Cuban Communism

Cuban Communism

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Cuban Communism 1959-2003 Irving Louis Horowitz Jaime Suchlicki editors

11th Edition

Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

New material in this edition copyright © 2003 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Previous editions copyright © 1970, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1995, 1998, 2001. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 088548042. This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2003044787 ISBN: 0-7658-0520-0 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cuban communism / Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlicki, editors.—11th ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7658-0520-0 (pbk.) 1. Cuba—Economic conditions—1990- 2. Cuba—Social conditions—19593. Cuba—Politics and government—1959- 4. Cuba—Armed Forces. 5. Communism—Cuba. 6. Cuba—History. I. Horowitz, Irving Louis. II. Suchlicki, Jaime. HC152.5.C799 2003 972.9106' 4—dc21

2003044787

Contents Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlicki Part 1 History 1 One Hundred Years of Ambiguity: U.S.-Cuba Relations in the 20th Century Irving Louis Horowitz

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2. Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952-1958 Hugh Thomas

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3. The Sierra and the Plains Roberto Luque Escalona

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4. Guerrillas at War Marta San Martín and Ramón L. Bonachea

36

5. Learning from the Missile Crisis Max Frankel

58

6. Immutable Proclamations and Unintended Consequences Luis E. Aguilar

69

7. Fidelismo: The Unfulfilled Ideology Tad Szulc

86

Part 2 Economy 8. The Cuban Economy in 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance Carmelo Mesa-Lago 9. Labor Conditions in Revolutionary Cuba Efren Córdova and Eduardo García Moure

99

122

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10. The Political Economy of Caudillismo Mary Katherine Crabb

134

11. Market-Oriented Marxism: Post-Cold War Transition in Cuba and Vietnam Julie M. Bunck

154

12. Waiting for Godot: Cuba’s Stalled Reforms and Continuing Economic Crisis Jorge F. Pérez López

176

13. Cuba’s Transition from Communism to Political and Economic Freedom Antonio Jorge

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14. Economic Organizations and Post-Castro Cuba Ernesto F. Betancourt

210

Part 3 Society 15. Searching for Civil Society in Cuba Damian J. Fernandez

225

16. The Conventionalization of Collective Behavior Benigno E. Aguirre

241

17. The Internet and U.S. Policy toward Cuba Taylor C. Boas

266

18. Women, Family and the Cuban Revolution Marisela Fleites Lear

276

19. Health Care in Cuba Tim Golden

303

20. Cuba’s Refugees: Manifold Migrations Silvia Pedraza

308

21. The Moral Basis of Cuban Society Emilio Ichikawa Morin

329

Part 4 Military 22. Political-Military Relations from 1959 to the Present Phyllis Greene Walker

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Contents

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23. Vanguard of the State: The Cuban Armed Forces in Transition Juan Carlos Espinosa

366

24. Military Origin and Evolution of the Cuban Revolution Irving Louis Horowitz

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25. The Cuban Armed Forces: Changing Roles, Continued Loyalties Juan M. del Aguila

415

26. Cuban Military Influences on Political and Economic Decision-Making Jaime Suchlicki

428

Part 5 Polity 27. Why the Cuban Regime Has Not Fallen Jorge I. Domínguez

435

28. Cuba: Without Subsidies Jaime Suchlicki

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29. Cuba: Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy Susan Kaufman Purcell

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30. Cuba and the United States: Back to the Beginning Mark Falcoff

471

31. Much Ado About Something?: Regime Change in Cuba Eusebio Mujal-León and Joshua W. Busby

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32. The Cuban Revolution and Its Acolytes Carlos Alberto Montaner

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33. After Fidel, What?: Forecasting Institutional Changes in Cuba Josep M. Colomer

523

Part 6 Transition to Civil Society 34. The United States and Cuba: Future Security Issues Brian Latell 35. Role of the United States and International Lending Institutions in Cuba’s Transition Sergio Díaz-Briquets

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36. Three Variations on Communist Successor Regimes Edward Gonzalez

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37. Festina Lente—The United States and Cuba After Castro Michael Radu

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38. Humanitarian Assistance during a Democratic Transition in Cuba Andrew S. Natsios

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39. Economic and Social Disparities in Cuba: Recommendations for Change Carmelo Mesa-Lago

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APPENDICES I. Chronology of the Cuban Revolution: 1959–2002

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II. Current and Past Revolutionary Leaders

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III. Chronology of Cuba and the Middle East: 2000–2002

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IV. Castro and Terrorism: Chronology and Glossary

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V. Fidel Castro on the United States: Selected Statements, 1958-2003

711

Contributors

729

Acknowledgments Ch. 1. Irving Louis Horowitz, “One Hundred Years of Ambiguity: U.S.-Cuba Relations in the 20th Century,” originally published in The National Interest, Number 67 (Spring 2002), pp. 58-64. Ch. 2. Hugh Thomas, “Cuba, The United States and Batista, 1952-1958.” Lecture prepared for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. First published in Cuban Communism (6th edition), 1986, pp. 3-12. Ch. 3. Roberto Luque Escalona, “The Sierra and the Plains,” The Tiger and the Children: Fidel Castro and the Judgment of History. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992, pp. 94-115. Ch. 4. Marta San Martín and Ramón L. Bonachea, originally appeared as “The Military Dimension of the Cuban Revolution,” adapted from The Cuban Insurrection, 1952-1959. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1974. Ch. 5. Max Frankel, originally published as “Learning from the Missile Crisis: What Really Happened on Those Thirteen Fateful Days in October,” Smithsonian, October 2002, pp. 53-64 Ch. 6. Luis E. Aguilar, originally appeared as “From Immutable Proclamations to Unintended Consequences: Marxism-Leninism and the Cuban Government.” Prepared and first published in Cuban Communism (6th edition), 1986, pp. 140-159. Ch. 7. Tad Szulc, originally published as “Fidelismo,” The Wilson Quarterly. Volume 12, Number 5 (1988), pp. 49-63. Ch. 8. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, originally appeared in Cuba in Transition—Volume 11. Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 2001. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Ch. 9. Efren Córdova and Eduardo García Moure, originally appeared as “Modern Slavery: Labor Conditions in Cuba,” Institute for Cuban & Cuban American Studies Occasional Paper Series, University of Miami, April 2000. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (10th edition), 2000. Ch. 10. Mary Katherine Crabb, originally entitled “Politics and the Culture of Work in the Dual Economy” and presented as a paper at the Association for the ix

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Study of the Cuban Economy, Coral Gables, Florida, August 6–8, 1999. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (10th edition), 2000. Ch. 11. Julie M. Bunck, “Market-Oriented Marxism: Post-Cold War Transition in Cuba and Vietnam,” Cuban Studies, Volume 26, Number 1, (1996), pp. 35–59. Ch. 12. Jorge F. Pérez-López, originally published as “Waiting for Godot: Cuba’s Stalled Reforms and Continuing Economic Crisis,” Problems of Post-Communism, Volume 48, Number 6 (November-December 2001), pp. 43-55. Ch. 13. Antonio Jorge, originally entitled “Cuba’s Transition from Communism to Political and Economic Freedom,” presented as a paper for the Cuba Transition Project of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies of the University of Miami, August 2002. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Ch. 14. Ernesto F. Betancourt, originally entitled “International Organizations and Post-Castro’s Cuba,” presented as a paper for the Cuba Transition Project of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies of the University of Miami, August 2002. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Ch. 15. Damian J. Fernandez, originally published as “Society, Civil Society, and the State: An Uneasy Three-Way Affair,” Problems of Post-Communism, Volume 48, Number 6 (November-December 2001), pp. 56-63. Ch. 16. Benigno E. Aguirre, originally published as “The Conventionalization of Collective Behavior in Cuba,” in The American Journal of Sociology. Volume 90, Number 3 (1985), pp. 541-566. Ch. 17. Taylor C. Boas, originally published as “The Dictator’s Dilemma?: The Internet and U.S. Policy toward -Cuba,” Washington Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 57-67. Ch. 18. Marisela Fleites-Lear, originally entitled “Women, Family, and the Cuban Revolution: A Personal and Socio-Political Analysis” and presented as a paper at the Latin American Studies Association Congress, Washington, DC, September 1995. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (10th edition), 2000. Ch. 19. Tim Golden, “Health Care in Cuba” from The New York Times, October 15 (1994). Ch. 20. Silvia Pedraza, “Cuba’s Refugees: Manifold Migrations,” longer version originally published in Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in America, Silvia Pedraza and Ruben G. Rumbaut, editors, Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth Press, reprinted with permission.

Acknowledgments

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Ch. 21. Emilio Ichikawa Morin, originally published as “The Moral Basis of Cuban Society,” in Society. Volume 40, Number 3, March/April 2003, pp. 64-71. Ch. 22. Phyllis Greene Walker, originally appeared as “Political-Military Relations Since 1959,” in Conf lict and Change in Cuba, edited by Enrique A. Baloyra and James A. Morris. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993, pp. 110-135. Ch. 23. Juan Carlos Espinosa, originally published as “Vanguard of the State: The Cuban Armed Forces in Transition,” Problems of Post-Communism, Volume 48, Number 6 (November-December 2001), pp. 19-30. Ch. 24. Irving Louis Horowitz, originally published as “Military Origins and Outcomes of the Cuban Revolution,” Armed Forces and Society. Volume 1, Number 4 (1975), pp. 402-18; and Volume 3, Number 4 (1977), pp. 617-31. Ch. 25. Juan M. del Aguila, “The Cuban Armed Forces: Changing Roles, Continued Loyalties,” first published in Cuban Communism (9th edition), 1998. Ch. 26. Jaime Suchlicki, “Cuban Military Influences on Political and Economic Decision Making.” Prepared for and first published in Cuban Communism (10th edition), 2000. Ch. 27. Jorge I. Domínguez, “Why The Cuban Regime Has Not Fallen,” testimony before the U.S. Advisory Panel on Radio Marti and Television Marti” (1994). First published in the eighth edition of Cuban Communism, 1989. Ch. 28. Jaime Suchlicki, “Cuba: Without Subsidies,” Cuba Brief (March, 1997), pp. 3-7. Ch. 29. Susan Kaufman Purcell, originally appeared as “Cuba” in Economic Sanctions and America Diplomacy, edited by Richard N. Haas. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1998. Excerpted with permission of the publisher. Ch. 30. Mark Falcoff, “Cuba and the United States: Back to the Beginning,” World Affairs, Volume 156, Number 3 (Winter 1994), pp. 111-123. Ch. 31. Eusebio Mujal-León and Joshua W. Busby, originally published as “Much Ado About Something?: Regime Change in Cuba,” Problems of Post-Communism, Volume 48, Number 6 (November-December 2001), pp. 6-18. Ch. 32. Carlos Alberto Montaner, “The Cuban Revolution and Its Acolytes,” Society, Volume 31, Number 5 (1994), pp. 73-80. Ch. 33. Josep M. Colomer, “After Fidel, What? Forecasting Institutional Change in Cuba,” first published in Cuban Communism (9th edition), 1998.

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Ch. 34. Brian Latell, “The United States and Cuba: Future Security Issues,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Volume 34, Number 4 (Winter) 2000, pp. 87–99. Ch. 35. Sergio Díaz-Briquets, “Role of the United States and International Lending Institutions in Cuba’s Transition,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Volume 34, Number 4 (Winter) 2000, pp. 73–86. Ch. 36. Edward Gonzalez, originally entitled “After Castro: Alternative Regimes and U.S. Policy,” prepared for the Cuba Transition Project of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies of the University of Miami. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Ch. 37. Michael Radu, “Festina Lente—The United States and Cuba After Castro,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Volume 34, Number 4 (Winter) 2000, pp. 7–22. Ch. 38. Andrew S. Natsios, “Humanitarian Assistance during a Democratic Transition in Cuba,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Volume 34, Number 4 (Winter) 2000, pp. 23–33. Ch. 39. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, originally entitled “Growing Economic and Social Disparities in Cuba: Impact and Recommendations for Change,” prepared for the Cuba Transition Project of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies of the University of Miami. Revised for publication in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Appendix I. “Chronology of the Cuban Revolution: 1959-2002,” prepared for and updated in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Appendix II. “Current and Past Revolutionary Leaders,” prepared for and updated in Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Appendix III. “Chronology of Cuba and the Middle East: 2000-2002,” prepared for Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Appendix IV. “Castro and Terrorism: Chronology and Glossary,” prepared for Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003. Appendix V. “Fidel Castro on the United States: Selected Statements, 1958– 2003,” prepared for Cuban Communism (11th edition), 2003.

Introduction to the 11th edition of Cuban Communism “Tyranny consists in the desire of universal power beyond its scope.” Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (Number 332).

I. Long Term Perspectives From the very outset of Cuban Communism, predictions of its demise were made—sometimes quietly, and at other times as a crescendo of self-declared expertise. But over and against what should have taken place, a countertendency emerged—since no such counterrevolution occurred, none could take place. In some measure such predictive extremes were a reflection of the passions the Castro era has generated. Hope replaced reason and passion displaced evidence. In such an environment, the eleven editions of Cuban Communism have served as a beacon for the accurate measurement of events. It has done so in the belief that a free society is indeed far superior to a totalitarian one, and acknowledges that statements of values, however personally satisfying, do not replace the need for careful, factual analysis. This prolegomenon registered, it is fair to say that however important the history, politics, economics and social structure of Cuba may be to the study of the present, it is also the case that the desire to know, nay predict, the future of Castro’s Cuba remains a subtext in a great deal of analysis disguised as purely objective. The steady drumbeat of essays and articles on the “transition” of Cuba attests to precisely this brew of what exists and what we want to exist. This volume, the latest and hopefully the last in the series of volumes on Cuban Communism, attempts to appreciate the admixture of sentiments without falling prey to its worst curses—dogmatic, subjective, and ideological thinking. In serving as the informal record of the progress—if that is the proper word—of the Cuban Revolution, it is our view that this compendium has performed its tasks ably, and at times, brilliantly. One of the grand luxuries of wealthy and large nations is their ability to develop a division of policy labors. As a result, we have an entity called “foreign policy” and another called “domestic policy” or sometimes “national policy.”

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Small and dependent nations like Cuba really do not have such luxuries either of definitions or actions. When we look at Cuba today—at the start of the 44th year of the Castro regime—what we observe is a mélange of events superimposed on one another. To some degree these are domestic policies driven by foreign exigencies, and in other instances, one finds foreign adventures that drive domestic affairs. Whatever the causal chain may be, the fusion and the interaction of domestic and foreign, national and international, is increasingly a hall mark of small nations, none more so than Cuba since 1959. Indeed, it is a high irony of Castro that friend and foe alike harbor a certain admiration for his unwillingness to resign himself to such a sizing down. Yet, the wear and tear of trying to achieve grandeur in a context of small nationhood has finally proven too much even for Fidel. That he felt the need in mid2002 to respond to the Varela Project—a modest effort to petition for a new referendum—by insisting upon a massive show of inflated support, attests to the prospect that time is running out on el comandante. The laws of entropy are greater than even his massive ego can resist. The establishment of 120,000 petition stations across Cuba, and the mobilization of seven to eight million people, or roughly one hundred percent of people on the island over sixteen years of age, does little to reassure the rest of the world. More importantly, it does little to assuage the Cuban people themselves that this call for a constitutional amendment declaring Cuba’s presumably “Marxist socialist” economic, political and social system to be inviolable and unchangeable, is worth any more than the paper on which the petitions are printed. Underlining the present moment of regime desperation are economic circumstances over which Castro has little influence. Cuba during its 44 years of Communism has proven woefully unable to break the shackles of a single-crop economy. It has continued to rely on one crop, sugar, to supply other requirements for the society. Two main factors have limited the impact of such a policy: the continued plummeting of world sugar prices due to a glutted market caused by global overproduction, and of greater consequence, the severe deterioration of Cuban sugar mills themselves. Despite mobilization of the state apparatus, the sugar harvest is only slightly more than in previous years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sugar production of Cuba has plummeted from 8.1 million tons in 1989 (the last year of Soviet subsidies) to the present level of about 3.6 million tons. Cuba is now undertaking a program of closing 71 out of 156 currently operating mills. The breakdown of equipment, the inability of Cuba to maintain any sort of technological competition with other nations, has led to a situation in which falling production now reflects declining world prices. The limited ability to purchase oil with sugar has now reached crisis proportions. To further complicate matters, the tourist industry, which was to pick up the slack in sugar production, suffered greatly after the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. For the first half

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of 2002, tourism to Cuba was off 14 percent from the same period one year earlier. Again, the problem is not simply the international decline in air traffic, but the relatively unattractive situation in Cuba with respect to tourist facilities. People on holidays are not looking for political slogans so much as pleasant personal situations for a limited time. The malaise of the national economy of Cuba feeds into polarizing consequences. The service sector displaces the production sector in the search for surplus. Indeed, in an effort to attract European tourists, the Cuban economic ministry has said it would allow the Euro currency to circulate alongside the U.S. dollar. But even this has a cost to the regime. It heightens the already considerable gap between have and have not individuals, namely, those who benefit from foreign currency speculation and exchange from those confined to the domestic Cuban currency. The idea of a “Marxist” regime heightening the gaps between people in the economic and social realms is clearly an unanticipated consequence of the desperate search for new sources of state revenues. A third element in Cuban life that both props the economy and unbalances any prospects for stability is the remission of considerable sums of money from Cuban Americans to relatives and families in Cuba proper. Such remittances, estimated by The Economist to total $800 million annually at the start of 2003, provide the regime with much needed hard currencies with which to make critical foreign payments and purchases. However, it also “dollarizes” the economy. As a consequence, the internal gulf between haves and have-nots is further exaggerated, making for a strain within the economic and social stratification of Cuban society that can hardly be addressed, much less resolved. Foreign currency remissions pushes further back what was once the primary goal of Castro’s regime: the creation of an egalitarian society—even at low levels of earnings and opportunities. As an indicator of how deeply global events have disrupted the national economy, one needs look at the Venezuela coup and counter-coup. Although Venezuela President Hugo Chavez managed to retain state power, the dubious price of doing so was restoring some semblance of rationality to Venezuela’s oilbased economy. Before the golpe, Venezuela supplied Cuba with more than 50,000 barrels of oil a day—about a third of the island’s requirements. Much of this was to be financed at a two percent rate of interest over a fifteen-year time frame. One of the first pronouncements during the brief spell that Chavez was out of office was an announcement by Petroleos de Venezuela that the Venezuelan nation would immediately cease the shipment of petroleum to Cuba. While it was assumed that ideology would trump economy once again, and Chavez would restore shipments to Castro, the strikes and turmoil that have gripped Venezuela under its military dictatorial period frustrated such resumption. The Cuban government has confirmed that it has received few recent petroleum benefits from Venezuela. Moreover, it has been forced to turn to the spot market and spend “dozens of millions” of dollars in order to obtain oil. The instability of

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the Chavez regime at this point makes it difficult to predict whether any meaningful or permanent resumption of petroleum shipments from Venezuela to Cuba can take place. While it would be illusory to presume that economic reality will displace political despotism—indeed, such “economic determinism” has continually been proven wrong in the past—Cuba’s current economic distress coupled with even modest political resistance and social disorder, makes the prospects for closure of the Castro era appear considerably closer at hand than at any time in the past 44 years. Certainly, it is now reasonable to consider a variety of scenarios for a transitional government after the termination of the Castro regime. The great strength of Castro has been a network of political organizations, from the block level to the women and youth brigades that owe a special allegiance to the regime for its central position in the society. But this depends heavily on some form of reward system—less than for the upper echelons of the armed forces, but still real—from privileges in newly constructed housing units to job favoritism working in industries that have contact with foreign, such as hotel waiters and bank managers. But even if the system cannot readily be toppled by economic rationality, the problem for Castro and his associates remains real: how to maintain ideological fervor and street-level mobilization in such a downwardly spiraling political economy. The limits of charisma should be sorely tested in the near term. Nonetheless, the failure to institutionalize the revolution, to move to a next generation of top echelon political leadership, does not necessarily spell the end of the regime as such. The emergence of dynastic communism, of a hierarchy built upon patronage and family ties, has proven resilient in places as far removed as North Korea and Syria, and is clearly what the Castro brothers envision for Cuba. It will hardly be the first time in history that personal vanity tinged by a sense of infallibility could result less in reform than in reaction. But this pattern of continuing dictatorship might itself also serve as a long-term trigger to rebellion and restitution of democratic norms. With the rest of Latin America serving as onlookers to Cuba’s collapse, rather than active supporters, the time for change in Cuba may actually be closer at hand than skeptics might imagine. In any event, the play of national and global forces has now reached a stage that can hardly be met, much less resolved, by manifestations of support or cooked-up signature drives to assure the great dictator that he still sits, albeit uneasily, on his proletarian throne. The primary evidence for a necessary, if indeed insufficient, cause for such a systemic collapse is the woeful performance of the Cuban economy. Despite the regime’s total dedication to maintain the peso as the currency of the nation, it declined 22.7 percent in 2001, with the same tendencies taking place in 2002. Indeed, the situation has worsened as a result of the decline in tourism from Europe and the deterioration of sugar revenues as mentioned above. A July 2002 report filed from Havana by Marc Frank on behalf of Reuters News Agency

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declares that “the dollar would be trading at 40 pesos to the dollar if not for a government imposed freeze on the exchange rate.” The difficulty is that in the managed Cuban economy, the government is spending more money while declining revenues indicate lower solvency. It is evident that the return to solvency of the last decade has run out of steam in the present decade. As a result, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Cuba is long in a protracted period best described as a crisis in the socialist state economy—that sector that employs more than 90 percent of the labor force. The political contradictions within the Cuban system have become irrevocable. For the sham vote of 99.7 percent of Cuban people signing onto an amendment to the Constitution making the socialist system irreversible, only served to highlight the brittle character of the regime. The imaginary support for Castro exceeds even the fantasies of Stalin’s popular vote during the heyday of the Soviet terror. What this points to is an insoluble contradiction between Castro’s evident desire to open the economy to globalization, while maintaining a closed political system at home. Thus it would appear that in areas where the United States embargo is simply not an operative factor, the contradictions of the socialist state appear manifest. Indeed, The Economist, in its first issue for 2003, estimates that the United States is already the tenth largest trading partner for Cuba, despite the retention of the embargo. But even these purchases for food create secondary contradictions, since other foreign trading partners dealing in credit envy the position of the United States, dealing with Cuba only in cash. As the recent (2002) memorandum of European investors has made clear, there are a series of obstacles to doing business that are so prejudicial and egregious, as to deter even the most dedicated entrepreneur from going into present-day Cuba. A litany of complaints are cited—from customs and import charges, residence and work permits and visas, inflation of labor charges that bear no relation to actual labor performance or level of tasks needed, to a tax system that requires payment by foreign companies in dollars, while in reverse, offering Cuban pesos in payment of its outstanding obligations, and even the methods of charging payment. The fiscal system as a whole is rigged so that Cuban banks charge exorbitant fees without corresponding guarantees of payment. So it is that European commercial “good intentions” provide a road to economic hell rather than commercial parity. Having provided this brief recitation of the current situation, it is important to reiterate what we have maintained over the years: fiscal hardship and even crisis do not topple dictatorial regimes. The response of such regimes is to redistribute what wealth exists, so that there is essentially a parity of hardships—which itself reduces the risk to regime insolvency. And the regime of Fidel Castro has proven masterful at such management of scarce resources. The problem he and his government now face is how long such statist managerial techniques can keep the lid on the society itself. The redistribution of poverty is, after all, not quite the same as the distribution of wealth—and with the

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omnipresent dollar end of the economy, now reinforced by the inclusion of the Euro currency as a free floating element, the social pressures can only be expected to increase. II. Recent Trends As the first decade of the twenty-first century unfolds, several important international events are having a positive impact on Cuba and the Castro regime. There is the survival capacity of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; the landslide electoral victory of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil; and the willingness of the Chinese to increase trade with and investments in Cuba. To this must be added the readiness of the U.S. Congress to liberalize the longstanding embargo of the island which is encouraging Cuban leaders in their attempt to muddle through the difficult period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. These events, while not likely to alleviate Cuba’s continuing economic crisis, may prove helpful to the longevity of the Castro revolution. The Chavez presidency has proven highly significant for Castro. Initially Chavez tried unsuccessfully to incorporate Cuba into the San Jose Accord. This would have provided Cuba with Venezuelan petroleum at a discounted price. Mexican and other opposition prevented Fidel’s younger comrade from achieving his goal of helping Castro. But the continued existence of the Chavez regime in Venezuela does provide a genuine, if modest source of raw materials at cheap prices. Of significant importance for Castro recently was the rise to power in January 2003 of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. A close ally of Castro in Latin America and one of the founders of the Foro de Sao Paulo, a group of leftist, Marxist and revolutionary leaders, Lula could provide Cuba with long-term, concessionary credits to purchase Brazilian food products. More importantly, perhaps, will be Lula’s support for Cuba in international forums and in pressuring the United States to end its embargo of the island. The presence of Lula and Chavez in South America represent a formidable force in challenging U.S. policies with respect to the continuation of Castro’s regime in Cuba. Perhaps the most intriguing, if unanticipated, development in the past few years is the growth of Chinese investments and involvement with the Castro regime. The Chinese have built a variety of factories in the island and have invested in Cuba’s biotechnology industry. But more important is the close military relationship that has developed between China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Castro’s Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR). The PLA is providing Cuba with military spare parts, munitions, and technology. Raul Castro and Defense Minister Chi Haotian have exchanged visits and a variety of Cuban military officers have spent time observing the Chinese economic and political experiment. China’s establishment of an eavesdropping station in Cuba and its provision of equipment to interfere with Radio Marti as well as to monitor U.S. military and commercial transmissions is of obvious concern. After the release

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of the congressional “Cox Report” detailing Chinese espionage at a U.S. nuclear laboratory, it is hardly a secret that the Chinese are operating an extensive spy network in the Western Hemisphere. So it should be no further surprise that the Chinese might want an electronic espionage base close to American shores. China is not in the same league as the Soviets were in the 1960s or 1970s, but the People’s Liberation Army hardly regards itself as a friend of the West. If it were, it would not have engaged in such potentially destabilizing practices as shipping advanced weapons to the Syrians and the Iranians. Indeed, Chinese foreign policy is patient and farsighted, In Cuba, the Chinese seem to be taking a calculated gamble: that the United States’ complex relations with and economic interest in China will prevent the Bush administration from raising a big fuss over China’s activities in Cuba. The shift from Russian to Chinese patronage is culturally significant, but the sense of Cuba as a client state of a communist regime appears as a constant. Meanwhile U.S. policy toward Cuba remains under constant pressure. U.S. agricultural groups and states, interested in selling their products to any buyers, are pressuring the U.S. Congress to ease-up on trade relations with the island. During the past 2 years Congress has allowed for Cuba to purchase for cash U.S. agricultural products. Castro has responded by purchasing about $175 million worth of American products. It is the hope of the Cuban leadership that these purchases would entice American capitalists into providing Cuba with loans and credits to buy more in the U.S. market, further eroding the U.S. embargo. Internally there have been several complicating developments in Cuba. Castro continues to cling to an outmoded economic model. Economic reforms of the mid1990s, which indicated a mild opening toward the market, have been stopped and in several cases even reversed. Politically there continues to be Castro’s opposition to even the most minimal opening. The visit of Pope John Paul II encouraged those who expected greater religious and political freedom. Neither has developed. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of a new century, the regime is increasing the persecution of dissidents and human rights activists. Cuba is undergoing a Chinese-type cultural revolution, albeit slower and less dramatic than in China, where an aging leader insists on purifying and rejuvenating “his” exhausted revolution before departing from this world. The two operative words in this collection of first-rate essays: Cuban and Communism have both lost substantial emotional steam over the course of these eleven editions. The rise of democratic politics and free market economics from Mexico to Argentina has reduced the blandishments of Castro’s Cuba to bleatings. At the same time, the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe inducing the end of the despotism known as the Soviet Union, has further deprived Cuba of the pretension much less the reality of servicing as a Western hemispheric vanguard of a coming socialist sweep. As is usually the case, whenever events of cataclysmic proportions take place, longstanding political conventions and ideological proclivities are also changed.

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What is often overlooked by those involved in everyday analysis of Cuba is how a remarkable consensus has been forged at the level of principles, which is to say in the overall characterization of Castro’s Cuba. If at the start of the Cuban revolution of 1959 Castro and his small band of guerrillas were the harbinger of greater things to come throughout the hemisphere (and they had every right to think so), by the start of 2003 there was a widespread consensus that Communist Cuba is an isolated regime, drifting somewhere between limbo and the backwater. From left to right, liberal and conservative opinion alike now accepts the premise that the regime has little if any potential for establishing open economic markets, competitive and multiple political parties, or free popular elections. Thus, in the midst of the heated debates that deal with the strategic issues of the U.S. embargo, there has now evolved a strong consensus that Cuban Communism is an antidemocratic ripple in the deep currents of changes that now characterize the hemisphere as a whole. As Freedom in the World reports: “Fidel Castro has shown no signs of loosening his grip on power, as cycles of repression, following harsh economic reforms, continued unabated.” The very singularity of Cuba however makes it a nation of special concern and consideration for students and policymakers alike. This said, since the previous (tenth) edition of Cuban Communism was published, significant events have taken place in the Cuban infrastructure. The economic reforms initiated in 1994-95 have come to a halt; Castro has been clamping down harshly on dissident groups in the island and the revolution has lost its luster, particularly with the young on the island which seem alienated from the system and unwilling to follow the party’s exhortations on Marxist rhetoric. As a result, a certain passive resistance has become the norm in Cuba. It underscores both the deterioration of Castro’s infrastructure and a decline in participation in social and economic activities that could possibly carry the regime to a new plateau. The Castro government has shown very few signs of making meaningful or durable concessions in the political and human rights arena recently or in the past four decades. There has been no indication that Castro intends to truly open up the island’s political or economic system or promote a peaceful solution to Cuba’s deepening crisis. History reveals various instances where strong and even autocratic political leaders have mellowed with age and softened their positions, but there is scant evidence that this is the case with Castro. On the contrary, as the Cuban leader has aged he has become more intransigent and difficult. At the Party Congress in 1997 he reaffirmed his staunch opposition to the U.S. and his unwillingness to relinquish personal power, a statements he has often repeated. During the past few years, Castro has mobilized significant resources to force the United States to lift the embargo and the travel ban. He has invited U.S. religious, political, business, and academics leaders to the island. He has

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reached out to moderate Cuban-Americans to begin a dialogue and to weaken Cuban-American opposition to a Cuba-U.S. rapprochement. He has even visited New York dressed up in a business suit, rather than his usual military uniform, enticing American entrepreneurs with a vision of a major bonanza if Cuba is opened up. Castro’s calculated moves were designed to gain time and to force the U.S. into unilateral concessions regarding the embargo and the travel ban. He hoped that U.S. and world opinion would force U.S. administrations to soften its policies and that U.S. attempts at subverting his revolution could be handled by Cuba’s efficient security apparatus. His short-term tactically motivated actions did not envision the dismantling of communism in Cuba or weakening of his personal power over the Cuban people. On the contrary during the past few years Castro has become concerned with the continuity of the revolution once he disappears. He has been attempting to imbue the masses with a new sense of anti-Americanism through mass mobilizations and in the educational system. He also has been emphasizing the need for a smooth succession of power. The last Party Congress reasserted Raul Castro’s position as the undisputed heir to Fidel Castro’s dynasty. Both in the party’s private meetings and in public, Fidel praised his brother and summoned the faithful to support him. Raul’s position as vice president, head of the military, and second secretary of the party makes him the obvious replacement for Fidel. Clearly, the older brother wanted to make it clear to the party cadres and the population-at-large that the younger brother, as his anointed heir does, should be supported and obeyed and that his leadership would be best for the future of Cuba. The succession from dictatorial father to dictatorial son has been successfully concluded in Communist North Korea as well as in Syria and Jordan. It remains to be seen if the same or similar dynastic processes can be implemented in a Communist Cuba. The Elian Gonzalez case highlighted certain large-scale problems in American foreign policy toward Cuba’s communist regime. Among the most telling of these is an unease over immigration policy as a whole, providing a temporary alliance of residual left-wing support for Castro and rising nativist sentiments on the right. The case also revealed smoldering resentment toward the CubanAmerican enclave in Miami, especially the sense of its economic gains and linguistic commitment to Spanish, again uniting diverse elements such as Haitians who felt slighted and those who dislike multiculturalism as a disguise for bilingualism. Finally, public opinion leaned heavily to the idea that a child should be united with a surviving parent, whatever the politics of that parent—even one loyal to the Castro regime. In microcosm, the fate of a single child indicated just how entangled policy considerations could become with respect to presentday Cuba. However, with respect to the structure of Cuban Communism as such, while this case accentuated the suspicions and hostilities that have been built up over four decades between Miami Cuban-Americans and Havana’s Communist leadership, it does not necessarily change the parameters of the system as such.

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Indeed, it has been argued that the Elian Gonzalez custody battle was a diplomatic coup for Fidel Castro. At the same time, it can justifiably be claimed that this case has again focused attention on the character of the Castro regime in a none too favorable light even among those Americans who believed that a child should have been united with a surviving parent. So at year-end 2002, the most important “on the ground” factor is the continuing survival of the Castro regime, with allies throughout the Third World, but also with powerful critics in parts of the Third World, and not least in advanced democratic nations. Policy concessions and constructive engagement did not work in the past. They are not likely to shake Castro’s faith in a socialist future. Commitment to anti-Americanism, personal rule, and virulent internationalism, remain the cornerstones of Castro’s policies. Faced with the approaching end of his life and his fear that once he is gone “his” revolution will change course and Cuba would end up as another friendly Caribbean island close to the United States, Castro is unlikely to open up either the economy or the political system to fresh winds of change. It might well be the case that impending better relations with the U.S. will be seen and feared by the Cuban leadership as an attempt to subvert the revolution and will lead to tightening political control. Whatever may be the tactical considerations of the moment, on the basis of Castro’s stated beliefs and recent actions, as long as Cuba remains under Castro’s dominion, it will continue as a Communist project. As a project, Cuban Communism was undertaken in splendid isolation from and opposition to the course of history in the Americas-and for that matter, the rest of the contemporary world. This eleventh edition of Cuban Communism is thus offered at a time of economic crisis for the founding generation of the Revolution of 1959. Precisely how this new set of circumstances will play out in the short run is still difficult to say. Offsetting economic difficulties for the Cuban regime are political victories for hemispheric neighbors that feel powerful affinities for Cuban Communism. To modify the famous saying of John Maynard Keynes, in the long run we may not, after all, be dead, but the current regime of Cuba’s aging dictator might be. Irving Louis Horowitz, Rutgers University Jaime Suchlicki, University of Miami January 17, 2003

Part 1 History

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1 One Hundred Years of Ambiguity: U.S.-Cuba Relations in the 20th Century Irving Louis Horowitz Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians.… Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, massed about central powerhouses. The conf lict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive the men, and the men tend to succumb to their own motive forces. —Henry Adams (The Education of Henry Adams, 1905–06, chapter XXVIII).

