The Still Life of Castro; As a colony, a protectorate and even now, Cuba is the odd Latin out.(Fidel Castro)

Byline: Jorge G. Castaneda

On July 26, Cuba marked the end of the country's first year since 1959 without Fidel Castro fully in power and in control. His first absence on Revolution Day since that year has led to endless speculation about Cuba's future; his illness appears to have rendered his return to the helm of state practically if not physically impossible. But Castro has yet to pass the torch fully to his younger brother, Raul; whatever pragmatic economic reforms the younger Castro may or may not want to implement will remain blocked until the elder Castro either passes away or truly fades away. His 35 editorial columns over the last few months in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper; the fear he evokes among his underlings, and the uncertainty about the possibility of his return have all paralyzed Cuba. In all likelihood the nation will remain in this state until this stage in its history comes to an end.

But the real question is what will happen then. The dilemma facing the Cuban people--not just those who live on the island but those in Mexico, Spain, Miami or New Jersey--is whether the Pearl of the Antilles will finally join the rest of Latin America or continue to be a singular exception, as it has been for most of the last two centuries. For all of the 19th century, Cuba remained a Spanish colony while the rest of the Americas broke free. Independence in 1899 was short-lived as the 1901 Platt Amendment transformed Cuba rapidly into a formal protectorate of the United States. Freed from this U.S. tutelage by Franklin Roosevelt in 1934, Cuba enjoyed a brief period of Latin normality, when it experienced the same traumas and thrills--elections, coups, assassinations--as the rest of Latin America. But this interlude ended soon after Fidel and his comrades entered Havana in 1959, and turned Cuba into an exception once again.

From 1960 until today, Cuba has been what its rulers call a socialist country, for decades the only Soviet-bloc state in the Americas. Later it became part of a tiny group of nations that possess a different political, economic, social and foreign-policy approach from other parts of the world and the region. While the rest of Latin America, at least since the early 1980s, has moved ...