> In an interview, Castro says he is confident of Cuba's future
> By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, 6/23/2000
>
> HAVANA - President Fidel Castro said in an interview published yesterday
> that he is not worried about Cuba's transition after he dies, because the
> socialist revolution will continue without him since he is just a common
> man.
>
> ''In Cuba, there is no personality cult,'' Castro said in an interview with
> Spain's Federico Mayor, the former director general of the United Nations
> Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
>
> The interview was published in its entirety in the official daily Granma.
>
> ''When a true revolution has been consolidated, and the spread of its ideas
> and consciousness has begun to bear fruit, no one - no matter how important
> his personal contribution - is indispensable,'' Castro said.
>
> The 73-year-old Cuban leader has in the past endorsed his brother, Raul
> Castro, as his successor. Raul Castro, 69, is the number two man in Cuba's
> Communist Party and the government's ruling Council of State, as well as
> head of the armed forces.
>
> Castro did not mention his brother in the interview, but he said the
> question of succession - a topic of endless speculation in Cuba and abroad -
> was not really an issue.
>
> ''I wasn't a head of state as much as a very common man,'' Castro said. ''I
> didn't inherit any title, nor am I king.''
>
> The socialist transition has been going on for more than 40 years and will
> continue because there is a party ''with much moral prestige and
> authority,'' Castro said. ''What should I be worried about?''
>
> Castro touched on a host of issues, including the Elian Gonzalez case, the
> US election campaign, the problems confronting poor countries, and the US
> trade embargo against the Caribbean island.
>
> Mayor interviewed Castro in January in Havana for a book he is writing.
> Granma published what it said was the transcription of the interview
> yesterday.
>
> Mayor asked whether the United States was trying to influence Cuban politics
> through the trade embargo.
>
> Castro responded: ''They didn't try to influence the revolution, but rather
> destroy it.''
>
> On Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign in New York, Castro said her
> aides sometimes give her bad advice. He said she had said she hoped Elian's
> father could be persuaded to stay in the United States with his 6-year-old
> son. Castro termed the suggestion ''a grave and gratuitous offense'' to
> Cuba.
>
> Castro cited US laws that allow Cubans to receive residency if they reach
> American soil as the reason that so many Cubans have left the island.
>
> ''If Mexico and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean had received
> such privileges over the past 35 years, more than half of the population of
> the United States would be Latin American and Caribbean,'' Castro said.
>
> At the end of the interview, Mayor asked Castro whether he would remain a
> myth in death as he has been in life.
>
> ''That's not me,'' Castro said. ''It's the governments of the United States
> that has converted me into what you call a myth, and if I have been one in
> life it's also thanks to their failures to deprive me of it.''
>
> This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on 6/23/2000.