There are so many things that I have seen in my lifetime that I swore were beyond my wildest imagination.  In the 70’s, I never thought to see the end of Apartheid in South Africa, or Nelson Mandela a free man; I never thought to see the Berlin Wall come down and the unification of Germany; I never thought to see the break up of the Soviet Union; and I never thought I would live to see Castro step down from ruling Cuba on his own accord.  All things are possible!

I wrote my senior thesis at Princeton on Castro and Cuba.  I was interested in why a given group of people in a specific place would make the governmental choices that they did.  One of my junior papers was on Sino-Chilean relations.  I clearly had a fascination, or at least a curiosity, in Communism and all the people who thought that it would work.  Castro and Cuba especially intrigued me because Cuba is so close to the US and so many attempts had been made to depose Castro, in one form or another, and they had all failed.  Clearly, any removal of Castro was going to come internally.  At least, that was my opinion in the 70’s.

I also hoped that I would be able to travel to Cuba when it opened for the US because I firmly believed that that would happen in my lifetime.  I wanted to see first hand the effects of being so limited in resources because of the lack of trade with the US and later, the break up of the Soviet Union.  One of the things that limited my research in college was my lack of Spanish.  Learning Spanish has been on my list of things to do for many years, but I have never had the time.  I always thought that I would have the time to learn it before Cuba opened to general tourism from the US.  Now, I have the feeling that my time to learn it is now, or at least after I finish this Master’s program when I have free time again.

I am looking forward to reading about the changes that Castro’s brother Raul puts into place for the people of Cuba.  Perhaps I will visit Cuba in 10 years?  That certainly is a possibility.