The future of Cuba is as uncertain as the legacy left by its strongman.

Gabriela Perdomo - Forty-nine years after leading a triumphant revolution, Fidel Castro has told Cuban legislators he will not stand for president again. The speculation from now on will be endless. Some will say the United States is ready to ship Miami Cubans into their motherland in a matter of days. Others will say Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has been handed the baton of Cuba’s future.

The truth is that the next few years of Cuba’s history are as easy to predict as the troubled waters around the island. It would be better to wonder what will happen to Castro’s legacy as—unprotected by omnipotence—his figure becomes more open to scrutiny.

No question, Cuba’s strongman still has followers around the world. There are those who still see through romantic eyes that Castro represents an era of revolution and resilience against an evil empire called America. Many of them are politicians with democratic left-leaning movements and parties who see no contradiction in their admiration for a man who curtailed every chance of popular governance on his island for half a century.

Castro’s legendary fight represents an awkward truth for today’s left-leaning politicians, especially in Latin America. Many leaders in the region still praise the Comandante’s fight for the poor and his strong Marxist ideas, which they see as an honest battle against the evils of bully right-wing politics and economics. Many also admire the guts needed to fight off the well-known influence of Washington in internal affairs.

Ironically, Castro has done more harm than good to the left in Latin America. His brand of radical communism has hurt the aspirations of social-democrats across the board. Voters still find it hard to understand why a responsible left-leaning party would praise a dictatorial regime like Cuba’s. Even when it doesn’t, the left in Latin America has been branded many times as Cuban communism, something very few parties actually aspire to. In some countries, like Colombia, left-wing parties have fought an uphill battle to be recognized as a legitimate political force thanks to the barbaric acts of supposedly Marxist guerrillas inspired by Castro’s revolutionary army—a reference that was never unauthorized by Castro himself.

Castro’s defenders cite Cuba’s indisputably excellent health care system and education programs as a model of modern-day social programs. But in hindsight, Cuba’s political prisoners, its silenced media, its raging poverty, will tell a more eloquent story of Castro’s regime. As Castro’s legacy begins to be revisited, leftist politicians and followers should slowly begin to recognize that under his rule Cuba was far from utopian, and that his regime had, and still has, more in common with a right-wing dictatorship—like Augusto Pinochet’ s in Chile or the Somoza family in Nicaragua—than with a perfect socialist dream.

The first reaction to Castro’s resignation should be to abandon the romantic revolutionary veil that has protected Cuba since 1949. If left-wing political parties are to be taken seriously in Latin America, their leaders should be the first ones to revisit their allegiance to an oppressive dictator.

An immediate response should also be for everyone to acknowledge that they have failed the Cuban people. Washington, on account of its inflexibility and arrogance in dealing with Castro; the rest of the Western international community, for not stepping in to cover the massive gap left by the American embargo in the lives of Cubans; the international media—with few exceptions—for failing to condemn the obvious abuses of the Castro regime on its own people; misguided left-wing politicians everywhere, for refusing to recognize that there is nothing kind or intelligent to learn from a dictatorship—no matter how "leftist" it allegedly is; the right-wing politicians, whose demonizing of Castro turned him into a hero; and, most importantly, Castro himself, for giving in to his own vanity and sacrificing an entire generation for the stubborn goal of defying an empire.

Castro was a dictator. Hopefully this will be the long-lasting tag attached to his name after he is gone.

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