By Tony Karon

                  When the U.S. embargo on Cuba finally goes, no one will miss it as much as
                  Fidel Castro. That much was clear Wednesday when the Cuban strongman led a
                  reported 800,000 people in a protest march along Havana's oceanfront to
                  denounce Washington's latest adjustments to the 38-year embargo. Now that
                  little Elian Gonzalez is back at school, the embargo remains the most useful tool
                  in Castro's ideological shed: It provides both an all-purpose excuse for the
                  privations suffered by his people since the collapse of Cuban socialism's Soviet
                  patron, and a nationalist rallying point against the just across the water. And U.S.
                  election years usually provide him with plenty of ammunition.

                  It may have looked a little incongruous, perhaps, that the Cuban leader donned his
                  sneakers and led the equivalent of half of Havana's population on a protest march the
                  very day the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of legislation ostensibly relaxing
                  the embargo. But a closer look at the measures contained in an agriculture spending bill
                  makes clear that the easing of the embargo on imports of food and medicine is more
                  symbolic than practical -- Cuba would still be denied the credit facilities routinely
                  used by countries trading with the U.S., rendering any new purchases extremely
                  unlikely -- and restrictions on Americans traveling to the island have actually
                  been tightened. President Clinton had earlier signaled he'd sign the bill precisely
                  because it doesn't substantially alter the embargo on Cuba, which he said would
                  be a "big mistake."

                  In truth, the "mistake" to which Clinton alludes probably has more to do with the
                  election than with foreign policy. A neck-and-neck electoral race in Florida has
                  seen both the White House and the Bush campaign dutifully endorsing the
                  embargo to the hilt, but few administration officials speaking off the record are
                  prepared to defend its soundness as a policy, while most of the wise men of
                  Republican administrations past assembled as foreign policy advisers by
                  Governor Bush have called for a review of the embargo. The Clinton
                  administration's previous moves toward relaxing the embargo were torpedoed in
                  1996 by Havana's shooting down of two civilian aircraft flown by anti-Castro
                  exiles who'd dropped pamphlets on the island. That prompted President Clinton
                  to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which made the embargo an act of Congress
                  rather than simply an executive order. But once electoral concerns recede next
                  year -- and if Castro avoids any high-profile outrage -- the momentum on the
                  issue is likely to swing back to the agriculture and business groups lobbying
                  Capitol Hill to end the embargo. Until then, expect Castro to rack up the mileage
                  on his running shoes.

                  Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.