Cuba Libre!

Last night, as I was flipping back and forth between a rerun of Supernanny and Hell's Kitchen (that reality show with the wannabe gourmets who have to put up with the hot-tempered, potty-mouthed British Chef), when all of a sudden the news busts in with one of those "This Just In, and It's Really Important... So Important That We're Gonna Interrupt an Important Episode of Supernanny - You'll Have to Learn How to Discipline Your Kids an Another Time."

And whereas many times, it's not really that big of a deal (news of a tropical depression that maybe - just maybe - might become a tropical storm if the sustained wind speeds pick up another 30 knots, Paris Hilton being spotted on Lincoln Road with what seems to be the look of someone who has broken her vow of abstinence, or something of the like), this time it was.

Kind of.

"Castro steps down." Rumors abound about whether he was dead or not, but the official news coming in from Havana stated that Fidel Castro announced a provisional transfer of his duties as Cuba's president to his little brother Raúl. The announcement cited "an acute intestinal crisis, with sustained bleeding" requiring immediate medical intervention - basically a colon that had become so impacted it caused his hemorrhoids to bleed profusely.

But seriously, I had this thought pop into my head as I watched the celebratory parades waving Cuban flags and cheering in the streets of Little Havana, Westchester, and elsewhere in Dade County: do you think they're interrupting Supernanny elsewhere across America? In places like Des Moines, Peoria, Omaha, and Spokane? I mean, it'd make the 11 o'clock news (or in most of those places, the 10 o'clock news... they go to bed a little earlier in the Heartland). But they don't bust in.

Let me say right off the bat that I'd love to see Castro out of power. He's a despot who has brutally executed his enemies, driven his island into abject poverty, and struck fear into the lives of the resilient Cuban people. Ordinary citizens dare not utter his name for fear of arrest by Fidel's Gestapo-like secret police.

Back in 1997, I witnessed this firsthand: doctors, lawyers, electricians, teachers scraping by on the government mandated $15-a-month; a former island paradise (and I don't use that term lightly - it used to be a paradise) delapidated and in ruin; young girls whose only hope is a life of prostitution - selling their bodies to the myriad Canadian and European tourists who remain at the resorts, but never see the real Cuba.

I stayed with a family of 7 who were crammed in a tiny, sweaty apartment, whose oldest son was my primary means of communication - my grasp of the Spanish language is limited to spewing vocabulary words and misconjugated verbs. The son's name was Alejandro. He was 25 years-old, and had what looked like a volleyball tucked under the skin of his neck. This grotesque tumor was malignant, and it was something that any doctor could operate on and remove - even one whose medical school diploma was signed by Sally Struthers. But day after day, Alejandro stared at this growing death sentance - one exacebated by the man in control.

And while I witnessed this firsthand, and long to see a free Cuba, it's all cerebral... I don't harbor this feeling in my gut like the people celebrating on Calle Ocho. Like the ones who fled Cuba after the Revolution. Like the ones desperate to the point of hopping in an innertube, braving shark attacks and the Florida Straits simply for the chance of a taste of freedom.

And while Castro has been resilient through the years (surviving the Bay of Pigs debacle, a 13-cigar-a-day habit, and beard leeches), he has also had his share of moral support (the picture to the right shows Castro, the USSR's Nikita Krushchev, and Steve Buscemi).

Of course, the big question remains: what happens next?

My hope and my prayer is for a free Cuba. And when that happens, we'll work on the east end of the island.