LAT.AM. FOLLOW-UP: Castro Unloads Power to Brother Raul

To follow up on our feature from two weeks back, Leftist Latin America, the big development of the day is that Cuban leader Fidel Castro has handed over control of the country -- for the time being -- to his brother, Raul.

Birthday celebrations have been postponed; Fidel's bound for some serious bed rest (months, likely).

From Mik Awake's essay in The Inquirer last month, "Waiting for Castro to Die":

Inevitably, one day, you will stoop over in your doorway, or open your browser to the online news source of your choosing, and you will read this headline on the front page . . .

If we can agree on anything, we can perhaps agree that Fidel Castro's defiance is a relic of a bygone era, that the capitalist world machine has left him in the dust, and that, evidenced by his human rights abuses and the aforementioned waves of exiles, his failure to play in the world state economically hasn't been balance by his ideology. China continues to segue out of the Cold War; why hasn't Cuba?

Let the power grabbing begin . . .

(Photo from Wikipedia.)