In Memoriam Castro’s Cuba 1959–2010

Not to be caught off guard, most serious journals keep obituaries of the notables that will sooner or later succumb to the passing of time. I have prepared the following for Telos, not only on a man but also on his country. I propose to launch it ahead of the events.

From Hope to Fear: The Dilemma of Radical Equality

Ten years after the triumph of the Chinese revolution, in the Americas the island of Cuba underwent an equivalent upheaval. The Cuban revolution provoked an extraordinary interest and enthusiasm at the time throughout the world. In the middle of the Cold War, Cuba acquired a geopolitical significance out of proportion to its size and economic weight—and almost provoked a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers.

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Victor Zaslavsky (1937-2009)

It was the dull abruptness of it all. I was walking along the shores of Newport Harbor, with friends, on a fine Thanksgiving afternoon, when the cell phone rang and we got the news from Maria Piccone. Then there was the immediate call to Rome, to the number under his very name. Elena Aga Rossi, in tears, told me it happened in the morning, while walking with a friend, a thrombosis hitting like a bolt from nowhere, and sending him to the big nowhere.

So little to say—and absolutely nothing to do.

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