“FIDEL,” Hugo Chavez announced late last month, “is in the Sierra Maestra again, battling for his life.” Given that the Venezuelan president’s previous pronouncements about his Cuban friend and mentor had been altogether less pessimistic, the remark was inevitably interpreted as an indication that the Cuban leader was on the verge of expiring.

Not long afterwards, following a bedside chat with Fidel Castro, Chavez revised his prognosis, suggesting that the patient was steadily improving and almost able to jog.

In keeping with an unfortunate communist custom, the state of Castro’s health is a state secret in Cuba. This has inevitably sparked a great deal of speculation, consisting in large part of claims that the octogenarian icon is suffering from cancer – which, in turn, have been denied by Havana and Chavez, as well as by a Spanish specialist who examined Castro in December. But whatever the precise nature of his ailment, there can be little doubt that Fidel – who handed over power in August last year to a leadership team led by his brother Raul – is indeed engaged in a struggle that, for once, he cannot win.

Inevitably, the reaction on the other side of the Florida Straits has been jubilant. “When Castro dies,” CNN announced, “Miami will party like it’s 1959.” A media and public backlash compelled civic authorities to announce last week that festive elements wouldn’t be included in a city-organised public event planned to mark the demise of a man whom many Cuban-Americans regard as a tyrant. Not surprisingly, the bitterest residual hatred has been nurtured by those who had the greatest cause to resent the 1959 revolution’s egalitarian agenda – those who thrived amid the stark disparities of wealth in the days when Cuba was effectively a colony of the United States.

At least some of them expect a restoration of the status quo ante once Castro is no longer on the scene. They strove for decades, in collaboration with the CIA, to arrange his assassination, but hundreds of bizarre plots and dozens of attempts came to naught. The most recent of these occurred as recently as 2000, during a visit by Fidel to Panama. The leading conspirator, Juan Posada Carriles, an old CIA hand, lives in the US. The authorities have refused to extradite him to Venezuela, where he is wanted for bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976. Some terrorists, clearly, are more equal than others.

Successive US administrations have been beholden to the Cuban-American lobby, which owes much of its strength to the fact that Florida is a crucial state in electoral terms, and which has steadily resisted all attempts to weaken the trade embargo slammed on Cuba in 1962. It didn’t have to try very hard with the present administration, which established a so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and named a “transition coordinator”. According to Wayne S. Smith, who served in Havana as a US diplomatic representative on two occasions, the commission’s 500-page action plan envisaged “what sounded worryingly like the US occupation of Cuba”, based on the premise “that the regime was on the verge of collapse”. That was nearly three years ago.

In truth, it’s extremely hard to predict where Cuba will go from here, but the first six months of what is effectively a post-Castro phase have been remarkably uneventful. Visitors to the Caribbean island are taken aback by the apparent lack of trepidation among ordinary Cubans, the majority of whom have known no leader other than Fidel. The adulation he inspires has never been universal, but there’s evidence of an undercurrent of affection even in cases where familiarity has bred contempt.

Crucially, observers note that although there are constant complaints about various shortages, about bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, about restrictions on the freedom of speech, the complainants change their tone when addressing the revolution’s accomplishments: most notably, virtually unrivalled standards of healthcare and education.

It is this pride in Cuba’s achievements over the past half-century that may yet serve as a bulwark against the advertised designs of the exiles in Miami and the administration in Washington. Cuba’s economic experience under Castro has – for a variety of reasons that range from the embargo to poor decision-making and flawed Soviet advice – been variable, yet the pains and gains have hitherto been more or less evenly distributed. That is bound to become a thing of the past once the free-market vultures descend on the island.

It is hard to see how they can be kept at bay for very long. Ironically, the sooner they arrive, the easier will it be to offer retrospective justification for Castro’s determination to remain at the helm for as long as it was physically possible. Cuba’s political development has inevitably been distorted by relentless US hostility and its consequences, not least Havana’s submission to Moscow’s bear-hug.