Much ink has been spilled to determine whether Fidel Castro was a Communist before his seizure of power in 1959, or whether he became one at some later date. While the results are inconclusive, what is certain is that Castro was a Cuban nationalist long before the triumph of the July 26th Movement. Understanding Castro’s Cuba therefore requires examination of that nationalism—its historical roots and its political consequences—as much or more than examination of Castro’s communism. This, in turn, obliges us to study the imperfect origins of independence in Cuba itself. Such study requires a century-long retrospective, not just a look at the 42 years in which the Castro regime has held political power. Two dates stand out in the American-Cuban relationship: 1898 (the year Spain surrendered Cuba to the United States following the Spanish-American War), and 1959 (the year the Soviet shadow to the Cuban Revolution ended any chance of resolving the contentious issues dividing Havana and Washington). There are other critical dates in Cuban internal political dynamics, such as

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1925–33, the period of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship, and 1934–59, the populist-militarist era of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. But they do not matter nearly as much as 1898 and 1959, which is a sad reflection of the fact that, unlike most other countries, Cuba’s political history has been marked by popular passivity and hence a tendency toward largely undisturbed military and then totalitarian rule. Despite the importance and drama of the Spanish-American War, 1902 is a better starting date for this narrative than 1898 because it was only after the four years of American colonial hegemony that Cuba could begin to define its status as an independent nation. The four-year interregnum between 1898 and 1902 demonstrates the simple fact that real liberation, much less democracy, cannot be given—certainly not by the armed forces of an occupying power. National independence must be earned; it must be won against opposition. What the United States was able to provide, and the wisest thing in its power to grant, was schooling in the practices of a free and autonomous society. The Cubans were allowed to act as if they had won and created some of the basic rights and duties of a democratic nation. The immediate consequence of this was to heighten a note of ambiguity in a political situation already less than clearcut. As it happened, Cuba has been unable, ever since 1902, to clarify its status vis-à-vis the United States. This was not entirely the fault of Cubans. The native Cuban regime in 1902 was established under the ostensible protection of the Platt Amendment, which was terminated only in 1934 as a part of the Good Neighbor Policy. Thus, in 1902 and 1934, not much less than in 1898 and 1959— and, of course, in October 1962—external forces rather than internal actors determined the course of Cuba’s national existence. Around these dates one may plot, so to speak, Cuba’s one hundred years of ambiguity. Cuba has never been the master of its own fate in its independence struggles. Without minimizing the bitterness of the Cuban popular classes against Spanish colonial rule—or, for that matter, the bravery of the Cuban guerrillas who fought the best troops of the Spanish empire—the plain fact of the matter is that the United States and Spain set the terms of Cuban independence. Native forms of national struggle were not entirely absent; indeed, by 1897 it became evident that the Spaniards were unable to impose a purely political or legal solution on the island, and that raw military force was required. In such circumstances, the indigenous resistance in Cuba could not hope to achieve more than a military stalemate—at least in the short term—without external intervention, whether the resistance wanted it or not. In such a vacuum of power, the United States was able to extend as well as to impose its Monroe Doctrine over a Spanish colony. It did so first by insisting on a pacific solution that did not require outright subjugation of the native peoples and then, when it became apparent that Spain did not have a civil administrative infrastructure that could impose such an outcome without using

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military force, moved to intervene directly. Spain’s frailty thus allowed President McKinley to move into the power vacuum in fairly simple fashion—something that his predecessor, Grover Cleveland, resisted doing. But nothing has been simple since. In 1902 Cuba became a relatively independent nation, modeled after the United States in its formal apparatus of government. The arguments over the one hundred years since 1902 confirm the use of the term “relative.” Radicals argue that “relative” means that Cuba enjoyed little true independence. Conservatives claim that all sovereignty, especially for a small nation with a single-crop economy, is necessarily relative. One of the few scholars writing on Cuba who deeply appreciated this ambiguous legacy is Hugh Thomas. In an essay focusing on the Batista era, he stated the historical situation frankly: Cuba was not China or Nicaragua. It was a state whose independence from Spain in 1898 was in effect secured for it by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war. As such, Cuba’s freedom of action was limited for thirty years (1902–34) under the Platt Amendment, enabling the United States to intervene legally in the island’s internal affairs under certain circumstances. Such intervention occurred several times—in 1906, 1912, 1917 and 1933. Although after 1933 the country’s industries and services were increasingly “Cubanized” by local entrepreneurs, much of the aura of the old days still hung about U.S. Cuban relations in the 1950s. Thomas goes on to note that “Cuban national history read by students at the University of Havana revived memories of the early part of the century, when U.S. business involvement promoted the rapid economic development of the island and at the same time put a damper on the rhetorical romantic Cuban nationalism articulated by José Martí during two ruthless wars against Spain (1868–78 and 1895–98).”1 Castro was indoctrinated by this special reductionist reading of Cuban-American history—that U.S. domination repressed Cuban national aspirations. The problem for Cuba, after securing its independence, was the ambiguity of the outcome. It achieved a result that it desired without devising a method for accomplishing it. The result was that regimes in Cuba from 1902 through 1959 wrestled with a dilemma that they could not resolve. A group of democratic reforms introduced in 1933 was identified with Machado and represented a step toward securing greater autonomy, for on their account the Platt Amendment was soon lifted. But the reforms fell prey to a series of coups and were weakened further by the illegitimacy of the Batista regime. Instead of resolving matters either with regard to Cuba’s political culture or relations with the United States, the Batista dictatorship was halfhearted and inconclusive, like so many earlier regimes. Into such a situation Fidel Castro came to power—not as living vindication of Marxism-Leninism, but as part of an effort to move Cuba beyond ambiguity and to nationalist closure, and, in consequence beyond the suffocating sphere of American influence.

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The absence of closure before 1959 clearly helps to explain the ferocity of Castro’s resentment of the United States. This resentment is not simply a consequence of generic factors (big power versus small power, or Anglo versus Hispanic cultures). Rather it is a result of the specific history of Cuba and its intersection with the United States from 1898 to the present. In a nutshell: the United States invaded Cuban soil and, no less, liberated it from the Spanish empire. Castro’s May Day speech of 2001 indicates his unbending hostility toward and suspicion of the United States. He denounces hemispheric trade agreements as “annexation.” He says such a free trade “would mean more neo-liberalism, less protection for industry and national interests, and more unemployment and social problems. National currencies would disappear to be replaced by the dollar, and all monetary policy across the region would be dictated by the U.S. Federal Reserve.”2 The distant echo of the Platt Amendment can be heard in his remarks. It is not simply a policy difference, but a psychological distance that is reflected in Castro’s words. How this came about is worth reviewing. Pivotal to any analysis of this history is the fact that in the year 2002—one hundred years after Cuba’s acquisition of independence and more than 42 years after the imposition of Communist dictatorship—one can still speak of Cuba in terms of a single-crop economy, although the sugar crop is sweetened by other revenue streams. However one feels, or better said, to whatever one ascribes the causes, the fact is that Cuba is an economy dominated by dollarization, and tourism is a major source of income. The classical situation of small nations of the Caribbean—still extant in Cuba—is indicative of the hard truth that the politics and ideology of Marxism-Leninism comprise a sort of fool’s gold, a fantasyland of autonomy. The Castro regime is strong enough to goad the United States but weak enough to require appeals for aid to other Western powers. The writing of this scenario was already on the wall with the Cuban missile crisis, which was precipitated as well as settled by the major contestants in the Cold War. The turf may have been Cuban, but the decision-making had distinctly Russian- and English-speaking voices. Listen to the analysis of Adam B. Ulam, perhaps the sharpest Sovietologist of his time, of the events of October 1962: Riding Russian coattails brought quiet rather than solution for the Castro dictatorship. It created a transitional equilibrium that became permanent more through inertia than design. And so it was with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. That cataclysmic event finalized the resentment and focused the animosity toward the United States for its involvement in Cuban affairs. It did not provide a solution in 1902 that satisfied either democrats or autocratic landholders within Cuba, nor did it bring to closure the sense of solitude and isolation that Marxism promises in theory, but that Leninism-Stalinism took away in practice.3 Left-wing scholars take the view that if there had been no U.S. invasion or occupation, Cuba would have ridden the coattails of the 1895 uprising toward full autonomy. In this view, the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, with a heavy loss of American lives, provided President

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McKinley with a pretext to intervene in the conflict. The demands were for Spain to terminate its concentration camp policy, offer an armistice to Cuban rebels, and accept the United States as a final arbiter between the parties. Cuban independence was not mentioned. Benjamin Keen and Mark Wasserman develop an interesting view—one that parallels Fidelista historiography: The ensuing war was short and nasty. American commanders ignored their Cuban counterparts, excluding Cuban generals from decision making and relegating Cuban soldiers to sentry and clean-up duties. Incompetence was the dominant feature of both the Spanish and American war effort. American military actions were incredibly ill prepared and badly led. The only major land battle of the war, the famous charge up San Juan Hill, which helped to catapult Theodore Roosevelt to national prominence, was very nearly a catastrophic defeat for the United States. Spain, to some extent, defeated itself, for its generals believed the war lost from the beginning and sought above all to minimize their losses. Thus, in a bizarre little war, the United States Army, wretchedly led, scandalously provisioned, and ravaged by tropical disease, swiftly defeated a demoralized, dispirited Spanish army and snatched the fruits of victory from the Mambises, the Cuban guerrilla fighters who had fought gallantly in a struggle of three years duration. The exclusion of Cuban leaders from both war councils and peace negotiations foreshadowed the course of Cuban-American relations for the next sixty years.4 The unspoken assumption in this account of events, in which Spaniards—and especially Americans—marginalize Cubans, is that Castro put an end to such humiliation. But he did no such thing. The negotiations between the United States and the USSR over the missile installations aptly demonstrated that Castro had no more input in the solution than the Cuban guerrilla leader Antonio Maceo had in the settlement between the United States and Spain. The further presumption is that, if left to their own devices, Cubans would have put an end to Spanish rule. Such an outcome was certainly the wish of José Martí, Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez, but whether that wish would have become reality is problematic. Under the direction of General Valeriano Weyler, Spanish military policy shifted to anti-guerrilla tactics. The Spaniards then drove back the Cuban revolutionists to the eastern end of the island. All seemed lost until the U.S. military bailout. What we do know for certain is that the interregnum ended in May 1902 with the voluntary departure of the U.S. military and the declaration of a free and sovereign Cuba. A quite different, conservative reading of the same events comes to us from Milton Eisenhower, the brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower and a diplomat and educator in his own right. Milton Eisenhower viewed the American intervention as an appropriate response to Spanish imposition of taxes and other restrictions on direct trade in sugar and tobacco between Cuba and the United States. He saw this as parallel to the American pre-Revolutionary War slogan of “no taxation without representation.” Indeed, Eisenhower goes so far as to declare

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Spanish cruelties as “forerunners of Hitler’s mass executions in World War II.” In this situation, Cuba “seemed a natural ally if not a dependency of ours.” While there is a big gap between an ally and a dependent state, and while trade irritants hardly seem sufficient cause for an invasion, it is worthwhile listening to this voice of American rationalism: For four years following the victory over Spain in 1898, the United States maintained military rule in Cuba. This seemed essential, for the former colonials had had no experience in self-government. Our military control was honorable. Local governments, the courts, and other public agencies were improved. Progress in agriculture, education, health (especially in the campaign to eliminate yellow fever), transportation, trade, and general living standards was noticeable but not notable. There was little if any serious thought given to changing inherited social customs. The Cuban people themselves did not then seek such change. Most of them wanted independence—only large landowners objecting—and they got it, with qualifications in 1902. The limitation on independence was the Platt Amendment to our treaty with Cuba. In the ensuing years of quasi-independence, Cuba suffered the indignity of numerous interventions by the United States, saw most of its own Presidents promise honesty and reform only to fatten their own pockets, lived in fear of slaughter by military and guerrilla leaders, and came to accept betrayal as an inevitable condition of government.5 The range of professional opinion across the political spectrum, then, confirms this uneasy sense of ambiguity in Cuban national life. All recognize that the United States served as both colonial master of the Western Hemisphere and also democratic liberator from colonialism. Fernand Braudel sees this duality as a function of the “degree of isolationism that has been a basic feature of the United States.”6 Carl Becker, while bemoaning the less-than-sterling conduct of American intervention, nonetheless sees such behavior in terms of a defense of “democratic institutions to which America was committed” and opposition to “the extension of the European political system [Becker’s italics] to this continent.”7 Raymond Aron considers the United States guilty of “a great power policy, even an imperialist policy in the ordinary sense of the term.” This classical colonial policy was followed by a more recent policy of benign, or not so benign, neglect of Latin America. Aron goes on to say that “a sense of geography and memories of the past are at the root of these [American] feelings and this behavior.”8 More recently, Henry Kissinger noted that, by the start of the 20th century, “America found itself commanding the sort of power which made it a major international factor, no matter what its preferences.” In short, from the Monroe Doctrine to the Platt Amendment, the United States was pursuing a policy of “national interest” and not just “remaining unentangled” in its immediate neighborhood.9 Each of these statements is a variation on the same contradictory theme: America simultaneously as dictator and liberator. Clearly, in these two views the moral glass of American power is seen as half empty on the far Left and more than half full on the conservative Right.

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Perhaps no one caught the spirit of ambiguity more ably than Hubert Herring, who in his great History of Latin America wrote that the Cuban Republic from 1902–34 “was now free—but not free to make her own mistakes.”10 He added philosophically that “a clear lesson on the education of nations, as of children, [is] that none learns to order its life unless granted the privilege of going wrong as well as of going right.” Projections of what might have been notwithstanding, it is a fact of history that Cuban independence was granted and not earned. This may be viewed as a bitter fact of island history, or a tribute to a people on a small island navigating colonial forces far larger than itself. What is no less evident is a Cuban Revolution of 1959 that saw itself as settling accounts with the legacy of 1898–1902. Castro’s strength is less a function of the authority of Marxism-Leninism as an ideology than of an unrequited nationalism as a mobilization tool. From the outset, Castro had an image of Cuba as larger than life, certainly larger than the life of the island. From the start, Castro’s self-image was that of Simón Bolívar in an era of communism. He sought to bring the future to the entire hemisphere—if not on horseback, like Bolívar, then as a foot soldier in the mountains. Castro was and remains the embodiment of nationalism tinged by a greater, if ultimately counterfeit, internationalism. The fusion of the two was solidified by the ideology of Marxism-Leninism in the form of the tradition of the Comintern—centered in Havana rather than in Moscow. In each decade, from the Tri-continental in the 1960s through a variety of conferences over the next forty years, Castro maintained that his position was properly in the vanguard, not the backwater, of revolutionary consciousness. So while foreign intervention and great-power intrigue pockmarked the history of Cuba from 1898 to 1959, the history of Cuba after 1959 was supposed to turn this around and make Cuba a world political actor—militarily, diplomatically and otherwise (such as through its international medical teams). This effort has had modest results. On the one side, there was the removal of nuclear warheads from Cuba as a result of a Soviet-American deal, the embarrassment of Cuban troops participating in a losing effort in the Syrian Golan Heights, the humiliating defeat of Cuban troops in Grenada, the routing of the Cuban military presence in Angola and Namibia. These initiatives, aimed at reinforcing Castro’s role in world affairs, failed in frustration and loss of prestige. But on the other hand, Cuba has had a tremendous impact on hemispheric affairs: for example, from the Venezuela of guerrilla Douglas Bravo to the Venezuela of President Hugo Chávez. Castro’s impact on the Nicaraguan Left is widely recognized. Alliances have been forged with China for advanced military supplies, replacing those lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Training and arming Palestinians from the PLO forces is ongoing. There is scarcely a dictatorship in the world—from Kim Il Sung’s in North Korea to Muammar Qadaffi’s in Libya—that has not enjoyed the benefit of Castro’s warm embrace. As the late Arthur P. Whitaker predicted as long ago as 1962, “although Cuba’s ties with the

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Communist bloc make it difficult to appraise the difference between the two, Fidelismo is probably a greater potential threat than communism to the interests of the United States in Latin America. This is because Fidelismo expressed so well and for so long the rising Latin American tide of both continental nationalism and populism.”11 However, what neither Whitaker nor Thomas could have anticipated was that national interests and populism would develop in Central and South America along an autonomous axis different from anything envisioned by Fidel Castro— or, for that matter, by Simón Bolívar. What has actually occurred, to Castro’s obvious and public chagrin, is the development of international alliances at the political level, and regional and global market relations that extend far beyond the borders of nations in North or South America. Everything from telephone companies to oil drilling arrangements has changed the old system. Latin America is no longer a decidedly junior partner to North America. It is simply a partner whose size and scope depends upon investment prospects and corporate profits. What has drastically reduced the significance of Castro as a player in global affairs is not a direct assault on Cuba’s shores, but the sheer capacity of nearly every other Latin American nation simply to bypass Cuba on its own road to a new century. Henry Adams’ “forces” are indeed at work. While Cuba remains a force to contend with, its xenophobic nationalism has institutionalized an economic backwardness that has in turn created a diplomatic impasse. Cuba is now isolated from the trends sweeping the region. Bolstered by revitalized democracies from Mexico to Brazil, Latin America is undergoing a degree of economic integration unforeseen by the allies of the United States and unnoticed by its enemies. Economic upheaval notwithstanding, the situation in 2002 is profoundly more favorable to the forces of hemispheric democracy than it was in 1961, or for that matter throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This illustrates Fidel’s myopia as the century of ambiguity nears its end. Post-Castro Cuba will become part of an extraordinary hemispheric vitalization in which the fabled ogre of U.S. domination is absent. The problem of Cuban nationalism and jealousy for its sovereignty will be bound up in choices concerning hemispheric multilateralism, not obeisance to a new Platt Amendment. The long-term positive future of Cuba is neither utopian nor ideological. Rather, it is normalization in the best sense of politics, and rationalization in the best sense of economics. Notes 1.

2. 3.

Thomas, “Cuba, The United States and Batista, 1952–1958”, in Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlicki, eds., Cuban Communism (10th edition) (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2001), pp. 3–12. Quoted in the New York Times, May 2, 2001. Ulam, The Rivals: America and Russia since World War II (New York: The Viking Press, 1971), pp. 330–40.

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11

Benjamin Keen and Mark Wasserman, A Short History of Latin America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), pp. 408–9. 5. Eisenhower, The Wine is Bitter: The United States and Latin America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1963), pp. 296–7. 6. Braudel, A History of Civilizations (New York: Penguin, 1995), pp. 496–7. 7. Becker, The United States: An Experiment in Democracy (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2001), pp. 134–5. 8. Aron, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945–1973 (Cambridge, ma: Winthrop, 1974), p. 185. 9. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 37–40. 10. Herring, A History of Latin America: From the Beginnings to the Present (2nd edition) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 401–16. 11. Whitaker, Nationalism in Latin America: Past and Present (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1962), pp. 69–70.

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2 Cuba: The United States and Batista, 1952–1958 Hugh Thomas From some points of view, the experience of Cuba in 1958 might be regarded as one more archetypical failure of American foreign policy—of a piece with China in 1946–49 or Nicaragua in 1978–79. A commitment was made to an unpopular tyrant, Fulgencio Batista, who was becoming increasingly unpopular in his own country and, what is more, apparently losing a guerrilla war to insurgents led by Fidel Castro. Today the deplorable consequences are all to evident. What should U.S. policy have been? The question can be simply put, but it cannot be answered without a larger consideration of the background. First, Cuba was not China or Nicaragua. It was a state whose independence from Spain in 1898 was in effect secured for it by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war. As such, Cuba’s freedom of action was limited for thirty years (1902–34) under the Platt Amendment, enabling the United States to intervene legally in the island’s internal affairs under certain circumstances. Such intervention occurred several times—in 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1933. Substantial U.S. investment in Cuba in the early part of the century led the British minister (who must have known something of such matters) to describe the country in 1933 as a U.S. “protectorate.” Although after 1933 the country’s industries and services were increasingly “Cubanized” by local entrepreneurs. much of the aura of the old days still hung about U.S.-Cuba relations in the 1950s. This long, ambiguous association with North America led Cuban nationalism to be defined. perforce, as anti-Americanism. Much of this was actually anachronistic. Even so. the Cuban national history read by students at the University of Havana1 revived memories of the early part of the century when U.S. business involvement promoted the rapid economic development of the island and at the same time put a damper on the

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rhetorical romantic Cuban nationalism articulated by José Martí during two ruthless wars against Spain (1868–78 and 1895–98). The Cuban attitude toward the United States was thus complex at best. One of the most revealing remarks made by Castro was his characterization of the arrival of the new ambassador from the United States in 1959, Philip Bonsal. Castro described the event as if Ambassador Bonsal arrived like a viceroy, with endless obeisances. Actually, Ambassador Bonsal arrived in his normal, rational way, an experienced professional diplomat determined to make the very best of a potentially difficult post. Indeed, almost until the end of 1959, he went out of his way to try to persuade colleagues at home that all was not lost, that there were some aspects of Castro’s character that were promising, and so on. What Castro seemed to have been describing was not the arrival of Bonsal, but Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s special representative at the end of the Machado era in 1933. This form of ultra-anti-Americanism, now so prevalent even in Europe (not to speak of Africa, Asia, etc.), is one of Latin America’s least creditable contributions to political dialogue. There were, of course, ambiguities in public attitudes to Batista. That interesting personality had dominated Cuban politics since the Sergeants’ revolt in 1933, in which he was principal protagonist—sergeant-in-chief, one might say. As the power behind nationalist presidents in the years 1933–39, and subsequently as first president formally elected under the new Constitution of 1940, Batista was actually—and in the minds of most observers of the Cuban scene, truly—a radical reforming soldier of what we would now call the “Nasser type.” His social reforms were precisely what one would expect from a man of his extremely humble birth. In effect, there were two Batistas. The first was a Cuban nationalist who creatively rode the demands for change following the depression of the 1930s and the revolution of 1933–34 very successfully as a populist. Cuban trade unions and the Communist Party were allowed to organize legally for the first time under his aegis, and communists actually served in his government—including, for a short time, the current (1983) Cuban vice-president, Dr. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, an experienced economist. The first Batista was also a reliable friend of the United States during World War II, in which Cuba benefited from high nickel and sugar prices, and in which Cuba collaborated in interallied defense and anti-German security measures generally. The second Batista was different. His coup d’état in 1952 was a rather lazy protest by a man who seemed certain to lose an election. He may have been pushed into action by that section of the army (the sergeants of 1934 turned into colonels or generals) who wanted a new share in the profits of power. The coup came at a moment when the country had been rendered quite dizzy—first, by a cycle of sporadic political gangsterism (a much more amiable game than the guerrilla wars of the 1970s and 1980s) and second, by the evident corruption under and by two popularly elected Cuban presidents, Ramón Grau San Martín

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and Carlos Prío. These two clever, amusing, self-serving men did more to damage the good name of democracy (in all Latin America) than even England’s Henry Fox. The second Batista showed himself incapable of dealing with the problem of corruption. Rather, he and his colleagues sank deeply into it. He did manage to bring something like an end to political gangsterism—by harnessing some of the leaders as collaborators (Rolando Masferrer) or by driving others into more conventional armed opposition (Castro). The Batista regime of 1952–58 was bad but not wholly evil. It continued to encourage the diversification of agriculture, which most people recognized then as a desirable venture for Cuba if the economy were to prosper in freedom. But Batista himself, though retaining much of his personal charm for occasional visitors, had become lazy and procrastinatory at a time when Cuba—much richer than it had been in the 1930s—was a country much more difficult to govern. One of his old generals told how when communiques were issued saying that Batista had spent the day conferring with his officers, he was in fact playing canasta with them. He accumulated a substantial fortune abroad making him more inclined to dream of retirement in the Canaries of perhaps in Portugal. Only when the opposition began to take shape under Castro and his young associates— some of them merely students or even schoolboys—did Batista allow his police the free run that made them infamous. His army, divided by personal disputes among officers and ill-provided with weapons and supplies, was incapable of coping with a small insurrection whose directors from the start showed themselves masters of public relations both in Cuba and in the United States. Indeed, they would have needed great skill to cope with the Robin Hood-like legend of Fidel en las montañas. American assistance to Batista was never explicitly forthcoming. Training and a limited amount of weapons were available to Cuba throughout the 1950s under the appropriate U.S. hemispheric defense program. But in 1957 the skillful personal relations mentioned above created a powerful lobby against its continuance: Batista had been caught using weapons intended for hemispheric defense against Castro and other opponents, such as the Revolutionary Directorate. The subsequent U.S. arms embargo was a severe psychological blow. But at the same time, U.S. intelligence continued to assist an explicitly anti-communist bureau of the Cuban Minister of Defense, the BRAC (Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities), founded in 1955 with help from the Central Intelligence Agency.2 But that agency was not specifically concerned at that time, since Batista’s enemies in 1956–58 did not primarily seem to be communists. A different view was held in 1958 by the then-U.S. Ambassador Earl E.T. Smith. In his book3 Mr. Smith, who was not a career diplomat, described how he sought to persuade the State Department, the Embassy Staff, even the local CIA station chief in Havana that Castro’s movement was communist in motivation. Earl Smith turned out to be right in the end, but at the time there was no

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evidence for his views. No doubt the BRAC told him of the activities of certain communists in relation to Castro—the early party youth membership of Castro’s brother, Raúl, for example, or the dubious affiliations of Ernesto Guevara in Guatemala in 1954, or the actions of Dr. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Félix Torres, Armando Acosta, Pablo Ribalta, Osvaldo Sánchez, to name a few of the party members who, in 1958, began to prepare the ground for the later association of Castro with the communists. But there was a lot of evidence that other opponents of Batista were more dominant around Castro. It was the “liberal” socialist intelligentsia—most of whom are now in exile—that gave the movement (always small in the field) its ground swell of support in Havana and the cities. The question of what to do about Batista did not really present itself as a serious one until the last quarter of 1958. Until then the Eisenhower administration in the United States did not treat Cuban politics seriously: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles thought Latin America uninteresting; and despite an earlier Marxist episode in Guatemala involving, among others, Ernesto Guevara, and despite the unpleasantries encountered particularly in Caracas by Vice-President Richard Nixon during his Latin America tour, this was entirely comprehensible. Castro had only a few hundred armed followers; he captured no towns at all; and the level of violence was modest; the figure of 20,000 killed in “the war against Batista” appeared in 1959, after Castro was in Havana. This was part of a deliberate policy inspired by the communists to blacken the past in the same way that, say, in France the number of communist “martyrs” in the resistance against the nazis has been grossly (and effectively) exaggerated. During these months Batista’s chief enemy appeared to be less Castro than Herbert Matthews of the New York Times, whose activities—privately intervening in the affairs of Cuba—were fully in the tradition of Sumner Welles. The varying interpretations of what Castro represented led to discussions in the Department of State; but Batista did not seem to be threatened by a communist revolution—rather, by a genuinely nationalist one led, no doubt, by reformers, with modest communist collaboration at the end. It was only after the open failure of the staged elections of November 5—convoked to establish credibility— that the U.S. government began to take any stance at all. The policy pursued was two-fold; on the one hand, an attempt to persuade Batista to resign; and on the other, an attempt to put together a coalition government of “men of good will,” including judges, army men who had offended Batista and were not Castroites, bankers, and ex- and progressive businessmen. Direct approaches were made by the CIA in both Cuba and in the United States to both these ends. Not all the papers are available, but it is obvious that Bill Pawley, the founder of Cubana Airways and an old associate of Batista, played an important part. The efforts to create an intermediary government were divided, and there is a clear sense that the agency’s left hand did not always know what its right one was doing. The situation was clearly exacerbated by the continuing divisions between the ambassador in Havana and his

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embassy staff, and between the ambassador and his department, as well as the apparent divide between the aims of the Department of State and those of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the end, certain successes of Castro with very few men in Santa Clara province as well as in Oriente, but on a small scale all the same, persuaded Batista that he should take his American friends’ advice after all, and by doing so deliberately save most of his own friends as well as his life and money. The efforts to put together an alternative government of the center failed because of the sudden swing of almost everyone to Castro, whose political manipulation of the power vacuum left on December 31, 1958, alone entitles him to be looked on as a master craftsman in politics.4 The momentum was irresistible. Meanwhile, the collapse of the plan for the alternative government led to a consideration of further possibilities in Washington. I have not found any record of the minutes of the meeting held on December 31 in the Pentagon between Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, Allen Dulles of the CIA, and Robert Murphey of the Department of State, but Admiral Burke once gave me an account of it, later confirmed by Allen Dulles. All agreed that “Castro was not the right man” for Cuba but at that hour nothing was decided—could be decided?—and to prevent him from seizing the power that he has since held for now nearly thirty years. Admiral Burke mentioned the possible use of the U.S. Marines, but even he apparently seems not to have pressed the issue. The following months saw—and it is desirable to establish the order of things— the complete capture of authority in Cuba by Castro (by May 1959), his alliance with the communists (in the summer) and subsequently the economic arrangements with the Soviet Union (in the winter of 1959–60) accompanied by what became the cessation of movement and liberty of speech in Cuba. By March 1960 the famous arrangements in Washington had been approved which would lead to the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. All through 1960 the U.S. and Cuba publicly quarrelled; U.S. property was taken over; and the break of diplomatic relations came in January 1961. Having described what happened, let us consider the possible alternatives facing the United States. At the very beginning we are faced with a difficulty. Castro may or may not have been a different man in 1958 to what he made himself out to have been. But until 1961 and even afterwards, there was widespread doubt about his communist affiliations. U.S. officials seized on little straws to suggest that his loyalty to the Soviet bloc was questionable. Even when he boasted in December 1961 that he had been a Marxist-Leninist since the University such affirmation was not believed: rightly, because he probably was not telling the truth. The consequence was the official backing of the view that patient handling of Castro might yield dividends—the obverse of the public and still widely believed argument that impatient handling actually led Castro to choose communism. This is not really a point of view, but something akin to

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religious belief. Castro himself would laugh at the idea, though it is still firmly cherished by people usually impervious to unreason. Returning to the question of what could have been done with Batista—one alternative would have been to deploy U.S. forces in Cuba, either the Marines or naval/military units. Such forces could have landed, presumably, by the middle of 1958, either to sustain Batista (as was done that very year in Lebanon to prop up another U.S. ally) or to overthrow him. Though it is hard to imagine such action now, it is well to recall U.S. action in the Dominican Republic (1965) and in Grenada (1983), and to keep in mind that there were far more people active in American public life at that time used to the frequent deployment of U.S. armed forces in Latin America. I believe that a relatively small number of soldiers—say, 3,000—could have done either of these two things relatively easily. Batista could not have held on against a public display of force of this kind, and I do not think he would have wanted to. The use of marines in support of Batista would probably have been more difficult, but the accounts of the modest scale of the war in the Sierra suggest that it would not have been difficult to bring the insurgency to an end. The problem would have been to find Castro, not to defeat and scatter his forces. Neither policy, of course, would have any direct legal sanction, though Batista could surely have been induced to make a formal request for military assistance in much the same way that the government of the Dominican Republic did in 1965 (when the forces deployed were, of course, very large indeed). It may be doubted whether the use of these forces in the way suggested would have met with the kind of violent international protest that such action would now receive. European public opinion had at that time not yet awoke to its extraordinary love affair with anti-American causes in Latin America. The Guatemalan affair of 1954 occurred with virtually no protest, even though the CIA’s role in what happened was barely hidden and generally realized by the small number of international observers who knew where Guatemala was on the map. National opinion in the United States is much more difficult to gauge in retrospect. I believe that either way the intervention would have been initially condemned by the democratic opposition, but the overthrow of Batista and his substitution—in the manner of 1906 or 1917—with a good government would have been quickly accepted had it worked. The same would very probably have happened had Batista been assisted to crush the rebellion, provided he swiftly moved to a democratic regime guaranteed by U.S. officials and provided Castro was caught—a proviso that probably could not have been fulfilled given the skills of that political leader. If the campaign on Batista’s behalf against Castro had lasted more than a few weeks, public opinion at home would have turned sour. In either case, of course, the action concerned should have been accompanied by an elaborate and well-thought-out information policy programme designed to pinpoint all the issues. Given the time, it could have worked. Eisenhower was a

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popular president, in the middle of his second term, and U.S. opinion would have cheered a resounding success the year after the bad news of Sputnik (October 1957). Of course, neither plan was put forward. The reason was, first, that no one thought the crisis in Cuba justified action of that kind of seriousness. Second, the different agencies of the government were divided and undecided as to what to make of Castro; and, nearly all intelligent men were optimistic about him. In no time other than 1958 could military intervention have had the desired effect one way or the other. Action such as discussed—as mentioned above, in the Pentagon on December 31, 1958—would have led to many difficulties even in the relaxed atmosphere of the 1950s. Sending in forces to prevent Castro from capturing power at that stage would have been almost like sending troops into Paris in June 1944 to prevent De Gaulle taking over the government. Similar problems, more muted perhaps, would have occurred had the two choices—to sustain Batista or to substitute him—been left to the CIA, in the style of Guatemala. No attempt of either sort was contemplated, though Ambassador Arthur Gardner (Earl Smith’s predecessor in Havana) did once tell me that he offered to Batista to have Castro assassinated. What agency would have been entrusted with this task is something upon which he did not elaborate. (Batista’s answer, interestingly, was ‘“Of course we couldn’t approve that: we’re Cubans.” It had the ring of truth to me at the time.) Otherwise U.S. assistance to Batista seems to have been really limited to the BRAC. This still seems to me to be odd. Those were the golden days of the Central Intelligence Agency. The money, the people, and the opportunities were there—as Guevara and other survivors of the Guatemalan affair were believed to be constantly warning Castro. What was lacking was the will, basically because the issue was not properly defined, and—given real doubt about Castro’s motives—could not be. If the Department of State and the Havana station chief of the CIA were in general agreement that Castro probably promised well, then the chances of a successful operation against him were nil. The CIA did, as we have seen, seek to operate against Batista in the end, but its actions were too late: too late above all for a centrist, decent, law-abiding government of North American educated democrats to have any chance of being formed. One other possible pressure against Batista could have been considered, though it could not have way to give a disadvantage to Castro: the imposition of sanctions. I mention this not because I think there is as a rule a chance of such policies being effective against countries that need to import: but perhaps the case is less clear in respect of exports—and sugar at that. Suppose the United States had sent in Ambassador Pawley early on with the message that unless Batista hand over power to a democratic government, the U.S. sugar quota would be reconsidered. This kind of pressure might be used more effectively against a country such as Cuba than one with a diversified agriculture. Indeed,

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it was represented by Castro that Eisenhower had used it spitefully, though the idea occurred to the United States only after months of abuse by Castro. The consequences if such a policy were carried out in 1958 as a means of pressure against Batista are less clear, of course, but perhaps one should bear in mind that the only possible alternative buyer of Cuban sugar on the desired and necessary scale was in 1958, 1960, and for that matter, 1985, the Soviet Union. The international sugar market is too quota-controlled for any other smaller purchaser to be able to take part. A limited sanction on U.S. sugar purchases from Cuba therefore might have been effective. Two qualifications to this argument must be made. First, historians, including myself, have made much of the “Cubanization” of industry on the island between the revolutions of 1933 and 1958. Yet we know little about how much stock was held in Cuban enterprises by North Americans in 1959. Enough, perhaps, to have exerted quite an influence on behalf of “Cuban investors” in the event of an export blockade. Second, the consequence of the abrogation of the quota in 1960 was to make it easy for the Soviet Union to step in and establish itself quickly as Cuba’s chief trading partner, with the disastrous consequences that we all know. Given Batista’s earlier record, given known Soviet interest in the 1950s in breaking into Latin America somehow5 and given the facts of sugar economics, it might have been Batista who turned first to Russia, not Castro. It sounds like fantasy now, but then it was surely not. So much has happened in Cuba and in the United States since 1959 that it takes an effort to think back when these choices were possible. Perhaps one should also consider the chances of a more skillfully carried out intervention along the very lines that were embarked upon, too late, in December 1958. Some show of force would have been necessary, and a lot of trouble should have been taken to find the names of men in Cuba who would not only have sounded like good men of the center but who had the capacity to govern, coupled with the toughness and agility to outwit Castro. U.S. troops should have stayed until free elections could have been held on much the same basis as those elections should have been in 1953. Such action would have been denounced as “imperialism” in the end by Castro and his friends, and as thwarting then as the Cuban rebels of 1898 were in legend thwarted by the U.S. army of those years. Another legend would thus have been created. The trouble with this picture is that the men in the center with the capacity required—always very difficult to identify beforehand by outsiders—were never easy to find in Cuba. Since 1959 the only real opponents of Castro of any quality have been men and women who were for a time with him and certainly were so in 1958. They might have been the most bitter opponents of the United States at the time. Once again we have to recognize that, between conquest or empire and independence, the intermediate stage of protectorate is a most uneasy one. I believe that the only policy that could have worked in Cuba in 1958 would have been the deployment of a large number of troops—adequate, first, to en-

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able Batista’s army to defeat Castro; and then to remain to guarantee free elections after a reasonable length of time. This would have meant a willingness to be associated with a quasi-imperial role in an explicit sense. Though an old method, it seems to have been the only one that could have guaranteed continued U.S. control of the Caribbean. Notes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

Quite typically, the works of Herminio Portell-Vilá (Historia de Cuba en sus relaciones con Estados Unidos y España). Sr. Portell-Vilá, a virulent opponent of Castro, subsequently resided in exile in Washington. I recall former CIA director Allen Dulles telling me “I was the father of the BRAC.” The Fourth Floor (New York: Random House. 1962). I have elaborately considered this in Chapter LXXXIX of Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971) and feel no need to add to what I have said there. Argentina was the most likely contender before 1958 for a possible host to major Soviet interests, as the major maverick Latin American country very critical of the United States for reasons different from Mexico and Cuba.

