Cuba Libre

South Florida's Cuban exile community has got to be having mixed feelings about the benefits of modern medical science.

Cuba's celebrated miracle-worker doctors are keeping Fidel Castro from succumbing to his latest medical ailments. The octogenarian dictator has at least temporarily ceded power to his (relatively) younger brother, but it looks like those hoping for change on the isolated socialist island nation will have to keep waiting for their dreams to be fulfilled.

Lots of people out here on the left coast have their own opinions on the situation. At various parties and get togethers over the last couple of weeks, I've heard a few oddball statements about the Carribean's biggest island from people whose firsthand experience with Cuba mostly consists of 72-hour debauched booze-fests at Cuba's beach tourist resorts. "The people are happy over there! They don't want capitalism. Fidel built schools for the children and everybody has a job. They're much better off with communism."

Right. That's why the Castro regime's biggest immigration debate is about how to keep its impoverished people from sailing en masse to the shores of its greatest ideological enemy. The people in Cuba are so hopeful about their future on the island that it has a birth rate lower even than Japan's and an abortion rate higher than just about anywhere in the Western hemisphere. They're so happy about their government that the police can toss people in jail just for badmouthing it - usually on the word of family members, neighbors or associates who pass on the incriminating hearsay.

Are the people of Cuba truly happy? Hopefully, the world will be able to hear what they really think before the Castro's little brother gets too comfortable in his new office.

tags: Fidel Castro, communist island, Cuba Libre, regime change, true happiness