Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

Cuba keeps expectations low with scant Castro news

Thursday, August 17, 2006

by: Esteban Israel

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Cuba has carefully paced the release of information on Fidel Castro's health and the transfer of power to his brother Raul to ensure stability while keeping expectations low, experts and diplomats say.

For two long weeks, Cuba and the world wondered if Castro was dead or alive until photographs and then video images of the frail communist leader in his hospital bed were released around his 80th birthday on Sunday.

"They have been very efficient at pacing the news. First they showed Fidel was alive, then they showed Raul was running the show and now we see ailing Fidel in bed suggesting he might come back but not be the same," said Marifeli Perez-Stable, a sociologist at Florida International University.

In many other countries, a president undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding would produce a flurry of daily briefings by officials and doctors.

In Cuba, there were only three statements from Castro, published in state-run media, to inform an anxious public he had handed over power temporarily to his brother, was recovering slowly but remained at risk.

Only a handful of top aides have spoken about his condition. All have said he was recovering and would be back on the job in weeks, while his actual illness remains a closely guarded state secret.

Cryptic messages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, which often referred to Castro as a hardwood tree, have told Cubans Castro was able to talk and walk. Foreign media trying to get in to report on the situation without proper journalism visas were rebuffed.

Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington said Cuba's leaders realized managing public expectations would be the key to a smooth succession.

ROOM TO MANEUVER

"They have kept expectations low and given themselves a great deal of flexibility and a lot of room to maneuver," he said. "At this point, Fidel may or may not be coming back, and the government is well-positioned for either possibility."

Control of information about Cuba's governing inner circle has always been tight and that has helped the state, a European diplomat said. The absence of leaks would indicate things are going well, the diplomat said.

"If people were dissatisfied, if there were problems behind the scenes, something would have leaked out," he said.

Castro, a news junky who regularly checks stories on Cuba in the international press, has been media savvy since his guerrilla days in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

Visited there in 1957 by New York Times journalist Herbert Matthews, Castro prepared his camp to give the reporter the impression he had more than a handful of men. The newspaper stories boosted his cause at a crucial moment.

The video released on Monday of Castro talking and joking with his leftist ally President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was carefully scripted to show the Cuban leader was on the mend.

In Cuba, were the public is accustomed to being kept in the dark, the images of a frail Castro who hardly spoke made Cubans realize he may not be able to reassume his leadership role.

The lack of information did not go down well abroad, where anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, and a White House spokesman, took the first photographs to be montages.

Damian Fernandez, a Cuban-born professor at Florida International University, said Cuba's media strategy was as "opaque" as the Cuban government itself.

"The principal objective of the strategy is to present an image of business as usual, and everyone knows that business in the inner circle of power is anything but usual," he said.

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