3 The Sierra and the Plains Roberto Luque Escalona By 1956, there appeared on the national scene two figures who embraced Fidel’s immediate goals but might have threatened his long-range plans. One was yet unknown to the general public, working in the shadows in Santiago de Cuba. Energetic, capable and brave as few men, Frank País would become famous on November 30, 1956. País at least was active in the July 26th movement. The other, a product of the militant student tradition of Havana University, preferred to go at it alone. He was a tall, stocky, (or better yet corpulent) young man with rosy cheeks, the unaffected charm that Cubans find irresistible, and the blind courage of a fighting cock: José Antonio Echeverría. Both Frank and José Antonio were students; Frank studied pedagogy and José Antonio architecture; and, besides bravery and patriotism, they had something else in common: their deep religious convictions. Frank was the pastor of a Baptist church and José Antonio was a fervent Catholic. Strange martyrs for a Marxist-Leninist revolution. While Fidel was preparing for war, the Society of Friends of the Republic offered to mediate peace talks between the government and the opposition. This attempt at national reconciliation was led by Cosme de la Torriente, an old Conservative politician and one of the last surviving officers of our War of Independence, and José Miró Cardona, president of the Cuban Bar Association. But such negotiations were doomed to fail from the start: Batista had been cured for good of all populist illusions by the elections of 1944. The Ortodoxo party was split into many factions, and what had once been a formidable political machine, was slowly but surely coming apart. One of these factions decided to set up its tent elsewhere: Jorge Mañach and José Pardo Llada founded the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement. They then joined not the Revolution, but the controversial peace negotiations. The Auténtico party, which 21

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ruled Cuba for eight years prior to Batista’s coup, practically had ceased to exist, though its leaders continued to speak as if it still existed. In the plaza adjoining the Muelle de Luz, there was a mass gathering of the opposition. It was attended by representatives from the entire political spectrum, ranging from Grau to the University Students Federation. Only the unpopular Popular Socialist Party was excluded, because it had labelled the Moncada assault a “putsch” and “petite bourgeoisie adventurism.” Fidel’s supporters in the crowd sang in unison, “Revolution! Viva Fidel!” Tempers flared to the boiling point. Suddenly, someone was thrown headfirst from the grandstand and an hell broke loose. Everywhere in the crowd rival groups were beating up on one another, folding chairs were flying through the air like birds of ill omen, and the great meeting of the opposition broke apart. We are in 1956, the year that Fidel had selected to begin the insurrection. Yet it wasn’t only Fidel and his followers, or the boys from the University, who were plotting Batista’s downfall. A clique of officers headed by ex-Colonel Ramón Barquín was preparing a coup d’état. Nothing came of their plans: someone turned informant. The conspirators were apprehended, spending the remainder of the Batista dictatorship in the stockade. That would be, however, less than three years. The aborted conspiracy cost the army its most competent high ranking officer: José Ramón Fernández (dubbed “El Gallego” because he spoke like a Galician), the able artilleryman who years later would play a pivotal role in what Fidel has called “the first defeat of imperialism in the Americas [i.e. the Bay of Pigs].” Shortly before Fidel’s 1956 deadline had expired, students under the leadership of José Antonio Echeverría founded a new insurrectional organization: the Revolutionary Directorate, which was almost from the first marked by a tragic destiny. José Antonio travelled to Mexico to sign an alliance with Fidel and Frank País. Little time remained to make good Fidel’s promise. In November 1956, the storied yacht Granma, with 82 men aboard, set out from Tuxpan, Mexico, bound for the southern coast of Oriente province, which is but a few miles from the Sierra Maestra. The yacht was expected to arrive on November 30. On that day, as planned, Frank País, who was always precise and reliable, led his men to action on the streets of Santiago de Cuba, in a diversionary operation that paralyzed government troops. The July 26th Movement accomplished its mission with only three casualties; and then went into hiding in the belief that the men of the Granma expedition were also safely ensconced in the Sierra Maestra. But the Granma had not arrived; it would not arrive for two more days, and when it finally touched land, it was not on the coast of the Sierra Maestra, but on a mangrove swamp not far from Manzanillo on the Gulf of Guacanayabo. After a mile-long trek through the marshlands, the exhausted expeditionaries saw a vast plain before them, and in the distance, very far away, the outline of

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the foothills of the Sierra Maestra. That’s about as close as most of them would get to their destination. The army caught them by surprise, cornered them, and many lost their lives. Others were taken prisoner and spent the last 25 months of the Batista regime in prison. Among the captured rebels was Mario Chanes, that much-persecuted man who has never had the good fortune of becoming famous. Fidel was presumed dead, but, of course, he wasn’t. A few days later, somewhere in the hills, a small band of survivors would re-group round their leader; they were twelve. Much has been said about them, for they have not lacked historians; some enjoy international fame, and almost all have occupied or still occupy high government office—those, of course, who are still alive and have been able to retain Fidel’s favor. There is no reason, then, to enumerate them. I do want, however, to mention another small group of revolutionaries, not twelve, but fourteen men. When the July 26th Movement was disbanded in the wake of the news of the disastrous landing of the Granma and the supposed death of the movement’s leader, there were only 14 urban fighters left alive in Havana. Since no one has ever mentioned their names, I shall. Of the top men in the Movement, there were only two survivors in the capital: Gerardo Abreu (“Fortín”) and Carlos Franqui. The others who were ready to resume the struggle, were Julio Alon, Julio Bauta, Federico Bell-Yoch, Sergio González (“El Curita”), Enrique Hart, Alonso Hidalgo, Ricardo Martínez, Francisco Miralles, José Pellón, José Prieto, Héctor Ravelo and Aldo Vera. When Faustino Pérez, one of Fidel’s Twelve, was sent to Havana in late December 1956 to revive the July 26th Movement, he found that it was still alive. Dr. Faustino Pérez, a physician and veteran of García Bárcenas’ conspiracy, proved an underground leader difficult to surpass or even equal. Under his direction, the Movement carried out a long series of successful actions, overcoming the tyranny’s repressive net. Shortly after Faustino’s arrival, Haydée Santamaría, who had been in Santiago during the tragic events of November 30, and René Rodriguéz, another of “The Twelve” but a very different sort of man than Faustino, were sent by Fidel to Havana on a mission which I am unable to clarify. I know nothing about the objectives of the mission, but I do know the results: René Rodriguéz, whom Haydée called “a little gangster,” devoted himself to creating a group independent of the leadership of Faustino Pérez, with the connivance of the attorney Humberto Sorí Marín. Expelled from the July 26th Movement, Rodriguéz and Sorí Marín marched off to the Sierra Maestra, where, despite the expulsion dictated against them, they were received well enough for both to attain the rank of comandante. Sometime later, in 1961, Sorí Marín was executed by firing squad. René Rodriguéz had much better luck. He still occupies high office and has even achieved a kind of international celebrity: in 1982 he was indicted by a Miami grand jury for drug trafficking.

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But let’s return to the Fifties. The Revolutionary Directorate committed itself in the Mexico pact to supporting the Granma expedition with diversionary tactics similar to those carried out on November 30 by the July 26th Movement, but didn’t do it. The Directorate decided instead to liquidate the tyranny with one blow, a great blow meant to decapitate it. While it prepared for that mission, the Directorate kept up a seeming passivity. The calm was broken by the assassination of the head of Military Intelligence, Colonel Blanco Rico, which was carried out with great skill. Next the Directorate would attempt to get the Colonel’s boss. Meanwhile, in the Sierra Maestra, the fledgling fidelista guerrillas, supplemented now by some peasant recruits but still small, gave some signs of life by attacking a small army barracks. Nevertheless, the government continued to insist that Fidel had been killed in the Granma landing, as if it believed that its unshakable faith in a lie could somehow modify reality. One of the first feats of Faustino Pérez and his men was to demolish this stupid legend. They arranged to bring Herbert Matthews of The New York Times from Havana to the Sierra Maestra. Matthews interviewed and photographed the “dead man,” and so Fidel became an international celebrity overnight, and, in time, the most famous of Cubans. But wars are not won with propaganda alone; men and arms are also necessary. Frank País came to the rescue of the decimated expeditionary group in the Sierra Maestra. He reinforced it with a detachment of well-armed and -equipped fighters that tripled the guerrilla force in one day. The July 26th Movement created the rebel army; in time, the army would devour it. By the way, the reinforcements sent by the Movement were transported on trucks provided by “an arrocero from Manzanillo,” as Ernesto Guevara was later to describe Huber Matos. When Dr. Guevara wrote those words he had already been in our country long enough to know what we Cubans mean by arrocero: a landowner who cultivates rice on vast tracts of land using the latest agricultural technology and with a great concentration of capital, as economists say. In short an arrocero is, as Guevara well knew, an agrarian capitalist. Except that Huber was, as Guevara also knew, a schoolteacher with an enterprising spirit who had rented some trucks to transport the rice that others grew. “I am extremely rigid in my actions,” Dr. Guevara wrote on another occasion. I also can be quite rigid at times. Under certain circumstances, however, I wish I could be less rigid because I realize that being rigid doesn’t do me any good. But respect for the truth won’t let me. My veracity compels me to accuse Dr. Guevara of lying. He may be one of the major deities in the revolutionary pantheon, but he lied through his teeth when he portrayed Matos as bourgeois. My love of the truth also obliges me to say, as I have already, that the Directorate did not live up to the commitment it made in Mexico. But in this case it was not due to bad faith; it had, quite simply, decided to stake all on one card.

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On March 13, 1956, the Directorate stormed the presidential palace with all the force at its disposal. In an interview with a CBS reporter, Fidel labelled the attempted assassination of Batista “useless bloodshed,” adding that “the dictator’s life is of no importance.” With a heavy heart, I must disagree. Batista’s dictatorship, like Fidel’s, centered around one man. There was no substitute for that man among his followers. With the death of the dictator, his regime would have been condemned to disappear immediately or in short order. To eliminate Batista was tantamount to destroying the dictatorship, which was all for the good. What Fidel found objectionable was that the Directorate should bring about the fall of the dictator; such a contingency would have affected seriously his future plans. As for the bloodshed, it was “useless” only because it did not directly benefit him. Moncada also ended in failure, but the blood expended there was not “useless” because it served to make him a national figure and put him on the road to power. What is certain and undeniable, however, is that to assassinate Batista made much more sense than attacking an army barracks. The assault on the presidential palace itself was better planned and executed than Moncada. However, certain imponderables predominated that day, and to the great misfortune of many and the great luck of few, the Directorate suffered a terrible defeat that included the death of its leader. While the assault was underway, José Antonio Echeverría burst into a radio station and read a somewhat impassioned and puerile communiqué announcing the death of the tyrant. It was a mistake. In politics, one shouldn’t announce possibilities as facts, however feasible these may seem. The brave José Antonio didn’t have the time to learn that axiom: he died a few minutes later in an encounter with the police on the street. Hardly a few weeks had passed when we again had proof of the tragic fate that dogged the Directorate: four participants in the events of March 13—Fructuoso Rodriguéz (José Antonio’s successor and as intrepid as the fallen leader), José Westbrook (one of the most promising young men of his generation), Juan Pedro Carbó Servía (a medical student whose name now adorns a wing of the Havana Psychiatric Hospital—an institution that will surely be investigated by the Secretary General of the United Nations whenever he decides to comply with his duty), and José Machado—were ambushed and murdered in an apartment on Humboldt Street where they had taken refuge. It was not known then, but they had been betrayed to the authorities by a Communist informant about whom I shall have more to say in due course. Meanwhile, in far off Santiago de Cuba, death continued to reap its harvest. Frank País was murdered; gunned down in the street, like José Antonio. I have already compared these two young men who could have contributed so much to the restoration of democracy in our country. Today, far removed in time (and despite the sympathy that the recollection of a youth so filled with

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kindness and joy inspires in me), I believe that José Antonio never got to be more than he was: a youth. Not so Frank; this serious-minded native of Santiago was already a mature man, although no older than the brave student from Cardenas. “They don’t know what a man they have killed,” wrote Fidel on learning of Frank’s death. On that day, he was truthful. José Antonio was the promise. Frank was the realization of that promise. Two leaders died that would forever remain in our memory, but the struggle continued. In Matanzas, an armed group attempted to seize the Goicuría barracks. They got as far as the gates: the army was waiting for them, and the slaughter that ensued was the work of the curiously named Colonel Pilar García. Another group (which like the last was financed by ex-president Prío) disembarked on the Northern coast of Oriente, where they were ambushed and wiped out (only two escaped) by Colonel Fermín Cowley, commander of the Holguín regiment and a criminal psychopath who celebrated Christmas 1956 by distributing 25 corpses throughout the streets of the city. In September, navy contingents supported by the July 26th Movement mutinied in Cienfuegos and took the city. They couldn’t defend it against the army’s Third Tactical Squadron and another massacre ensued. Batista had returned to his old ways: not since the days of his colonelcy had he shed so much blood. Attempts at mediation continued, but there seemed to be no peaceful way out of this situation. Batista would not compromise. He felt strong. He was sure that he could finish off all the revolutionaries. Of course, the government also sustained losses—important losses. On a day that would prove fatal for him and others, the ferocious General Salas Cañizares burst into the Haitian embassy in Havana with the objective of murdering a group of asylum seekers. One of these men was armed and wounded Salas Cañizares in the lower abdomen before the general’s henchmen killed him and all the other rebels under Haiti’s protection. Salas Cañizares died amidst atrocious and prolonged suffering. It served that criminal right. Cowley was luckier; they blew his head off with a sawed-off shotgun in an operation executed with much ability and luck. Later, the new chief of Military Intelligence, Irenaldo García Báez, son of Pilar García (the colonel with the woman’s name), practically exterminated the forces of the July 26th Movement in Holguín. Among the dead was Manuel Angulo, my old high school gym teacher. I had always considered him an idiot because he let his students get away with so much, but he faced torture and death with admirable firmness. I pay tribute to his memory and offer these words as belated amends. Batista cried publicly at Cowley’s funeral. It was out of pure sentiment because in truth, he had henchmen to spare. Good henchmen who were merciless, amoral and sometimes even brave: Ventura, Carratalá, Martín Pérez and José Salas Cañizares, the spitting image of his late brother. And let’s not forget Rolando Masferrer, another townsman of mine, who fought on the side of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War but later turned gangster in the Forties.

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Masferrer was ready to fight the putschists on March 10, 1952, but the next day embraced Batista’s cause with all the enthusiasm of a new convert. The tyrant allowed Masferrer to dedicate himself to what had always been his vocation: killing. Masferrer was not a soldier or a policeman. He was a senator and editor of his own newspaper, but the vocation of which I spoke held a very strong sway over him. No doubt about it, the henchmen were plentiful. They had all kinds of advantages to fight the July 26th Movement and what was left of the Directorate. What Batista didn’t have, however, were officers, soldiers capable of leading men into combat. He had only one: Colonel Sánchez Mosquera, who attacked Fidel’s guerrillas with the obstinate ferocity of a pit bull. But a fidelista bullet penetrated his cranium and damaged vital brain matter. The pit bull lived but lost his ferocity and obstinacy. Batista, who had a surplus of murderers, from then on had not a single warrior in his army. The lengthy task of destroying the effectiveness of the army, initiated by Machado and continued in all aspects by Batista, was by now complete. The army no longer existed. Batista, despite his long military career, was unaware of it; after all, he was only a sergeant stenographer. Fidel did understand the situation. He always understood it. Before him opened the road to power. He still had a long way to go, but the road was free of obstacles. Meanwhile, under the fierce and relentless pursuit of the not inefficient Batista police, the July 26th Movement continued to hit and hit hard in Havana. Havana was the principal theater of urban combat, not Santiago de Cuba, as official history claims. The men of the July 26th Movement, under the direction of Faustino Pérez, carried out a series of well-conceived and -executed operations, some even spectacular. On the way, they became the main source of financing for the rebel army. It’s not for me to write the history of their daring deeds. That responsibility and honor rests with those who lived for years under constant pressure from repressive forces and at the mercy of chance, and who confronted day after day the possibility and the reality of torture and death. I will cite only three of their successes: the so-called “Night of a Hundred Bombs,” which drove the tyranny mad; the abduction of the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, the world champion professional race car driver—a masterful tactical operation that in addition to generating loads of publicity, served to demoralize the enemy; and the blackout of sections of Havana, an operation that involved the excavation of a tunnel from a rented safe house on Suárez Street to the main electrical cables servicing the city just across that street. Of all the men who have fought dictatorships in the cities of Latin America, I believe that only the Uruguayan Raúl Séndic equalled Faustino Pérez as a clandestine leader. And since I have already alluded to chance—that terrible and unforeseeable enemy of clandestine fighters—I want to point out that both Faustino and Séndic were captured by chance. A police officer who knew Faustino

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happened to run into him on a street; and a detachment of police carrying out a routine house to house search knocked on the door of a residence where the leader of the Tupamaros happened to be visiting. I also want to point out how Faustino was freed from prison after undergoing the usual beatings. Judge Enrique Hart, father of two brothers of that name who were active in the Movement, got in touch with the examining magistrate in charge of the case and arranged bail for the revolutionary. The bond was posted immediately, Faustino was released and vanished. Human solidarity with a man in danger, risking livelihood and social position to aid a deserving man, is one of the traditions that has been erased by fidelismo. Such traditions saved the lives of many men and women who fought so that Fidel could reach power. The urban fighters, the “plainsmen” as they were beginning to be called, withstood the hardest and most dangerous part of the fight against the tyranny, confronting the most efficient forces that the tyranny had at its disposal and living in a climate of permanent tension that the guerrillas in the mountains in no way knew. Although subject to material hardships, Fidel’s men were spared the constant worry that is an inevitable part of the life of one who may lose his life at any moment, sometimes just by chance. The harshness of war, or of any confrontation that involves the use of violence is in direct proportion to the degree of danger that the enemy poses, whether he is capable of doing us little or great harm. From this axiom of war, it naturally follows that it is impossible to compare the struggle waged by the rebel army and that waged by the clandestine resistance. To put up with hardships requires only a strong will, but to withstand torture requires strength of character. How many men died in the mountains as compared to the cities? How many died in Havana alone? I have no answers to those questions. Those who do have the figures, answer if you are able. I can, however, point out some interesting facts. Of “The Twelve” who made it to the Sierra Maestra, only one died in combat: Ciro Redondo, who by the way was active in the Catholic Workers Youth. None was captured. None suffered torture, except Faustino Pérez, and this happened in Havana when he was fighting with the underground. By contrast, of the fourteen members of the July 26th Movement in Havana, four died: Gerardo Abreu (“Fortán), Sergio González (“El Curita”), Enrique Hart, and José Prieto. Another eight were detained and tortured. Aldo Vera miraculously escaped torture, but was imprisoned. Only one escaped unharmed. One in fourteen. The publicity surrounding the insurrection centered on the guerrillas. Besides Fidel, other names were becoming famous: Raúl Castro, Cienfuegos, Guevara and Juan Almeida. The men of the urban resistance were photographed only when their corpses turned up or they were put on trial. This was unavoidable: those who fought in the shadows had to shun the limelight. But what was historically unjust (and in the long run politically tragic),

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was that the struggle waged by the Sierra Maestra guerrillas was promoted as the sole image of the Revolution. That’s where the theory of the guerrilla foco originated, meaning, of course, the guerrilla foco as the heart, brains and very center of the revolutionary struggle. Ernesto Guevara was the principal exponent of this theory. The growing confrontation between “The Mountains” and “The Plains” is reflected, on a small scale, in an epistolary skirmish between Guevara and René Ramos Latour, who had succeeded Frank País as head of the July 26th Movement in Santiago de Cuba. Ramos Latour sent a shipment of arms to the Sierra Maestra that Guevara pronounced defective. In a letter to the urban leader, Guevara, an Argentine physician but now a comandante, complained of the poor quality of the arms with that asperity that Guevara considered one of the most beautiful adornments of his character. In a devastating reply, Ramos Latour told Guevara that in order to send him that defective shipment he first had to disarm men who were in constant danger of death. These differences, which would become more pronounced with time, were not founded on mere jealousy. They were, to use the political jargon that has been imposed on Cuba in the last three decades, “a manifestation of the ideological struggle.” The rebel army was under the complete control of Fidel, who by then had discovered (although he was careful not to say so) that the dictatorship of the proletariat afforded the greatest felicity to those who rule. Guevara shared Fidel’s point of view, as did (naturally) Raúl Castro, Ramiro Valdés and Juan Almeida (all of whom, as far as I can tell, have never had an idea of their own in their lives). In the urban resistance movement, on the contrary, those who favored the restoration of democracy were in the majority. Facing an army that was every day more inept, corrupt and demoralized, the guerrillas began to spread out over the mountainous zones of Oriente. To the northeast of Santiago de Cuba, a second guerrilla front was established under the command of Raúl Castro. A third front commanded by Almeida cropped up in the very Sierra Maestra, just west of the capital of Oriente. But it wasn’t just the rebel army that was creating new guerrilla fronts. At the center of the island, a group of men rose under the command of Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, becoming the autonomous Second Escambray National Front. The decimated Directorate, now led by Faure Chaumont, took refuge in the Escambray mountains and was able at least to survive. In April 1958, the ideological struggle between “The Mountains” and “The Plains” finally came to a head. After a long string of successes, Faustino Pérez and his men met at last with disaster: the general strike that the July 26th Movement had convened in Havana for April 9 was a complete failure. “April is the cruelest month.” I remember that April 1958 because it did indeed prove cruel for our country. Fidel, Guevara and the rebel army used to great advantage the Movement’s reverse of fortune. Faustino Pérez couldn’t

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rise to the occasion; his strength lay as a clandestine fighter, not as a politician. He also lacked ambition and independent judgement, qualities that every leader should have. As a result, the Movement of “The Plains” came completely under the control of the men of “The Mountains.” Emblematic of that control was the appointment of Enzo Infante to replace Faustino Pérez. I have a friend who is also friends with Infante and holds him in the highest esteem. I have myself met the gentleman on several occasions and he seemed a decent sort to me. But the fact remains that Enzo Infante was an absolute nobody then, surely no substitute for Faustino Pérez. Why wasn’t someone chosen who was at least known in revolutionary circles? Why not, for example, the energetic and capable Manolo Ray, who led the Movement of Civic Resistance (a collateral arm of the July 26th Movement)? Or the respected Haydée Santamaría? Nothing stimulates men’s courage more than the presence among them of a courageous woman. Her appointment would have constituted a promising token of that much vaunted but as yet unrealized “equal opportunity” that the Revolution would later promise women. Or if not Ray or Haydée, then why not at least name one of the survivors of the original fourteen, none of whom lacked courage? Sometime in 1975, a conference was held in the economics department of Havana University to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Cuban Communist Party. One of the superabundant cretins in attendance asked a panel member, Professor Sergio Aguirre, why Martí had named Tomás Estrada Palma as his replacement in the United States rather than Carlos Baliño, a Key West tobacco cutter who much later would become one of the founders of the party. Aguirre was an old member of the Popular Socialist Party but nonetheless an honest man. After explaining the role that each played in the independence struggle and their respective merits—Estrada Palma’s vast and Baliño’s very modest contribution—he concluded that the appointment of Estrada Palma was both natural and logical in view of his record. “Whereas if Martí had named Baliño, all would have asked themselves. ‘why Baliño?’, or what’s worse, ‘who’s Baliño?’” And so I ask myself, why Infante? Or worse, who was Infante? He was named Faustino Pérez’s replacement precisely because he was an irrelevant figure, the ideal candidate if you wanted to minimize the July 26th Movement’s role in the revolutionary process. And minimized it was. In the days to come the Revolution would mean only the rebel army. And Fidel was the rebel army. But that was not the only cruelty that April 1958 showered upon us. In Mexico, certain events transpired that have not been given much importance. Since they happened to be important in my life—and this is my book—I shall treat them, for I consider those events if not significant then surely symptomatic. When the yacht Granma departed from Tuxpan in November 1956, various members of that expedition were obliged to remain in Mexico for various reasons (imprisonment, illness). Among those left behind were Pedro Miret and

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Gustavo Arcos, two leaders and founders of the July 26th Movement who were entrusted with the mission of organizing and training a new group of recruits and sending them to Cuba in a reinforcement expedition. Miret and Arcos set out to work. By April 1958 almost everything was ready. A few recently arrived recruits were still scheduled to receive basic training, but the arms and the ship had already been acquired. These were kept somewhere on the Yucatán peninsula under the custody of a small group of men. In April, while Arcos was in Caracas, Miret learned that various members of the Movement were planning to fly a small plane from Costa Rica to the Sierra Maestra. Such an action could not be taken without Miret’s approval, for he was chief of foreign operations for the Movement, with Arcos as second in command. Miret decided to go to Costa Rica to impose his authority. Up to that point everything was done correctly. But then Miret assumed direct control of the Costa Rican group—which included, by the way, Huber Matos—and flew with them to Cuba, landing at Cienaguilla, a small plain on the foothills of the Sierra Maestra. The plane landed but could not take off again. While this did not affect those who intended to stay, Miret was supposed to return to Mexico. With Miret in Cuba and Arcos in Caracas, the expeditionary group in Mexico was temporarily without a leader. Jesus Suárez Gayol, Heliodoro Martínez Junco, an American named Jay Silvester who was our military instructor, and the other custodians of the arms and the ship, decided, without consulting God or the devil, to set out for Cuba on their own, leaving behind the rest of their companions. That is exactly what they did, sailing as far as the coast of Pinar del Río, which is at the opposite end of the island from the Sierra Maestra. Upon landing, they were detected by the army and lost everything except their lives, with which they were able to escape. The long and patient work of more than a year came to naught. This seemed to me then, seems to me still and will always seem to me even if hailstones should rain on me for saying so, a signal instance of irresponsibility on Miret’s part, and of irresponsibility, insubordination and lack of esprit de corps on the part of Suárez Gayol, Martínez Junco and the other adventuresome voyagers. Nonetheless they were not penalized. Fidel, who is always so unforgiving of errors (I mean, of course, errors committed by others), took no disciplinary measures against the architects of this disaster. Miret was named a comandante before finally returning to Mexico. Suárez Gayol remained in Cuba, fighting bravely in Las Villas and achieving the rank of captain. Martínez del Junco returned to Mexico a few days after the failed expedition. Some day he would become Minister of Public Health. Of course, not everything was going wrong for the rebels. With his characteristic sagacity, which was then functioning at full capacity, Fidel understood just how near he was to the end of the struggle. So perhaps Fidel was inclined

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to forgive the perpetrators of the Mexican fiasco. One who was not forgiven, however, was Gustavo Arcos, who in no way was implicated in that disaster. El Comandante has shown an inexplicable hatred toward him. Perhaps I should say it was a hatred that has yet to be explained. Another who did not rub Fidel the right way was Huber Matos. However, Matos must have been a very good guerrilla. How else do you explain the fact that he became not only one in a heap of comandantes, but the chief of a column? There were barely a dozen chiefs of column in the rebel army, including Guevara, Cienfuegos, Almeida and Raúl Castro. In time, Matos would pay dearly for being “the stranger in their midst.” In Mexico, at the other end of that stage on which this April drama was played, were a group of disillusioned men who had been abandoned by their leaders; some of these individuals would later gain notoriety. José Abrahantes, for example, who, like me, saw the end of the struggle without shooting one bullet or placing one bomb, was named a captain on arriving in Cuba in January 1959. He then embarked on a brilliant career in repression, which ended just recently in complete ignominy. We arrive now at the final stage of the Batista dictatorship, which signals the end of the presence in the public life of our country of that wretch without whose actions our present misfortunes would not have been possible. It was he who led the way to that “blind alley without a glimmer of hope,” of which Lezama spoke. The guerrillas came down from the Sierra Maestra and began to move west; at the end of the road in that direction, lay Havana and power. Some but not all of the rebel army came down from the hills; in fact, very few abandoned their mountain stronghold. Fidel was not among them. Two columns commanded by Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos crossed on foot the plains of Cauto and the flatlands of Camagüey, a total of more than 300 miles, until arriving at Las Villas. This march has been compared to the Westward Invasion led by Generals Gómez and Maceo during our War of Independence, an absurd and disrespectful analogy that is in keeping with the Communist practice of using our national heroes for propaganda purposes. Gómez and Maceo were facing more than 100,000 enemy troops and had to fight every inch of the way. Yet our mambises broke through the box formations of the Spanish—a feat rarely accomplished in any war. The enemy that Guevara and Cienfuegos confronted was very different. Batista’s army was no army. Perhaps Dr. Guevara recalled his uninterrupted hike through the plains of Cuba as he saw his guerrilla forces in Bolivia battered, encircled and finally annihilated by a battalion of army rangers. There was nothing special about those little Bolivian soldiers; they had been welltrained and -armed, and when their officers led them into battle, they fought. But Batista didn’t have at his disposal a single battalion like that.

