According to the BBC, Fidel underwent the operation already and the handover of power is only temporary:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5233556.stm

As the article mentions, this guy has a tendency to come back... so until we know for a fact he's gone, rumors of his demise could be greatly exaggerated.

What happens next? Well, next a bunch of American "political pundits" (aka "propagandists") write and talk about this event as if it is really any of our business at all what happens next in Cuba. This is what is called "manufacturing of consent." Consent for what? Consent for the use of American power to control Cuba through one avenue or another (all the better to increase profits, my dear....).

These rightwing and CryptoRight/PseudoLeft "political pundits" are part of the overclass's ideology-control ecosystem. Now the question is, which one are you--Rightwing or CryptoRight/PseudoLeft? PseudoLeft, apparently, from all the Democratic Party-oriented propaganda on this site.

My documentary/book in progress is at http://www.leftwingmediamachine.blogspot.com

This sort of question requires donning the tinfoil cap. Which only makes it more fun. :)

Even the slightest hint of a reform movement's emerging in the wake of, well, the wake, will be used as a pretext for the Bush administration to "liberate" Cuba. Perhaps some sort of pretext about instability threatening the US base at Guantanamo Bay?

Ideally, from the point perspetive of the election calendar, this happens right around October . . .

--Ken Riley

Opportunity of a lifetime!!!
Let's invade while he's under the knife.
Just think of it like the appendicitis pangs of Democracy.

Honestly, the U. S. knows so little about Castro, his government and even his immediate family, that I think it's a stretch to think that Cuba will see democracy in the ten years that follow the eventual death of Fidel Castro.

If we were to compare Cuba and the Soviet Union, I'd say that Castro is Leonid Breshnev, Raul is Yuri Andropov, an as-yet-unknown party apparatchik (a Chernenko) comes next, and THEN we get the equivalent of a Gorbachev in Cuba that opens it to the world at large and turns it into a democracy. By this conservative timeline, we wait about 15 to 20 years after the death of Fidel until Havana gets the Studebakers off the streets once and for all.

The end of Castro does not ensure liberal democracy, open markets, human rights, or the rule of law; it ensures one thing: that I will die of lung cancer after taking up the habit again. !Vive los Montecristos!

How much power do the exiles have, and how long do they retain it? Aren't increasing numbers of their descendants far less embittered or determined to return to Cuba in power? I'm inclined to say that the exiles will run out of power about the time Fidel does from generational dillution alone. And once the voting bloc is gone, or sufficiently dilluted the demands for Cuba (including the repayment of all assets) will be forgotten.

I think what really annoys me most about Cubans, both real Cubans and Miami exiles alike, is that they persist in swallowing the ends of their words. To those of us who speak non-Cuban spanish it is rather maddening.

I apologize in advance to Cuban cafe patrons.

The Cubans will welcome us as liberators with open arms and sugar canes. Sales of Cuban Cigars will completely finance the reconstruction of Cuba.

The real question is who in the Miami Cuban community is ready to step up and be the business-friendly pro-American authoritarian figurehead we need to lead their country?

I suspect that the local Cubans who have been living in the country, will not be feeling any special need to welcome the exiles back to be their leaders... Or give them confiscated property...

I think it's probably the Ahmad Chalabi situation all over again.

I may be naive but unless the people of Cuba want a democracy, they won't get it. Even if the Castro family cedes power and elections are held after Castro kicks the bucket they won't have a democracy in anything but name if they simply elect an autocrat to take Castro's place. There's more to Democracy than simply being able to vote.

The New Yorker has now made available online the article from the July 31 issue (last week's) that previously was only available in print:

"Letter from Cuba: Castro’s Last Battle. Can the revolution outlive its leader?"

by Jon Lee Anderson

In it, Anderson goes over the possible players in good detail, speculates on some possible public reactions, and gives his own impressions.

Highly recommended.

The prescience of the article makes me wonder if someone over there had extra input on Castro's health.

Expect a huge economic boom in Cuba when it becomes capitalist and, at least ostensibly, more open. The artificial exclusion of Cuba from American markets, has cost the average Cuban a great deal and kept Fidel's revolution from attaining a much more dynamic, and therefore unacceptable, socialist alternative.

