Like those Japanese soldiers who would occasionally show up in the jungles of East Asia twenty-five years after the end of the Second World War, Fidel Castro is a lonely warrior today, lost and thrashing about in the dense foliage of history. While his former communist comrades in Moscow and Beijing are making fortunes for themselves on global energy and equity markets, the aptly named Fidel is still the faithful Marxist, still leading the Caribbean branch of the revolution of the proletariat, still thumbing his nose at the supposed triumph of capitalism, and all a mere ninety miles from the luxury apartments and fleshpots of Miami. 

Well, ‘leading’ might be a bit strong. If the press reports of his steadily declining health are to be believed, his own physical role in the struggle may be no more effective than the efforts of those Japanese soldiers in the jungle. But as a figurehead, as the still extant