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union entailed exigencies that posed a formidable challenge for the Cuban revolution: its survival was not far short of miraculous. It involved compromises, but the concessions to private enterprise were relatively minor and did not seriously threaten the revolution’s basic accomplishments: there was never any danger, for instance, that education would become less than universal or that medical attention would come at a price.

What’s equally remarkable is Cuba’s undiminished penchant for benevolence beyond its means. The Argentine writer and politician Miguel Bonasso recalls: “One dawn we were chatting in the Palace of the Revolution meeting hall and (Fidel) began to forecast the consequences of the severe earthquake that had just hit Pakistan (in October 2005). ‘The extreme cold periods are coming,’ he told me, ‘and the inhabitants of destroyed towns will be wandering without a destiny on the mountainside. There will be exposed fractures, gangrene, and pain, an indescribable human suffering. We have to do something.’ ”

And, as everyone in Pakistan ought to know, they did do rather more than any other nation, expecting nothing in return, but extending the offer of enrolment in Cuban universities for Pakistani medical students. Cuban medical schools are a veritable United Nations of aspiring doctors, including Americans who cannot afford the phenomenal cost of a medical degree in their homeland.

The compassionate gesture towards Pakistan wasn’t by any means a one-off. Large-scale natural calamities invariably attract Cuban doctors and health workers, except in cases where the offer is turned down -- as it churlishly was in the case of Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps a contrary reaction by the US would have been construed as a violation of its own embargo, which extends to foreign subsidiaries of American countries. Not only that but, much to the consternation of Canada and Europe, it technically covers all companies that do business with the US.

There was a time when the military sphere wasn’t excluded from Cuban humanitarian assistance programmes. The most notable example of Cuba’s involvement in a foreign war was the critical role played by its army first in the liberation of Angola and subsequently in protecting it against subversion sponsored by the apartheid regime in South Africa and endorsed by the CIA.

The Cuban troops had to contend not only with mercenaries but with large contingents of South African soldiers. Back in Havana, Castro anxiously awaited details of every battle and could subsequently recite them with the precision of an eyewitness. The South African forces were repelled, Angola retained its sovereignty, Namibia gained independence, and apartheid crumbled shortly afterwards. Fidel had his reward when he attended the inauguration of South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994, where Nelson Mandela leaned over and whispered in his ear: “You made this possible.”

In recent years the Cuban president has been able to draw some comfort from momentous developments in Latin America, a continent whose independence and unity have always meant so much to him. Shortly after his triumphant entry into Havana in 1959, Fidel travelled to Caracas on an official invitation and was mobbed by adoring Venezuelans wherever he went.

In a two-hour speech (rather brief by his standards) in the Plaza del Silencio, Castro asked: “How much longer divided, the victims of powerful interests? Given that the unity of our peoples has been fruitful, doesn’t the unity of nations have to be more so? This is Bolivarian thinking. Venezuela must be the leader country of the peoples of America...” It took 40 years for his dream to begin to come true. No wonder he’s been thrilled to locate an heir in Hugo Chavez.

The promise of a new beginning across a handful of Latin American countries could yet turn out to be a deceptive dawn, but in the short term it could help to revitalise the Cuban revolution in its post-Fidel phase. Beyond that, only time will tell. One can only hope that Cubans will resist all efforts to restore their beloved isle’s pre-revolutionary status as a mafia-run brothel for rich gringos.

Castro’s mortal enemies will never understand the passion he excites across Latin America and in many other parts of the world, let alone the warmth he attracts from intelligent Americans such as Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg. He has already joined the likes of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti in his continent’s pantheon of liberators. When he goes, he will be remembered, by and large fondly, for a long time to come as an extraordinarily inspiring presence on the world stage in the latter half of the 20th century.

As for the question of whether history will absolve him, that will depend entirely on who writes that history.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com