United. The rest of Fidel Castro's traits everyone agrees on. Famous
for his marathon speeches, Castro is a powerful orator and orienter,
with perhaps the most experience of any head of state alive today.

Socialist Cuba's 33 years of existence have been ones of continuous
crisis and constant U.S. threats to Cuba's independence and national
security. Given such an exceptional situation, most Cubans consider
themselves lucky to have a man of Castro's caliber at the helm. The
Cubans, forced day and night to scramble to survive and defend them-
selves against all odds, have never felt the time was right to replace
Castro. By 1992 socialist Cuba faced the gravest crisis and most seri-
ous threat to its existence ever. The general sentiment in Cuba re-
mained "if anyone can, Fidel will get us through this one."

There are no new "Fidels' waiting in the wings to take Castro's
place. There are, however, a number of people capable of running the
nation, especially under normal circumstances. The Cuban Party and
government are made up of much more than those 12 young men who
were the core of the "Rebel Army" that drove Fulgencio Batista from
power back in 1959. There is a pool of experienced Cuban leaders on
the Party Political Bureau and Central Committee, in the government
and military, leading the Union of Young Communists and Cuba's many
national mass organizations. Some of them boast histories that date
back to well before 1959, such as Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael
Rodriguez, whose literary and diplomatic brilliance has earned him
fame, second only to Castro, in all corners of the world. Others, like
party leader José Ramón Machado Ventura, a medical doctor, made
their mark after the Rebel Army marched victoriously into Havana.
There are also those like Union of Young Communist leader and Party
Political Bureau member Roberto Robaina, one of 300,000 "interna-
tionalists" who served in Angola, and who were infants when the
United States invaded Cuba's Bay of Pigs in 1961.

How does Fidel Castro see his own role? The Cuban President,
meeting with a group of Brazilian intellectuals in 1990, described it
like this:

No one ever calls me Mr. President or anything like that. Everybody calls
me just Fidel...Because I happen to be one more neighbor, close at hand,
a fact that they (Western politicians and the media) simply can't understand.
They think...I live in an ivory tower, removed from the world...We have
a shared presidency, if you will, just as there is a shared Party leadership. I
cannot grant a pardon on my own; that's one power presidents have
everywhere. I have to convoke the Council of State to grant a pardon. I
can't appoint an ambassador; it's the Council of State that appoints
ambassadors...The Council of State appoints ministers and must issue a

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