The Castro Show
The Longest-Running Soap Opera in the Americas Played out This Week Before the Eyes of the World

“Won’t have to fly to Havana via Toronto? Get a few more second baseman? Oh, the drink Cuba libre will no longer be ironically delicious.”

By Rebecca Wakefield

Earlier this week, the biggest stories in the news were the Israelis vs. Hezbollah, Mel Gibson vs. the Jews, Shakira’s seven MTV award nominations, oh, and FIDEL CEDE EL PODER!

Whaaah? I thought Monday night, shortly after an official on Cuban state television announced that a recent bender down in Argentina had caused the bearded dictator “an acute intestinal crisis,” requiring him to suddenly disappear from his national podium. Apparently spicy barbecue had done what decades of embargo could not.

I turned immediately to the TV news source I trust most – Fox affiliate WSVN-TV Channel 7, home of Deco Drive — for the story. “Fidel Castro has passed on,” intoned anchorpixie Belkys Nerey, pausing just briefly but dramatically before adding, “leadership to his younger brother.”

On cue, every media outlet in town descended on a number of local restaurants, the civic spaces of South Florida. Old men sporting tattoos mixed liberally with young women in belly shirts, all waving or wearing Cuban flags. Cell phones, cigars, and SUVs paraded before the lenses of the world, as did the calculated commentary of elected officials, from Miami Mayor Manny Diaz to Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Versailles and La Carreta did a brisk business in carbs and commiseration. It was like watching the street fairs after the Miami Heat won the NBA championship — if Mark Cuban’s vitriol had ruptured his nether tube.

I spent a fascinating 24 hours digesting the coverage and came away with a few observations. One is that I seriously miss Rick Sanchez. This column would have been much easier to write had Sanchez (once a 7 stalwart) not decamped to New York to be a CNN correspondent. He did make a small appearance on Anderson Cooper’s show early on, but without his trademark hyperbolic nonsense, it just wasn’t the same.

Still, the media helped immensely by giving in to their impulse to logo-ize the drama. For Channel 51 and El Nuevo Herald, it was “Castro Cede el Poder” (in 51’s case arranged in an acute angle like a crocodile’s smile). Channel 23 was more specific and personal with “Fidel Cede el Poder a Raul.” At CBS 4 it was “Castro Transfers Power.”

There were several constants. Everybody went to the airport to find out what passengers from Cuba knew about the situation. Unsurprisingly, they knew nothing. Miami’s least-appealing rapper, Pitbull, came up with a song to mark the occasion.

All the stations used the famous footage of Castro nose-diving off a stage to great effect. The award for this has to go to Channel 7, which looped the footage over a droning commentary by anchor Craig Stevens about eight or nine times.

The University of Miami’s Cuba expert, Jaime Suchlicki, served as the Dr. Phil of political analysis for everyone. “I don’t think this is the beginning of the collapse,” he told CBS 4. Former Cuban American National Foundation spokesman and current New Democrat Network shill Joe Garcia made it on to nearly every network, plus the radio, taking potshots at Castro and George W. Bush alike.

There was a weird Elian Gonzalez moment when both Manny Diaz and political consultant Armando Gutierrez were interviewed by an effusive CBS 4 reporter outside Versailles. “I believe he’s dead,” Gutierrez said of Castro. Diaz just looked uncomfortable, clearly trying to ride the line between playing to the locals and still being a credible interview on CNN.

At 12:32 a.m., County Commission Chairman Joe Martinez huddled behind a podium at the Emergency Operations Center with fellow commissioners Pepe Diaz, Rebeca Sosa and Natacha Seijas to bask in the glow of the “possible demise of the Cuban dictator” before the county mayor could get there.

Mayor Carlos Alvarez then made a boring but reassuring speech to the effect that the county was officially happy about Castro’s troublesome intestines and sanctioned the celebrations, but if people could get out of the road before the morning traffic, that would be cool. Later that day, an anchor on one of the stations made a revealing flub, when he said that “County Mayor Carlos Diaz — I mean Alvarez — says the county is prepared.”

Both Univision (Channel 23) and Telemundo (Channel 51) spent more airtime on the story than the English-language stations which, by 6 p.m., were all leading with Tropical Storm Chris. The Spanish-language stations ran a press conference by congressfolk Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in full, where the English stations tended to go for the highlights. They featured more of Mesa Redonda, Cuban TV’s nightly public affairs show. And they also had more coverage of pro-Castro reaction in Venezuela and Bolivia, Cubans in New Jersey, and speculation about whether Cuban hunger strikers would now feel free to go get a sandwich.

One of the most interesting facts uncovered by Miami media is the number of local gastroenterologists willing to rhetorically climb up Castro’s butt for a theoretical look-see at the, ahem, seat of power. GI-tract Kremlinologists of all sorts crawled out of the political soft tissue, from CBS 4’s reality-TV reject, Dr. Sean Kenniff, to Jeffrey B. Raskin, the University of Miami’s interim chief of the division of gastroenterology. “They could be hiding something more serious,” Raskin told the Miami Herald reporter unfortunate enough to have to ask questions about a medical diagnosis based on a disinformative press release.

Bob Norman, a New Times Broward/Palm Beach columnist, noted on his blog the difference in the treatment of the news in South Florida’s three major dailies on Tuesday. Norman observed that the headlines got smaller the farther north the newsprint went.

If you got as far north as New York’s The Daily Show, you heard host Jon Stewart ask faux correspondent Rob Corddry what Castro’s passing would mean to America. “I don’t know,” Corddry replied. “Won’t have to fly to Havana via Toronto? Get a few more second baseman? Oh, the drink Cuba libre will no longer be ironically delicious.”

The Herald’s own coverage indicated that Cuban-American navel-gazing was much reduced north of the county line. The paper dispatched seemingly hundreds of reporters to cover every minute angle of the story as if it were a Category 5 hurricane. The angle I didn’t see was, what happens to the local anti-Castro politico-industrial complex when Castro and his political heirs are gone?

What happens to a community that has identified itself through its opposition to one man when that man goes away? How do politicians like state Rep. David Rivera, who likes to harass travelers to Cuba at the airport and take away funding for educational exchange programs, continue to exist? For that matter, what is the transition plan for Radio Mambi, the Diaz-Balarts and other fixtures of a fading exilio? It’s an interesting question.

On Jim DeFede’s morning radio show, he asked Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen what effect the transfer of power would have. “It will be a watershed moment for Cuba only because they’re losing a guy who is — he’s the only head of government 70 percent of that population has known,” Hiaasen replied. “They are going to have an emotional upheaval, but are they all going to rush into the streets and say finally we can have free elections? I wouldn’t bet on that at all. …We’re going to continue this charade until Castro’s entire bloodline is deceased and out of power.”

Both commentators noted that no one can ever tell quite what the wily old bastard is up to. “He could be out there throwing out the first pitch of the new baseball season,” Hiaasen noted. “You just never know.”

DeFede responded with an old joke about someone giving a Galapagos turtle to Castro and explaining that the species lives a hundred years. “He said, ‘No, no. Take it away. That’s the problem with pets — you get attached to them and then they die.’”

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.