with grand themes such as global energy supply, particularly biofuels, and climate change. Castro avoids discussing domestic matters in them presumably because, following the successful transition of power to his brother Raúl in July last year, he does not plan to resume his old role as a president with stifling control over every aspect of the revolution.  

It is likely that instead he will play a more symbolic part as head of state, as a sage who is seen to provide guidelines on the broad ideological direction of the government's policy, thereby giving it legitimacy. Meanwhile Raúl is clearly in charge of the day-to-day running of the government. At any rate, this is how the state media, and by extension the government, want to portray the power balance.  

For example, on 20 April both Fidel and Raúl held separate meetings with a top Chinese official, Wu Guanzheng, a member of the nine-man Standing Committee of China's Communist Party Politburo. The report about the encounter published in the Communist party mouthpiece, Granma, established that it was Raúl who, flanked by several high-ranking members of the Cuban government, signed the co-operation agreement with the Chinese official. Fidel's meeting, by contrast, was reportedly less business-oriented and more diplomatic, with Guanzheng delivering a letter to him from the Chinese President Hu Jintao.  

Posada Carriles freed
The predictably anti-US vibe of Castro's articles was given extra potency by recent developments in the Luis Posada Carriles case. On 19 April the Texan court trying Posada on immigration fraud charges released him on bail. In response, Castro argued in an article that "the impunity and material benefits with which any violent action against Cuba has been rewarded for the past half century" motivated two Cuban army recruits to try to hijack a plane and escape to the US on 3 May.

The federal judge in charge of the case then went a step further on 8 May and dismissed the charges altogether, just three days before Posada was due to go on trial. Judge Kathleen Cordone explained her decision, saying she had thrown out the case because Posada had been subjected to "a criminal investigation" during a citizenship interview which had been poorly translated by an interpreter.  

She said Posada should not have faced questions about his alleged bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 nor a string of Havana hotel bombings in 1997. "The realm of this case is not, as some have suggested, terrorism," she wrote. "It is immigration fraud... The government's tactics in this case are so grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice."

Others condemned the government for not dealing strongly enough with the suspected terrorist. The head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, Dagoberto Rodrí­guez, said, "The White House has done everything possible to protect the hemisphere's (Osama) Bin Laden for fear that he might talk and reveal the connection between the US government and his terrorist activities."  

Members of the US opposition have also expressed their shock at Posada's release. Democrat congressman Bill Delahunt wrote to the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, to ask why Posada was not detained as an alien who has "engaged in terrorist activity" under the Patriot Act, a law passed after the attacks of 11 September 2001 which is invoked regularly in other cases of suspected terrorism.

There is still a chance that Posada will have to stand trial in the US. FBI agents visited Havana last year to investigate whether he was involved with financing the 1997 bombings that targeted Havana hotels, and a grand jury has met in Newark, New Jersey, to decide whether to indict him on those charges. According to the Miami-based Nuevo Herald newspaper, "The New Jersey investigation is in the final stage and could bring charges of financing actions that violate the Neutrality Act, according to sources linked to the case."

• In the 1980s Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted in Venezuela of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, but escaped from prison while awaiting retrial. He has never been tried for the 1997 hotel bombings which killed one Italian tourist.