WITNESS-With Castro sidelined, hope mixes with fear

HAVANA, Aug 12 (Reuters) Cuba's crumbling capital is unusually quiet.

Domino games in the pot-holed streets have stopped, and the horns of vintage American cars have largely fallen silent since Cubans were stunned by the news that Fidel Castro, the man who had governed their lives for 47 years, had relinquished power, at least temporarily.

''The calm is scary,'' said a teacher born when Castro had been in power for two decades. Like others who spoke to a foreigner about the mood in the Communist country, she declined to give her name.

''Everyone is waiting to see what will happen,'' she said.

Fear and uncertainty, tinged by hope, have prevailed here since the announcement July 31 that Cuba's maximum leader had handed over the presidency and leadership of the ruling Communist Party to his younger brother, Raul Castro, due to health problems requiring abdominal surgery.

''This country has no future,'' said a second-hand book seller.

''Things could not be worse.'' Some Cubans, fed up with the hardships endured under Castro, and particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, have found timid grounds for optimism in the handover, hoping for economic if not political change.

But many fear that the end of Castro's rule could bring turmoil and violent settling of accounts, or prompt Cuba's longtime ideological enemy, the United States, to invade.

Seven out of 10 Cubans were born after Castro ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. They know no other political system, and wonder how the uncharismatic Raul Castro can fill his brother's shoes and lead Cuba out of its economic morass.

Both reviled and respected abroad, Fidel Castro has always been cast here as the wise and irreplaceable leader; his sudden disappearance has left Cubans at a loss for a father figure.

''Everyone is shocked,'' said Laura Vitier, a filmmaker. ''We hope he recovers. Despite all we say about him, he is like our father. At the end of the day we love him. There is no other.'' ''Knowing Fidel, he has planned our future, whether we like it or not,'' she said.

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