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The trek of the two guerrilla columns was undoubtedly a great feat, but it wasn’t a military feat, because that would have required an enemy willing to fight. The 300-mile hike instead was an impressive demonstration of physical resistance and forbearance in the face of material hardships. Guevara arrived in the Escambray mountains and was received with cordiality by the Directorate and with cold hostility by Gutiérrez Menoyo’s men. This was the beginning of the bleak future that awaited Gutiérrez Menoyo. Cienfuegos, for his part, proceeded to northern Las Villas, where a small guerrilla band hastily organized by the Communists operated. At the last moment, the Communists had decided to abandon their opposition to the armed struggle. “It’s never too late to enjoy good fortune,” says a somewhat incongruous Spanish proverb, which was fulfilled on that occasion. The veteran Stalinists were the last to climb on the bandwagon, but they’re still aboard today. Camilo Cienfuegos should have kept going west, where a guerrilla front organized by Comandante Escalona was waiting for him. Escalona commanded a “stationary front,” to borrow a meteorological term. No fighting ever happened on that front. Its mission was to prepare a base of operations for when Comandante Cienfuegos arrived. But Cienfuegos never came: it wasn’t necessary. In the western mountains, Batista’s army continued to demonstrate its absolute incapacity to fight. It was undermined by cowardice and corruption. The rapacious and shameless General Tabernilla, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his equally rapacious and shameless subordinates, turned the war into a business venture by selling material. One example: Colonel Sosa Blanco, a fearless man when it came to murdering defenseless peasants and burning their thatched huts, but incapable of facing armed and dangerous people. One day the Colonel and his troops arrived at the outbuildings of a sugar refinery, situated some twenty miles from Holguin. The soldiers hurriedly dismounted their trucks, falling over themselves in a mad scramble to get to a nearby park where there was a grove of coconut trees. The desperate soldiers climbed those trees like monkeys and knocked down every coconut, which they opened with their bayonets and devoured as if someone were going to take them away. Meanwhile, the townspeople and other witnesses looked on in astonishment. The frenzied enthusiasm that Colonel Sosa Blanco’s troops demonstrated for coconuts had a very simple explanation: they were starving. Their scoundrelly colonel had sold their rations. Batista’s army continued to prepare and launch attacks on rebel positions, but they always had the same result: defeat and desertion. Although these were small fights, sometimes only skirmishes, Radio Rebelde, the guerrilla’s clandestine station, referred to every encounter as a “battle.” One of these so-called battles (not that it matters, but I don’t remember what it was named) was described as “one of the greatest defeats ever sustained by a modern army.” How was it possible that such a propaganda fraud could have gone undetected? We didn’t suspect. No one suspected—even though the magnitude of those

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lies was self-evident—because we were all overpowered by hope, which makes men blind. When Pandora opened her blessed box and let loose all those evils, the last to escape was hope. I sometimes think it would have been better if hope had stayed in the box. The end came. Villages were captured, then towns. Finally, troops led by Comandante Guevara with the assistance of Directorate forces under the command of Rolando Cubelas attacked the city of Santa Clara. Batista sent an armor-plated train to reinforce the city. However, the train and its contents served only to rearm the rebels, who had captured it but rather had bought it from the colonel Batista had entrusted with this last-ditch mission. Santa Clara fell to the rebels in late December 1958. On the morning of January 1, 1959, having fulfilled his historic mission, Batista fled the country. We thought then that all vistas were opening to us. And so it was, but only for the chosen few who have lived like princes since that day. The fugitive tyrant headed for Santo Domingo. The Americans didn’t want him in their country, even though they granted asylum to some of his worst henchmen. Batista made a bad choice: Rafael Léonidas Trujillo, the fiery Dominican despot, had many scores to settle with Batista and availed himself of this opportunity to get even. Trujillo moved him violently from one place to another, terrorized him (which wasn’t hard to do); corralled him (which is the best word to use in his case); forced him to clean the toilet of his cell, and, lastly, stripped him of several million of his heart’s dollars. I know that this is of absolutely no historical importance, but I am a vengeful man and I take great satisfaction in narrating the misfortunes of scoundrels. Alas, Batista’s travails were not many. Another dictator, Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, granted Batista asylum on the condition that he remain on the Isle of Madeira. There (and later in Estoril and Costa del Sol), Batista spent his final years, enjoying the golden exile of thieving rulers. But I waited. I expected he would be punished as he deserved, either by Fidel or Providence. Years later, the Sandinistas signed a family pact with the Montoneros that entrusted the Argentine terrorists with the assassination of the deposed dictator Somoza, then living in Uruguay. Fidel attempted no such undertaking against Batista, even though he has managed (or rather others working under his orders have managed) to pull off much more difficult and risky things. Providence failed me too. I had expected something like the cancer that killed Machado, but it was not to be. Many years after the fall of the tyrant, I was waiting at a stop on Santa María del Mar beach for a bus to take me back to Havana. Meanwhile, I was keeping one eye on a certain diminutive young man whose wild perambulations threatened the public safety. At a certain moment when he tried to cross the street, I took the necessary measures against the subject in question. It was then that I heard, from passers-by on the street, that

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Fulgencio Batista had died of a stroke, sweetly and quietly, in his luxurious residence in Spain. “Daddy, I’m a big boy,” said my five-year old son Ernesto, enraged at what he considered excessive control over his person. I lowered my gaze and looked sadly at that tiny and mischievous being who meant the world to me. I recalled at that instant that Batista, while in the last years of his millionaire exile, had lost one of his numerous male offspring to leukemia, and I conceived the hope that the wretch loved his children as I love mine. A malignant idea, perhaps, but comforting. The designs of Providence are inscrutable, as my mother used to say. But not so men’s designs. As I scrutinize Fidel’s designs, I can’t help thinking that the indifference he demonstrated to Batista’s fate, the dolce vita that he allowed the tyrant to enjoy in his exile, was in large measure due to a conscious or unconscious sense of gratitude. Fidel has been able to do everything that he has done thanks to the Revolution. This is not my idea; it belongs, as far as I know, to Carlos Alberto Montaner. Without Batista there would have been no Revolution; without the aborting of Cuban democracy on March 10, 1952, there would have been no Fidel Castro. And even with Batista’s disruption of the democratic process in Cuba, if only he had not destroyed the professional army and replaced it with a parody of an army after his own image and likeness, cowardly and corrupt like him. Then Fidel’s fate would have been very different, as would have that of our country and all its people. Fidel would then have had to face troops led by career officers of the caliber of a General Martí Zayas Bazán; Colonel Lezama (“according to his instructors at West Point, my father was capable of commanding an 100,000-man army,” José Lezama Lima said proudly one day); men like Colonel Martín Helena, Colonel Barquín, or even the same Captain José “Gallego” Fernández who is today Fidel’s unconditional follower. Had Fidel had such men as adversaries, he and his guerrillas would have met with the same fate as the Salvadoran rebels, or, worse yet, Ernesto Guevara in Bolivia. I don’t think that Gary Prado, the Bolivian captain who commanded the troops that annihilated Guevara’s guerrillas, was a military genius; he was only a competent and gutsy officer.

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4 Guerrillas at War Marta San Martín and Ramón L. Bonachea The militarism of Cuban society is now undeniable. Various students of the revolution have observed the increasing dominance of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which has dampened early hopes that the Cuban Revolution would not fall prey to a professional military machine. On the surface, the militarization of Cuba seems to be the result of a policy geared toward establishing a strong defense on the home front as well as in respect to the United States. Yet the larger question is whether any underdeveloped nation can acquire the appropriate tools with which to allocate and distribute its economic, social and political resources without resorting to militarization. Has the Cuban leadership concluded that only men from the armed forces can move the revolution into a new economic and political takeoff phase? Has the Cuban Revolution become institutionalized in the structure of the FAR while it still retains an uncompromising communist party? What new ideological dimensions have resulted from the militarization of the revolution? These are some of the important questions that must be raised about the Cuban military if one is to grasp recent changes in Cuba. From Rebels to Soldiers General Batyn Dorzh, minister of defense of the People’s Republic of Mongolia, pointed out, after touring Cuba’s military establishment, that one of the most important achievements of the Cuban Revolution was the development and consolidation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.”1 This accomplishment, he said, had been made possible by the Soviet Union. Similarly, when Army General Heinz Hoffman, minister of national defense of the GDR, visited the San Antonio Air Force Base last spring, he reminded the Cubans that every socialist nation was in debt to the Red Army of the Soviet Union for the achievements of 36

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their armies.2 Brigadier General Carlos Araya Castro, heading the delegation of Chilean Armed Forces that visited Cuba in January 1971, praised the “seriousness” of the Cuban Armed Forces’ training Programs. 3 All of these observations lend weight to Major Fidel Castro’s assertion that Cuba’s FAR is today the strongest, most modern, most professional military organization in Latin America. Certainly as early as 1964 the U.S. State Department had agreed that Cuba’s FAR constituted the most powerful military establishment in the area.4 Though economic and domestic policies such as the unfulfilled ten-million-ton sugar quota or the March 1968 revolutionary offensive have captured the attention of Cuba’s observers, the role of the military is the single most important development of recent years, and one that is rapidly changing the profile of the revolution. Their professionalism, and to a great extent, technocraticism, impresses one most about the men wearing the olive green uniform. The FAR began with the civilian, middle-class-origin guerrillas who participated in the armed struggle against General Fulgencio Batista. Known as the Rebel Army of the Revolution, they included the insurrectionist groups of the Sierra Maestra and Escambray mountains as well as urban underground fighters from the 26th of July and the Revolutionary Directorate movements. From the Granma landing on December 2, 1956, to the final collapse of the regular army and the government, the rebel forces grew steadily, and included over 1,500 men when they finally reached Havana in January 1959. The extermination of the regular army—by execution, exile and discharge— posed the need for a new one to take on the responsibilities of national defense. Such a task was by no means easy; both Fidel and his brother Raúl have conceded that the rebel army’s lower ranks were mostly illiterate and unfamiliar with military science. Priorities for the defense of the revolution were set early in 1959. First, the revolutionary leaders understood that they must defend the revolution from Batista’s forces within and abroad. Second, the possibility of a U.S.-sponsored intervention, such as in Guatemala in 1954, could not be dismissed, especially after American properties were confiscated. The available manpower in the rebel guerrilla army could not possibly meet such challenges. As a result of these political realities, the National Revolutionary Militias were officially created in October 1959. Majors Raúl Castro and Sergio del Valle and Captain Rogelio Acevedo met with 50 militants to discuss the need for a militia based on voluntary enrollment by workers. It was discussed as a pilot project for the city of Havana, but by 1960 the regulations of the revolutionary militias stated that they would be organized “through units in every cooperative, farm, factory, working and student centers, neighborhoods and/or any state or state related organizations.”5 Militia instructors were drawn from the 26th of July, the Organización Auténtica (OA) and the Revolutionary Directorate underground movements. Rebel army

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officers also volunteered to teach workers the elementary notions of military defense in case of attack. Classes were held after work and on weekends so as not to affect production, and in areas belonging to working centers, military posts or syndicates. The National Revolutionary Militias were to be a supporting and dependent corps of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. The Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria On December 2, 1960, a meeting of decisive importance for the future of the rebel army was held. Headed by Fidel Castro, the meeting was to unite the main revolutionary movements within the military. Cadres were to be formed from among the veterans of the insurrection. Others present at the meeting were Emilio Aragonés, National Coordinator of the 26th of July movement, Faure Chomón, Secretary General of the Revolutionary Directorate, and Blas Roca, Secretary General of the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP). This meeting disclosed the urgent need to build a strong armed forces.6 As a result, the Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria were set up. These cut vertically and horizontally across geographical and occupational lines. There were national EIR for teachers, fishermen, farmers and members of syndicates and provincial EIR encompassing regional and municipal cadres from all professions. Of particular interest were the Escuelas Básicas de Instrucción Revolucionaria (EBIR) especially designed for core revolutionary militants. Classes lasted from three to six months, depending on production schedules, contingency planning, mobilization against counterrevolutionists (the so-called Escambray “bandits”), literacy campaigns, etc. The programs of these schools included the study and discussion of Fidel Castro’s “History Will Absolve Me,” Blas Roca’s “Los fundamentos del socialismo en Cuba” and the controversial manuals of the USSR Academy of Science such as Manual of Political Economy, The Basis of Marxist Philosophy, O. Kuusinen’s Manual of Marxism-Leninism and even Mao Tse-tung’s On Contradictions.7 By the autumn of 1961, the EIR Osvaldo Sánchez School of the Revolutionary Armed Forces had graduated 750 battalion and company instructors. In less than eight months 1,175 students had completed studies at the provincial EIR and 4,000 had been trained at the EBIR. These men and women assumed revolutionary leadership in the areas of production, defense and culture.8 As for the FAR, the injection of fresh cadres could not be more desirable. The EIR and EBIR eliminated the intergroup friction that had characterized the various insurrectionary organizations, particularly the 26th of July and the Revolutionary Directorate movements. The cadres’ politicization through these schools, and their virtual integration within the armed forces, paved the way for the emergence of a united FAR. At last the rebel forces were beginning to look like a modern-day military institution.

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Mass Organizations and the Test of Strength As the revolution moved toward the Soviet Union and showed evidence of a deepening Marxist-Leninist character, the leadership began to adopt a socialist program for each of the existing revolutionary organizations. The EIR and the EBIR were essential tools in providing trained personnel to organize, educate and eventually consolidate the masses. The Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes (AJR) became the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC); the loose vigilance committees started at random in 1959 were turned into sophisticated committees for the defense of the revolution in September 1960. The Revolutionary Directorate, 26th of July, OA and the PSP became the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI), while the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas retained its name but added new cadres and leaders. The first phase of the revolution reached its climax with the April 17, 1961, Bay of Pigs invasion. This began a series of tests of the strength of the revolutionary forces. Despite the confusion and severe measures imposed on the population during this crisis, the revolution successfully met the challenge. The National Revolutionary Militias suffered many casualties but by and large FAR’s ground troops and air force easily decided the outcome. Meanwhile, the revolutionary leadership was waging a fierce fight against the Escambray guerrillas in Las Villas province. The Escambray had been the scene of Ché Guevara’s and Rolando Cubelas’ most resounding victories, such as the attacks on Guinea de Miranda and the Battle of Santa Clara; now it was the setting of new guerrilla warfare—this time against the revolution. Disenchantment with the radical measures of the revolution was not an exclusive prerogative of economically affected classes. The movement in the Escambray region was mostly led by former Castro supporters, ex-guerrillas who had a thorough knowledge of the terrain and respectable expertise in irregular warfare. Of them, the most popular was Porfirio Ramírez, a student leader from Las Villas University and former guerrilla. Equally popular was Major Evelio Duque, who commanded wide support from the Escambray guajiros. At the height of their campaign, official sources estimated that these leaders commanded approximately 3,591 men,9 who comprised 179 guerrilla groups. Open counterrevolutionary activities began throughout the six provinces of Cuba. Groups operated in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Oriente province and the Sierra de los Organos in Pinar del Río province. Others were actively engaged in operations to the south of the city of Havana and around the coastal areas of Matanzas and Las Villas, both to the north and south. The counterrevolutionary guerrilla movement was nurtured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s shipment of arms, food supplies and explosives. In addition, the CIA oversaw the recruitment of an urban underground. A few guerrilla groups attempted to remain independent though the effort was useless

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since they depended on the CIA for military supplies. It is no secret that without the CIA the guerrillas would never have been able to establish their fronts across the island. Regular aid parachuted at night, infiltration of saboteurs from various points in the Caribbean and a continuous flow of intelligence data from the CIA staff at the U.S. embassy in Havana gave the insurgents momentum. Against the persistence of the counterrevolution, the Ministry of the Armed Forces prepared a number of retaliatory measures. The struggle against the Escambray “bandits”—as it is called in Cuban military parlance—became known as the Lucha Contra Bandidos (LCB). Amidst the revamping of the old rebel army, the Ministries of Defense and the Interior rapidly mobilized the CDR and the National Revolutionary Militias. The former participated in Operación Anillo (Ring Operation) while the latter were charged with Operación Cerco (Encirclement Operation). Altogether, 50,000 workers were mobilized from all the surrounding cities and provinces, and 50,000 peasants from various regions of the country.10 Legendary figures from the revolutionary war such as Ché Guevara, Raúl Castro, Faustino Pérez and Raúl Menéndez Tomasevich all took part in the struggle. At Escambray, a column led by Guevara suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Porfirio Ramírez’s guerrillas. After regrouping and charging again, Guevara’s column was ambushed in a place called Potrillo, and as a result his force was cut to pieces. Afterwards, he was rescued by helicopter and transported to the nearby city of Cienfuegos. Raúl Castro encountered a similar fate; he was outmaneuvered by Major Evelio Duque’s outfit, which inflicted heavy casualties on the militias before the terrified eyes of many an Escambray family. At the Sierra Maestra, small guerrilla bands attacked isolated posts of the rebel army. Castro’s response to these defeats was to arm the peasants for self-defense, and after a few sound skirmishes the guerrillas took refuge in the heights of the Sierras. The final drive on the Escambray guerrillas came with the removal of the rural population from the zone of operations. Selective terrorism was applied to any peasants suspected of aiding or abetting the counterrevolutionaries. Executions and imprisonment were frequent. Both the Anillo and Cerco operations succeeded in exterminating the hard core of the insurgents. In November of 1960, before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA suspended most of its aid to these groups. After President Kennedy’s decision to back an invasion of Cuba, and the creation of the CIA-supported Cuban Revolutionary Council, the Escambray guerrillas were on their own. If a U.S.-supported invasion had succeeded the guerrillas would have had a direct claim to power, and the CIA feared that these men were too far to the left in comparison with their counterparts in the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Thus, the CIA discouraged the urban underground movement from joining the guerrillas in the mountains. As the CIA phased out its support for the guerrillas it became a matter of days until they would be exterminated. Guerrillas went to the llanos searching

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for food and supplies and were caught by the revolutionary forces. Without an external base of logistical support they were condemned—as Ché was to be in Bolivia—to total oblivion. The first front to be eliminated was that of Pinar del Río, followed by groups in Camagüey, Havana and Matanzas provinces. The last haven of the guerrilla movement became the Escambray. Some favored trying to get out of the country to join the training camps already underway for the coming invasion. Others decided to stay and continue the fight. Meanwhile, FAR’s offensive escalated in a final effort to clear the country’s rear guard as reports told Castro of the impending invasion. Although Ministries of the Interior and Defense effectively eradicated most of the guerrillas, scattered groups remained hidden in the mountains until well into 1965, when the government finally claimed to have successfully mastered the Lucha Contra Bandidos. Fidel and Raúl Castro make no bones about their deep bitterness about the Escambray episode, in which the revolutionary government lost 500 men and spent between 500 and 800 million pesos.11 For Fidel, Raúl, Ramiro Valdés, Sergio del Valle and others—especially after the nuclear confrontation of October 1962, when the Soviet Union and the United States decided everyone’s status—“arming to the teeth” became necessary if the revolution and its leaders were to survive at all. The tests of Cuba’s strength during the first five years of the revolution tended to consolidate the revolutionary consciousness of the leaders and the people—except those who remained but were philosophically at odds with the socialist regime. The various political and educational campaigns waged during these years increased the feeling of solidarity among the FAR, and their pride in having defended the revolution. The literary output through the Escambray period, the Girón invasion and the Caribbean crisis reflects these sentiments. Poems praised the sacrifice of the literacy brigadistas, and novels depicted the epic of the Escambray,12 while Girón (or Bay of Pigs) was celebrated. The changes in FAR’s profile were noticeable. Many revolutionaries from these campaigns went on to occupy important positions throughout Cuba’s defense system and structure. The youngest fighters went into advanced military schools to become FAR officers, and others joined the intelligence units of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and the Ministry of Defense (MINFAR). Compulsory Military Service On July 26, 1963, Fidel Castro told the people of Cuba that the defense of the fatherland was a duty of everyone, not just of a few. Accordingly, on November 26, 1963, the revolutionary government approved Law 1129, by which it directed every male between the ages of 16 and 44 to register for military service.13

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In April 1964 the first draftees went into the various military schools throughout the island. Many a traditional Cuban family disapproved this measure, for it took their children away from home—an unprecedented event in Cuban history. Certainly Cuba had not been as militaristic as her Latin neighbors. However the Cuban tradition of civilian rule, which had been upset at times by the dictatorships of General Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista and the military skirmishes of the first years of the revolution, now came abruptly to an end. Instrumental in the draft movement were the CDR. Through them youngsters qualifying for service were issued their Servicio Militar Obligatorio (SMO) cards. The SMO reached many youngsters who in the view of the revolutionary government did not study, work and were not engaged in any significant task. The conscription of cadres through the SMO increased the politicization of a substantial sector of the population, particularly the young. To resolve the contradiction between education and national defense, the government gave technical training to the draftees while they were serving in the FAR. Credits were given cadres for the time worked in agriculture or industry.14 Those who remained in the FAR to become future officers attended technological institutes or precollege institutes.15 Altogether a conscripted cadre had to serve three years. Then he had to decide whether to continue with the military or to enroll in one of the three universities or simply to put his knowledge and services to the use of the revolution. Universal conscription insured that there were no criteria for membership in the cadres. To qualify for an officer’s school, however, the cadre member had to be a good communist (belong to one of the mass organizations such as the UJC, have a record of good moral conduct (homosexuals, drunkards, thieves and the like were excluded from membership in mass organizations), demonstrate absolute self-discipline and respect for military discipline, be of a responsible nature (judged by his record of militancy in the mass organization) and above all obey the orders of the chief. The SMO no doubt helped supply the FAR with manpower, not just numerically but qualitatively. Yet it was also instrumental in extending the authority of the military establishment over adolescents and youth. The revolutionary leaders felt no qualms about this trend; it is their philosophy that every Cuban citizen must be a soldier, a student and a worker, or, put into a slogan, “Trabajo, Estudio y Fusil.” The Military and the Party In 1965 the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) was created. Then the Cuban leadership complied to Soviet pressures to patch up their Marxist-Leninist revolution with an earthly touch of reality: the PURS became the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

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The PCC structure places Major Fidel Castro as its first secretary general, prime minister, director of the Institute of Agrarian Reform and commanderin-chief of the revolutionary armed forces. Major Raúl Castro is second in command for each of the above positions. The Politburo is made up of Majors Juan Almeida, Ramiro Valdés, Guillermo García and Sergio del Valle, along with two civilians, President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado and Armando Hart as the secretary of organization. The party’s secretariat is headed by Fidel Castro as chairman, Raúl Castro as vice-chairman, in addition to Major Faure Chomón, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Blas Roca. The party structure bears a striking resemblance to the internal organization of the clandestine 26th of July Movement. In addition, 63 of the Central Committee’s 100 members were military men, and only three women were members16—Vilma Espín (Raúl’s wife), Haydée Santamaría (Hart’s wife) and Celia Sánchez. Responsibility for the decision-making process falls on the first and second secretaries of the party as well as on the members of the Politburo. The Central Committee seems to wield little power except as a supporting body for any and all decisions taken by either Secretariat or Politburo. In 1963, Raúl Castro issued orders to the effect that the creation of the party within the FAR should have priority over the coming years. To create the appropriate objective and subjective conditions a number of steps were taken. First, the FAR conducted a mass media campaign to introduce FAR members to some elementary notions about the forces leading to the creation of Marxist-Leninist parties. Study material for this task involved the Communist Manifesto by K. Marx and F. Engels, the “Historic Mission of the Working Class” and chapters related to the organization and functions of the party in Kuusinen’s Manual of Marxism–Leninism.17 Second, commissions for the creation of the party were developed by selecting the best political instructors from the FAR, including some troop officers. These men were to instruct their comrades about the materials they themselves had previously studied. Last, encounter sessions were held with political commissars from other socialist countries experienced in the building of other communist parties. Shortly thereafter, FAR’s political instructors were sent to Oriente province to begin the pilot construction of the Cuban Communist Party. December 2, 1963, or the seventh anniversary of the Granma expedition, was chosen as the beginning date for this task. One of the main concerns in forming a communist party within the armed forces was to ensure a careful selection of future party members.18 The MINFAR may have chosen Oriente because its army division there was farthest away from key influential members of the old communist guard residing in Havana which had intimate contacts with the USSR embassy. But officially Oriente was chosen for traditional reasons: the building of the party would simulate an invasion recalling both the War of Independence from Spain and the revolutionary war against Batista forces, that is from Oriente to Pinar del Río.19

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The available literature of this period shows a tactful but firm emphasis on the precept that the party in the armed forces had to differ “totally from the experience of the party’s construction in working centers.”20 This zealous preoccupation lends substance to the belief that FAR’s structure was not to be controlled by the remnants of the old Cuban Socialist Party (PSP), which commanded strong support among the working class, or by revolutionary civilians of any of the major movements in the struggle against Batista. Instead the MINFAR, through the Joint Chiefs of Staff, diligently and carefully supervised the arrangements leading to FAR’s screening of future party cadres, leaving no doubt that FAR would control them rather than the other way around. Many of the drilling mottos of the FAR were geared to instill obedience and loyalty not to the party but to the chief, i.e., “to educate the officers and the troops in the principle that the order of the chief is the law incarnating the will of the land,” or “for anything, in any way, and wherever at your orders Commander in Chief.”21 It was this clear-cut distinction that led René Dumont to remark sarcastically that “the Party is still impregnated with a Spanish-American mentality gladly delegating all powers on the Chief, the Caudillo.”22 The construction of the party clearly involved an attempt to avoid disrupting the monolithic nature of FAR’s structure. But during the ensuing two years other events produced deep-seated unrest. First, the dismissal of Major Efigenio Almeijeiras, Vice-Minister of the Armed Forces, began a drive against “inmoral conduct.” This move was followed by an intensive campaign against homosexuals, paving the way for the much-resented UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production). The impact was felt at every echelon of Cuban society and created bitter resentment. Second, a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro was unveiled, and Major Rolando Cubelas, a former leader of the Revolutionary Directorate and president of the University Student Federation, was tried and sentenced to 30 years of hard labor. Other military officers were to participate, along with Manuel Artime, a former civilian leader of the Bay of Pigs invasion. This and the disappearance of Ché Guevara increased the intrigue and uneasiness within the FAR. Third, the People’s Republic of China was suspected of promoting widespread dissaffection against Fidel Castro by means of propaganda within Cuba and abroad. Pekín Informa (the Spanish version of Peking Review) was sent freely in large quantities to army personnel, and in September of 1965 the MINFAR reported that massive distribution was carried out systematically among officers of the FAR by delegates of the Chinese government. Individual contacts were made with officers of the General Joint Chiefs of Staff, of armies, army corps, divisions and chiefs of political sections of the army.23 In February of 1966 Castro charged the Chinese with economic aggression and disclosed China’s attempt to subvert Cuba’s military institutions. Declaring that the government could not tolerate China’s maneuvers to “influence the

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military and administrative cadres through acts amounting to betrayal,”24 Castro came close to a complete break with the People’s Republic of China. In the process it was revealed that pro-Guevarist officers were less willing than their pro-Castroite comrades to compromise with the Soviet Union on Cuban policy toward guerrilla wars in Latin America.25 In spite of Castro’s much-talked-about promises to support such plans there is evidence that he never seriously intended to risk too much on behalf of the idea of “many Vietnams” in Latin America.26 Meanwhile the construction of the party proceeded while the approach changed. It became necessary to instill discipline by preparing cadres loyal to Castro and to his pro-Soviet line. New methods were employed to assess the political and military performance of FAR’s officers. Previously, self-criticism offered many low-ranking officers an opportunity to openly criticize their superiors. A new approach established eight categories according to rank wherein group discussions would take place: privates, corporals, sergeants and officers were grouped under four categories, and officers from the Chief of Sections of the General Staff of Armies, Chiefs of the General Staffs of Divisions, Brigades and Units—including battalions, artillery and company chiefs—would form the remaining four.27 Other structural arrangements concerned the centers of political command: the National Commission of the FAR, the Political Direction of the FAR, Political Sections, the Party’s Bureau, the Bureau of Nuclei, and the núcleos at the base of the military pyramid. The National Commission, headed by Raúl Castro as chairman, was followed by the Political Section, which would select members and from which the Political Direction would be fed the correct orientation. In turn, Political Sections would supervise the party’s work in brigades and armies. The party’s Bureau was to control the activities at the level of battalions, followed by the Bureau of Nuclei, and last the núcleos at the platoon level, the base organization of the party.28 The above scheme parallels that of other mass organizations, especially the CDR, which as a paramilitary organization is closely related to FAR. It contains a national directorate, provincial, regional, municipal, sectional and lastly the local CDR or base organization, which in the FAR is the nucleus. Closely intertwined with the party’s structure in the FAR is the UJC, with cadres up and down the party structure. Together they form the FAR-UJC nucleus, balancing FAR and injecting “militant enthusiasm” in addition to checking the activities of platoon leaders whose behavior is the subject of monthly reports to the Bureau of Nuclei. UJC members can be ready for combat duties with 24 hours’ notice.29 The construction of the party within FAR has not only contributed to the emergence of various military figures but also to their promotion to key positions within the power structure usually filled by civilians. Some of the key men surrounding Fidel Castro are Major Senén Casas Regueiro, first deputy minister

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of the FAR and chief of the General Staff, his brother Major Julio Casas Regueiro, deputy minister of services of the FAR. Major Oscar Fernández Mell, deputy chief of the General Staff, Major José R. Machado, first secretary of the party, Havana province, and Major Julio Camacho, first secretary of the party, Pinar del Rio province, in addition to Majors Julio García Olivera and Roberto Viera Estrada, members of the Central Committee of the CCP and Major José N. Causse, chief of the Political Section, Captain Manuel Peñado, deputy chief of the Political Department of the MINFAR and Major Lino Carreras of the Armored Division. The Ministry of the Interior (MININT) The right arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba is the MININT, one of the country’s most complex and awesome revolutionary institutions. The MININT performs as important a role in the national defense system as the FAR. Its immediate domestic branches are the National Revolutionary Police, the Department of Technical Investigations and well-known Department of State Security. There also is the International Section, dealing mostly with espionage and counterespionage as well as the Liberation Directorate, concerned with guerrilla activities. But the MININT also includes a Joint Chief of Staff supervising the tasks of the MININT’s army divisions. Very little is heard or known about this “secret army,” which commands at least two very important outfits: the Batallones Fronterizos (Bons) and the Milicias Serranas (the LCBs—Lucha Contra Bandidos). The MININT’s army divisions are autonomous bodies reporting directly to Fidel Castro and to Minister of Defense Raúl Castro. The Bons keep a 24-hour constant surveillance along the first lines of defense, the coasts. In case of invasion or small landings the Bons are responsible for prompt execution of orders and strategies. The LCBs are equally important because they patrol the plains and mountains of Cuba. Staffed by and constantly in contact with the peasantry, these military detachments constitute the guardians of the revolution against the “bandits.” In terms of manpower the Bons are an elite corps, since they include able political cadres whose status symbolizes the “exemplary socialist soldiers” who are experts on Marxist-Leninist theory. Their training is carried out jointly by MININT’s and FAR’s political instructors from various military schools, so they are also known as the MININT-FAR forces. Approximately half of the troops are regular FAR soldiers and the other half MININT’s cadres. In the event of an exile raid, or any other irregularity, the units of the MININT-FAR are to report to the MININT Havana headquarters, which in turn notifies the FAR. As for the LCBs these largely stem from the paramilitary CDR organization, the National Militias and regular soldiers from the FAR. Together, these organizations comprise an army within an army, a system that permits a constant flow of intelligence badly needed in a militarized revo-

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lutionary process. Should the army plot against Fidel Castro, either by allowing exile raids or among themselves, the MININT cadres—also known in Cuban parlance as Contra-Seguridad del Estado—are there to see that the attempts are thwarted and punished. The same holds true for the communist party if it should move against the revolutionary leadership. For MININT cadres are present throughout the FAR as well as throughout the party’s top positions, especially at the provincial levels where most positions such as provincial secretaries are held by majors. Major Sergio del Valle,30 Minister of the MININT since October 1968 (replacing Major Ramiro Valdés) has described his ministry’s performance as one of the most important in the field of national defense.31 Major Fidel Castro himself has argued the merits of the MININT when criticisms against it have come from certain sectors such as Havana University students in the School of Humanities and Cuban intellectuals.32 Overall, the MININT is essential to the survival of the revolution as well as to Fidel himself. The Making of a Professional Officer Future professional officers are recruited from the UJC-led Union of Cuban pioneers (UPC), a new concept enveloping the embryo of Fidel Castro’s new “army of cadres.” The UPC embraces children between the ages of seven and 14 years with a membership of one million in 1970.33 Their motto “Pioneers for Communism: We Shall Be Like Ché,” represents the government’s effort to create the “new man” evoked by “Ché” Guevara. One of the objectives in this recruitment is to gradually eliminate universal conscription. However, instead of doing away with the SMO, the revolutionary government has internalized it into the educational system. Prior to September 1970 grade school children were trained in drilling, marching and political instruction until reaching the Escuelas Básicas. From ages 15 to 77 they would serve three years in some branch of the FAR. Until 1966, secondary and pre-university schools were not so militarized. In that year Raúl Castro issued orders for the first Camilo Cienfuegos military school with an enrollment of 300 students.34 This pilot project generated five similar schools throughout the remaining provinces. The Camilo Cienfuegos enroll children between ages 11 to 17 and are coeducational institutions which provide secondary and pre-universitary education under regimentation paralleling FAR’s cadet military schools. In 1972 it included 12,000 students through the six provinces; these youngsters were called “the principal source feeding the schools of technical cadres as well as cadres for the FAR’s command posts.”35 While the secondary and pre-university schools are in operation alongside the Camilo Cienfuegos, the latter will gradually replace the last vestiges of civilian-oriented public instruction. In the view of the government, if the revolution is to survive its economic crises, more disciplined cadres must be formed.

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After the “Camilitos”—as these students are known—have completed their basic pre-college education they are absorbed into the CEM, or Centros de Estudios Militares. The CEM is a conglomerate of military schools, the foremost of which is the Instituto Técnico Militar founded on September 16,1966, in the former building of Belén School where Fidel Castro graduated from high school. The ITM became a reality thanks to Soviet advisors and the students themselves. Previously, technicians were trained in other socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union. In this sense, the ITM was a step in the direction of training Cubans in Cuba with the help of Soviet instructors and Cubans already trained in the Soviet Union. Until 1971 students enrolling in the ITM came from the Secundarias Basicas and the Pre-universitarias. This pattern changed with the increasing output of “Camilitos”; by the end of 1971, 74 percent of the incoming recruits came from the Camilo Cienfuegos schools.36 Once in the ITM students are given a 45-day training course known as the Soldier’s School where they are further acquainted with the life, rule and regulations of the armed forces. They are also given short courses on physical fitness, tactics, engineering training, preventive measures against mass extermination weapons, political instruction and topography. They are compelled to engage in agricultural production in areas programmed for these camps. Before actually enrolling in the ITM’s schools their work and study is evaluated by faculty members who decide if they meet the standards and/ or if vacancies are available.37 Overall the ITM is a fine technological training institution preparing officer-technicians to assume professional positions in the modernized FAR. There are four major schools at the ITM: the School of Geodesy and Construction, specializing in phototopography, construction of anti-aircraft shelters, cartography and land surface; the School of Mechanics, emphasizing physics, chemistry and machinery, especially tanks, heavy equipment and armaments, mechanical aviation and engineering; and the Schools of Electrical Mechanics and Radiotechnical Mechanics, specializing in rocketry armaments, radar, wireless communications, radio-navigation, radio-communication and automatic computer systems.38 These studies last from three to five years depending on whether the student wants to become a technician or an engineer. Not all students pursue technical training though FAR emphasizes qualified technical manpower. Those who choose to become strictly military officers, and who have completed their secondary and pre-college schooling, will, depending on their aptitudes and socialist consciousness, enroll in any of the special military schools under the CEM. If the student prefers the navy he will enroll at Mariel Naval School in Pinar del Río province. If he wants to become an air force cadet he will go to San Antonio, one of the main military installations of the celebrated DAAFAR (Defensa Anti-Aérea de las Fuerzas Aéreas Revolucionarias) where most of the sophisticated rockets and air force planes are found.

