Fidel Castro says remarks about Cuban model 'not working' misinterpreted

The Guardian

Fidel Castro said today that his comment to a US journalist about Cuba's system not working had been misinterpreted.

The former president told a meeting at the University of Havana that the remark, which caused a sensation when reported earlier this week, did not reflect his view. He meant "the exact opposite", he said.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, reported that at the end of a long lunch last month he asked the 84-year-old communist revolutionary if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries. He said Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

Castro did not elaborate but the implication, according to Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert from the Council on Foreign Relations who also attended the lunch, was that the state had too big a role in the economy.

The island's dire economic state was hardly news but for the man who spent over half a century building it to breezily admit failure astonished observers.

"I have been somewhat amazed by Fidel's new frankness," said Stephen Wilkinson, a Cuba expert at the London Metropolitan University. "This is the latest of a series of recent utterances that strike me as being indicative of a change in the old man's character."

With his comments at the today Castro, perhaps taken aback at the attention heaped on his nine apparently offhand words, sought to dampen the story.

Goldberg, who detailed his three-days in Havana with Castro on his blog, did not immediately respond to the disputed version of the controversial remark.


Sweig, a doyenne of Cuba analysts, was unavailable for comment but an aide said the analyst would brief the media on Monday about her trip to Havana.

Earlier this week she confirmed Goldberg's version of the lunch, telling AP that she took the remark to be in line with Raúl Castro's call for gradual but widespread reform.

"It sounded consistent with the general consensus in the country now, up to and including his brother's position," Sweig said.

Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement was seen as bolstering the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change.

In general, Sweig said she found the retired grandfather to be "relaxed, witty, conversational and accessible. He has a new lease on life, and he is taking advantage of it."