Yeah, like Che Guevara! I'd give my right coronary artery for one of those shirts. I wear it and watch "The Motorcycle Diaries" again. And cry and strum the Spanish guitar. . . .

I heard a long piece on NPR about Castro and the dynamics of change in Cuba on my way back from my pottery class this evening. Apparently the U.S. has and (and has long had) $80 million earmarked for strategic and diplomatic moves toward democracy there when Fidel crosses the finish line. There's a huge, detailed plan for how to move forward, which of course hasn't been publicized but seems fairly easy to speculate about.

The BBC reporter from the Cuban hospital was saying that Fidel's alive on the night of his surgery but seriously ill, and they played several sound bytes of Fidel talking about his mortality at various times in the past when everyone's said he's headed for the end. He derives great strength and amusement, he said three years ago, when others are certain he's dying. The reporter said the most interesting thing was how fired up Cuban Americans and Cuban exiles in America are about the whole situation, demonstrating in the streets for Castro's demise, whereas the folks in Cuba itself are very calm and unfazed about the whole story. The report mentioned that Raul Castro is much more of a hard-line Communist than his brother. And they talked about the fact that Cubans themselves have been better off under the Castro regime than they were under Batista and the previous dictators but explained why exiles and their progeny are so mad at Castro and his "reign" because so many of those folks lost vast amounts of money and livelihoods and parts of their families on the other side of the Cuban iron curtain after it closed in 1959.

The whole situation makes me want to go to Cuba immediately and just look around and see it all. The prohibition against American tourists visiting there has always made me more eager to see the place. I'd sport my Guevara t-shirt there, too, and drink mojitos while doing so. . . .