Ever since Cuban dictator Fidel Castro came to power 37 years ago, some Americans and others have blamed his misdeeds on the United States, which, by failing to support his revolution, supposedly drove him to embrace communism. Now that his great patron, the Soviet Union, is gone, Castro’s Cuba is in dire straits, and once again, some analysts are faulting the United States, this time for prolonging its 34-year-old embargo on trade with Cuba.

Smith, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University who served in the U.S. embassy in Havana from 1958 to ’61 and was chief of the U.S. Interest Section there from 1979 to ’82, contends that the embargo is counterproductive and should be lifted. "Castro’s departure or ouster is unlikely to occur soon, and it is probably undesirable," he says. The dictator (who turns 70 in August) "continues to enjoy considerable popular support," has the army and security forces on his side, and is reluctantly making Cuba "an economy that mixes private enterprise with a continued role for the state and a far more open political system."

Cuba has indeed been changing, reports Wroe, the Economist’s "American Survey" editor, "but at a glacial pace." Cubans can now hold dollars, tourists are welcomed, foreign investment is sought, state enterprises are being broken up, and "private" farmer’s markets are being allowed. Whereas in 1989, 95 percent of Cubans worked for the state, now "only" 75 percent do. The Soviet withdrawal from Cuba (popularly known on the island as "Armageddon") caused the island nation’s gross domestic product to shrink 35 percent between 1989 and 1993. Thanks to the limited reforms undertaken since, the Cuban economy last year grew 2.5 percent. But much of the country, Wroe says, "remains in economic and physical ruin." Even so, she adds, "the revolution is not necessarily bound to crumble." Despite the hard times, she believes, most Cubans "still assume that Mr. Castro has their best interests at heart. American antagonism only burnishes his reputation." She considers the

U.S. embargo "a cynical farce which needlessly hurts 11 million people" and which, whether tightened or lifted, will not bring democracy any closer.

Nevertheless, argues Lane, a senior editor at the New Republic, the embargo remains for Americans "our only leverage and our best symbolic protest against Castro’s dictatorship." The "endless debate over U.S.-Cuban relations," he believes, helps to obscure "the only question about Cuba that really matters: Why on earth does Castro refuse to hold a free national election?"