From the looks of it, Castro’s brother Raul will be in charge in Cuba for quite a while. So it’s reasonable to suspect that the relationship between the two Caribbean countries will become more of a state matter and less of a personal one, as it has been between the ever-whimsical protégé Hugo Chavez and the patronizing, hardened Fidel Castro.

Chavez’s personal attachment to Castro is no secret: he is an enthralled young follower of his mentor. Castro, for his part, is perhaps Chavez’s foremost champion on the island. But this “chemistry” is not likely to work between Raul Castro — a reserved, scheming character with strong pragmatic ideas and a tight grip on the military — and the vociferous and fickle Chavez.

That’s despite the fact that Cuba receives Venezuelan subsidies to the tune of US$3 billion annually, plus 110,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The wary Raul, like Fidel, does not approve of Chavez's perpetual warmongering.

Chavez, true to himself, will probably make the mistake of seeking to broker Cuba’s forthcoming internal strife, in his usual antagonistic and backhanded way.

So the prevailing question is this: Does Chavez really have what it takes to assume Castro’s place as the leader of Latin American anti-imperialism? Will he be as persistent and as vexing as Castro, for decades to come?

Chavez seems to believe so, despite the way he has clowned around with ExxonMobil’s legal action against Venezuela’s state-run oil company over compensation for last year’s nationalization: threatening to cut off exports of crude oil to the U.S., then agreeing to leave the legal matters involved to the state-owned corporation.

Chavez lacks the essential ingredients to take Castro’s place: guts and legitimacy. For all his faults, Castro earned his anti-American and anti-imperialist stripes. Chavez is only awash in petrodollars and too embedded in the very global system he purports to reject.

In two centuries of U.S.-Latin American cohabitation on this continent, few leaders have been as consistent champions of anti-Americanism as Castro has been. Even his staunchest enemies recognize and respect his unshakeable attitude. Castro’s relentlessness is at the core of the feelings he inspires among many of the region’s residents.

After almost two decades spent trying to spark failed uprisings all over the continent, Castro had to cope with the Soviet collapse -- and then survival became his only priority.

His regional appeal lingered, but in a half-hearted, nostalgic way. In the late 1980s, Castro became the star attraction at the inaugurations of democratically-elected presidents throughout the region. His presence was a cheap and harmless way to display independence from the United States. Yet, as soon as the crazy uncle boarded his flight back to Havana, his erstwhile hosts quickly adopted the pro-market economic policies pushed by Washington and the IMF. Castro—whether wiser or older, or both— looked the other way.

Chavez, all to the contrary, has heaped scorn upon those Latin American governments that quietly negotiate free-trade agreements with Washington. Yet Venezuela’s president enjoys the benefits of his own informal trade agreement with America: last month, for example, the U.S. bought more than 41 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil. Chavez has found the profitable path to anti-imperialism.

As quaint or misguided as it may sound today, true anti-imperialist leadership in Latin America still requires old-fashioned guts and commitment. Much of the mythology surrounding the Latin American crusader par excellence, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, resides in the fact that, even in the manner of his death, he stuck to his guns. Castro, also true to his rhetoric, nationalized the Standard Oil affiliate in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and has stood up to the U.S. embargo for decades.

But Chavez, despite all his anti-American bluster, is still dealing directly with Chevron Corporation.