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But with most armies the trend is to enroll in any of three main military schools of the FAR: the “General Maceo Inter-Armas School,” which includes the Schools of Communications and Infantry, the Máximo Gómez Military School specializing in artillery and armored equipment, or the Advanced School of War reserved for the best military officers trained at any one of the CEM’s special military schools or in the Soviet Union. Ever since the Cuban Revolution proclaimed its allegiance to socialism there has been a marked emphasis on preparing responsible personnel to occupy decision-making positions in agriculture, industry, the military or education. This qualified manpower has been termed cadres or, more specifically yet, “command cadres,” a managerial development within the revolution that led René Dumont to suspect the existence of a vastly militarized bureaucracy. After training in Soviet military academies, the revolutionary Cuban leaders have been able to initiate their own training schools such as the ITM, and to replace civilians in key managerial posts by military personnel technically qualified to carry out the programs, exerting stern discipline in the economic area, which has become Cuba’s vital artery. Officers attending the Soviet M.V. Frunze Military Academy, founded in 1918 by Lenin, have ranged from first and second lieutenants to majors who now hold important positions in the military establishment.39 Criteria for selection of faculty members in the Soviet Academy include combat experience, breadth of knowledge in the field of education, direct experience with the country from which the recruits have come, and thorough familiarity with the theater of operations as well as knowledge of the “peculiar local conditions” of each nation sending officers to study at the academy.40 Raúl Castro has asserted that the military establishment represents the most important institution of the Cuban Revolution, and that the nation’s resources are to be placed solidly behind the FAR even if Cuba is forced “to sacrifice some aspects of social development.” The military must be allocated “a greater amount of resource.”41 Some of the results of this intensive training of professional officers deserve mention. In 1960–1961, 750 political instructors—the antecedents of the command cadres—graduated from the Osvaldo Sánchez school. By comparison, in 1970 1,579 professional officers graduated, of whom 90 percent were either members of the UJC or the PCC.42 Similarly, 1,304 cadets graduated from the ITM, the naval academy, and other military schools already mentioned. At least 275 successfully completed training in Soviet military academies and returned to Cuba to assume jobs in any of the CEM’s schools or further studies at the Advanced School of War in Cuba.43 The Military Structure Despite the lack of substantial data concerning the structure of FAR it is safe to say that it appears to function along the model of the USSR Red Army. But

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noticeable variations—the National Militias or the LCBs—answer to Cuba’s specific needs. In terms of weaponry, training and political orientation, FAR may be categorized as a modern professional military institution. To what extent this professionalism is sine qua non of power capability or commendable performance is a question that remains largely unanswered for lack of empirical evidence. In turn, the division of services remains orthodox, with an air force, navy and an army, each with its own general staff under the supervision of the Joint General Staff of the Armed Forces. The structure of Cuba’s FAR ties into the country’s defense strategy. As early as September 20,1961, Fidel Castro projected three types of offensive overtures that remain equally feasible today: a formal or informal U.S.-sponsored Cuban exile invasion, guerrilla warfare or a spontaneous uprising generated by the elimination of the main revolutionary leaders.44 These alternatives are largely cancelled out by the effectiveness of the FARMININT forces controlling mass organizations such as the CDR, UJC and the National Militias. Being dependent paramilitary organizations they can be instrumental in breaking up any urban underground, and since an internal uprising must be planned from inside, an urban underground movement must be developed first. A massive invasion, or an invasion like the Bay of Pigs is not at all impossible and FAR prefers to concentrate on this possibility. As for irregular war or guerrilla warfare, the existence of an underground is concomitant to any successful armed struggle. Because of organizational difficulties the likelihood of this alternative is remote. As for the specific characteristics of Cuba’s topography and geography, FAR has seemingly opted for three main blocks of military concentrations: the Western Army covering the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana and the eastern half of Matanzas: the Central Army including the western half of Matanzas; all of Las Villas province and half of Camagüey; and the Oriente Army extending from Camagüey city to all of Oriente province. This geo-strategic breakdown is followed by a geo-political one, that is, the existence of six independent armies or divisions such as the Independent Army Corps of Pinar del Río, Havana, Matanzas, Las Villas, Camagüey and Oriente. If the island were invaded at several points, resistance could be maintained even if it were cut off in half—witness the opposite effect during 1958 when Batista concentrated his army in Las Villas and Oriente. If the Joint General Chiefs of Staffs were unable to direct operations, the General Chiefs of Staff of the independent armies would continue to pursue pertinent strategies and tactics. Initiative, flexibility and unity of command parallel Fidel Castro’s military and political tactics during the Sierra Maestra days. Military exercises are conducted every month in various parts of the island. The strategy is to crush the invaders before they approach the coast, or to annihilate them entirely if they land. Large quantities of human and material

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resources are mobilized to this end since any hesitation would be costly in terms of lives and time. FAR is a large military machine with unprecedented manpower of approximately 300,000 men; yet it can revert to guerrilla warfare. Theoretically, FAR has the capability to atomize into hundreds or thousands of guerrilla columns to oppose an enemy like the United States. Cuban leaders may not be entirely confident that they can reject a U.S. invasion of Cuba. If such an invasion takes place, FAR would suffer heavy casualties though it ultimately would control the situation, assuming use of conventional weapons only. But the ensuing phases of resistance would be more difficult. Thus, the FAR are trained in guerrilla warfare, and selected units receive careful attention. These vanguard units are usually located in the mountains and have their own independent arms depots camouflaged in the hills and caves. More specifically the Batallones Serranos constitute these guerrilla outfits. The evidence available shows that because of the Serranos’ knowledge of the terrain, their high degree of fighting morale and constant mobility, their counterinsurgency actions have proven lethal against small bands of Cuban exiles who attempt to promote guerrilla warfare. The latest recorded attempt took place on April 17, 1971, when a group commanded by Vicente Méndez unsuccessfully tried to establish a guerrilla center in the region of Baracoa, Oriente province. FAR’s high degree of combat readiness is a response to the “socialist emulation” technique whereby every military unit competes for first place in socialist production, socialist military behavior or socialist performance in the field of battle. One of the most important competitions consists of reaching the highest possible level of politicization for the members of each unit. Such an objective is attained through the study of Marxism-Leninism, the advancement of the party within the FAR and the maintenance of vigilance within the military organization. A Large Military Establishment The need to maintain a large military establishment is emphasized by the leaders of the revolution. Fidel Castro has referred on various occasions to the disproportionate numerical force of the FAR in relation to the total population of Cuba (eight million). In Chile Fidel Castro disclosed that that FAR’s manpower can increase its numbers from 300,000 to 600,000 in 24 hours by adding its paramilitary organizations.45 The leaders of the revolution constantly remind the people that the survival of their revolution depends on the combat preparedness of the mass organizations. If FAR must incorporate more men for defense it can count on the cooperation of roughly a million persons militarily trained from the CDR. The same holds true for the Federation of Cuban Women

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(1.5 million), and the Central Confederation of Cuban Workers (1.5 million) though the CDR (3.5 million) are the most numerous of all. It is doubtful that any other Latin American army could mobilize such an impressive manpower, or that it could match FAR’s technological prowess. Unlike Argentina or Chile, Cuba never had a professional navy despite its geographic situation. With the revolution, Cuba’s heavy, often obsolete vessels have been exchanged for a large fleet of Soviet-built speed boats such as the Krondstads, Komar I and II. Numerous naval posts have been erected along the coasts, particularly in the inlets and small bays. The navy’s own approach to defense has also undergone palpable transformations. Until 1971, the navy maintained a surveillance system to intercept exile commando raids, and to capture Cubans trying to leave the country clandestinely. The persistent attempts of several exile organizations to infiltrate the island has prompted Fidel Castro to order the navy to intercept vessels navigating too close to the coast, and to capture known counterrevolutionary ships cruising the Caribbean. This policy and the navy’s efficiency in accomplishing such objectives have greatly discouraged exile raids, and have alerted potential counterrevolutionaries of the dangers involved in attacking Cuba’s coastal villages. The traditional immunity of vessels in international waters is disregarded by the Cuban government. Recently there were rumors that the USSR was building a submarine base at the port of Cienfuegos in Las Villas province. The U.S. State Department immediately complained to the Soviet Union, and an Izvestia analyst reported such assertions were groundless.46 However, the southern part of Cienfuegos has been made available to Russian ships, possibly for refueling or repair work, and plausibly for propaganda effects. No concrete evidence exists to assume that facilities have been established there “to service missiles or Y-class nuclear missile submarines.”47 Militarization of Society The final militarization of Cuban society may be traced to Castro’s speech on the 11th anniversary of the Palace Attack, March 13, 1968. The striking note in that address was the take-over of whatever remnants of the private sector had been able to survive earlier revolutionary measures.48 The new policy of the revolution, known as the “revolutionary offensive,” signaled a turning point which would require the utmost utilization of human resources for a huge economic mobilization in anticipation of the much-heralded ten-million-ton sugar harvest. One of the aspirations of the leadership in setting forth the offensive was to achieve a technological revolution in the field of agriculture. Fidel himself claimed that Cuba’s agriculture “in the shortest period of time will become the most developed, mechanized, technical and productive of the world.”49 To that effect the revolutionary leaders initiated the famous “Jornada de Girón” whereby

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production in every working center would—as a matter of moral and revolutionary commitment—surpass all goals. Aside from using the Jornada to mobilize the masses for economic production—as the Cuban leadership had been doing every year—the Jornada would function along the guidelines of Cuba’s civil defense to “make sure by means of practice all the plans elaborated at war time.”50 To this end, people were mobilized into squadrons, platoons, companies and battalions at the level of provinces, regions and municipalities under the supervision of the party from civil defense command posts. Mass organizations like the UJC numbered 40,000 and the FAR contributed with 60,000 regular soldiers. Of these, 20,000 came from the technological institutes headed by a contingent of high-ranking officers from the General Joint Chiefs of Staff and eight members of the Central Committee led by Juan Almeida of the Politburo.51 This large force concentrated its efforts in the provinces of Camagüey and Oriente where absenteeism was sharpest. In the cities, workers moved from their homes to the respective working centers for several weeks and sometimes months. These centers were christened “Centros Guerrilleros” because of the exemplary labor productivity achieved by means of voluntary working hours. In addition, the party called for the formation of the Youth Centennial Column which would be established by 40,000 UJC volunteers ranging from ages 17 to 27 years. This force would be deployed throughout Camagüey province for three consecutive years, or until 1971. To prepare this column for economic tasks the FAR arranged short courses lasting 20 days and involving military topics. According to Raúl Castro each provincial UJC would recruit volunteers in the following numbers: Oriente, 15,000; Camagüey, 5,000; Las Villas, 10,000; Matanzas, 3,000; Havana, 15,000; and Pinar del Río, 2,000. Altogether they would add up to 50,000 young people working in Camagüey.52 By August of 1968, five months after launching the revolutionary offensive on the economy, 350,000 workers, students, soldiers and peasants were mobilized in the agricultural field. One of the immediate effects of the revolutionary offensive was the ebullient, almost frenzied mood that overcame the masses. Such disposition underlined a sense of urgency and feverish desire to tackle the aggressive challenge of the coming ten-million-ton sugar harvest. The revolutionary leadership was confident that the new approach to economic production would substantially solve, perhaps alleviate, the problems of discipline, absenteeism, waste and almost chaotic disorganization among workers, administrators, auditors and political cadres. Raúl Castro, for one, at Camagüey felt that a “revolutionary offensive” organized along military lines would offer sound proof that such techniques must be utilized in every sugar harvest from then on. He made it clear that the “revolutionary offensive is not a simple political password but a plan of action geared to further production . . . to raise the consciousness, cultural and political level of the people, to deepen the ideological struggle against the remnants of the past.”53

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The leadership saw the issue as the lack of discipline and coordination in agriculture as well as in industry. The sense of attack injected in 1968 was directed at regrouping—in the economic and psychological sense—and counterattacking. Thus when Fidel Castro officially launched the ten-million-ton sugar harvest goal on October 27, 1969, he bitterly asserted that the problem was discipline, and it had to be solved at once.54 Less than a month later he called on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba to exert their influence concerning administrative and decisionmaking matters. Of them he said that “the Army, the Armed Forces, is a disciplined institution par excellence; they have more experience in organization, and have more discipline. It is necessary that the positive influence of such organizational spirit, of discipline, of experience, be constantly exerted.”55 In this mood, the FAR became a decisive factor in the ten-million-ton sugar harvest. And so it was that from November 1969 to mid-summer 1970, 100,000 men from the FAR were mobilized in agriculture.56 This manpower did not include the members of the Ministry of the Interior whose forces also participated in the canefields. FAR’s participation in the harvest became known as Operación Mambí. At the managerial level FAR’s presence became more than obvious. Not only were the command posts staffed by lieutenants and captains, but the party’s secretariats at the provincial level were undertaken mostly by FAR’s majors, such as Guillermo García in Oriente, José R. Machado Ventura in Havana, Julio Camacho in Pinar del Río, Arnaldo Milián in Las Villas and Rogelio Acevedo in Camagüey. The above, together with the number of cabinet positions already filled by FAR majors, could only confirm a vision of militarism throughout Cuban society. Cuba had evidently made vital commitments to the Soviet Union in regard to sugar exports; to achieve a satisfactory level of production entailed crucial decisions on the part of the revolutionary government. Fidel Castro chose to bring in large FAR contingents to solve the crises of absenteeism and disorganization. FAR-officers trained in the ITM or the provincial technological institutes were supposedly better equipped to make economic decisions, and to handle heavy agricultural equipment. At the same time, by incorporating soldiers and officers into agricultural tasks, the revolutionary leaders were averting the potential problems of an idle military manpower stationed only in the barracks. The most controversial aspect of the 1970 sugar harvest, which prompted harsh criticism from René Dumont, the closest economic advisor Fidel Castro has had from Europe,57 was the issue of puestos de mando, or the military structuring of the economic sector. The Cuban government is unfolding a subtle campaign to erase this idea from the minds of foreign observers. Thus, Pelegrín Torres, a Cuban economist, has denied that the command posts are structured along military lines and discloses that Fidel Castro has suggested “their names be changed to Agricultural Provincial Departments.”58

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A similar response has come from the field of education. In a recent article about the school system in Cuba, newspaperman Lionel Martín critically notes that “in the last few years there has been a trend in the school system, particularly among the free boarding schools toward what the Cubans themselves call ‘militarization’ that is, applying a kind of military discipline in the schools.”59 These are but sparse indications that the Cuban leaders are slowly attempting to disengage themselves from the image of a militarized society. The question is whether it is a passing strategy or an outright policy. Presently, however, the social and economic militarization of Cuba appears to be the almost natural consequence of all the steps taken by the leadership to consolidate the revolution without relinquishing political power. In 1972, military personnel hold key positions in society, at the national, provincial and municipal levels. The military presence must be reckoned with as part of the contemporary revolutionary scenario. To think that this process can be reversed in 24 hours—as if it were a matter of concentrating the masses at the Plaza of the Revolution—seems at best wishful thinking. For one must remember that precious time, resources and organizational energy—to say nothing of money—have been used to erect this awesome military complex. At this point the question is whether the price of militarism has been the loss of all other elements of the revolution’s earlier claim to producing a just and abundant and free society. For a revolutionary process that says it is committed to the people but becomes stagnated in the hands of the military certainly frustrates the spontaneous flow of ideas. Needless to say, under this rigid climate the people will not produce more but less. Whatever vestiges of freedom may still be enjoyed by small cliques, whatever claims are made to “democratization,” the empirical evidence hardly supports such illusory assumptions. In the late sixties Fidel Castro was confronted with a decisive choice: to reorganize the entire system allocating power where it should belong, that is, with the people, or to confer this power on an institution that would be loyal and responsive to him. He has opted for the second choice in the hope that discipline is the cure for economic, social, cultural and political illnesses. The Cuban Revolution has been victimized, and delivered into the hands of a few men striving for supra-natural power. The creative, dynamic, humanistic and populist ingredients of the revolution apparently were expendable to the Maximum Leader. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Granma Weekly Review, January 16, 1972. Granma Weekly Review, April 25, 1971. Granma Weekly Review, January 30, 1972. U.S. Department of State, U.S. Policy Toward Cuba (Washington, D.C., 1964), p.2. Reglamento de las Milicias Revolucionarias, Verde Olivo, No. 1, 1960, p. 38.

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6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

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Lionel Soto, “Dos años de instrucción revolucionaria,” Cuba Socialista III, 18, February 1963, p. 30. Lionel Soto, “Las Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria y la formación de quadros,” Cuba Socialista I, No. 3, November 1961, p. 33. Ibid., pp. 40–41. Raúl Castro, “Graduación del III Curso de la Escuela Básica Superior ‘General Máximo Gómez,’” Ediciones El Orientador Revolucionario 17, 1967, p. 11. Also Fidel Castro, “Décimo aniversario de la creación del MININT,” Granma Weekly Review, June 17, 1971. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 11. See Norberto Fuentes Los condenados del condado (Havana: Casa de las Américas 1968); Víctor Casaus. Girón en la memoria (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1970); and Jésus Díaz, Los años duros (Havana, 1966). Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, Memorias de 1963 (Havana: Ediciones con la Guardia en Alto, 1964), p. 193. Raúl Castro, “Speech on May 1, 1968 in Camagüey.” Política Internacional, Nos. 22–23–24, 1968, p. 136. Verde Olivo IX, No. 48, December 1968, p. 18. Four members of the Central Committee, Juan Vitalio Acuña, Antonio Sánchez Díaz, Alberto Fernández Montes de Oca, and Eliseo Reyes Rodríguez, were killed with Major Ché Guevara in Bolivia in 1967. José N. Causse Pérez, “La construcción del Partido en las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Cuba,” Cuba Socialista V, No. 47, July 1965, p. 52. See Fidel Castro’s speech “Fidel Castro Denounces Bureaucracy and Sectarianism” (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1962), pp. 13–14. Verde Olivo, December 5, 1971, p. 71. José N. Causse, op. cit., p. 55. Also see Combatiente IV, No. 10. May 1, 1965, p. 12, and IV, No. 11, May 15, 1965. Combatiente is the newspaper published by the Army of Oriente. Raúl Castro, “Discurso en la graduación de la Escuela de Cadetes InterArmas ‘Antonio Maceo’ y la Escuela de Artílleria ‘Camilo Cienfuegos,’” Política Internacional 7, No. 25, 1969, pp. 330–31. René Dumont, Cuba: ¿es socialista? (Caracas: Editorial Tiempo Nuevo, 1970), p. 26. Granma, February 6, 1966. Ibid. Peking Rundschau No. 19, 1966, p. 9. Interview with Major C. Rojas, former Political Commissar of the FAR, February, 1972. José N. Causse Pérez, op. cit., p. 56. Ibid., pp. 60–61. Juventud Rebelde, February 3, 1970. Major Sergio del Valle is a medical doctor by profession, and one of the first physicians to have joined Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra.

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31. Sergio del Valle, “Discurso en el Fórum de Orden Interior,” Pensamiento Critico No. 45, October 1970, p. 163. 32. See the entire text of Armando Hart’s speech in the Schools of Humanities and Philosophy at Havana University. Política Internacional, Year 7, No. 26, 1969, pp. 269–84. 33. Granma Weekly Review, February 28, 1971. 34. González Tosca, “Escuelas,” Verde Olivo, December 5, 1971, p. 90. 35. Ibid., p. 90. 36. Luis López. ‘’Futuros ingenieros y técnicos,” Verde Olivo, December 5, 1971, pp. 51–51. 37. Luis López, op. cit., p. 52. 38. Marta Borges, “La preparación militar como parte muy importante de la formación del hombre nuevo,” Verde Olivo IX, No. 31, August 4, 1968. pp. 37–41. 39. Gregorio Ortega, “Cubanos en la Academia Militar ‘M.V. Frunze,’” Verde Olivo, December 5, 1971, p. 75. 40. Ibid., p. 81. 41. Raúl Castro, “Discurso de Graduación.” El Orientador Revolucionario 17, 1967, pp. 5 and 24. 42. Granma Weekly Review, August 23, 1970. 43. Ibid. 44. Fidel Castro Ruz, El instructor revolucionario tiene que ser ejemplo (Instrucción MINFAR, Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, 1961). 45. Granma Weekly Review, December 19, 1971. 46. Izvestia, October 10, 1972, p. 2. 47. New York Times, April 7, 1972. 48. To give an idea, 57,600 businesses were nationalized in two weeks, and people’s administrators were appointed by the local CDRs. See Raúl Castro, “Discurso del 1° de Mayo en Camagüey,” Política Internacional VI, Nos. 22– 24, 1968, p. 122. 49. Fidel Castro. “Discurso en el estadio deportivo de Batabanó el 17 de julio de 1968,” Política Internacional VI, Nos. 22–24, 1968, p. 207. 50. Raúl Castro, op. cit., p. 123. 51. Ibid., p. 134. 52. Raúl Castro, op. cit., p. 136. 53. Ibid., p. 130. 54. Fidel Castro. “Discurso en el teatro ‘Chaplin’ de La Habana, el día 27 de octubre de 1969,’” Política Internacional VII, No. 26, 1969, p. 323. 55. Fidel Castro, “Discurso en el teatro del MINFAR, el 4 de Noviembre de 1969,” Política Internacional VII, No. 26, 1969, p. 351. 56. Ibid., p. 339. 57. René Dumont, “The Militarization of Fidelismo,” Dissent, September–October, 1970, pp. 411–428. 58. Cuba Internacional, February 1971, p. 31. 59. Cuba Internacional, May 1971, p. 18.

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5 Learning from the Cuban Missile Crisis Max Frankel It was a lovely autumn day 40 years ago in October 1962, a day not unlike September 11, 2001, when Americans realized that the oceans no longer protected us from enemy attack. Those old enough to remember the presidency of John F. Kennedy will never forget the fear that swept through homes and cities on October 22, 1962 when the president appeared on television, grave and gray, to proclaim a crisis. Reading a stern ultimatum to the Russians that called them nuclear cheats and liars for placing offensive missiles in Cuba, he also left the impression that his counteractions might any minute provoke a rain of Soviet missiles. The news terrified the public for six days and nights (though less for those of us trained to parse the bellicose words and signals flying urgently between Moscow and Washington). And as Hollywood has demonstrated time and again, the drama of the Cuban missile crisis has the power to instruct, beguile and entertain Americans in every decade. The 2000 film version, with Kevin Costner playing an absurdly fictionalized role as Kennedy’s aide Kenneth O’Donnell, was called Thirteen Days, referring to the period of public alarm plus the period of frantic, secret debate that preceded it as Kennedy planned a response to the discovery of the nuclear rockets in Cuba. If the moviemakers had bothered with the Soviet and Cuban sides of the crisis, they could have made a vastly better film, reasonably called Thirteen Weeks. And had they examined the calamitous miscalculations on all sides, it might have been titled Thirteen Months. Most accounts of the crisis concentrate only on the Washington players, led by the glamorous, nervous president and his shrewd younger brother, Robert. A view of Havana would feature the humbling of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s bearded Robin Hood, and his scheming younger brother, Raúl. In Moscow a bombastic Nikita Khrushchev was drowning in sweat as his boldest Cold War maneuver collapsed into retreat. This is a tale about a fateful triangle. 58

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Like the attacks of 9/11, the missile crisis had deep political roots that were unwittingly nourished by our own conduct. Also like 9/11, our failure to imagine the threat beforehand caused us to ignore the few available warnings. Yet the 1962 showdown left us ill prepared for an Osama bin Laden, because our Soviet foes 40 years ago—though we demonized them as evil aggressors—were rational rivals who valued life. We played nuclear poker against them but shared a common interest in the casino’s survival. As a reporter in Washington I covered the Cuban drama for the New York Times and have studied it faithfully since. Over the years, our knowledge of it has been enhanced by autobiographies written by many participants, by a great deal of scholarship and by nostalgic, on-the-record gatherings of Soviet, American and Cuban officials. We also have had credible reports on the contents of Soviet files and most recently, verbatim records of crisis deliberations in the Kennedy White House. In hindsight, I think two common views need correction. It is clear now that Nikita Khrushchev provoked America not from a position of strength, as Kennedy first feared, but from a chronic sense of weakness and frustration. And it is also clear from the historical record that the two superpowers were never as close to nuclear war as they urgently insisted in public. Calamitous Miscalculations Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, was a gambler who had expected great returns from his radical economic reforms, denunciation of Stalin, release of political prisoners and gradual engagement with the rest of the world. He had visited the United States preaching coexistence and vowing to compete peacefully. But he was under tremendous pressure. The Soviet hold on Easter Europe, a vital zone of defense against hated Germany, remained tenuous; Khrushchev’s generals were clamoring for more expensive weaponry; his people were rioting to protest food shortages; and China’s Chairman Mao was openly condemning Khrushchev for undermining Communist doctrine and betraying revolutionaries everywhere. After the launch of Sputnik in 1957 revealed the sophistication of Soviet rockets, Khrushchev acquired the habit of rattling them at his most stubborn problems. Thanks to his missiles, which cost far less than conventional forces, he was hoping to shift money from military budgets into the USSR’s backward food and consumer industries. By aiming medium-range missiles at West Germany, France and Britain, he hoped to force NATO to acknowledge Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. Toward that end, he kept threatening to declare Germany permanently divided and to expel Western garrisons from Berlin, which lay vulnerable in Communist East Germany. By also rattling long-range missiles at the United States, Khrushchev expected finally to be dealt with as an equal superpower.

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Although President Eisenhower had not directly challenged the Soviets’ sway over Eastern Europe, he had not yielded to any of Khrushchev’s other ambitions. A new and inexperienced President Kennedy, therefore, struck the Soviet leader as a brighter prospect for intimidation. Kennedy had arrived at the White House in early 1961 visibly alarmed by Khrushchev’s newest bluster, a promise to give aid and comfort—though not Soviet soldiers—to support “wars of national liberation” in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Then, in April of that year, Kennedy stumbled into the fiasco of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, the humiliating failure of a CIA-sponsored invasion aimed at overthrowing Fidel Castro. So when Kennedy and the Soviet leader met in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev pummeled the American leader with threats to end Western occupation rights in Berlin and then watched with satisfaction when the president acquiesced in the building of the Berlin Wall. Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev’s taunts was to flex his own missile muscle. During his presidential campaign he had criticized Republicans for tolerating a “missile gap” in Khrushchev’s favor. Now he abandoned that pretense. As both governments knew, the Russians held only 20 or 30 intercontinental missiles, of unreliable design, and were having trouble building more. By contrast, the United States’ missile, bomber and submarine forces could strike 15 times as many Soviet targets. The Kennedy team began to boast not only of this advantage but also to hint that it might, in a crunch, resort to a “first use” of nuclear weapons, leaving Russia unable to strike American targets. Thus stung in the spring of 1962, Khrushchev came up with a bold idea: plant medium-range missiles in Cuba and thereby put most of the United States under the nuclear gun. Without having to wait a decade for long-range missiles that he could ill afford, the Soviet leader would give Americans a taste of real vulnerability, save money for other things and strengthen his negotiating position. Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Soviet defense minister, embraced the idea and helped sell it to dubious Soviet colleagues. Khrushchev’s old chum and American expert Anastas Mikoyan predicted an unpleasant reaction from Washington and a tough sell in Cuba. But Khrushchev thought he could hide the buildup from Kennedy until the missiles were mounted and armed; he hoped to reveal his new poker hand in November during visits to the United Nations and Havana. The Castro brothers were desperate for Soviet weaponry to protect them from American invaders, but they didn’t want sealed-off bases under alien control. To overcome their resistance, Khrushchev forgave Cuba’s debts, promised more economic aid and insisted his missiles would help defend the island and support Castro’s dream of inspiring other Latin revolutions. Castro was not fooled. There were easier ways to deter an invasion; Soviet ground troops in Cuba could serve as a trip wire to bring Moscow into any conflict, or Cuba could be included in Soviet defense agreements. Castro knew he was being used, but agreed to the bases to show “solidarity,” as he put it, with the Communist bloc and to win more aid for his people.

