Scholars See Castro Push to Preserve His Legacy

But the crackdowns also have exposed a deepening rift between a shrinking coterie of communist true believers and a society that analysts say has largely defected from his movement's core ideals of solidarity and self-sacrifice.

In an ideological endgame pitting the nearly 80-year-old leader against what analysts believe is a large and growing segment of his own people, Castro's drive to root out "imperialist" influence is provoking comparison with Mao Tse-tung's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which ravaged China and set back the hopes of reform for years.

Although Castro has held his island in a vice grip since his guerrilla band seized power on New Year's Day 1959, his campaigns have lately taken on an urgency. In the last year, amid indications of the bearded icon's flagging health, the regime has:

* Declared war on the "new rich," arresting those who use their cars or bicycles as taxis, seizing privately raised produce on sale at farmers markets and rescinding self-employment licenses that had allowed Cubans since 1994 to run restaurants and guesthouses in their homes.

* Increased the number of "acts of repudiation" by Communist Party militants, who track down and heckle dissidents and their families.

* Ramped up efforts to dismantle outlawed satellite dishes, and confiscated televisions and subscription decoder cards brought in by relatives visiting from abroad.

* Drafted students and aging Communist Party loyalists to stand guard at gas stations and factories to deter theft by a broad sector of state employees, a problem even the party mouthpiece Granma acknowledges has reached pandemic proportions.

* Ordered Cubans to refrain from contact with foreign tourists unless "absolutely necessary" for their jobs, claiming a need to protect citizens from ideological contamination.

The moves follow earlier rollbacks of the economic reforms implemented in the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow cut off billions in aid to its communist ally. In November 2004, Castro formally withdrew from circulation the U.S. dollar, the foundation of the reforms for 10 years, replacing it with a new national peso. The same year, the government increased restrictions on the Internet, denying all but a few thousand government employees access.