CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER Carlos Alberto Montaner is a Madrid-based author, syndicated columnist and international political analyst whose father was a friend of Fidel Castro in the 1950s. Montaner became a political prisoner in Havana in 1960 but escaped and managed to leave Cuba in 1961. In the late 1980s, he directed the opinion pages of El Nuevo Herald. He is head of the Cuban Liberal Union and has written numerous novels, including the recent Manual of the Perfect Latin American Idiot. Among others, he has also written 200 Years of Gringos, Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro, Cuba y el Caribe.

You Got a Lot of 'Splaining to Do, Fidel

There's a Cuba B.C. and a Cuba A.C. The C, of course, is Castro's doing. Before Castro, Cuba was an island of beaches, cigars and rum that every so often shook the world with a new musical beat. It was the friendly country of conga, of mambo and cha-cha-cha, perfectly personified by Ricky Ricardo; a nation whose best known geographic reference was Varadero Beach. There was a lot more, of course -- a select literature, a beautiful capital, fine artists, a booming middle class -- but the international image was just that: ``A paradise under the stars,'' as the Tropicana nightclub slogan proclaimed. A country to visit on holiday.

After Castro came the gun-toting ``bearded ones,'' the political rallies on overcrowded plazas, the heroic guerrillas, the military expeditions to Africa, the complicity with the Soviets and the ``sacred revolutionary cause.'' Suddenly, the nation's musical vein dried out and Ricky Ricardo ceased to represent the platonic image of a Cuban man. He was replaced by Argentine-born Ernesto Che Guevara, and the small Caribbean island prepared to play a severe role on Earth.

Why did this tremendous transformation take place? The answer lies in Fidel Castro, or rather on the fevered political tradition inherited by this outsize personage. Fact is, on one hand Fidel Castro is the reason that Cuba became one of the most conflictive spots in the planet in the second half of the 20th Century. But on the other, that development is the consequence of a series of errors and conceptual idiocies accumulated throughout Latin America in the first half of the century.

Many Cubans -- Jose Marti tops the list -- believed that the island had been called upon to play a stellar role in world affairs. Others were convinced of the intrinsic evil of the United States, which -- through iniquitous exploitation -- denied Cubans their happiness, independence and prosperity. That sinister plan, they said, began with the U.S. military intervention of 1898, a feline swipe aimed at keeping the Cubans from defeating the Spaniards on the field of battle. The gringos would first steal victory from the Cubans; later, they would steal their riches.

Lastly, legions of people thought that the market economy, i.e., capitalism, was responsible for the obvious pockets of poverty that existed in the country and for the inequalities that became apparent between the rich and the less affluent.

Fidel Castro invented nothing. He is merely a repository of that foolish revolutionary tradition found in Cuba (and elsewhere in Latin America); that anti-yanqui, anti-capitalist attitude so inimical to common sense. Unfortunately for Cubans and their neighbors, in addition to being extremely superficial in his thinking (the result of very poor academic training), Castro turned out to be a consistent chap.

Were the yanquis responsible for Cubans' misfortunes? They should be expelled from the country and fought on all the world's battlefields. Was capitalism to blame for poverty and inequality? Well then, that unfair pattern of exploitation should be replaced by the more egalitarian system proposed by Communists. Was a superior historical fate ahead for Cuba? The U.S.S.R. would help Cuba achieve it.

The problem now consists in finding a way to return the country to its amiable past. The Pope has already begun to re-Christianize the island. Let's see when it will once again be a fine place to mambo.