For even the hopeful, Fidel Castro’s imminent mortality has for decades presaged the end of a dream. But Castro lived to see a successor. Not brother Raul, indeed neither an island-bound disciple nor a private-school Marxist, nor (but for this photo) a khaki’d comrade, but a veritable everyman Simon Bolivar to deliver the indigenous Americas to autonomy.
Though Fidel and Che could not bring the revolution out of the jungle, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is poised to overrun Latin America, sitting on a mountain of oil wealth, telling Uncle Sam’s banker goons where they can stick it. It’s Capitalism’s domino theory come home to roost.