Inside Cuba: Coping Without Castro
Erik Wurster
Issue date: 9/20/06 Section: Entertainment
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One evening in late July, about halfway through my summer contract with the United Nations Development Programme in Cuba, I took a sunset stroll through my neighborhood in Havana. That evening the streets were uncharacteristically silent, the stillness broken only by the synchronized echoes of televisions delivering the evening news.
That day the news would make history. People soon gathered on street corners discussing what they'd heard in hushed voices. I quickly learned that Fidel Castro had ceded power for the first time in 47 years to his brother Raul, apparently due to intestinal surgery.
At the Kennedy School, students learn that communication strategies are of critical importance during times of crisis. Yet the Cuban media offered little information about Castro's health to the Cuban people. Over lunch at his home, Alfredo Prieto, an accomplished Cuban academic and chief editor of the cultural periodical Temas, offered interesting observations about Cuban media's approach to Castro.
The Cuban media has always gone to great lengths to hide Castro's weaknesses, Prieto said. When Castro pauses for a drink of water during his notorious five-hour televised speeches, for example, the camera pans temporarily to the crowd. In 2004 Castro stumbled while stepping off stage, breaking his left knee-cap and right arm. The Cuban media refused to televise the fall even after black market tapes of the event were being sold in the streets of Havana.
Two weeks after the announcement of his deteriorating health, Castro appeared on national television in hospital with Hugo Chavez at his bedside. Chavez and Castro joked and poked fun at each other -- typical of their relaxed and close relationship.
But this time there was a dramatic departure from the Cuban media's traditional depictions of Castro. He appeared frail, sick and so weak that he had trouble speaking in a clear and audible voice. The cameras zoomed in on Castro's wrinkled, 80-year-old hands. It seems likely that this broadcast was the first attempt to accustom the Cuban public to the idea of Castro slowly fading from the public sphere.
That day the news would make history. People soon gathered on street corners discussing what they'd heard in hushed voices. I quickly learned that Fidel Castro had ceded power for the first time in 47 years to his brother Raul, apparently due to intestinal surgery.
At the Kennedy School, students learn that communication strategies are of critical importance during times of crisis. Yet the Cuban media offered little information about Castro's health to the Cuban people. Over lunch at his home, Alfredo Prieto, an accomplished Cuban academic and chief editor of the cultural periodical Temas, offered interesting observations about Cuban media's approach to Castro.
The Cuban media has always gone to great lengths to hide Castro's weaknesses, Prieto said. When Castro pauses for a drink of water during his notorious five-hour televised speeches, for example, the camera pans temporarily to the crowd. In 2004 Castro stumbled while stepping off stage, breaking his left knee-cap and right arm. The Cuban media refused to televise the fall even after black market tapes of the event were being sold in the streets of Havana.
Two weeks after the announcement of his deteriorating health, Castro appeared on national television in hospital with Hugo Chavez at his bedside. Chavez and Castro joked and poked fun at each other -- typical of their relaxed and close relationship.
But this time there was a dramatic departure from the Cuban media's traditional depictions of Castro. He appeared frail, sick and so weak that he had trouble speaking in a clear and audible voice. The cameras zoomed in on Castro's wrinkled, 80-year-old hands. It seems likely that this broadcast was the first attempt to accustom the Cuban public to the idea of Castro slowly fading from the public sphere.
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