RIP, Mikhail Gorbachev, a leader who spoke, as he described it, “the language of practical politics” and ended the Cold War — albeit, not in Cuba or Miami.
But, for an inspiring era of hope, he was Man of the Hour as nations of the Eastern Bloc embraced the Soviet leader’s call for dramatic change, adopted his reform doctrine and went further, declaring their sovereignty.
“This society is ripe for change. It has long been yearning for it,” Gorbachev wrote of the Soviet Union in his 1987 American bestseller, “Perestroika,” an unprecedented book where he explained his vision for a new Russia and analyzed how the superpower’s new social order might impact the rest of the world.
His words, and news of one communist regime falling after another, fed our Cuban-exile souls in Miami with renewed — and at the time, realistic — aspirations of our return to the homeland.
Glasnost & perestroika memories
His death Tuesday at 91 evokes memories of when democracy seemed within reach for Cuba — and Miami prepared for change. “Ya viene llegando,” became affirmation and hymn.
Our day is coming.
The Baltic States. Soviet territories. Soviet satellites: Czechoslovakia. Poland. Hungary. Bulgaria. Romania, all free of Soviet dominance. And, on Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, chunk by chunk, as Germans, east and west, became one.
Surely, we thought, Cuba would be next.
We all called what was happening the “domino effect.” Cuba would be the last piece.
The uprisings, and the almost-overnight regime change, fed our wildest fantasies.
Would repressive Fidel Castro meet the same fate as brutal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, overthrown and executed by firing squad on Christmas Day after a military tribunal held a summary trial and found him guilty?
The military had turned on Ceaușescu. Cuba’s had powerful reasons to do likewise.
On July 13, 1989, Castro had executed Arnaldo Ochoa — an admired hero of the Angola War who, according to Cubans who knew him, favored reform — after mounting a dubious drug-smuggling case against him. Three senior officers of the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior (MININT), also were executed.
Preparing in Miami for Cuba’s turn
In Miami, a city becoming accustomed to international conflicts turning into a local story, Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika were household words. Freed minds ignited movements, and despite the repression in Cuba, the dismantling of the Soviet Union inspired a new generation of human-rights fighters like the late Oswaldo Payá.
We prepared for Cuba’s fall.
At the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, we had a “Cuba plan,” which included reservations on boats ready to leave Miami for Cuba at the first sign of revolt or announced change. All the journalists had assignments. El Nuevo’s features editor had her bags packed by the door of her Coral Gables house, ready to fly on the first plane to Cuba.
But the falling dominoes stopped at Havana’s seawall.
Not even Gorbachev’s visit to Cuba on March 31, 1989, persuaded Castro to embrace reform.
Coincidentally, that day, I was at a White House, sitting at lunch right next to President George H.W. Bush. I asked him about his expectations for Gorbachev’s visit. He wouldn’t answer.
Photos from Cuba showed an unhappy Fidel Castro greeting Gorbachev at Havana’s airport. We in Miami read too much between the lines. Gorbachev confirmed the end of Soviet subsidies and Cuba’s free ride with debt.
Castro, however, would stick by his worn-out battle cry, “Socialism or Death,” and when the lack of Soviet goods and cash led to the so-called Special Period and to the unrest of starving people, he solved the problem by allowing the perilous rafter exodus to proceed.
And, here we are, 33 years later, with Cuba in an economic free-fall. Hungry, poor, hopeless people, too scared to fight Miguel Díaz-Canel’s repressive apparatus, instead risk dying at sea, in a Central American jungle or crossing the Rio Grande.
Another generation is fleeing to the United States in record numbers.
Gorbachev could have changed Cuba — and by proxy, Miami — forever, but as the Soviet Union collapsed, he could hardly save himself. He was deposed in a badly staged coup that eventually opened the door to Boris Yeltsin, who visited Miami and was warmly welcomed.
Why, why didn’t Cuba follow the rest of the Soviet bloc?
“Cuba is an island, which makes it easier to control by an authoritarian dictatorship,” said retired Congresswoman Ileana-Ros Lehtinen, elected to Congress that historic year of 1989. “Cuba has, and continues to have, a highly developed and oppressive internal security apparatus, which is aided by its isolated island geography.”
On the other hand, “The Eastern European countries in the Warsaw Pact always had resistance movements against the imposition of communism by outside Soviet arms,” said Ros-Lehtinen, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2011-2013.
“Communism in Cuba was imposed by Cuban communist thugs themselves,” she added. “So this makes it harder to avoid detection of dissidents by the internal security system, especially when capital punishment awaits those detected. To put it simply, Cuban communist oppression is imposed and directed by Cubans.”
A Gorbachev for Cuba
And only Cubans inside the island can change the repressive dynamic that keeps Cuba stuck while Eastern Europe, once behind the Iron Curtain, now thrives.
Perhaps the physical death of the last Castro, Raúl, 91, will provoke change.
Perhaps inside the ruling forces within the government — “feuding” since the historic July 11 protests last year, as a source with connections inside Cuba described factions — is another Gorbachev waiting for the right moment to articulate his vision of Caribbean glasnost and perestroika.
