Christine Folch

The predictions of thousands of academics, intelligence agents, and ordinary Cuban emigres who have envisioned a thousand different outcomes for the end of the Cuban experiment in Communism notwithstanding, would it not be the most fitting irony that the Castro brothers themselves oversee the dissolution of the system themselves in a gradual, unremarkable, unrevolutionary style that stands in opposition to the way the whole of it has run since Moncada (1953)?


Instead of a fiery violent conflagration or the bold reforms pushed forward by a mass of popular protests, it looks like two old men who, at the end of their lives, are weary of the struggle and, looking for rest, do the unthinkable: willingly loosen their grip on the reins. On the other hand, it shouldn't be that surprising. The Cuban Revolution has always defied expectations.