When it is not known to true science if Fidel Castro is alive or dead, this analysis treats on
current relations between Cuba and the USA

Let's speak about a short honeymoon. That of the president Barack Obama and the Cuban leader Fidel Castro ended even before beginning. After praising Obama qualifying it of sincere, noble and intelligent, and of calling it a symbol of the American sleep, now Castro is attacking it for his position in the conflict Palestinian - Israeli and is required that the United States should return Guantanamo to the Cuban people.
It has been years since we were not listening to Castro to say anything positive about a North American president. Not only it has done career speaking pests of the United States, denouncing to the Yankee imperialism and blaming it for all the evil of his country due to the economic sequestration, but it has directed the anti-American wave that it has interspersed intensely across the region.

Nevertheless, the arrival of Obama to the power seemed to have softened it a little. During the campaign, Obama said that he would be ready to sit down with the Cuban leader and with others that support hostile relations with the United States. Also it clarified that it is ready to consider the suspension of the restrictions on the mailing of remittances and familiar visits to Cuba.

But it gives the impression that Castro did not like anything listening that while Obama announces that it would close the military prison in Guantanamo, also he suggested that before the United States considers to return the territory of 45 square miles that lodges the military base the Cuban government would have to do authorizations.

“ Obama is demanding a change in the political diet of Cuba”, wrote Castro in one of his publishing houses one week after Obama was sworn like president. “This is a price against which Cuba is fighting half a century ago”, he added. To support the base in Cuban ground, said Castro, “it is against the will of our people and it violates the most fundamental beginning of international law”.
The presence of the United States in Guantanamo has been a contest point from the first years of the communist diet. The United States has been hiring the area from 1903, after the war Hispanic - American. The terms of the lease dictate that they can only be broken by mutual agreement or if the United States does not fulfill his part of the dealing. The rent supports in $ 4.085 dollars a year, and only one one has not spent him to the United States I pay.

But, on having denied to legitimizar the dealing to him, the Cuban government has not changed any of the checks sent like payment into the lease. For the time being the United States does not have intention of closing the base that serves to watch and to attend to his military activities in the Caribbean Sea.

The complaints and criticism of Fidel Castro are not new at all. But his most recent publishing house yes uncovers certain questions. It does a pair of weeks Castro showed that he would stop publishing his called "reflections" not to interfere with the decisions of the communist party on having brought in in Washington a new government. It broke its own promise quickly.

Some of them wonder if Castro will be trying to sabotage the possibility of improving relations with the USA him to keep on blaming for his economic problems. Even more, the question arises if he is Fidel – who has not been seen publicly since it delivered the power to his brother in July of 2006-, which keeps on being in charge in Cuba, if he is really he who is writing these "reflections" or if in effect he is still alive or not.

Obama has sent a clear and direct message to the world: There is a new government in Washington. It is still for be seen if that will result in a change in the relations between the United States and Cuba. For the time being it is the same rhetoric. The short honeymoon between Obama and Fidel was finished.

(c) 2008 by Maria Helen Salinas.