Was Hugo Chavez caught off-guard by Fidel Castro’s resignation yesterday? Is Chavez prepared, psychologically and politically, to face whatever comes next?

In all of his political crises, Chavez has reportedly called Havana for advice. Absent Fidel, who will answer Chavez’s frantic phone calls now? Chavez has politically polarized Cuba just as he has polarized his own society, splitting Cuban decision-makers into “chavista” and “anti-chavista” factions. Just who he consults now will depend on which of those factions prevails in the near future.

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The Current Discussion: With Castro gone, will Cuba become America's 51st state?

With Castro gone, Cuba might be poised to be the Singapore of the Caribbean.

It has a large, eager, young and educated population. Despite censorship and constraints on Internet access, Cuban youth are incredibly aware of what globalization means and of all the possibilities it entails for a country like theirs.

On the other hand, a big chunk of that youth is part of the rank and file of the officialdom (I don't think this is the right time to deem the elders Stalinist-minded bureaucrats). I do not mean that Cuba's government will swiftly establish democracy, but I don't see any reason for them to spurn the never-so-close chance to become a thriving business hub in industries ranging from tourism to off-shore oil drilling. Cunning Cubans are affectionately held in Latin American imagination as the shrewdest businesspeople of the Caribbean -- if they are given the chance. Cuba has accumulated better human capital any emerging economy in Latin America could dream of: a young population that is highly educated, mostly bilingual, full of economic motivation and eager to catch up with the rest of the world after fifty years of a stagnating, infamous dictatorship.

Democracy is not visibly at hand, but I would be surprised not to see a thriving Cuban market economy working full throttle by early next decade. That's what Cuba once was: a market, a frontier between the old Spanish Empire and the British colonies. If it's true that nowadays the world is flat, there is nothing that an increasingly free Cuban society cannot attain in less than a generation's time.

On learning the news of Castro's resignation, a Panamanian businessman who was having breakfast at the table next to mine in a Caracas five-star hotel this morning threw his hands on top of his head and exclaimed, "Now who's going to bankroll the Panama Canal's overhaul?!!!"