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In Washington as in Moscow, domestic politics fueled the drive toward confrontation. Through the summer of 1962, the U.S. Navy had tracked a large flotilla of ships from Soviet ports to Cuba, while the CIA heard confusing reports about sightings of military equipment on the island. Heading into a close Congressional election, Republicans saw a chance to repay Kennedy for his past attacks on their Cuba policy by mocking his tolerance for a Soviet buildup just go miles from Florida. But the administration’s intelligence teams detected only nonnuclear “defensive” weapons—MIG fighter planes, torpedo boats and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), which had a range of only 25 miles. Having roundly misread each other, Khrushchev and Kennedy brought this diplomatic stew to a boil. The Making of a Crisis Hearing the Republican alarms about missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev sent his ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to Robert Kennedy with assurances that the Soviets would do nothing provocative before the American election. And when RFK complained that the buildup in Cuba was bad enough, the ambassador insisted—in innocence, it would turn out—that his government would never give another nation control over offensive weapons. To fend off the Republicans, the Kennedy brothers hurriedly produced a statement saying that if any nation’s forces were to achieve a “significant offensive capability” in Cuba, it would raise the “gravest issues.” In a deceptive riposte, Khrushchev responded that his long-range missiles were so good he had “no need” to send big weapons “to any other country, for instance Cuba.” OK, then, Kennedy countered, if Cuba ever became “an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union,” he would do “whatever must be done” to protect American security. American analysts concluded that the president’s strong warnings made it highly unlikely that the Soviets would install a missile base in Cuba. After all, they had never placed nuclear weapons outside their own territory, not even in Communist Europe. That fixed American mind-set caused Kennedy to dismiss reports from spies in Cuba of missiles much larger than “defensive” antiaircraft SAMs. Then a dumb coincidence delayed photoreconnaissance. Because on September 9 the Chinese shot down a U-2 plane photographing their terrain, the White House ordered U-2 pilots over Cuba to steer clear of areas protected by SAM defenses. Equally ill timed was the marriage of CIA chief John McCone, a Republican and former businessman who was the only Washington official to have reasoned his way into Khrushchev’s mind. Before embarking on his honeymoon at the end of August, McCone had tried to persuade Kennedy that the SAMs in Cuba could have only one purpose: to prevent U-2 Spy planes from observing Khrushchev’s probable next step—the installation of medium-range missiles ca-

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pable of striking American cities. McCone’s absence meant his suspicions, and insights, were not heard in Washington for most of September. Once McCone returned, he learned that an intelligence analyst had indeed spotted, in a photograph, suspicious bulldozer patterns in the terrain in western Cuba—patterns resembling the layout of missile bases in Russia. McCone insisted on more aggressive reconnaissance, and finally, on October 14, in the suspect area near San Cristóbal, U-2 cameras 13 miles up snapped remarkably clear pictures of medium-range missile transporters, erectors and launchpads. It was compelling evidence of imminent deployment of nuclear weapons capable of striking Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Dallas. Khrushchev, deeply committed to defying Kennedy’s warnings, was, in fact, installing at least 24 medium-range ballistic missile launchers (MRBMs), plus 16 intermediate-range missiles (IRBMs) that could reach any point in the continental United States except the northwest comer. Kennedy, in turn, was just as deeply committed to prohibiting such bases. Upon seeing the U-2 photographs the morning of October 16, he first envisioned an air strike to destroy the missiles before they became operational. His more sober second thought was to keep the news a tight secret until he could take counsel and sift his options. Gauntlets thrown, here began the historic “thirteen days.” The President’s Men Convene What appears in retrospect to have been a quickly devised and effective American plan of action was actually the product of chaotic, contentious debate among official and unofficial advisers. They functioned as a rump “executive committee of the National Security Council,” soon jargonized as “ExComm,” and often met without Kennedy, to free up the discussion. The ranking ExCommers were the president and his brother, the attorney general; Dean Rusk, secretary of state; Robert McNamara, secretary of defense; McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser; Douglas Dillon, secretary of the treasury; Gen. Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other chiefs; John McCone of the CIA; and United Nations representative Adlai Stevenson. They all made a show of keeping their public schedules while moving in and out of secret meetings. From Tuesday, October 16, through Sunday, the 21st, they gulped sandwiches for lunch and dinner and kept their own notes in longhand, without secretaries. They shuttled among meeting sites by crowding circus-style into a few cars, to avoid a telltale herd of limousines. They lied to their wives, to subordinates and to the press. For the climactic hours of decision, the president cut short a campaign visit to Chicago, feigning a bad cold and a slight fever. All this undemocratic secrecy served a policy purpose. The president was afraid that his options could be dangerously reduced if Khrushchev knew he had

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been found out. Kennedy worried that the Soviet leader might then stake out a preemptive threat to retaliate for any attack on his missiles, either by firing some of them or attacking American forces in Berlin or Turkey. Alerting Congress could have provoked demands for swift military action without allowing time to study the consequences. The more the ExComm members talked, the less they agreed on a course of action. Every day brought more evidence of Soviet haste. Some of the missiles, the ExComm members speculated, would surely be armed with nuclear warheads within days, and all within weeks. So what?, the president asked provocatively at one point. He had once said a missile was a missile, whether fired from 5,000 or 5 miles away. And Defense Secretary McNamara held throughout the discussion that 40 or so more missiles pointed at U.S. targets, while perhaps quadrupling the Soviets’ strike capacity, did nothing to alter our huge strategic advantage. The Joint Chiefs disagreed, insisting that by dramatically increasing America’s sense of vulnerability, the Soviet weapons would greatly limit our choices in any future exchange of threats or fire. Everyone soon acknowledged that Soviet bases in Cuba were, at the very least, psychologically and politically intolerable. They would embolden Khrushchev’s diplomacy, especially when it came to his designs in Berlin. They would also enhance Castro’s prestige in Latin America and erode Kennedy’s stature at home and abroad. As if the missiles themselves were not challenge enough, Khrushchev’s deception was seen as undermining U.S.-Soviet negotiations. The president kept posing the issue starkly, insisting there were only two ways to remove the missiles: bargain them out or bomb them out. Bargaining might entail painful concessions in Berlin or the withdrawal of American missiles from NATO bases in Turkey; though the weapons were technically obsolete, they represented commitment to an ally. Bombing Cuba would surely kill Russians and risk Soviet counterattack against American bases in Florida or Europe. (Our southern coast lacked radar defenses; as General Taylor observed prophetically at the time, “We have everything, except [the capability] to deal with a simple aircraft coming in low.”) In any case, a strike at Cuba was bound to miss some missiles and require a follow-up invasion to seize the island. Small wonder the advisers changed opinions as often as they changed clothes. For every possible “if,” they conjectured a discouraging “then.” If we withdrew our missiles from Turkey, then the Turks would shout to the world that American guarantees are worthless. If we sent a Polaris missile submarine into Turkish waters to replace the missiles, the Turks would say we always slither out of harm’s way. What if we warn Khrushchev of a coming air strike? Then he’ll commit to a violent response. And if we don’t warn him? Then he’ll suffer a surprise attack,

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seize the moral high ground and announce that the United States would rather risk world war than live with the vulnerability that all Europeans have long endured. Round and round they went. What about a U.S. naval blockade of Soviet weapons coming into Cuba? Well, it would not remove missiles already in place or prevent deliveries by air. A total blockade? That would offend friendly ships but not hurt Cuba for months. Time grew short. Many Soviet missiles were installed, and the scent of crisis was in the air. At the New York Times, we heard of canceled speeches by the Joint Chiefs and saw officials being summoned away from their own birthday parties. Lights at the Pentagon and State Department blazed at midnight. We clamored for enlightenment, and officials mumbled about trouble in Berlin. Kennedy heard us approaching and asked our bureau chief, James “Scotty” Reston, to call him before we printed anything. Thursday, October 18, was the day for a double bluff when Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko paid a scheduled visit to the White House. He sparred with the president over Berlin but held tightly to his written-out claim that only “defensive” weapons were going to Cuba. Though angry, Kennedy and Rusk pretended to be fooled. The president had told ExComm earlier that morning that he discounted the threat of a nuclear attack from Cuba—”unless they’re going to be using them from every place.” He most feared nonnuclear retaliation in Europe, probably in Berlin. But as McNamara put it to the group, firm action was essential to preserve the president’s credibility, to hold the alliance together, to tame Khrushchev for future diplomacy—and by no means least—to protect the administration in domestic American politics. Most important, ExComm had the benefit of the considered views of Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, Jr., the just-returned ambassador to Moscow who knew Khrushchev better and longer than any Western diplomat. He thought the Soviet leader intended for his missiles to be discovered—to invigorate his campaign against the West. Thompson felt that Khrushchev might well respect a U.S. weapons blockade and was unlikely to risk a fight in faraway Cuba. While he might strike impetuously at Berlin, that was a gamble he had been reluctant to take for four years. Returning Saturday from Chicago with his “cold,” Kennedy seemed to buy Thompson’s assessment. He was ready to risk a Berlin crisis because, as he had told the ExComm, “if we do nothing, we’re going to have the problem of Berlin anyway.” A blockade would buy time. They could always ratchet up tougher action if Khrushchev didn’t back down. Kennedy was plainly haunted, however, by the Bay of Pigs and by his reputation for timidity. So he ended the week’s deliberation by again cross-examining the Joint Chiefs. Would an air strike destroy all the missiles and bombers? Well, 90 percent. And would Russian troops be killed? Yes, for sure. And couldn’t

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Khrushchev just send more missiles? Yes, we’d have to invade. And wouldn’t invasion provoke countermoves in Europe? The president decided to avoid violent measures for as long as possible. But he did not want to reveal the tactical reasons for preferring a blockade. He insisted his aides use “the Pearl Harbor explanation” for rejecting an air strike— that Americans do not engage in preemptive surprise attacks—a disingenuous rationale that Robert Kennedy piously planted in histories of the crisis. Story of a Lifetime When I learned from his butler that the West German ambassador was fast asleep before midnight Friday, I became certain that the agitation in Washington did not concern Berlin, and so my Times colleagues and I focused on Cuba. And if it was Cuba, given all the recent alarms, that had to mean the discovery of “offensive” missiles. On Sunday, October 21, as promised, Scotty Reston called the White House. When Kennedy came on the line, Scotty asked me to listen on an extension. “So you know?” Kennedy asked Reston, as I recall it. “And do you know what I’m going to do about it?” “No, sir, we don’t,” Reston answered, “except we know you promised to act, and we hear you’ve asked for television time tomorrow night.” “That’s right. I’m going to order a blockade.” I was tasting a great story when Kennedy dropped the other shoe. If he lost the element of surprise, he went on, Khrushchev could take steps that would deepen the crisis. Would we suppress the news in the national interest? Reston called a meeting. For reasons patriotic or selfish, I at first resisted granting the president’s request. A blockade is an act of war. Did we have the right to suppress news of a superpower war before Congress or the public had even an inkling of danger? Reston phoned the president again and explained our concern. Did Kennedy want secrecy until after the shooting had begun? “Scotty,” the president said, “we’ve taken a whole week to plan our response. I’m going to order a blockade. It’s the least I can do. But we will not immediately attack. You have my word of honor: there will be no bloodshed before I explain this very serious situation to the American people.” Given the president’s word of honor, I believe to this day that we were right to defer publication by 24 hours. Kennedy’s reasons were persuasive: our disclosure could have led the Soviets to threaten a violent response against the blockade and thus provoke a violent conflict. But I took my name off the fudged story I wrote for Monday’s paper: “Capital’s Crisis Air Hints at Development on Cuba,” which, without mentioning missiles or a blockade, said the president would deliver news of a crisis. Like the Washington Post, which had been similarly importuned by the president, we held back most of what we knew.

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Kennedy’s speech that Monday evening, October 22, was the most menacing of any presidential address during the entire Cold War. Although the Senate leaders whom he had just briefed deplored his reluctance to attack, Kennedy stressed the danger implicit in the moment: “[T]his secret, swift, and extraordinary build-up of Communist missiles … in violation of Soviet assurances, and in defiance of American and hemispheric policy … is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country if our courage and our commitments are ever to be trusted again by either friend or foe.… Should these offensive military preparations continue … further action will be justified.… It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Americans certainly did not underrate the gravity of events; families drew close, planned emergency escapes, hoarded food, and hung on every news bulletin. Friendly governments supported the president, but many of their people feared his belligerence, and some marched in protest. In a private letter to Khrushchev, Kennedy vowed to stand firm in Berlin, warning him not to misjudge the “minimum” action the president had taken so far. The Kremlin’s response encouraged both ExComm and diplomatic observers. While denouncing America’s “piracy” at sea and instructing Soviet agents abroad to fan the fear of war, the Kremlin obviously had no ready plan for counteraction. Berlin was calm; so were our bases in Turkey. Moscow’s governmentcontrolled press pretended that Kennedy had challenged little Cuba rather than the Soviet Union. Khrushchev assented at once when the U.N. Secretary General, U Thant, tried to broker a pause for negotiation, but Kennedy decided to balk. In fact, Washington prepared a blunt notice about how the United States planned to challenge Soviet ships and fire dummy depth charges to force submarines to surface at the blockade line. More good news came on Wednesday, October 24. The president kept some of his nuclear bombers airborne for the Russians to notice. And suddenly word arrived that Khrushchev had ordered his most vulnerable Cuba-bound ships to stop or turn tail. Recalling a childhood game in his native Georgia, Dean Rusk remarked, “We’re eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” Washington also soon learned that the Soviets had instructed the Cubans not to fire antiaircraft guns except in self-defense, giving American reconnaissance unhindered access. Kennedy now stressed that he, too, wanted no shots fired. He also wanted the Pentagon generals eager to enforce the blockade (officially designated a “quarantine”) to know that although it was a military action, it was intended only to communicate a political message. Public tension, however, persisted Thursday because work on the missile sites continued. But Kennedy let a Soviet oil tanker pass through the blockade

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after it identified itself and its cargo. And Friday morning, October 26, a Soviet ship allowed Americans to inspect what they knew would be innocent cargo. At the prospect of negotiation, however, Kennedy still could not decide what price he was willing to pay for a Soviet withdrawal of the missiles. ExComm (and the press) debated removing the U.S. missiles in Turkey, but the Turks would not cooperate. The most unsettling hours were the next 24, which brought a maddening mix of good and bad news that once again rattled nerves in both Washington and Moscow. Three separate unofficial sources reported a Soviet inclination to withdraw from Cuba if the United States promised publicly to prevent another invasion of the island. And Friday night, in a rambling, highly emotional private message that he had obviously composed without the help of his advisers, Khrushchev implored Kennedy “not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war.” He said his weapons in Cuba were always intended to be “defensive,” and if Cuba’s safety were guaranteed, “the necessity for the presence of our military specialists in Cuba would disappear.” “I think we’d have to do that because we weren’t going to invade them anyway,” Kennedy told ExComm. But early Saturday, Moscow broadcast a colder message asking as well for an American withdrawal from Turkey. The Turks publicly protested and urged American officials not to capitulate. The Russians seemed to be upping the ante, and Kennedy feared that he would lose world support and sympathy if he held out against the reasonablesounding proposal to trade off reciprocal missile bases. Then came the shocking news that an American U-2 pilot had been shot down over Cuba and killed, presumably by a Soviet SAM, and another U-2 was chased out of Soviet Siberia, where it had accidentally strayed. Were accidents and miscalculations propelling the United States and the Soviet Union toward war after all? In another Kennedy-Reston conversation that night that I was invited to listen in on, the president expressed his greatest fear that diplomacy might not resolve the crisis after all. He said the reconnaissance simply had to continue, and if his planes were again molested, he might be forced to attack antiaircraft installations. With the Pentagon pressing for just such an attack, the president made doubly sure that no one assumed he had already decided to strike. He told ExComm that unless more planes were shot down, he envisioned the slowest possible escalation of pressure on the Soviets—starting with a blockade of oil shipments to Cuba, then of other vital supplies—taking great care to avoid the nuclear conflagration that the American public so obviously feared. Eventually, perhaps, he would take a Russian ship in tow. And if he had to shoot, he thought it was wiser to sink a ship than to attack the missile sites. Plainly neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev was anywhere near risking anything like a nuclear shoot-out.

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Still, without much hope for negotiations, Kennedy yielded to advice from several ExComm members that he accept Khrushchev’s no-invasion bargain and ignore the bid for a missile swap in Turkey. The president signaled his readiness to guarantee that the United States would not attack Cuba if the missiles were withdrawn, but simultaneously sent his brother to tell Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin that the time for diplomacy was running out, that work on the missiles had to stop at once. In delivering this ultimatum, however, Robert Kennedy also offered Khrushchev a sweetener: an oral promise to withdraw the missiles from Turkey within a few months, provided that this part of the deal was not disclosed. Only a half dozen Americans knew of this promise, and they, as well as the Russians, kept the secret for more than a decade. A Collective Sigh of Relief The sun shone bright in Washington Sunday morning, October 28, as Radio Moscow read out Khrushchev’s response to Kennedy’s offer. He said he had wanted only to protect the Cuban revolution, that work at the bases on the island had now stopped, and that he had issued orders to dismantle, crate and bring back “the weapons which you describe as offensive.” Castro, bypassed in all the negotiations, threw a fit and refused to admit U.N. inspectors sent to the island to verify the de-armament, forcing homebound Soviet ships to uncover their missile cargoes for aerial inspection at sea. For a month, Castro even refused to let the Russians pack up their “gift” to him of several old Ilyushin bombers, which Kennedy also wanted removed. President Kennedy, sensing Khrushchev’s discomfort in retreat, immediately warned his jubilant aides against gloating. He had now earned his spurs as a Cold Warrior and the political freedom to reach other deals with the Soviets, starting with a crisis “hot line,” a ban on aboveground nuclear tests and a liveand-let-live calm in Berlin. Thirteen months later he would be killed in Dallas— by a psychotic admirer of Fidel Castro. Khrushchev emerged from the crisis with grudging respect for Kennedy and tried to share in the credit for moving toward a better relationship. But his generals and fellow oligarchs vowed never again to suffer such humiliation. Two years later, denouncing Khrushchev’s many “harebrained schemes,” they overthrew him, going on to spend themselves poor to achieve strategic weapons parity with the United States. The Soviet Union and the United States never again stumbled into a comparable confrontation. Both nations acquired many more nuclear weapons than they would ever need, but they kept in close touch and learned to watch each other from orbiting satellites, to guard against surprise and miscalculation.

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6 Immutable Proclamations and Unintended Consequences Luis E. Aguilar The study of the correlation between events and changes in the Cuban regime’s interpretation of Marxist-Leninist ideology offers numerous difficulties. To begin with, contemporary Marxism, even its more apparently dogmatic variation, Marxism-Leninism, has become such a loose theory that it is constantly invoked by a wide spectrum of revolutionary groups and regimes to justify different policies. As Leszek Kolakowski aptly puts it: “At present Marxism neither interprets the world nor changes it: it is merely a repertoire of slogans serving to organize various interests, most of them completely remote from those with which Marxism originally identified itself.”l There is also the complexity of the Cuban phenomenon: the evolution from a democratic rebellion against a dictatorship into a “socialist” revolution, and eventually, into a “communist” regime. An unexpected social and political transformation practically imposed by a charismatic leader devoted more to action than to theory. Castro’s Marxism-Leninism, and consequently his regime’s, has been generally limited to vague declarations or sporadic quotes often aimed at justifying pragmatic political decisions. Ernesto “Che” Guevara had a deeper knowledge of Marxism, but he seemed to have wandered into an antidogmatic vague idealist concept of “a new man” and “a new society”. 2 On practical political matters, and especially on foreign affairs, he usually coincided with or yielded to Castro’s decisions. Occasionally those decisions seemed quite remote from orthodox (Soviet) Marxist tenets. Cuba’s guerrilla theory of the 1960s, for example, initially expounded in the name of Martí and Bolívar, was based on the notion that in Latin America the peasants, not the workers, integrated the real revolutionary army. This thesis obviously clashed with the Leninist dogma of the proletariat as the only truly revolutionary class and

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his indictment of the peasants as a class who as soon as feudalism is abolished “join the forces of order”.3 The influence of the Soviet Union in Cuban affairs must also be taken into account. But the distinction between Moscow’s policies, which might be ascribed to Marxism-Leninism, and those aimed at defending Russian national interests is far from clear. Similarly, Soviet-Cuban relations cannot always be explained by Moscow’s overwhelming power. It is difficult to ascertain if the Cuban regime’s adoption of Soviet “proletarian imperialism,” the promotion of revolutionary movements in the Third World, is a result of Moscow’s pressure, Castro’s own adventurism, or a combination of both.4 There is also what Paul Johnson calls the law of “unintended consequences.” Actions taken in the name of a political doctrine might create an unexpected situation, forcing leaders to adjust the doctrine to new circumstances and take further unplanned actions. There is no better illustration of this law in the Marxist field than the growing breach between the concept of the state and the reality of its development. Far from disappearing, as Marx predicted, the communist state continues to expand. And each expansion is followed by a f lood of Marxist literature trying to justify the phenomenon. In 1983, the then Soviet leader Yuri Andropov recognized that developments in the Soviet Union did not follow the laws laid down by Marx and the Engels: “the specific historical ways of the emergence of socialism have proved to be not in all respects what the founders of our revolutionary theory expected.”5 This law of unexpected consequences also applies to the Cuban process. Significantly, in 1961 Castro declared that “la revolución nos va revolucionarizando” (the revolution proceeds to revolutionize us). That is, revolutionary action had compelled further, and perhaps unplanned, revolutionary radicalism in theory and practice. To determine whether action or theory is more influential in such a dialectical correlation of factors is a vexed question. Nevertheless, the basic thesis or orientation of this paper is that the margin of freedom of the Cuban regime to interpret Marxism-Leninism had been inexorably constrained by the consequences of its own actions. The law of unexpected consequences and the iron hand of reality reduced Castro’s initial wide horizon of options to a narrow pro-Soviet position. All research on the relationship between Marxist-Leninist doctrine and Castro’s policy at any given time should be done with caution, and be considered as a tentative interpretation of a very complex process. For reasons of space, this paper will only examine the most important political consequences, national and international, of Castro’s decision to follow a Marxist-Leninist path. Considering the meanders of Cuba’s socialist current, I would have liked to emulate Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s famous book on Marxism, and give this paper the theme, “Adventures of the Dialectic in the Tropics.”

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From a Democratic Rebellion to a Marxist-Leninist Proclamation It is a well-known fact that Castro’s revolution was successfully fought under nonsocialist banners. Rooted in some of the aspirations and dreams of the Cuban people, nationalism, social justice, political honesty, the program of the 26th of July Movement was far from radical. For Mario Llerena, one of the founders of the 26th of July, the initial goals of the Movement “amounted basically to the ethical reforms of public life.”6 James O’Connor, an analyst of the initial period of the Cuban revolution, went as far as to assert that “one of the supreme ironies of the revolution is that the social and economic programs of the Batista government closely resembled those of Castro’s 26th of July Movement.”7 Whether Castro was a Marxist before reaching power, whether his “revolutionary conscience” evolved rapidly toward Marxism afterward, or if the change resulted from his personal ambition and political opportunism, is not relevant here. The pertinent issue is that by the end of his second year in power he had rejected the democratic option. By then, all political power was concentrated in Castro; the press was controlled, elections were no longer mentioned and, most important, anticommunism was branded counterrevolutionary. These developments, plus an increasingly radical legislation which began transforming Cuba’s social and economic structure, along with an evident rapprochement with the Soviet Union, provoked numerous internal conflicts in Cuba and a growing chasm between Cuba and the United States. Diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana were officially broken on January 3, 1961. The trend toward the left then gained momentum. On April 16, 1961, the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, at a rally in Havana, Castro ended his speech with the cry “Long live our socialist revolution!” After the defeat of the U.S. backed expedition, Castro unfolded plans to merge every revolutionary political group into a single socialist party. On December 1, the Cuban leader publicly proclaimed that he was and always would be a Marxist-Leninist. Consequences and Problems of the Marxist Proclamation Castro’s power and popularity, enhanced by the euphoria of a “victory against U.S. imperialism,” made it relatively easy for him to proclaim a socialist revolution and to publicly commit himself to Marxism-Leninism But as always, fulfilling the commitment proved difficult. When Castro and the 26th of July Movement emerged victorious in 1959, the prestige of the Cuban Communist party—supposedly the Marxist revolutionary vanguard—was at a very low point. The party had collaborated with Batista in the 1940s, and dismissed Castro’s guerrilla campaign as “petty-bourgeois adventurism.” Most revolutionaries had only contempt for the communists. On its side, jolted by the collapse of Batista’s regime,

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and loyally following Moscow’s strategy of peaceful coexistence, the communists looked askance at the sudden radicalism of the new revolutionary leaders.8 Castro’s Marxist proclamation could not erase this mutual mistrust. Forced underground by the leader’s call for unity, the antagonism remained ready to reappear at the first opportunity. Furthermore, the proletariat itself had remained passive during the revolutionary struggle. The total failure of the general strike ordered by Castro in April 1958, which provoked a crisis in the 26th of July Movement, had demonstrated the unwillingness of the workers to join the political fight against Batista. Efficiently organized since the 1930s within the powerful Confederation of Cuban Workers (C.T.C.), the majority of the proletariat supported the new revolutionary government. But, following its own tradition, it was more inclined to fight for labor gains than for political issues. Even worse for Castro’s Marxist plans, most of the workers mistrusted the communists. In May 1959, five months after the triumph of the revolution, twenty of the thirty-two confederation leaders reaffirmed their anticommunism and pledged to defend the rights of private property. Under those conditions, the acceptance of a Marxist-Leninist regime, which implied surrendering the labor movement to the communist leadership, had to overcome the resistance of many workers. This resistance explains Castro’s repeated complaints about the “lack of political conscience” in the Cuban proletariat.9 Only the personal intervention of the Cuban leader, mixing emotional appeals with oblique threats (many 26th of July labor leaders, such as David Salvador, fell in disgrace or prison) forced the workers to submit. However, as French economist René Dumont keenly noted, official coercion planted in the proletariat the first seeds of disillusion. The Decision to Create a Marxist-Leninist Party In July 1961, yielding to Castro’s pressure, the 26th of July Movement, the PSP (communists), the Revolutionary Directorate, and minor revolutionary groups merged into the Integrated Revolutionary Organization (ORI). The next step was to form a United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS). Probably aware of the shaky political basis of his Marxist-Leninist proclamation, Castro devoted most of his long speech of December 1, 1961, to explain the history and essence of Marxism and to stress the urgency of creating PURS. Because of the nature of his audience or his own limited knowledge of the subject Castro offered a simplistic explanation of both subjects. His vision of Russia and socialism bordered on the idyllic. Imperialism, the source of all evils, was rapidly decaying, he said. In the scientific and cultural fields, the Soviet Union had surpassed all nations.10 Russians were healthier and happier than any people on earth. Marx was the greatest of all geniuses. Scientific socialism, the source of all goodness, meant

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the actual elimination of abuse, injustice and torture, Even rough peasant-like Krushchev was praised as a profound theoretician whose ideas marked “the true beginning of a new era: the era of building communism.” Some points, though, are worth noting in that shallow speech, including the assertion that “objective and not subjective conditions” were essential for revolutionary success (an argument destined to be reversed in a couple of years); the fear of discord among revolutionary groups, which prompted him to once again extol the “old communist fighters”; and the candid recognition that they were making “a socialist revolution without socialists.”11 This last admission, and the undeserved praise, led the communists to what seemed a logical conclusion. If, in the new party, only they had socialist experience, then they alone could organize the new socialist cadres. Trying to redeem the communists, Castro had set the stage for a crisis which in three months would shake the party’s unity, discredit the communist old guard, and force him to revise his utopian image of Marxism. His speech made the communists reach a wrong conclusion. Sectarianism and a Marxist Twist Believing themselves indispensable, as veteran socialists and Moscow’s trusted allies, the communists moved swiftly to control ORI. Publicly disdaining the “political ignorance” of their revolutionary allies, they proceeded to remove from key positions many ex-members of the 26th of July. It proved a costly miscalculation. In March 1962, an angry and alarmed Castro made a scathing denunciation of veteran communist leader Aníbal Escalante and other comrades as “ambitious sectarians” who had tried to turn ORI into an instrument for personal power. Disguised as a criticism of a small group of comrades, his attack included all communists and revived old sensitive topics. Castro reminded his audience that “some” communists had stayed under the bed while the true revolutionaries were fighting in the mountains.12 Castro’s vision of socialism appeared to have also changed. Instead of exultation, the maximum leader stressed the difficulties of building a socialist society. He spoke of error, struggle, and sacrifice. Imperialism was not the only enemy. In the midst of a “socialist” revolution, a socialist faction, integrated precisely by some of those “old fighters” he had lauded, had been forging a party of “trained and domesticated revolutionaries,” creating “a veritable garbage” (una reverenda basura).l3 Perhaps to justify his criticism, or to prepare the public for future changes, he pragmatically and conveniently interpreted of the Marxist dialectic: “dialectic teaches us that what is a correct method at a certain moment might be later an incorrect method.”14 The law of unexpected consequences had functioned. A simplistic, utopian approach to Marxism, destined to explain a political change, had produced un-

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foreseen consequences. As a result, Castro was forced to adjust his interpretation of socialism, and to face the new reality with decisions he had not previously envisioned. Changing Relations with the Soviet Union Castro’s change of attitude toward the old communists signified a reassertion of his personal power and a test of his relations with the Soviet Union. In their bid for power, the communists had apparently relied on Moscow’s support, and on the Cuban regime’s increasing dependence on that support. Castro’s drastic actions implied a warning to Moscow that he was the only power in Cuba, and that he was dissatisfied with the Soviet attitude. With valid reasons, he believed he had given more than he had received. After all, it was Castro who had initiated the rapprochement with the Soviet Union. In February 1960, he invited Soviet Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan to Havana, received him with full honors, and praised to the limit Soviet achievements. He appeared ecstatic after signing the first commercial agreement between Cuba and the Soviet Union. And naturally, he expected equal enthusiasm in Moscow. The initial reaction of the Kremlin, though, was one of traditional caution. Latin America had never been one of Moscow’s priorities. And past experiences, especially the events in Guatemala in 1954, did not encourage haste. The temptation to establish a zone of influence 90 miles from U.S. shores, was tempered by the possibility of provoking a strong reaction in Washington. A confrontation in the Caribbean could jeopardize Soviet international pacifist propaganda. In September 1959, Krushchev toured the United States making numerous public statements emphasizing the danger of nuclear war and appealing for peaceful coexistence and disarmament. The Cuban revolution was publicly applauded, but Moscow refrained from signing any military commitment. The Bay of Pigs invasion changed Moscow’s attitude. Convinced that President Kennedy lacked the necessary nerve to act decisively,15 Khrushchev shifted from caution to boldness. He ordered the construction of the Berlin wall, and began to pour military equipment into Cuba. At the beginning of 1962, he must have felt he could achieve a demonstration of Soviet military power capable of impressing the U.S. and China, which had become a rebellious neighbor challenging Russia’s international revolutionary leadership: the decision to install missiles in Cuba was made.16 Under those circumstances it would have been practically impossible for Moscow to make any gesture in defense of the old Cuban communists. The Soviets condoned the ouster of Aníbal Escalante, praised the integrity of Cuba’s leadership, and in May 1962 signed a decisive commercial treaty with Cuba. The so-called missile crisis of October-November 1962 altered the situation once more. The Soviet Union withdrew its missiles without consulting Castro, provoking the anger of the Cuban leader. Not even the fact that the so-called

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“Kennedy-Khrushchev pact” gave him a guarantee of survival calmed him. Feeling betrayed, he began to defend a belligerent, almost anti-Soviet Marxist line. There were no third alternatives, no peaceful roads to socialism, no compromises with imperialism. The Declaration of Havana became a rallying war cry for Latin American revolutionaries. The time had come to transform the Andes into the Sierra Maestra of the continent. The Rise and Decline of a Marxist Heresy, 1963–1968 As previously stated, the interrelation between theory and praxis is a complex one. To conclude that Castro embarked on his continental guerrilla adventure because of his frictions with the Soviet Union, or because of a sudden insight on the “revolutionary essence” of Marxism, simplifies the issue, and fails to take into account Castro’s character. Since his early youth Castro had a part in internationalism. He had enrolled in an aborted expedition organized by the Caribbean Legion to topple Dominican dictator Trujillo, had seen (or participated in) political violence in Bogota in 1948, and kept contacts with some of the veterans of the Caribbean Legion.17 Once in power, and even before his Marxist proclamation, he sent expeditions to Panama and the Dominican Republic. By 1961, he was bitterly denouncing his former protector, Venezuelan president Rómulo Betancourt, and all Latin American oligarchies. The crisis with the Soviet Union gave Castro the opportunity to radicalize his policies and to carry on his dreams for continental action. This aggressive strategy received the enthusiastic backing of Che Guevara, who, early on, showed contempt for those communists, including the Cubans “who sit down to wait until in some mechanical way all the necessary objective and subjective conditions are given without working to accelerate them.”l8 Guevara had expressed similar disdain for the Soviet formula of a “peaceful road to socialism.” Castro’s decision to revolutionize the continent came at a seemingly propitious time. The Sino-Soviet dispute had become public and bitter. The inevitable polemics and splits which shook many communists and Marxist groups weakened Moscow’s traditional monopoly on Marxist dogmas. Encouraged by this atmosphere, young radical Marxists rebelled against the passivity of Latin American communist parties and began clamoring for action. A defiant new left emerged in the continent. Furthermore, Castro’s prestige as a true revolutionary, enhanced by his independent Marxist stand, was at its peak. Even some sectors of the Catholic Church began to respond to his radical appeal. In Colombia, father Camilo Torres, who would eventually join the guerillas, proclaimed that “for Christians, revolution is not only permissible, it is an obligation.”19 The new radicalism, though, needed a respected theoretician. In spite of his prestige, Guevara was too involved in the struggle; and his Argentinian nation-

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ality was against him. Traditionally, Latin Americans, including leftists, pay more attention to European writers than to those of their own continent. Very soon Castro found his European theoretician: a young French Marxist writer, a disciple of Louis Althusier, named Régis Debray. The “guerilla” or the “focus” theory defended by Debray represented, at least from Moscow’s point of view, something close to a Marxist heresy. According to Debray, the Cuban experience had given birth to “a new conception of guerrila warfare.” The peasants were the revolutionary soldiers and the guerilla the revolutionary vanguard. Objective conditions, always latent in Latin America, might be created or made patent by heroic subjective actions. The duty of a revolutionary was to make revolution. The blunt nature of Debray’s criticism fell on Moscow’s traditional allies, the Latin American communist parties. “Fidel Castro says simply that there is no revolution without a revolutionary vanguard: that this vanguard is not necessarily the Marxist-Leninist party; and that those who want to make the revolution have the right and the duty to constitute themselves a vanguard, independently of those parties.” Che Guevara made once this mordant comment: “You (the communists) are capable of creating cadres . . . but not of training cadres who can capture a machine-gun nest.”20 Moscow did not find it necessary to answer directly this challenge, but almost all Latin American communist parties rallied around the “orthodox” Marxist banner and condemned Debray’s and Castro’s heresy. By March 1967, Castro and the Venezuelan communist party were publicly exchanging insults. Three months later the Communist parties of Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela issued a joint communique reaffirming their role as the only revolutionary vanguard, and condemning “foreign influences in the affairs of national communist parties.” Ironically, at the time that this confrontation was becoming quite heated, the Cuban Marxist heresy was declining. The Cuban-modeled rural guerillas who had appeared in almost every corner of the continent had been everywhere defeated. And the ranks of the new left, whose representatives displayed a bellicose radicalism at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana (January 1967), had been rapidly decimated by Latin American armies. In September of 1967, Régis Debray was captured in Bolivia. The following month Che Guevara was killed after a skirmish with the Bolivian army. After so many disasters, Guevara’s death was a devastating blow for Castro’s guerilla theory. “Success is the final test for every theory” Debray had written. His own dictum condemned his ideas.21 It was then that the Soviet Union, no longer hampered by China’s influence in the Third World (China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution), decided to intervene directly in the continental polemic. Moscow’s pressure, and the disastrous consequences on Cuba of Castro’s erratic application of Marxist economy, forced the “maximum leader” to alter his political course.

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A Forced Return to “Orthodox” Marxism, 1968–1975 As stated before, Castro’s goals of gaining absolute power and imposing a socialist revolution encountered from the very beginning numerous obstacles. He coped with political and economic problems with what he later called a “guerilla mentality,” a series of improvised measures which, rather successful in the political field, totally disrupted Cuba’s economic infrastructure. As usual, each new crisis compelled him to adopt more drastic decisions. By 1962, Castro had completely won the political battle. No one in Cuba, not even the veterans of the old communist party, could challenge his power. But the price had been high. The massive emigration of about one million Cubans had deprived the regime of trained technicians, economists and planners. And the Cuban economy, which Castro had inherited in healthy conditions, began to show the strain of efforts aimed at political and not economic gains. The lack of clear economic programs, and the substitution of technicians by enthusiastic but unskilled supporters of the regime, resulted in widespread economic disorganization.22 Practically disdaining the realties and the limited resources of Cuba, the revolutionary leaders set unreachable goals. In 1961, in Punta del Este, Uruguay, an arrogant Che Guevara confidently proclaimed that by 1980 “Cubans will have a net income of about $3000, more than today’s U.S. per capita”. In ten years Cuba would have had eliminated the dependance on sugar, erradicated poverty, and become an industrial power.23 Barely three years later, Guevara had been forced to modify his utopian outlook of the future. Retreating to his basic idealism, he stressed moral incentives for the Cuban workers, insisted on the need of creating a “new man” free from bourgeois material desires, and spoke of a revolutionary spartan way of life. But sugar production continued to decline, rationing became a necessity, and dependency on Soviet aid increased24. By 1967, the production of sugar, previously scorned as the “Cuban chain to capitalism,” had become once more the top priority of the Cuban government. In 1975, Castro recognized “in the economic field we had suffered from idealistic errors, and on occasions we have disdained the reality of objective economic laws which must be taken into account.”25 These events resulted in a growing dissatisfaction of the Cuban masses. The seeds of disillusion planted in 1960–61 began to emerge after 1967. Apathy and absenteeism among the workers replaced enthusiasm. On August 8, 1969, Jorge Risquet, Minister of Labor, recognized that indiscipline, negligence and resistance were expanding evils among workers, and announced stern measures to fight them. The only answers the regime found to those problems were increasing repression and the militarization of the society. Castro’s famous “dialogues” with the masses, a curious political system hailed as “direct democracy,” became monologues. Discipline and military virtues were extolled. As in the Soviet Union, centralized democracy, a method devised by Lenin as a tactic to control the party before reaching power, evolved into a permanent way to rule the country.