Tourism will flourish and there will be a flood of outsourcing of American jobs. Cuba's well educated and healthy population, willing and able to work for less, will make Cuba seem like eden to American corporations. Once more, the American working class will pay the price for globalization.

It will be interesting to see how Cubans feel about having non-universal health care and education. The right-wing, free market propaganda machine will have a hard time selling that bill of goods.

What comes after Castro is Castro. That is, Fidel handed power temporarily to his brother Raul, and has also designated Raul as his successor (as does the Cuban constitution, since he has the appropriate title). I see no particular signs that this handover won't succeed; as both the designated successor and as the formal head of the armed forces, he seems to be in a good position to consolidate power.

On the other hand, Raul Castro is 75, so he is likely to be a transitional figure; he obviously can't serve for multiple decades like his brother.

One thing I'm fairly confident of, though, is that the Cuban people have no desire to be ruled over by the Miami exiles, as discontented as some might be with life under the Castro brothers.

I've got a question which I think is going to come out sounding more snarky than I mean it to be.  Is there a formal difference between a Cuban Exile and a Cuban Immigrant?  The two words, exile and immigrant have such different emotional weights that I'm wondering if they should be used interchangeably as seems to be the case.  I say this in the context of hearing a NPR interview with an "exile" in Miami who had never visited Cuba, and if one remembers how long ago the last large wave of migration was, the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, one suspects that the number of "exiles" who have never seen the homeland must be approaching half. 

I ask this question because while it is fully understandable for American citizens to maintain an interest in their countries of origin (my family keeps contact with its Swedish roots), there are are cases where that continuing interest may raise issues of confusion.  Can one, or should one, recognize that the interests of one's home country and one's new country may intersect, but not be congruent?  Under those circumstances can one ever go home again?

I understand there have been splits within the Cuban community in Miami and elsewhere, about how to approach Cuba today, and not just in the post-Castro era.  There is an interesting and moving essay by Myra Mendible which outlines some of the conflict between those who favor dialog and those who do not.  Those emotions and those conflicts can be grist for the political mills of those who have neither interest in nor affection for Cuban Americans. 

I'm concerned that American politicians will manipulate the portion of the electorate with emotional ties to Cuba the same way that politicians manipulated Irish anti-British sentiment in the 1920s and 1930s, when Big Bill Thompson, Mayor of Chicago, threatened to punch King George V in the snoot. 

I don't really believe that history repeats itself.  One does note, however, that Thompson was (a) a republican (b) ran one of the most corrupt administrations of his era and (c) was a buddy of Jack Abramov Al Capone.

Mike

No Hoppy, what they've had since Fidel took over was an economy where everything is owned by wealthy interests like Fidel and his cronies. I remember him having his panties in a bunch when the facts of the wealth he has amassed while oppressing his people in Cuba..

Where they have no rights short of what Fidel thinks they should have, no self determination where they slave away catering to the radical left tourists who travel in, stay in hotels and visit where they are allowed to go so they can continue to delude themselves with the fantasy that communism is some utopia.

It's the reason why those so called beneficiaries of Fidel's Cuba risk their lives in inflatable boats and rafts in shark infested waters to escape their good fortune. They're probably kicking themselves for being so ungrateful, and wishing they had your insight into their lives...

When I lived in Florida, I met a family who lived in Ybor City who had escaped Cuba a few decades ago. They run a small sandal shop. They didn't flee because they were landowners or wealthy overlords. They were in the busines they are in now, makng leather sandals by hand. The Cuban people are subject to brutality, at the hands of those Fidel entrusts power to. It's no fantasy land, and it's something that you're overpampered behind has no concept of. Snap out of it..

What's next? Whatever it is you can bet George Bush, Jeb Bush and any GOP congressman or woman from south Fla who is up for re-election this fall will take credit for it. Even if nothing happens, they'll take credit for it. Heck, this could even be the launching point for Jeb's presidential run in '08.

I hear his brother is just as bad as Fidel is maybe there won't be any change.