I have spent recent days traveling between Miami and Mexico City _ that is, going from one uncertainty to another.

More than a month has passed since Mexico's July 2 presidential elections and still Mexicans don't know who their president-elect is.

And in Miami, after Fidel Castro being at the helm in Cuba for 47 years, Cuban exiles don't know whether his dictatorship is about to collapse or simply renewing itself to avoid dying.

(On the plane, I knew I had arrived in Miami when, seconds after landing, one of the passengers received a call on his cell phone and he announced to the rest us on the plane: "They say Fidel has died." That has always been a sure sign you're in Miami. Every year they kill off Fidel at least once or twice.)

Both in Cuba and in Mexico no one knows, for sure, what will happen. Mexicans and Cubans (those on the island and those far from it) have made rumor and speculation a science. When information is scarce and there's a vacuum in authority, gossip is king.

Mexican radio and television, as well as those in Miami and official media in Havana, are replete with experts and wordsmiths filling air time without saying much. The people who actually know something _ whether about the strategy of Mexican presidential wannabe Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) to win the presidency or about the Cuban leader's health _ aren't talking.

For over a week now, the news has been... that we know nothing! Today we know a little bit more _ that a partial vote count in Mexico taking place and that Fidel did not die in the operating room after "an acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding." However, those little tidbits of information aren't nearly enough to know what life holds for Mexicans and Cubans next year.

A Cuba with Fidel is not the same as a Cuba without Fidel.

With Fidel, there will be a continuum of repression, political prisoners, the commander as god and sole religion, and the absurd, inexplicable idolatry from Latin Americans who want democracy in their own lands but not for the Cuban people; with Fidel, fear will keep on living on the island.

Without Fidel, possibilities open up: that the Communist system, based on denunciation and force, dissolves. Without Fidel, people could say "Fidel" on the streets of Cuba without being afraid. Without Fidel, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales will both deflate and become disoriented. Without Fidel, as the late Pope John Paul II wanted, Cuba could open up to the world and the world to Cuba. Without Fidel, his brother Raul is only Raulito, not "the-brother-of-Fidel." And that's saying a lot.

And Mexico, too, faces its own serious dilemmas.

A Mexico with (conservative) Felipe Calderon from the National Action Party (PAN) as the president is not the same as a Mexico with (left-leaning) Lopez Obrador at the rudder. The first one would rule from the top to the bottom and the second from the bottom to the top. And here the order of the parts indeed changes the product.

Cuba and Venezuela would rather deal with Lopez Obrador; the U.S. government, undoubtedly, would be more comfortable with Calderon. With Calderon, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada would remain intact; with Lopez Obrador, the accord will be broken in 2008 since the Mexican government will then be able to evade eliminating subsidies to its farmers.

Lopez Obrador would signify a gigantic change. Before and after the presidential vote, the PRD candidate has criticized everybody: business leaders, the mass media, President Vicente Fox, the Mexican Congress, the Church, the military, the electoral authorities, the Electoral Court _ anyone who opposes a total recount of the 41 million votes cast on July 2. Lopez Obrador would be a president who would swim against the current. That way he would only have two options: drowning alone or dragging the country down with him.

Calderon, for his part, never presented himself as the president of change. There would be continuity from Foxism to Calderonism, with mild adjustments here and there. Calderon would build on what has already been gained. The PANista offers stability to Mexico; he is not the ferocious wolf threatening to destroy the house by blowing it down. Calderon is the one who quietly takes care of the house from the inside.

The uncertainties in Mexico and in Cuba stem from not knowing who will be in power. And both countries have a long and fateful tradition of dependence upon those at the top for their most fundamental decisions. The ones at the bottom simply wait for the white smoke.

The problem is that everything is rather fluid. Fidel says he has ceded power to his brother Raul, but inside or outside of Cuba, nobody believes that; Fidel, sick or not, is still in charge of the country.

In Mexico, meanwhile, the official vote count had Calderon winning the presidential election. However, it is Lopez Obrador who is making the daily headlines. And the recount of more than 3 million votes gives us a bit more time for delicious and absolute ambiguity.

What's so serious is that, when the truth finally reaches us, neither Mexico nor Cuba will be satisfied. Neither Fidel nor Raul, neither Felipe nor Andres Manuel, will have a mandate backed by the votes of the majority. In the Cuban dictatorship, only Fidel's vote counts. And in the fragile Mexican democracy, the next president (in a country of 106 million people) will have come to power with only 14 or 15 million ballots.

From that perspective, the present uncertain scenario may be the best source for learning and for preventing it from ever happening again in Mexico and Cuba.