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Through centralized democracy, different levels of political institutions are created to give the masses the illusion of participating in the political process. Actually, those institutions are used by the power elite to decide who deserves promotion. The majority in and outside the party can never ask the elite to step down; the elite can always select who will step up. Recognition of errors, self-criticism, admission of failures, even as grave as the disaster of the 10 million-ton sugar crop, provoke changes in the lower or middle strata of the party or the government, but not in the eite that rules. Inside that elite Fidel Castro is supreme. Any criticism of a certain policy of the government must be preceded by a cautious and safeguarding, as el Compañero Fidel has pointed out.” René Dumont, a witness of the process, concluded that in Cuba, Castro was not creating “socialism with a human face” but “Stalinism with a human face.”26 As in Russia, militarization and tropical Stalinism could not solve the growing Cuban economic crisis. By 1967, hundreds of Cubans who had lost hope on any improvement were lining up to leave the island. In view of the deepening economic crisis, the question arose why the Soviet Union tolerated for so long Castro’s defiance and his confrontation with the Latin American communist parties. The answer probably lies in Moscow’s pragmatism. As long as Castro’s guerilla offensive in the continent appeared to have some possibilities of success and China posed a challenge, the Soviet Union refrained from using economic pressure to bring the Cuban leader back to an “orthodox” Marxist path. During the polemic Moscow limited itself to an occasional criticism of the new left, but tolerated Castro’s sporadic anti-Soviet tirades. By 1968, China was out of the picture as a disruptive element, and Castro’s Marxist heresy had resulted in failure. Moscow decided it was about time to settle accounts with the mercurial Cuban leader. On January 1, 1968, a somber Castro informed Cubans that the Soviet Union “apparently” was not going to meet the increasing petroleum needs of the nation. Strict controls on the consumption of fuel had to be imposed. No criticism of the Soviet Union followed the announcement. The Cuban leader evidently accepted the necessity of a new rapprochement with Moscow. Fearing that his opponents inside Cuba could be encouraged to take advantage of this new change in policy, or that the Soviet Union could be tempted to further weaken his position, Castro took measures to reaffirm his political control. In February 1968, the Cuban government denounced the existence of a “micro-faction” inside the Communist party (organized in 1965 under Castro’s tight control) which, in unexplained ways, was in contact with the CIA and with several Soviet and East German officials. The principal culprit was Aníbal Escalante, who had been allowed to return to Cuba in 1964. Significantly, the micro-faction was accused of criticizing Castro as an erratic dictator who felt superior to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while pushing Cuba to economic disaster. After punishing the principals involved, Castro felt free to initiate his reconciliation with Moscow.

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In August 1968, carefully selecting his words and still posing some questions about Soviet foreign policy, Castro justified the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was a thorny task. The similarities between Czechoslovakia and Cuba were dangerouslsy evident. If “a minority” was right in asking for Soviet intervention against “a majority” which was betraying socialism, why were Aníbal Escalante and his group condemned as traitorous for doing the same thing in Cuba? How could masses that had been living under socialism for twenty years still be attracted by capitalism, “a monstrous system of exploitation”?27 While trying to use his best dialectic to answer those questions, Castro could not resist the temptation of firing a parting shot at the recent Soviet support for the Latin American communist parties: “Yet we were accused of being adventurers, of interfering in the affairs of other parties . . . I ask myself if the nations of the Warsaw pact which send their troops into Czechoslovakia . . . will also cease to support these rightist, reformist, soldout, submissive leaderships in Latin America that are enemies of the armed revolutionary struggle.”28 In spite of those questions and criticisms, the speech was warmly received in Moscow (at least the part that was published) and marked a new period in Soviet-Cuban relations. A quietly as possible, Castro folded the guerilla banners, praised nonrevolutionary Latin American governments, and denied that armed struggle was the only road to socialism. In June 1969, Cuba attended the Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow and joined the chorus criticizing China. In April 1970, Castro declared that without the Soviet Union, Cuba could not have become a socialist country, and proclaimed his unshakeable alliance with Moscow. To demonstrate his new orthodox position, Castro’s passivity was as eloquent as his declarations. In October 1968 Mexico was convulsed by a bloody repression of student demonstrations. Ironically, the students had begun their protest with a march in honor of the Cuban revolution. Their appeals for solidarity and the boycott of the Olympic Games in the capital received no answer from Havana. Two weeks after the so-called massacre of Tlateloco, Russian and Cuban athletes displayed their flags at the opening of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. Cuba was back in the fold of the faithful. The Dialectics of the Rapprochement (1970–1985) In terms of examining the relationship between the actions of the Cuban government and the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the period which followed the reconciliation with the Soviet Union is less interesting. After 1970, the year of the 10 million-ton sugar crop failure, Castro’s horizon of options was limited to the margin of freedom allowed him by the Soviet Union. And even that margin refers to a freedom of action, there and where Moscow has no particular interest. Castro’s autonomy does not include a capacity to deviate from the Soviet official interpretation of Marxism. In 1975, in an increasingly common

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display of humbleness, Castro recognized that “if we would have been able to understand that revolutionary theory was not sufficiently developed in our country, and that we really lacked true economists and scientists of Marxism,” Cuban revolutionaries would have been able to learn, “with the modesty of true revolutionaries,” from the experiences of “other socialist countries.”29 The most obvious consequence of this humbleness was what Castro called “the return to reality.” After 1970 (and even before) pragmatism had become the basic trademark of the Cuban regime. When asked in Chile in November 1971 if there were contradictions in the socialist field, Castro answered: We have had contradictions at times. On occasions those contradictions were due to a certain idealism (from our side) . . . We expected things to develop the way our imagination pictured them.”30 By the end of 1975, Cuba began implementing the Soviet-directed “System for Economic Management and Planning.” According to that system, and following strict Soviet guidelines, sugar remained the principal sector of the economy, decentralization was emphasized, and dependence on “voluntary” labor, one of the few remnants of Guevara’s dream, was drastically reduced.31 Identification with the goals and ideology of the Soviet Union had continued to expand in Cuba. One of the resolutions adopted in the Second Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (December 1980) plainly stated, “The basis of our party’s foreign policy is its historic, lasting alliance with the Soviet Union.”32 On occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Russian revolution, Cuban media repeated ad nauseam the same exalted praise of and gratitude toward the Soviet Union. And Castro’s speech in Moscow at the XXII Congress of the Soviet Communist party (1986) was a laudatory homage to the Soviet Union and Gorbachev. Castro’s failed attempt to become a leader of the Third World, one of his oldest dreams, clearly demonstrated the limits of his capacity to act independently. He did become president of the nonaligned movement in 1979. But his efforts to manipulate the movement toward a sort of alliance with the Soviet Union (a strategy openly opposed by Yugoslavia), and the sudden Russian invasion of Afghanistan, which Castro could not condemn, frustrated his plans. After those events, the majority of the “nonaligned” countries consider Castro too “loyal” to the Soviet Union. Cuba’s long and bloody intervention in Africa, especially in Angola, hailed as an expression of the principle of international socialist solidarity and of Castro’s capacity to make decisions “independently” of Moscow, had brought many more benefits to the Soviet Union than to Cuba. While Cuban soldiers had been dying in Angola for eleven years, the Soviet Union had been able to expand its influence in Africa by simply providing logistical support to Castro’s adventurism. Using troops of a small Third World country like Cuba, the Soviet Union can achieve important military and political objectives without arising accusations of imperialism or sacrificing a single Soviet soldier.

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The events following the triumph of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua provides another clue to Castro’s peculiar decline. Managua’s regime had proclaimed itself Marxist-Leninist, built a formidable military machine, and adopted many of the institutions and symbols that Cuba had made familiar. At first sight it appeared that Castro had obtained a resounding success; the guerilla theory appeared revindicated. A closer analysis shows another panorama. Nicaraguan guerillas, and in general those of Central America, had not followed Guevara’s model. The destruction of the new left had convinced many guerilla leaders that military success requires Soviet aid. Consequently, present day guerillas are closer to an “orthodox” Marxism than to the radicalism of the 60s. Not one of them had openly criticized Moscow or broken with the communist parties. In that situation, Cuba has become a channel for weapons and propaganda. Castro is a revered leader who should be listened to, but not a dominant figure who can decide the route to follow. Managua has its own direct connection with Moscow. Castro is a leader among equals. But the deterioration of the image of the Cuban model, and Nicaragua’s own economic problems, determine a mutual gravitation toward the Soviet Union. Finally, in neither Cuba nor Nicaragua has Marxism-Leninism promoted a cultural revitalization. As in Europe, the establishment of a rigid Marxist system has stifled creativity. Beyond the usual slogans and military parades, there is only the state version of Marxism. At the Cuban Communist Congress in the 1980s, after recognizing a certain decline in work discipline and “the spirit of austerity,” Castro issued a stern warning that “we must keep our state of alert at the highest level and observe the most rigorous firmness against all petit-bourgeois spirit, accommodation. relaxation of revolutionary discipline and any sign of corruption, no matter how insignificant it may seem.” The “purity” of official MarxismLeninism must be kept at all costs. The only recent relevant development in Cuba that could offer a possibility for theoretical analysis is Castro’s aparent desire to soften religious restrictions in Cuba, and to establish better relations with the Catholic church in Latin America. A glance at the past is essential to evaluate this situation. Castro’s Marxism and Cuban Catholicism In Cuba, Catholicism, and in general religious devotion, has always been weak. The Catholic church in particular suffered from severe economic limitations imposed by the Spanish government during the nineteenth century and by its reputation of having sided with Spain during Cuba’s war for independence. Only after World War II did the church begin to increase its influence in Cuba by actively promoting labor, youth and religious organizations. At the triumph of the revolution, there appeared to be no reason for any confrontation between Catholics and revolutionaries in Cuba. Many Catholic

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leaders had opposed Batista and more than once the Catholic church raised a protest against the brutal methods of the dictatorship. Castro himself, a graduate of the Jesuit school of Belén, owed his life to the intervention of Monsignor Pérez Serantes, Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, after his defeat at Moncada’s barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Nevertheless, in November 1959, several Catholic organizations convened a National Congress “to revitalize the faith and the union of all Cuban Catholics.” Behind the spiritual call was a growing concern on the part of many Catholic groups about the course the revolution was taking, and the division among Catholics. Many supported the government; some suspected that the “humanism” proclaimed by Castro was evolving toward communism. The Congress was a success. Thousands of Cubans gathered in Havana to proclaim their Catholic faith. But a final proclamation in support of social justice was accompanied by a denunciation of all totalitarianism, especially the communist one. Immediately, criticism from several government spokesmen intensified the tension. By the middle of 1960, the government’s leftist tendencies were evident. When Mikoayan deposited flowers on Martí’s monument, Catholic students protested and brought a Cuban flag to the monument. Several were arrested. A few weeks later Communist leader Marinello accused the Catholic youth of being counterrevolutionary. Government control on the press silenced any valid Catholic protest. In August, the attacks against the church had become so violent, that Monsignor Evelio Díaz announced the possible closing of the churches to let the world know that “the Church of silence had been imposed in Cuba”33 After Castro’s Marxist-Leninist proclamation, that assertion became a reality. Catholic schools were closed, church activities drastically curtailed, and discriminatory policies against Catholics imposed. Outside Cuba, however, the Catholic church was entering a period of liberalization or modernization. Following this trend, certain Catholic groups defended the need to establish a dialogue with the Marxists. For those groups capitalism became the main enemy of progress in Latin America. Consequently a true commitment to defend the poor and exploited implied for them the acceptance of a possible alliance with the communists, and even the use of revolutionary methods. Consequently, almost at the same time that the new left was promoting an anti-Soviet “Marxist heresy,” the most radical representatives of an emerging Liberation Theology posed the threat of a Catholic “heresy.”34 Curiously, Castro apparently failed to grasp the importance of these potential Catholic allies. Concentrating on his guerilla crusade and the struggle against Latin American communist parties, he made no real effort to exploit his prestige among “progressive” Catholics as an “independent” revolutionary. In his conversations with Chilean priests in 1971 and during his visit to Jamaica in 1977, Castro spoke of the possibility of an alliance between Christians and revolutionaries, but he seldom mentioned Marxism and insisted on the necessity of Christians joining the revolutionaries.

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Only in 1985 did he speak of moderating the measures taken against the church and Catholics in Cuba. Yet, when interviewed by an admiring Brazilian priest, Frey Betto, he showed a remarkable ignorance of what Liberation Theology was about. Asked if he was considering the admission of Christians in the Cuban communist party, his answer was “not yet.”35 It looks as if this moderate change of attitude has come too late. The two defiant groups that in the 1960s would have responded to his appeal for union are in a weaker condition. Among Marxists, The new left has practically ceased to exist; among Catholics, the Vatican has bridled some of the most radical aspects of Liberation Theology. What could have been an impressive gesture a decade ago appears now as a belated and unreliable promise. More than twenty-seven years of a personal socialist dictatorship weigh heavily in the minds of many Catholics. The passing of time and his repeated demonstration of submission to the Soviet Union had eroded Castro’s revolutionary prestige. In a recent speech in Managua, Brazilian theologian Leonard Boff, a radical representative of Liberation Theology, praised the Sandinistas as the first revolutionary group who had demonstrated how just a revolution can be. Castro and Cuba were not mentioned in his speech. Considering the rigidity of Cuba’s socialism, and the limited options opened to Castro, it seems that the most pressing problems for Cuban Marxists today are the typical problems of a Soviet-type society: bureaucracy, inefficiency, declining morale among workers, and gaps between the masses and the party as well as between Marxist theory and official practice. Notes 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) p. 530. Guevara’s personal interpretation of Marxism lasted to the end. One of the few books he carried to Bolivia was one by Trotsky. On July 26, 1966, he lectured his small guerrilla group “on the significance of the (Cuban) 26th of July: rebellion against oligarchies and against revolutionary dogmas.” El Diario del Che en Bolivia (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1973) pp. 185, 188. Lenin, “Las Vicisitudes Históricas de la Doctrina de Karl Marx,” In Contra el Revisionismo (Moscow Ediciones en Lenguas Extranjeras, 1959), p. 157. Lenin also bitterly criticized the Populist and Social Revolutionary parties’ argument, similar to those of Castro and Guevara, that since in czarist Russia the vast majority of the population was formed by peasants, the revolution had to be a peasants’ revolution. An excellent study of this last point is W. Raymond Duncan, The Soviet Union and Cuba, Interests and Inf luence (New York: Praeger, 1985). Speech at the June 1983 CC Plenum, Pravda, June 16, 1983. See, Mario Llerena, The Unsuspected Revolution, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) p. 251.

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7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

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James O’Connor, The Origins of Socialism in Cuba (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970) p. 7. In 1978, trying to explain the communist party’s intial coolness toward the revolutionary government, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez wrote: “Fidel Castro’s confessed prejudices against the communists were similar to the Marxists’s prejudices against the petty bourgeois revolutionaries.” See his Cuba en el tránsito al socialismo, 1959–63, (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1978). p. 110. In 1975, seventeen years after the triumph of the revolution, Castro still complained about the “relatively low cultural level of our masses.” See his Informe Central, Primer Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba (Havana: Departamento de Orientación Revolucionaria, 1975), p. 207. To partially understand Castro’s initial attitude toward the Soviet Union, we should recall that for a short period of time (1958–1962), the success of Sputnik, the earth’s first artificial satellite, convinced some leaders of the Third World that the Soviet Union had achieved a permanent technical supremacy. All the quotations from that speech are taken from Fidel Castro, El Partido Marxista Leninista (Buenos Aires: La Rosa Blindada, 1963). For a complete text of the speech, Fidel Castro, Autocrítica de la Revolución Cubana (Montevideo: Ediciones Uruguay, 1963). Ibid, pp. 20, 21. Ibid. p. 17. President Kennedy was aware that Krushchev had judged his conduct at the Bay of Pigs crisis as “a failure of nerves.” See Joseph L. Nogee, Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York: Pergamon Press, 1984), p. 133. The question of who took the initiative of placing the missiles in Cuba is still not resolved. Both Krushchev and Castro had on different occasions conceded the initiative to the other partner. See Elie Abel, The Missile Crisis (New York: Bantam Books, 1966). The Caribbean Legion was a loose organization of democratic groups and parties, formed to help fight dictators in the region. It had some influence in the Costa Rican revolution of 1948 and other regional episodes. Quickly disbanded, it added a romantic, if not very effective aura to the struggle against dictatorship in the Caribbean. Che Guevara, “Guerilla Warfare”, quoted in Michael Lowry, The Marxism of Che Guevara (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), p. 92. Camilo Torres, “Message to Christians,” in Enrique López, El Camilismo en la América Latina (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1970), p. 16. Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967). pp. 98 and 103. (my emphasis). Much later, in 1985, Régis Debray made this astonishing confession: “I was passionately interested in what happened in Cuba between 1956 and 1959, on what happened afterwards unfortunately I had not thought much about it. . . . I meddled (tome cartas) in affairs that are not the business of an

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22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

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European.” See “Régis Debray: las metamorfosis de un revolucionario”, El País Semanal, Madrid, March 31, 1985. Castro himself proclaimed in 1965, “it is better a noncompetent revolutionary than a competent nonrevolutionary.” This slogan horrified French Marxist economist René Dumont. See his excellent Cuba, est-il socialiste? (Paris: Seuil, 1970), p. 50. Dumont’s book, usually ignored by leftist writers, is one of the best studies of Cuba’s economic misadventures. See La Profecía del Che (Buenos Aires: Escorpión, 1964), pp. 38–51. Actually, Guevara was echoing Krushchev’s exaggerated optimism displayed at the 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party: “in the current decade the Soviet Union will surpass the strongest and richest capitalist country, the U.S.A.” Ten years later Brezhnev painted a different, more sober picture. A good study of Cuba’s economic development, even if a little inclined to gloss over the regime’s failures, is Carmelo Mesa Lago’s Cuba in the 1970s. Castro, Informe Central, p. 104. Dumont, Cuba, p. 178. Castro was dealing with something that no Marxist or Leninist text had envisioned: a crisis in a communist society. Both Marx and Lenin saw all societies of their time as being crisis-prone, but they were convinced that the communist society of the future would be crisis-proof. The only Marxist who considered the possibility of a decline and breakup of an established communist regime was Mao Tse Tung. See his On Krushchev’s Phoney Communism (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1964), p. 71. Quoted in Ernst Kux, “Contradictions in Soviet Socialism,” Problems of Communism (Nov.-Dec. 1984). For a complete text of the speech in English, see Appearance of Major Fidel Castro analyzing events in Czechoslovakia (Havana: Instituto del Libro, 1968). A fascinating analysis of the speech from a Trotskyite perspective is Hansen, Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), pp. 355–78. Castro, Informe Central, p. 103. Granma Weekly Review, Nov. 28, 1971, quoted in Mesa-Lago. Cuba, p. 27. Maurice Halperin, The Taming of Fidel Castro (University of California Press, 1980), p. 326. Fidel Castro Speeches (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1981), p. 359. Quoted in Manuel Fernández, Religión y Revolución en Cuba (Madrid: Ediciones Saeta, 1984), p. 82. I am using the term in its original sense, “heresy,” from the greek “option.” For a more detailed account of this subject, see Luis E. Aquilar “Catolicismo y Marxismo o el Encuentro entre dos Herejías,” in Comentario (December 1985). Frey Betto, Fidel y la Religión, (Havana: Publicaciones del Consejo de Estado, 1985), p. 249.

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7 Fidelismo: The Unfulfilled Ideology Tad Szulc “It was much easier to win the revolutionary war than it is to run the Revolution now that we are in charge.” So Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz observed some months after taking power in Cuba early in 1959. Only 33 years old, he had just launched Latin America’s most fundamental social and politial upheaval in a half-century, proclaiming a wide-ranging agrarian reform and ordering a mass literacy campaign to teach all Cubans to read and write as prerequisites for progress. On this particular evening, over steaks served in the kitchen of a Havana hotel, the fiery young “Maximum Leader” was explaining to a few friends and visitors how hard it was to transform his Caribbean island. The conversation went on through midnight, and then past daybreak. As one of the guests, I vididly remember the glorious dreams and promises Castro spun off, and the excitement that pervaded Cuba at the dawn of what was to be a splendid new age. Thirty years later, a still-ebullient Castro has not solved the problem that confronted him in 1959: How to provide his 10 million compatriots (there were six million when he ousted Gen. Fulgencio Batista) with a modicum of satisfaction, if not the boundless Marxist-Leninist joy that he so often promised during the 1960s. After three decades of experimentation, of costly zig-zagging in economic plans, of vast national effort and sacrifice, and increasing Soviet subsidies, Fidel’s overarching revolutionary goal—the creation of a new “Socialist Man” in an efficient socialist system—still eludes him. And to make matters worse, old and new Cuban generations are paying a heavy price—the denial of personal and political freedoms—for the social gains that do exist today. Thus, especially to its early sympathizers at home and abroad, Castro’s regime on the threshold of its fourth decade must answer a poignant question: 86

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Why was political freedom not welcomed alongside the Revolution’s accomplishments in the realm of social progress? Castro’s revolution, widely admired when it began, might well have turned out better if instead of exercising absolute power, he had tolerated personal freedoms creating a form of partnership with the nation. After all, as he told us that night in the hotel kitchen, that was what the Revolution would be all about: freedom and happiness. Yet, even today, he keeps hundreds of political prisoners, many of them at the penitentiary on the Isle of Pines where he himself was confined during 1953–55. Unquestionably, Castro’s regime stands at something like a final crossroads. At home it is stagnating. Following the sizable gainst of the 1960s and 70s, Cuban living standards have declined during the 1980s. In 1987, for example, domestic production dropped by 3.2 percent from the previous year. Abroad, Castro finds himself out of step in the Marxist-Leninsit world. He clings to a public orthodoxy that most other Communist leaders have begun to abandon. He has refused to emulate Mikhail Gorbachev’s push toward decentralization, modernization, and higher productivity (perestroika), and relative openness and liberalization (glasnost) in the Soviet Union. China’s economic reforms have been anathema to him. Today, Cuba is, with the possible exception of Kim II Sung’s North Korea, the most inefficient and repressive Communist country in the world. (During a speech on the revolutionary holiday of July 26 this year, Castro asserted that the Cuban Revolution “need not imitate others; she creates.”) in the Soviet Bloc today, ironically, the Cuban leader stands with the antiGorbachev conservatives—East Germany’s Erich Honecker, Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, and Czechoslovakia’s Milos Jakes. Yet Castro, a public relations virtuoso, generally succeeds in projecting an image of tolerance, bonhomie, and unruffled self-assurance. Last April, for example, he found time to meet at length with New York’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, John Cardinal O’Connor, and actor Robert Redford to discuss Cuba’s relations with the church and the fate of political prisoners held by the regime. Like so many other foreign visitors, both the Cardinal, the first U.S. churchman of his rank to travel to Cuba in well over 30 years, and the Hollywood star declared themselves very impressed by their host. That Castro has not lost his touch as Cuba’s great master of political seduction is as obvious on Cuban television as in the many interviews he gives to U.S., West European, and Latin American TV networks. And there are his all-night meetings with Yankee businessmen, professors, and politicians, all of whom are welcome in Havana. Having given up cigars—his trademark olive-green uniform and beard remain, although the latter is now greying and kept closely trimmed—he emphasizes the healthy life for himself and all Cubans. He swims, goes spearfishing, plays basketball with the children when visiting Cuban schools, and in general behaves as if all were well in the best of all possible worlds, i.e. socialist Cuba. But his outward show of confidence, his ability to woo visitors, mask the travail of his people: the shortages of consumer goods, the lack of urban hous-

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ing, the glaring inefficiencies of the state-run economy, and, finally, the likelihood that little will change in the foreseeable future. They live in a mood of hopelessness. And there is a private Castro—moody, impatient, irascible, and downright violent with his subordinates. His behavior patterns have not changed in 30 years: Since the time he entered Havana riding a column of jeeps, tanks, and trucks on January 8, 1959, he has never deviated from “L’état, c’est moi” (I am the state), and, like Louis XIV, he has kept himself surrounded by sycophants. Yet, for all his outward ebulience, he is a very lonely man, trusting no one. Since I first met him in 1959, I have been impressed by his erudition, his sense of history, and his political agility and imagination. These qualities—and others—brought him victory over Batista against immense obstacles. For several decades, they helped make him a widely admired Third World leader and made Cuba a player in Central America and Africa. What, then, is happening to Fidel Castro? It appears that he has, oddly, become both the victim of his unfulfilled promises to construct socialism in “the most orderly manner possible” and the prisoner of his enduring conviction, unchallenged by his colleagues, that he alone understands what is good for Cuba. The added difficulty Castro seems to have created for himself (and for Cuba) stems from his misperception of what is really happening among the Cuban people. He still crisscrosses the island on trips by helicopter or Mercedes limousine, but he seems not to see and not to hear what is around him. And, increasingly, there is the steady murmur of discontent. “Fidel is desperate over his inability to make Cuba work,” a man who has known Castro all his life told me not long ago, when we ran into each other in Europe, “and this is why he is losing control and he is doing things that make no sense.” This man doubts that Castro believes in Marxism-Leninism viscerally or intellectually. He suggests that Fidel adopted it as convenient revolutionary dogma, and that his only true beliefs, underneath all the rhetoric, now revolve around himself—Fidelismo. We were discussing the great ideological campaign the Maximum Leader unveiled in 1987, known as “Rectification of Errors . . . and Negative Tendencies.” Specifically, Castro has re-introduced in Cuba the notion of “spiritual incentives” to inspire the citizenry to labor unselfishly for the common welfare, instead of the various “material incentives” that the Chinese, Soviets, and East Europeans have begun to offer. Under “rectification,” Cuba’s workers and students are instructed to “volunteer” for unpaid work in the fields or in construction on their days off, just as they did during the 1960s when the nation was still in the grip of nationalistic (if not ideological) fervor, and most Cubans were ready to do almost anything Fidel proposed. Interestingly, Castro is stressing “spiritual incentives” (medals, awards, publicity) to revive the ideal of “Socialist Man” that the famous Ernesto “Che”

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Guevara propounded during the Revolution’s early years. Guevara, the Argentine-born physician who joined Castro’s exiled rebel movement in Mexico in 1955 and became his chief lieutenant in the guerrilla campaign, was probably the purest believer in Marxism-Leninism of his generation; he was also Castro’s only intellectual equal among the rebels, and his principal ideological counselor. Castro told me several years ago that the greatest error committed by the “Revolution” (Fidel never says he has committed mistakes; it is “we” or the “Revolution”) was to try to implant pure communism in Cuba, skipping over the prepatory “socialist” stage that Marx and Lenin had recommended. Not even Stalin’s theoreticians saw the Soviet Union achieving the status of a classic “communist” society, but Fidel and Che set out to create such a society on their Caribbean island. They were on the verge of abolishing money altogether (in 1966) when the Soviets persuaded Castro that premature experimentation with classical communism would sink Cuba economically. Che Guevara was killed in October 1967 in the Bolivian mountains where, for reasons that remain unclear to this day, he had launched a guerrilla movement, hoping to rouse local Indian peasants. For the next 20 years, Castro appeared to have forgotten “spiritual incentives” and “Socialist Man,” concentrating on other themes. Meanwhile, Fidel used pay raises and favoritism in the distribution of scarce consumer goods to keep both top officials and lowly workers attentive to their duties. One result was creeping corruption in the Cuban Communist Party—Fidel is its first secretary as well as president of Cuba and the armed forces’ Commander in Chief—which has added to the erosion of popular faith in the selfless qualities of Cuba’s rulers. That his regime is in profound crisis is, to some degree, publicly recognized by Fidel himself. During the mid-1980s, he berated Cuba’s “workers who do not work” and “students who do not study.” He has also been discarding the annual plans drafted by his top economists, and firing the authors for being “despicable technocrats.” Castro personally redrafts the plans, down to the smallest detail— typical of his intervention in almost every arena of government. Fidel has reacted in other ways. To the call for “spiritual incentives,” he added a series of harsh austerity measures early in 1987. These ranged from a cut in the sugar allowance (even rice and meat are still imported and rationed) to an increase in urban transit fares (the bus system is in shambles) and a curtailment of daily television broadcast schedules. Cuba’s external debt to Western Europe had to be renegotiated because Havana had no hard currency with which to make payments; the Soviets presumably extended again the deadline for payments on the billions (the figures are never published) that the Cubans owe to Moscow. Thus, Castro had no choice but to embrace some sort of radical crisis management. What is surprising, however, is Castro’s recourse to the old Marxist-Leninist gospel. Fidel’s “rectification” campaign is aimed at warding off the twin demons of “capitalism” and the “bourgeoisie.” He has closed down small farmers’ mar-

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kets that he authorized in 1980, claiming that peasants were getting too rich selling piglets, chickens, and garlic directly to private customers. He now contends that any free-market experiment pollutes Marxism-Leninism. In a public remark that must have reached Gorbachev’s ears in Moscow, Castro announced recently that the way things were being managed around the world, he regarded himself as the last true bearer of the Marxist-Leninist banner. And Fidel does not joke about such matters. Nevertheless, it is difficult to fathom his apparent belief that contemporary Cubans will be turned toward noble socialist purposes by the revival of ideological slogans. Most Cubans are of the postrevolutionary generation (40 percent are under age 15). Although they may increasingly regard Fidel Castro as a heroic figure, they regard his revolutionary goals as abstractions. They did not experience the struggle of the 1950s. They take for granted universal education and health care, and, like people elsewhere, they want to enjoy a better life—a life they hear about via Spanish-language radio stations 90 miles away in Florida, where some 1.5 million native-born Cubans now reside. An exile in Miami remarked recently that “what throws me is that Fidel really seems to think that a team of aging revolutionaries—a 30-year-old team— can rekindle the fires of revolution in Cuba.” Another Cuban, who lives in Havana, drew a comparison between Castro and China’s late Mao Zedong. He suggested that Fidel had made a decision to risk everything on his version of a “Cultural Revolution” (though a bloodless one) to preserve the purity of the original struggle. “But please remember that Mao lost in the end, and the reformists took over to liberalize and modernize,” the Cuban said. “No two situations are alike, yet there are constants in human behavior, and Fidel, who should know better, is disregarding reality.” Castro won his struggle against the Batista dictatorship 30 years ago precisely because he had disregarded what was widely perceived as reality at the time: that his tiny guerrilla force in the Oriente Mountains could never oust an entrenched (albeit incompetent) military regime. Castro’s faith in himself is as strong today as it was then. Relying on his own audacity and imagination, Castro has always moved from one turning point to another, either defining them himself or exploiting events. His first move after the 1959 victory was the decision to transform the ouster of Batista into a continuing radical revolution. As Fidel explained it later, mocking “liberals” and “imperialists,” he had always planned it that way, but “our enemies never understood what we had in mind, and we didn’t act until we were good and ready.” Castro also understood that the United States would never endorse a radical regime next door, one committed to the nationalization of U.S.-owned land and other investments and to the rejection of Washington’s continued influence over Havana, and he behaved accordingly. America-baiting was a key element in Castro’s strategy. He foresaw that his regime would gain at home and in the eyes of much of the world if the

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Eisenhower administration (and later President Kennedy) reacted with hostility to his actions and his rhetoric; the Yankees would be the bullies. And, given the 60–year history of American dominance on the island, it was easy for Fidel to rouse latent nationalist sentiment among his compatriots. Quickly, his supporters came up with the chant, repeated endlessly at every public appearance by Castro: “ . . . Fidel, for sure . . . Hit the Yankees Hard! . . . ” This was the atmosphere as the Revolution acquired momentum—and as Washington officials began hatching plans to remove the Maximum Leader, especially after he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist in December 1961. But Castro’s decision to sever links with the United States required some new ally who could compensate for the loss of resources and trade from the mainland. Given the Cold War rivalries of the superpowers and Castro’s public fealty to communism, the Soviet Union was the logical candidate. By early 1960, high-level talks were underway between Havana and Moscow, and soon Soviet weaponry as well as oil and wheat began arriving in Cuba. By all accounts, Premier Nikita Khrushchev was as anxious as Castro to nurture the new relationship, inasmuch as it gave the Soviets their first strategic foothold and a Marxist-Leninist ally in the Western Hemisphere. But it is possible to argue that, in truth, Fidel manipulated the eager Soviets into providing massive economic aid. In any case, Castro owes his regime’s survival to the Soviet connection; it is less clear what continuing real profit the Kremlin has reaped from its long investment. Soviet weapons (and Washington’s bungling) helped to save Castro from the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-organized Cuban exiles. And Khrushchev’s installation of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island in 1962 led to the now-famous “eyeball-to-eyeball” U.S.-Soviet confrontation, still depicted in the United States as a Cold War triumph for John F. Kennedy. The story has another side. In return for removal of the missiles, President Kennedy gave private assurances to Khrushchev that the United States would never invade Cuba, thereby guaranteeing the future of Castro’s regime. Still, a regime with revolutionary aspirations must do more than simply survive. To prosper as a social and political phenomenon, it must create a better life for its citizenry. This became Castro’s overwhelming concern along with the permenent Soviet-aided defense of the island. Yet immense contrasts developed between the regime’s success in achieving social progress and its failure in economic development. That social progress did occur, to a degree rarely achieved elsewhere in the Third World, is widely recognized. As a result of the mass read-and-write campaign of the early 1960s, Cuba today has an impressive 96 percent literacy rate. The island has an ample network of schools and universities, and the postrevolutionary generation is by far the best educated in Cuban history; nowadays it lends teachers and doctors to other Third World countries. Public health in Cuba is better than in most Latin countries: Between 1960 and 1986, infant

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mortality below the age of one dropped from 62 to 15 per 1,000 live births (the U.S. rate: 10 per 1,000). Life expectancy at birth is 74 years (lower than the United States’ 75, but far ahead of Bolivia’s 53); caloric intake per capita is 127 percent of the international standard (it is 79 percent in Haiti). One can dispute such statistics, but few observers, hostile or friendly, dispute Cuba’s progress in these areas. Health, literacy, and education have improved since Batista’s time, even as political freedom has not. The economy is a disaster, and, in retrospect, one of the reasons is that Fidel Castro, the Maximum Leader, kept changing his mind. When he took power, Cuba was a monocultural country with sugar as its principal product and export-earner. The vulnerable, narrowly based economy could have been transformed with a blend of diversified agricultural and industrial growth. This was what Castro talked about at our hotel kitchen dinner in 1959. But his ideas never seemed fully thought out. And, in the end, they were never realized. At the start, both Castro and Che Guevara believed, almost as a matter of dogma, that the role of sugar cane had to be greatly diminished. But sugar was the only commodity that Cuba could produce in quantity for export to the Soviet Union. By 1968, when that reality could no longer be ignored, Fidel shifted gears so brusquely as to strip them altogether. Although the normal crop yielded about six million tons of sugar, the 1970 crop, Castro proclaimed, would yield a record 10 million tons. In the attempt to reach that goal (the harvest came up 1.5 million tons short), he damaged the rest of the economy by diverting transport, labor, and other resources to the cane fields. Today, sugar remains the mainstay of Cuba; the Soviet Union not only purchases the export crop, but pays more than the world market price. But Cuba’s inability to meet all of its economic production quotas led to the austerity measures of 1987. In fact, Castro has recently admitted that he has had to buy sugar at 10-1/2 cents a pound on the world market to live up to his export commitments to the Soviet Bloc. Sugar has been only one of the failures. Much of the once flourishing cattle industry was destroyed when Cuban- and American-owned estates were broken up under land reform; professional managers were replaced by untrained army offiers. Herds began dying off, and they were never replenished. Castro, meanwhile, experimented with mass production of poultry; it was a fine idea, but, again, nobody in the state apparatus knew how to make it work. And, at the start, Fidel refused to encourage tourism; it represented a throwback to “imperialism.” When, during the 1970s, he finally decided that tourism could provide desperately needed foreign exchange, Cuba no longer had the facilities to handle visitors; major efforts to spruce up resorts and colonial towns such as Santa Clara, Santiago, and Trinidad did not start until the 1980s. For years, Fidel was repeatedly distracted by new economic visions, neglecting Cuba’s existing assets—such as sugar and tobacco. One of his grander concepts was to surround Havana with a “Green Belt” where coffee, fruit, and vegetables would grow in abundance. After great investments of time, effort,

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and money, Castro quietly dropped the idea; for one thing, it was discovered belatedly that there was no water available for irrigation. In the end, the best that can be said of Castro’s hands-on managements is that perhaps a quarter-century—and billions of dollars in Soviet aid—has been wasted in the process. Amid austerity, mismanagement, and worker absenteeism, Cuba suffers increasingly from unemployment and underemployment. The island has seen growth in population without equal growth in jobs. The 1980 exodus of 125,000 Cubans— freedom-seekers as well as convicts, inmates of mental asylums, and other undesirables—from the port of Mariel to Florida eased the pressure briefly. The absence of many Cubans (around 55,000 as of mid-1988) serving in military units in Angola and Ethiopia has also helped to reduce joblessness. And in 1987, Castro agreed to an annual flow of emigrants to America: ex-political prisoners, and up to 20,000 others with U.S. relatives or certain skills. From exporting revolution, Cuba has turned to exporting unemployment. The Cubans are tired. One sees it in the faces of men and women riding to work in Havan’s rickety, overcrowded buses and in the faces of shoppers queuing up for rationed goods in front of nearly empty stores. It may take long years to be able to rent an apartment (72 percent of Cubans now live in Havana, Santiago, and other cities). To purchase a car (a Soviet Lada), the buyer must be recommended by the Communist Party, the labor union, and the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (part of the Interior Ministry’s neighborhood police network). Cuban’s work every other Saturday as an extra boost to the economy. Under Castro’s “rectfication” campaign’s “voluntary” labor requirements, men and women have little time to themselves—or for leisure. In addition to full-time jobs, most employees are expected to attend frequent indoctrination meetings at the workplace or at local Communist Party headquarters—often to discuss Castro’s latest speech. Then there are long hours of mandatory drill in the Territorial Militia. Thus, ordinary people are physically exhausted much of the time, and bored much of the rest. Leisure activities are severely limited. Those fortuante enough to own cars face gasoline rationing. Most people find it difficult to reach the beautiful beaches that Castro has proclaimed as the proud property of the pueblo; buses are few and tardy. Travel to the lovely old colonial towns is no easier. So, by and large, Cubans stay at home, visit neighbors, read, or watch television. The residents of the capital fare better. Old Havana, the colonial barrio adjoining the harbor, has been beautifully restored, and thousands stroll in the narrow streets and wide plazas on serene evenings. A pianist may play Chopin in the courtyard of a restored palace, a violin quartet may perform Mozart’s works in a chamber next door, and a Caribbean ensemble may evoke tropical rhythms down the street. They all blend marvelously—and provide an escape from reality.

