It took the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro 10 years to die.
Or rather, that's how long the rumors of his death raged on after he underwent stomach surgery in 2006 and handed communist Cuba's presidency to his younger brother, Raúl Castro.
In some instances, Cuban exiles even took to the streets of Miami's Little Havana to celebrate what turned out to be bogus reports of Fidel's demise.
Fidel did die in 2016 at age 90 — but now, a decade later, comes the Raúl rumor mill.
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This week Miami is once again with abuzz with curtains-for-Castro talk, this time focused on speculation that 95-year-old Raúl is on his own deathbed.
On Tuesday, the Miami news outlet Diario de las Américas published a report quoting anonymous sources that Raúl Castro is on hospital life support.
But there's been no confirmation from Cuba or Cuban officials to that effect.
Raúl's last public appearance was last month, at Havana's Karl Marx Theater, to celebrate what would have been Fidel's 100th birthday.
In May, the U.S. indicted him for allegedly ordering Cuban fighter jets in 1996 to shoot down two small planes carrying four Cuban exiles near Cuba, killing all of them.
Still, a big question is whether Cubans, on the island and in exile, are as gripped by rumors of Raúl's deteriorating state as they were by the never-ending guessing game about Fidel, who led Cuba's communist revolution and was the far more legendary figure of the two.
Does the prospect of Raúl's exit carry the same or at least approximate psychological weight?
To Miami Cubans like playwright Carmen Pelaez, the answer is yes.
"You have to remember that, especially for younger Cubans and more recently arrived Cuban exiles in Miami," Pelaez told WLRN, "Raúl is their dictator. Raúl is their Fidel."
A third of the Cuban Revolution
A big reason: Raúl has guided Cuba's repressive regime since Fidel was sidelined in 2006, almost a third of the duration of the Cuban Revolution, which took power in 1959.
Considered more pragmatic than his fiery brother, Raúl helped keep the cash-strapped revolution afloat in the 21st century by ushering in limited — but only limited — private enterprise.
Although Raúl relinquished the presidency in 2018, when current President Miguel Díaz-Canel took over, most Cuba watchers believe he has continued to be the island's de facto leader. He is thought to have overseen the regime crackdown, which resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of Cubans, after unprecedented mass anti-government protests in July 2021.
As a result, said Pelaez, whose short film Colada was shown at this year's Miami Film Festival, the rumor mill about Raúl's condition will churn almost as emotionally.
That may be the case particularly since Raúl Castro is one of the last of the revolution's geriatric old guard, known as los históricos. One key and especially feared histórico, Ramiro Valdés, died in June at age 94.
Cuban reformers hope their departure from the scene will give Cuba's younger leadership more freedom to pursue the sort of democratic and capitalist liberalization the bankrupt country desperately needs — and which the Trump administration, which has further tightened the economic screws on the regime this year, is demanding.
Between that U.S. pressure and the regime's uncompromising incompetence, Cuba's humanitarian crisis — including chronic blackouts, food shortages and other deprivations Cubans are suffering — is only worsening.
But Pelaez fears post-históricos reforms may be wishful thinking.
"When those dinosaurs are gone, Díaz-Canel and the younger leaders will only be trying to save themselves, not the Cuban people," she said.
"So just as Fidel's death didn't really mean that much in the end, I doubt Raúl's will, either."
Even so, Raúl Castro's passing would indeed be seismic hemispheric news — and a major blow to Cuba’s crumbling communist revolution.
For now, however, it’s only the revolution — not Raúl — that can actually be confirmed to be on life support.
