We were talking about Cuba. It was in the early '90s, and Paz was shaking his head about the double standard of Mexico's leftist intellectuals, who were quick to denounce the shortcomings of Latin America's free market democracies but were strangely silent about the absence of basic civil rights in Cuba.

``Working-class Mexicans increasingly see Fidel Castro as a dictator,'' Paz said. ``[But] Writers and journalists see Fidel Castro with a kind of tenderness, as if he were the last bastion of their hopes.''

It's a pity that Paz didn't live long enough to see how rapidly this is changing.

Today, support for Cuba's one-party regime is primarily coming from autocrats and conservative businessmen -- some of whom see Cuba and China as the last bastions of their dream system, capitalism without the right to strike -- and increasingly less from leftist intellectuals.

This reversal of roles became apparent in recent weeks, as a record number of mostly leftist intellectuals in Mexico signed a letter condemning Cuba's human rights abuses, just as the top leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest federation of U.S. businesses, was announcing plans to make its first official trip to Cuba. The U.S. Chamber is increasingly vocal in its opposition to U.S. trade sanctions on the island.

The Mexican intellectuals' May 27 letter says they ``condemn the hardening of the Cuban regime's policies against universal human rights, which over the past few months has been evident in the violation of the rights to free expression and due process, affecting journalists, intellectuals, and dissident citizens.''

In addition, the letter calls on Mexico's government ``to include the concern for the respect of human rights in the bilateral agenda of relations with Cuba.'' Mexico earlier this year departed from its earlier abstentions in United Nations human rights votes on Cuba, and cast its vote in support of the Cuban regime. Cuba lost the U.N. vote by 21 to 20.

Among the signers of the Mexican intellectuals' letter were a who's who of that country's intelligentsia, including writers Carlos Monsivais, Angeles Mastreta, Laura Esquivel, Jorge Castañeda, Elena Poniatowska and Enrique Krauze, and several politicians of the left-of-center opposition Party for the Democratic Revolution.

Novelist Carlos Fuentes was not asked to sign because the signature drive coincided with the death of his son, but he has signed similar petitions in the past, organizers say.

``This is the biggest group of Mexican intellectuals ever to sign a letter condemning Cuba's human rights abuses,'' Monsivais told me. ``I can only explain it by the fact that great numbers of Cubans are coming to Mexico, and we are all hearing stories of the police state that rules on the island.''

History takes strange turns. Fidel Castro, the ``socialism-or-death'' comandante who for decades was the darling of Latin America's intelligentsia, is ending his days courted by U.S. businessmen and shunned by leftist intellectuals.

Or perhaps it's not that ironic, and Castro's Cuba has come full circle, becoming a system not too different from the one he overthrew four decades ago. Whatever the case, Paz, for one, would have applauded the Mexican intellectuals' manifesto.