Pope John Paul II will be in Cuba from January 21st to 25th to meet the people and talk to Fidel Castro about the Cuban president's relations with the Catholic Church. Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to cut all trade with Cuba and starve the island into submission. His instrument is the Helms-Burton law, which is widely condemned, particularly by the European Union, which does not recognise it.
The Pope does not support the embargo, one assumes, but will he condemn it in Cuba? It punishes the Cubans for crimes they have not committed and its real purpose is to topple Castro.
The Pope (77) and Castro (71) met for the first time at the Vatican in November 1996, the year the Helms-Burton Act - punishing companies in countries which invest in Cuba - went into effect.
Economic conditions reportedly have gone from bad to worse in Cuba. Cubans were permitted to celebrate Christmas as a holiday this year rather than as another work day in the cane fields. But there is no socialist way of saving the sugar crop other than by the mass mobilisation of labour as under feudalism and capitalism. So they worked on Christmas Day.
The sugar problem is far more difficult since Cuba lost its Soviet market. The economic warfare is hurting. If Cuba cannot sell its produce it cannot finance its health, education and welfare plans.
The Pope's visit may be the biggest event in Cuba since Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista on January 1st, 1959. When the rising triumphed the social revolution began. This scared the Eisenhower administration and the CIA got orders to oust Castro as a "Red". The Communist Party of Cuba did not support Castro until January 6th, 1959, a week after the guerrillas of the July 26th Movement seized power.
There was one exception in the Communist leadership: Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, who died last month. He was a key member of the insurgency from the start. Threatened by a US invasion, Castro sought the help of the Soviet Union. His agent was Carlos Rodriguez. This help ended with nuclear rockets in Cuba and a US-Soviet nuclear stand-off.
Bill Clinton is the ninth President of the United States who has tried to oust Castro, though by fair rather than foul means perhaps. He has been less belligerent than his eight predecessors. He indicates, however, that the defeat of Castro is his goal. It is popular in Florida.
In October, Castro pledged: "What happened to the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is not going to happen here." He means it.
Classified documents released recently tell of US plans endorsed at the highest level of military command to oust and perhaps murder the Cuban leader. Operation Bingo of March 1962, the New York Times reported, was planned as a fake attack on the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to cover "a devastating military assault on Havana". It did not happen.
In the same month, Operation Mongoose was proposed. There are 1,500 pages of back-up documents titled, "Possible actions to provoke, harass or disrupt Cuba". One action would have used Mafia hit men, presumably to assassinate Castro.
"We could blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," another memorandum states. Which is how the Spanish-American War began in 1898 when the US warship, Maine, which was sent to Cuban waters to protect US citizens, blew up in Havana harbour. The incident permitted the US Congress to declare war on Spain.
These were operational plans in 1962. They were not carried out. Internal evidence suggests the documents were intended as exercises in planning, not the real thing. Another section quoted by the New York Times reads: "We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated)." Pretty scary stuff.
A further indication that these were exercises, not operations, is the fact that they were endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff "as suitable for planning purposes". There is no evidence that any of these planned exercises was carried out.