When Castro gets the boot.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Fidel Castro - Cover Story

Cuba watchers say the island nation will be rife with opportunity for Indiana businesses.

It's safe to say that Fidel Castro is on his way out. The question is when the post-castro era in Cuba will begin. After all, Castro came to power more than three decades ago and there's no indication that he's making any plans for retirement. But lately, a lot of informed and connected people have been betting that the end of the Castro regime will arrive sooner than later.

Cuba watchers in recent months have been advising corporate America to start thinking about post-Castro options. The Hudson Institute in Indianapolis recently conducted a siminar on Cuba and its potential as a trading partner, with the help of the Cuban-American National Foundation and its chairman, Jorge L. Mas Canosa. "We are confident that soon the Cuban people will live in a democratic society and enjoy the liberties that we sometimes take for granted each day," says Mas, whose name has been floated in the Cuban-American community as a possible successor to Castro.

Confidence that the end is near for Castro stems from a number of factors. Most obvious, the nation's historical benefactor, the Soviet Union, is no more, and its member states have economic problems of their own. With the Cuban economy already heading downward, the United States last year tightened the screws by enacting the Cuban Democracy Act, which extended the trade ban with Cuba to cover foreign subsidiaries of American companies. Those subsidiaries had been doing some $700 million worth of annual trade with Cuba, making the United States Cuba's largest trading partner.

The Cuban economy has become so bleak that so-called "people's violence" against th state is reported to be on the rise. And in what would seem to be a last-ditch effort to hold onto power, Castro in July legalized trade in the once-hated American dollar. While the move could help the economy somewhat, it could erode Castro's power base by giving any Cuban with access to American cash the economic privileges once reserved fro the loyal elite. According of Radio Marti, duluting the privileges of the party could ultimately be Castro's undoing. "It is a basic characteristic of societies that the repressive capacity of the state is usually in the hands of people who somehow enjoy a priviledged status within that society."

Why should anyone in the Indiana business community care about what's going on in a nation with whom we're not even allowed to do business? Because a free Cuba, if and when it comes to pass, would be a not-too-distant foreign market with a lot of potential.

"We're talking about what may turn into quite a substantial market," says Elliott Abrams, senior fellow at...