ABSTRACT
Fidel Castro suggests that Fidel adopted it as convenient revolutionary dogma, and that his only true beliefs, underneath all the rhetoric, now revolve around himself—Fidelismo. "Fidel is desperate over his inability to make Cuba work," a man who has known Castro all his life told me not long ago, when we ran into each other in Europe, "and this is why he is losing control and he is doing things that make no sense." Fidel's "rectification" campaign is aimed at warding off the twin demons of "capitalism" and the "bourgeoisie." He has closed down small farmers' markets that he authorized in 1980, claiming that peasants were getting too rich selling piglets, chickens, and garlic directly to private customers. The economy is a disaster, and, in retrospect, one of the reasons is that Fidel Castro, the Maximum Leader, kept changing his mind. Fidel was repeatedly distracted by new economic visions, neglecting Cuba's existing assets— such as sugar and tobacco.
