Castro, a great survivor

COULD HE, even in those giddiest of moments before his entry into Havana on 8 January 1959, have conceivably imagined it would come to this, 40 years on: his country in tatters, long since shorn of its ideological patron, half-crushed by the unremitting enmity of the most powerful country on earth just 90 miles to the north, but with himself still firmly in power?

The story of Fidel Castro is a story of nationalism, of defiance, of cruelty, ruthlessness and tyranny. Above all, it is a story of survival, of how the ruler of a besieged island in the Caribbean stands almost as the doyen of world leaders in terms of seniority.

President Castro, 71, has seen the passing of four Popes, eight US presidents (and who would say he will not outlast another, Bill Clinton?), and his intended nemesis, Jorge Mas Canosa, ruler-in-waiting with the Cuban exiles in Miami until his death in 1997. He has outlived his economic and political patron, the Soviet Union. Hurricanes, refugee crises, internal plots, external assassination attempts - he has weathered them all.

Of course, Mr Castro is an anachronism. The revolution he once sought to export to the Caribbean and Africa is the most unsaleable commodity on earth. The main supports of his country's economy are not sugar and cigars, but the foreign currency brought by tourists from the capitalist West (though not the US), seeking an ersatz political thrill among high- rise beach hotel developments that could be anywhere in the world.

And Mr Castro himself sometimes seems less than a true believer in the Communist state he formally declared on 16 April 1961. It is no longer his face, but that of his long-dead comrade-in-arms, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, that still possesses a tiny dash of radical chic. These days the whiskers of el barbudo, the "bearded one", are a wispy grey.

The war cry of "Socialism or Death" has been long tempered by a fondness for good whisky. In the past five years he has lifted the ban on the use of the dollar and the celebration of Christmas. According to Forbes magazine, by 1997 he had amassed a fortune of more than pounds 800m - equivalent, it has been calculated, to 10 per cent of the Cuban economy. "I wouldn't mind meeting Margaret Thatcher," he confided not so long ago. "In fact, if I had been a European perhaps I, too, would have been of the right."

But Mr Castro is of the New World, his political career defined by the hostility of the US. That hostility has been both his bane and his salvation. The US blockade is founded on a total trade embargo dating back 36 years, periodically embellished by dubious novelties such as sanctions on foreign companies that invest in Cuba. But the handicap has served only to cement the nationalism which has always been his trump card.

The US's folly has been to assume that without Castro, Cuba would become a grateful satellite. But Mr Castro was a hero for his countrymen when he overthrew the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. They were grateful for what he did to bring public health and education to all Cubans. Never does he look more secure than when Washington turns the screw on him.

The periodic bouts of US hysteria actually deflect attention from Mr Castro's quite atrocious human-rights record. Dissent continues to be brutally suppressed, independent newspapers and trade unions are forbidden, hundreds of political prisoners fill the jails. Agricultural labour camps are common, and the International Red Cross has not been permitted to visit Cuban prisons since 1989.

But the US's own excesses encourage Castro apologists. Left to its own devices, they say, Cuba might have flourished. The crumbling infrastructure, the fact that crime and prostitution are often the only way to make a living, the flight of many of Cuba's best and brightest - all are the fault of Uncle Sam.

And so Fidel plods on, tolerated but no longer loved. But the world is as fed up with the US's ranting against Castro as it is with Castro himself. President Clinton has taken a few half-steps to ease the pressure and even in Miami, now Mas Canosa has gone, the fury is abating. Which means, health permitting, the old boy could be with us in 2009, celebrating his 50th. Old revolutionaries never die - they just hang around.