Donald Trump could lead a new revolution in Cuba

Sola mors tyrannicida est, wrote Thomas More: death is the only way to get rid of tyrants. And so it has proved for Fidel Castro. Twenty-six years ago, he looked finished. The USSR had collapsed, and the Soviet subsidies that had propped up the Cuban economy for 30 years had been abruptly terminated. Around the world, statues of Lenin were being melted down or sold off to collectors of kitsch. But Castro never wavered in his revolutionary fervour. Unlike the nomenclatura of Eastern Europe, he had not inherited the communist system, nor seen it imposed by a foreign army. The Cuban revolution was his revolution, and he was damned if he was going to give it up.

By sheer force of personality, Castro kept the red flag flying over his muggy Caribbean island. His eyes grew rheumier, and his beard sparser, but his domination of the political machine remained total. The Americans were in no doubt that if they removed the dictator, they would remove the dictatorship.