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Under Castro, the official encouragement of culture has been constant, but highly selective. The government awards literary prizes to Cuban and foreign writers and poets. But nothing that is politically (or even aesthetically) unorthodox—of Cuban or foreign origin—is visible in the bookstores. Yes, there are novels by Fidel’s friend Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian Nobel laureate, and by Ernest Hemingway (who lived in Havana before his death in 1961), but not by many other “bourgeois” authors. The collected works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin are in every bookshop, but even telephone directories and foreign language dictionaries are difficult to obtain. Movie houses (Havana alone has about 30) show some good Cuban productions. Television, to which Cubans are condemned as their principal distraction, is less well endowed. Its menu relies on East European movies with Spanish subtitles (Western films cost too much to rent in hard currency), Mexican soap operas, occasional Cuban historical dramas, propaganda-laden news programs, baseball (the national sport), live broadcasts of official ceremonies, and speeches by Fidel Castro. The Cuban National Ballet is among the world’s best, but it is difficult to see a regular performance; there are 1,000 applicants for each ticket. Nightlife, to the average citizen of Havana, means a few bars with loud music; the traditional hot spots, such as the hotel nightclubs and the famous Tropicana with its spectacular f loorshows, are reserved for visiting foreign delegations or hard currency-spending tourists from Canada and Western Europe. In contrast to the Soviet Union, Cuba has little trouble with alcoholism: At more than $20 a liter, Cuban rum is out of the average Cuban’s reach, and foreign liquor is only obtainable in special hard-currency stores. But beer is cheap; young people in Havana drink it with gusto, especially on weekend evenings downtown. What will their future be? The simple answer is that as long as Fidel Castro keeps his health, nothing is likely to change. Since he appears to be in fine fettle, chances are that he will be in charge for some time—although he claims, unpersuasively, that he has already turned over many of his responsibilities to others, e.g., the Communist Party, the labor confederation, and “Popular Power” self-government goups operating locally under the aegis of the National Assembly (it meets twice a year for some speechmaking and rubber-stamping). Clearly, governing will become more difficult for Castro because he cannot arrest the warning of the old revolutionary esprit or (at this late date) perform economic miracles. For three decades, the threat of a U.S. invasion has been invoked (with some reason during 1959–62), and it is still used to justify the 500,000–member armed forces and reserves, and the even-larger militia. But the Yankee menace, now more illusory than real, cannot keep a growing, well-educated society united forever in the absence of some other kind of glue. This is the crux of Castro’s problem. Fidelismo, in contrast to Marxism-Leninism, seems strong enough to assure him a certain mass following—quite apart from

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the all-pervasive security apparatus that watches out for deviants. Yet, people talk more and more about having “one son in Miami and one son in Angola,” alluding to those Cubans who have fled to the United States and to those dispatched to fight in Africa in the name of socialist “internationalism.” Fidel still electrifies a great many Cubans when he rises to perorate, threaten, promise, and cajole, but the heartfelt explosive response that came from the admiring crowds during the early 1960s is no longer heard. Today, the cheers are much more ritualistic. Cubans know that the political system does not really work, and they increasingly, if quietly, resent the Communist Party’s privileged bureaucrats. The challenge to the existing system probably will come from the younger generations. They were educated by the Castro regime, they listen to foreign radio, and nowadays they ask why the system does not function more rationally. To be sure, they do not ask such questions in public. During Fidel’s student years, Havana University was a forum for great political debates; under communism, there simply are no such forums. In contrast to Eastern Europe, in Cuba there is no visible political dissent and no underground literature. One can glean enough from casual conversations to suspect that young Cubans are more attentive to what America and the West can offer them—in material ways and in ideas—than they are to the strictures of Marxism-Leninism. After 30 years of Castro’s rule, young Cubans do not seem convinced that trading total dependence on the United States for total dependence on the Soviet Union was a triumph of national policy. They probably would be delighted if Castro could not find ways of establishing a fruitful dialogue with the next U.S. administration. In Havana, one finds no overt resentment over the Bay of Pigs or the CIA’s past plotting against Castro. Generally, Cubans remain attracted to the United States, where so many have relatives, and U.S. visitors get a friendly reception (Russian residents are almost never seen in public). What seems beyond firm prediction is Cuba’s future when Fidel becomes incapacitated in some fashion. An agreed-upon mechanism for succession exists: Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother by five years, has been formally designated as the inheritor of the state, the Revolution, and the Communist Party. Recent history demonstrates, however, that such advance arrangements may not function as planned. In Cuba’s case, it would be preposterous to assume that Raúl Castro could enjoy Fidel’s personal popularity. Raúl is feared and respected, but he is not loved. His command of the armed forces and security services would presumably assure him of a period in power—it would most likely resemble a military occupation. It is doubtful that any other figure could emerge from among Castro’s aging revolutionary peers to take on Fidel’s role for long. Cuba would be plunged into instability. In the Maximum Leader’s absence, the reformist tendencies surfacing in the Communist world today would surely come to the fore in Cuba. It is even questionable whether any vestiges of Marxism-Leninism would survive Fidel. More-

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over, one must assume that the United States would not sit idly by as the process of change unfolded. And it may be that the Soviets would not greatly object if a new Cuba sought better relations with the West—and lessened its need for Soviet subsidies. In a real sense, the coming 30th anniversary of Castro’s rise to power marks the end of an era in Cuba, Latin America, and the rest of the Third World. Fidel Castro, his political genius, and his rhetoric may remain with us for a time, but this is a different world from the heady days of 1959. To a degree that neither Fidel nor his foes could have imagined, the East-West relationship has changed, as has the communism that Castro embraced. The poorer nations increasingly seek other development models: Marxism- Leninism has fallen out of favor in most of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. So has Fidel Castro’s revolution. The struggles for national liberation on which he sought to capitalize are essentially over. Castro is gradually shrinking as a major figure on the international stage. Fidelismo is not what it used to be.

The Cuban Economy In 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance

Part 2 Economy

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8 The Cuban Economy in 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance Carmelo Mesa-Lago In 1999-2000, the Cuban economy grew at an annual average rate of almost 6% and yet, in 2000, GDP still was one-fifth below the 1989 level. Cuba kept controlling inflation and the fiscal deficit, although the latter slightly rose and the monetary overhang expanded significantly. Gross revenue from tourism, as well as output of oil and nickel, continued to rise and reached record levels, but sugar output was stagnant at less than half the level of the 1980s. Production of several key industrial and agricultural products declined (textiles, fertilizers, milk) or rose and decreased (cement, cigars, fish, rice, eggs), while steady increases occurred in few lines (electricity, citrus); in all these cases, however, output in 1999-2000 was still below that of 1989. The external merchandise trade deficit kept climbing and surpassed the $3 billion mark in 2000, the highest ever, aggravated by low sugar production and high world oil prices. The trade deficit was partly compensated with tourism earnings and remittances from abroad, but Cuba had to resort to costly shortterm loans to cover the difference. The external debt slightly declined to less than $11 billion and a significant increase in cumulative foreign investment was reported albeit related to committed rather than actual investment. Open unemployment kept descending but estimates of underemployment were not available; the real wage slightly increased although still was 40% below the 1989 level. Social security expenditures (mainly pensions) rose to 13% of GDP and will continue to grow as the Cuban population rapidly ages to become the oldest in the region. Infant mortality continued its decline and, in 2000, was 35% below the 1989 level. University enrollment began a modest reversal of the dramatic fall of the 1990s but in 2000 still was 56% below the 1989 level. The large majority of economic and social targets set by the V Party Congress for 1998-2002 has not been fulfilled. Targets for 2001 are more moderate,

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but two thirds of them will be difficult or impossible to achieve. An interesting debate is taking place among some Cuban scholars on the need to advance reforms further and design a new strategy to give a thrust to growth and cope with the external disequilibria. The economic reform process has been basically halted since 1996, as only two measures were taken in 1997-1998, both of an administrative nature, without a further move to the market: restructuring of the banking sector and promotion of the system of enterprise perfection (sistema de perfeccionamiento empresarial). A Cuban scholar has compiled a comprehensive list of all reform measures taken from 1990 to mid-2001 and there are no such measures for 1999-2001 (Ferriol 2001). Economic Performance Several tables in this essay summarize Cuba’s major economic and social indicators, as reported by key government institutions such as the Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas (ONE), the Banco Central de Cuba (BCC) and ministries. Additional data come from Cuban scholars (whose academic output has expanded significantly, both in quantity and quality) and the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) based on official data. The series start with 1989, the year before the crisis began, tend to show their worst point in 1993, and recover in 1994-2000 (for a recent analysis of Cuban statistics see Mesa-Lago 2001a). Domestic comparisons are made between 1989 and 2000; international comparisons with Latin America and the Caribbean are also made when possible. The evaluation of performance is divided into four major sections: macroeconomic, external, physical output and labor/social. Domestic Macroeconomic Indicators Growth: Table 1 shows that gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 6.2% in 1999 and 5.6% in 2000, for an annual average of 5.9%, contrasted with an average of 1.8% during the slowdown of 1997-1998. The Cuban average rate of growth for 1999-2000 was the fifth highest in Latin America and the Caribbean, after the Dominican Republic, Belize, Nicaragua and Trinidad and Tobago. Except for the latter, which benefited from very high oil prices, these countries are among the least developed in the region, and Cuba suffered a 35-45% decline in GDP in 1989-1993. Cuba’s annual growth rate during the 1994-2000 recovery averaged 3.8%, but for the entire period 1990-2000 it averaged -1.2%, the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC 2000b). In 2000, Cuba’s GDP level at constant prices of 1981 was 16,556 million pesos (BCC 2001; ONE 2001), 21% below the 20,960 million pesos level of 1989 (ECLAC 2000b; according to BCC 2001, the gap compared with 1989 was only 15%). In 2000, GDP per capita at constant prices, in pesos, was 25% below the 1989 level. At the average growth

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rate of 1994-2000, it would take six years for GDP to recover its absolute level of 1989 and eight years to recover the per capita level. Capital Formation: Gross capital formation as a percentage of GDP shrunk from 26.7% to 5.4% in 1989-1993, but rose since 1995 and reached 13.2% in 2000, still 51% below the 1989 level (ECLAC 2001 estimates that gross domestic investment averaged 8.4% of GDP in 1997-2000). A Cuban scholar argues that a strong economic recovery would require investment rates similar to those of 1975 and 1989, that is, 25% of GDP (Marquetti 2000). Another scholar also acknowledges the currently low level of investment and that, to increase it, is necessary for GDP to expand at a faster rate, instead of changing the structure of investment/consumption, because the latter cannot be further reduced (Triana 2001). Price Stability: Inflation (based on changes in the consumer price index— CPI) peaked at 25.7% in 1994 and turned into deflation: -2.9% in 1999 and –2.3% in 2000 (BCC 2001). These figures are questionable for four reasons: (1) Cuba has never published information on the methodology for calculating the CPI, including the basket of goods and services used; (2) 1981 has been used for 20 years as a base for constant prices despite foreign criticism because it was an abnormal year (high inflation); (3) the CPI variation (negative) is significantly Table 1 Cuban Marcroeconomic Indicators: 1989-2000 (in percentages) Indicators

1989

1993 1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

% 2000 1989

GDP growth ratea

1.2

-14.9

2.5

7.8

2.5

1.2

6.2

5.6

-21d

GDP per capita (pesos) a

1,976 1,172 1,175 1,201 1,290 1,317 1,327

1,405

1,478

-25

0.7

Gross capital 26.7 formation/GDPa

5.4

5.5

7.2

8.2

9.5

9.4

10.3

13.2

-51

Inf lation rateb

n.a.

19.7

25.7

-11.5 -4.9

1.9

2.9

-2.9

-2.3

n.a.

Monetary liquidity/GDPc

21.6

73.2 51.8

42.6

42.0

41.1

40.6

38.8

37.9

+75

-33.5

-3.5

-2.5

-2.0

-2.3

-2.4

-2.5

-65

Fiscal balance/ -7.2 GDPc

-7.4

a At constant 1981 prices. b Annual variation of the CPI. c At current prices. d Based on GDP at constant prices of 1981, in million pesos: 20,960 in 1989 and 16,552 in 2000.

Sources: 1989 from CCE 1991; 1993-1997 from ONE 1999; 1998-1999 from ONE 2000 and BCC 2000; 2000 from ONE 2001, BCC 2001, and ECLAC 2001a.

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different from the behavior of the implicit GDP deflator (positive change): 5.2% in 1998, 0.8% in 1999 and 0.1% in 2000 (the latter estimated by ECLAC 2001a); and (4) “monetary liquidity” (monetary overhang) was reduced from 11 to 9.2 billion pesos in 1994-1995 (from 73.2% to 42.6% of GDP), but increased again in 1996-2000 to reach 10.5 billion pesos, 2.5 times the level of 1989 (see Table 2). An intriguing question is how there could have been deflation in 1999-2000 while the GDP deflator slightly increased and the monetary overhang rose in those two years. The fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP fell from 33.5% to 2% in 1993-1997, a significant achievement, but rose to 2.5% in 2000, above the regional average of -2.3% (ECLAC 2000b). One important component of the deficit is the fiscal subsidy to inefficient state enterprises (concentrated in sugar and agricultural sectors), that accounts for 18% of total expenditures (Triana 2000). Table 2 Cumulative Monetary Liquidity of the Cuban Population: 1989-2000 (in million current pesos and % of GDP)

a

Cumulative Monetary Liquidity a

% of GDP

1989

4,164

21.6

1990

4,986

25.4

1991

6,564

40.4

1992

8,362

56.1

1993

11,043

73.2

1994

9,944

51.8

1995

9,251

42.6

1996

9,534

42.0

1997

9,441

41.1

1998

9,710

40.6

1999

9,902

38.8

2000

10,490

37.9

Monetary overhang

Sources: CEE 1991; ONE 1999, 2000, 2001; BCC 2000, 2001.

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External Sector Trade Balance: The major indicators for the external sector are shown in Table 3. After a dramatic decline of 79% in 1989-1993, the value of exports (goods) increased by 61% in 1993-1996, but declined/stagnated thereafter; export value was 1.7 billion pesos in 2000, still 68% below the 1989 level. Imports of goods dropped 75% in 1989-1993 but steadily rose thereafter reaching 4.9 billion pesos in 2000, still 40% less than in 1989. As imports expanded faster than exports, the trade balance deficit of goods jumped six-fold in 1993-2000, reaching the historical record of 3.2 billion pesos, 18% higher than the 1989 deficit. There is a major difference between 1989 and 2000, however, that Cuba does not benefit any longer from generous Soviet automatic long-term loans to cover the deficit, at very low interest rates and never paid. Now Cuba has to resort to short-term loans from foreign banks and other financial institutions, which charge high interest (see below). Table 3 Cuban External Sector Indicators: 1989-2000

a

Indicators

1989

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

% 2000 1989

Exports (billion pesos)

5.4

1.1

1.3

1.5

1.9

1.8

1.5

1.4

1.7

-68

Imports (billion pesos)

8.1

2.0

2.1

2.8

3.6

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.9

-40

Trade balance (billion pesos)

-2.7

-0.9

-0.8

-1.3

-1.7

-2.3

-2.7

-2.9

-3.2

+18

Terms of trade (1989=100)

100.0

54.4

65.9

73.9

66.7

68.5

57.3

55.9

49.9

-50

External 6.2 debt (billion US$)

8.8

9.1

10.5

10.5

10.1

11.2

11.1

11.0

+77

Foreign n.a. investment (billion US$)

n.a.

n.a.

2.1

n.a.

n.a.

2.2

n.a.

4.3 b

n.a.

Exchange rate (pesos per 1 US$)a

78

95

32

19

23

21

20

21

+200

7

Unofficial rate, annual average.

b

“Committed investment” rather than actual.

Sources: 1989 from CCE 1991; 1993-1997 from ONE 1999; 1998-1999 from ONE 2000 and BCC 2000; 2000 from ONE 2001, BCC 2001, ECLAC 2001. Terms of Trade from ECLAC 2001. Foreign investment for 1998 from Martínez 1998, and 2000 from Rodríguez 2000.

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The merchandise trade deficit was partly compensated with a substantial surplus from services, mainly tourism, and yet the current account balance was negative: -462 million pesos in 1999 (1.8% of GDP) and -687 million pesos in 2000 (2.5 % of GDP); these were the two highest deficits since the end of the 1980s. The current account deficit was partly compensated with “net transfers,” mostly remittances from Cubans abroad; such transfers rose from zero in 1989 to 799 million pesos in 1999 and 842 million in 2000. But payments of debt principal and interest, combined with profit taking by foreign investors, added to the negative balance: -514 in 1999 and -693 million pesos in 2000 (BCC 2000, 2001; for statistical series on Cuba’s balance of payments see Pérez-López 2000). Terms of Trade: There was a significant steady deterioration in the terms of trade in 1989-2000 (-50 percentage points). In 1999, the price of sugar in the world market dropped one-third while the price of oil jumped 2.5 times provoking a 18.3% deterioration in the terms of trade (BCC 2000). In 2000, rising oil prices cost $500 million more for a similar volume of oil imported in 1999, and higher prices of sugar and nickel did not compensate for the high oil prices, leading to a 22% deterioration in the terms of trade (BCC 2001). In October 2000, however, Cuba signed a trade agreement with Venezuela, which might help to improve the terms of trade (in 1999 Venezuela was Cuba’s fourth trading partner, ahead of Russia, and jumped to first place in 2000). Under this agreement, the island will receive 53,000 barrels of oil daily, equivalent to 2.5 million tons annually, meeting 29% of domestic needs (8.6 million tons). About 80% of the imports will be paid at world prices within 90 days; the remaining 20% will be paid in 5 to 20 years, based on the average annual price of oil in that period, and one-fifth of that with Cuban services and goods (Rodríguez Castellón 2001). Trade Composition: Export concentration on sugar steadily decreased from 73.2% to 31.8% of total export value in 1989-2000 as a result of the fall in sugar export quantum and value. And yet, although all other export shares increased in 1989-1999 (nickel, tobacco, fish, citrus, rum), their actual value—and in most cases also volume—shrunk, except for cigars and cement. The composition of imports showed some important differences between 1989 and 1999 also: the share of food, fats and beverages rose from 13% to 19% and of manufactures from 14% to 26%; meanwhile, the share of imported machinery/transportation equipment decreased from 31% to 26%, and the share of fuels sank from 32% to 17% (CCE 1991; ONE 1999 and 2000). These trends are clear indicators of both Cuba’s decreasing self-sufficiency on food and of the de-industrialization process. Trade Partners: In 1989, about 79% of Cuban total trade was with the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries but, after the collapse of the socialist bloc, the island has significantly diversified trade partners. In 2000, the main partners were: Venezuela (13.9% of trade, an increase from 8% in 1999), Spain (13.4%), Canada (9%), Netherlands (8.3%), China (7.6%), Russia (6.7%, a decline from 65% with the Soviet Union in 1989), Mexico (5.1%), France (5.1%)

The Cuban Economy In 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance

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and Italy (4.8%) (BCC 2001). Cuba is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean that has not reached full membership in any of the regional commercial associations (CACM, CAN, CARICOM, MERCOSUR) and has been excluded from FTAA negotiations. In 2000, Cuba entered the Asian, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP) and, based on this, could become a member in the Cotonou Accord and receive aid from the European Union (EU). Cuba did not comply with the EU conditions on human rights and, when the EU countries voted against the island at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, Cuba decided not to sign the accord. The island has gained observer status in CARICOM but trade with member countries is minuscule (León 2001). The U.S. embargo on Cuba was slightly mollified by allowing the island to buy food, but the Cuban government rejected this action due to the lack of credit facilities. External Debt: The hard-currency external debt jumped from $6.2 to $11.2 billion in 1989-1998, and slightly declined to $11.1 billion in 1999 and $10.96 billion in 2000, because of the depreciation of currencies that make up most of that debt in relation to the U.S. dollar. About three-fourths of the debt has matured and has not been paid (BCC 2001). In 1986, Cuba suspended payments of the debt and in spite of several efforts to renegotiate its government debt with the Club of Paris, as of July 2001 there was no an agreement with the Club, hence, Cuba has not received fresh loans. The debt with Russia and the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, as well as the extinct Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), has not been paid, and Cuba has not reached an agreement on the sums to be reimbursed either, allegedly because “they are not convertible in hard currency … and those countries unilaterally did not fulfill the terms and conditions of that debt” (BCC 2001, p. 38). Negotiations with creditors in the United Kingdom, Belgium and Japan resulted in agreements in 1999-2000. In 1999, 80% of imports were financed with external loans, 70% with maturity of one year or less, and high interest rates, which imposed a heavy burden on the island’s finances (BCC 2000). One-year loans from foreign banks were received in 1996-1997 to finance the sugar harvest (about $500 million), but the cost was quite high, and the net gain from a declined sugar production was lower that the amount of the loan plus interest. The crop failure of 1997 led to less foreign credit available for 1998, the situation improved with a slightly larger harvest in 1999-2000 ($500 million in credits were obtained), but deteriorated with the poor harvest of 2001 (Mesa-Lago 1998; Triana 2000). In that year Cuba defaulted on obligations with France, Spain, South Africa, and other countries (Frank 2001b). Foreign Investment: Cumulative foreign investment since 1990 was officially reported at $2.1 billion by 1995 and $2.2 billion by 1998, virtually stagnant in three years. But it was given as $4.3 billion at the end of 2000, a surprising two-fold increase in two years, explainable because it referred to committed rather than actual investment. Other estimates of foreign investment vary wildly, according to divergent definitions, for instance: $1,352.6 million in “direct for-

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Cuban Communism

eign investment” in 1999 (Pérez Villanueva 2000); more than $4 billion in “committed investment” in 2000 (Ferriol 2001), and $5 billion in “total capital involved” in 2000 (Triana 2001). In spite of the significance of this item, there are not reliable statistics available. Exchange Rate: The official exchange rate of the peso to the dollar continued to be par, but the state exchange houses (CADECA), established in 1995, use a more realistic exchange rate. The latter, in pesos per one dollar, deteriorated from 7 to 95 in 1989-1994, steadily appreciated reaching 19 in 1996, deteriorated again to 23 in 1997, and appreciated to 20 in 1999 but slightly deteriorated to 21 in 2000 (ECLAC 2001a). Some Cuban scholars argue that maintaining the artificial parity with the dollar is harmful for the Cuban economy and advocate for convertibility based on the market (see last section of the paper). Tourism: The number of tourists visiting the island rose from 270,000 in 1989 to 1,774,000 in 2000, and gross revenue jumped ten-fold, from 168 to 1,940 million pesos in the same period. The problem is that data on the cost of imported inputs, which must be deducted from gross revenue to calculate net revenue, are not officially published. Table 4 is an attempt, admittedly speculative, to calculate the cost of imported inputs in 1992-2000 based on rough estimates given by Cuban scholars in some years. According to Table 4, net revenue increased from 99 to 1,182 million in the period 1992-2000, but these estimates are debatable. For instance, the 2000 figure is based on a statement from the Central Bank in the sense that 61% of inputs for tourism were produced domestically, implying that 39% were imported (BCC 2001, p. 25), but that does not mean that the total cost of imported inputs Table 4 Rough Estimates of Net Revenue From Tourism: 1992-2000 (in million pesos) 1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Gross revenue

550

720

850

1,100

1,380

1,515

1,759

1,901

1,939

Cost of imports (%)

82

77

72

67

63

60

55

50

39

Net revenue (%)

18

23

28

33

37

40

45

50

61

Estimated net revenue

99

165

238

363

510

606

792

950

1,182

Sources: Gross revenue from CCE 1991; ONE 1999, 2000, 2001; BCC 2001. Estimated cost of imports: 1992 from Gutiérrez Castillo 2000 (he says that the percentage gradually increased to reach 54% in 1999 and an expected 60% in 2000); 1999 from Marquetti 2000; 2000 from Del Barro 2001 based on BCC 2001; rest are author’s interpolations.

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was 39%. The Minister of Tourism, Ibrahim Ferradaz (cited by Muñoz 2001) has clarified that, in 2000, “the cost per dollar of revenue [in the tourist industry] was 0.78 cents … about the same as in 1999.” If this is correct, then the cost of imported inputs in 1999-2000 was not 39% but 78%, and net revenue in those years should be 418 and 427 million pesos, respectively. A Cuban scholar warns that the tourist sector is a grand importer and that the country must work in producing some of the inputs needed in that industry, otherwise, with the planned expansion, Cuba would have to import $3,000 billion–equivalent to the 2000 merchandise trade deficit (Pérez Villanueva 2000). Other two problems faced by the industry are: (1) the occupancy rate in international tourist rooms climbed from 39.7% in 1990 to 59.7% in 1999 (ECLAC 2000; BCC 2000), still low by international levels, hence, raising the question of how the added rooms will be filled; and (2) average expenditures, overnight stays at hotels and receipts for visitors have declined since 1994-1995 (Espino 2001). Physical Output The performance in terms of physical output of key products (export products, energy, food and manufactures) is presented in Table 5. Except for oil and nickel, production of all of the key products was lower in 2000 than in 1989. Nickel: Nickel output decreased 43% in 1989-1994 but, with the help of Canadian investment, surpassed the previous production peak in 1996 and kept rising thereafter. Output in 2000 was 51% above the 1989 level. There are three plants in operation: René Ramos Latour (formerly Nicaro, built with U.S. investment and technology), Pedro Soto Alba (formerly Moa, built with U.S. investment and technology) and Ernesto Che Guevara (built with Soviet technology and financial aid); a fourth plant, at Las Camariocas, has not been completed. In 1989 the installed capacity of the three operating plants were: 22,500, 24,000 and 30,000 tons, respectively, for a total of 76,500 tons. Production in 1989, however, was only 47,000 tons, because the Che Guevara plant was just starting and it consumed much energy, while the two former U.S. plants needed modernization (Mesa-Lago 2000). Production in 2000 was as follows: 10,708 tons by the Ramos Latour plant (it was said that production capacity was 10,000 tons, less than half the 1989 level), 29,700 tons by the Soto Alba plant, and 31,000 by the Che Guevara plant, for a total of 71,400 tons. Current production, therefore, is below the installed capacity of 1989, in spite of investment by Sherritt International Corporation. In 2000, the Che Guevara plant used half of the fuel it did in 1990, but still had high fuel consumption (BCC 2001; Portal 2001). Oil: Oil extraction peaked at almost one million tons in 1986, declined by 44% in 1987-1991, rose in 1992-1995, was stagnant in 1996-1997, and rapidly expanded in 1998-2000, to reach a record of 2.4 million tons (other estimates give 2.6 to 2.8 million tons). Output in 2000 was 234% above 1989, and 140% over 1986. This impressive performance has been the result of $450 million in foreign

108

Cuban Communism TABLE 5 CUBAN INDICATORS OF PHYSICAL OUTPUT: 1989-2000 (thousand metric tons)

Indicators

1989

1993

1994

1996

1997

1998

Sugar

8,121

4,246

4,016 3,258 4,528

4,252

3,229 3,783 4,059

Nickel

47

30

Oil

718

1,107

16

11

Cement

3,759

1,049

Textiles

220

Electricity (billion Kwh)

a

51

27

1995

43

54

1,299 1,471 1,476 12

12

13

1,085 1,456 1,438 56

45

48

62 1,462 14 1,701 54

68

1999 2000

66

14

-59

71

1,678 2,136 2,695 14

% 2000 1989

15

1,713 1,785 1,633

+51 a

+275 -6 -56

54

51

n.a.

-77

Fertilizers

898

94

136

217

241

184

156

138

118

-87

Cigars

308

208

186

192

194

214

264

284

226

-27

Fish catch

192

94

88

102

120

136

133

145

162

-16

Citrus

1,016

644

540

585

690

835

744

795 959

-6

Rice

532

177

387

396

573

614

441

567 462

-13

Milk (cow)

1,131

585

636

638

640

651

655

618 590

-48

Eggs

2,673

1,512

1,647 1,542 1,412

1,632

1,416 1,753 1,688

-37

BCC 2001; 2,635 according to ONE 2001 and 2,899 by Rodríguez Castellón 2001.

Sources: 1989 from CCE 1991; 1993-1997 from ONE 1999; 1998-1999 from ONE 2000 and BCC 2000; 2000 from ONE 2001, BCC 2001, ECLAC 2001a, Pérez Villanueva 2001, Triana 2001.

investment, two-thirds of total investment in this crucial sector (Triana 2000). About 42.3% of Cuba’s total energy needs are met with domestic sources, mainly bagasse (25%) and crude oil (17%); the contribution of natural gas and hydroelectric power is minimal (0.3%). Imports cover 58.4% of needs, 46% from oil derivatives and a 12% from crude oil (Rodríguez Calderón 2001). The contribution of domestic output of crude oil to total crude oil and derivative needs was 22.7% in 1999, up from 11.6% in 1987 (Mesa-Lago 2000). The increase in domestic oil production has reduced foreign energy dependency by half of what it was a decade ago, but it still is 77%. Sugar: At least until 1999, sugar was the main source of export revenue, although nickel was rapidly closing the gap. The tight relationship between sugar and GDP has been shown by Triana (2000), but this vital sector has been unable to recover: “The sugar industry has gone through a depressive state and

The Cuban Economy In 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance

109

its performance decides the rhythm and dimension of the process of economic recovery” (Marquetti 2000, p. 11). After small increases in the harvests of 1999 (3.8 million tons) and 2000 (4 million tons), sugar output declined to 3,532,000 tons in 2001—the third lowest under the Revolution. (The worst harvests were in 1995 and 1998, with production of 3.26 and 3.23 million tons, respectively.) The initial target for 2001 had been set at 5 million tons, but later was reduced to 3.7 million; actual output in 2001 was 59% below the 1989 level. In per capita terms the decline was from 0.76 tons in 1989 to 0.31 tons in 2001; the latter was half the per capita output of 0.60 tons. The Minister of the Sugar Industry, General Ulises Rosales del Toro, blamed the climate (a draught) for the failure, but other factors were responsible. Annual average sugar output (in million tons) steadily declined in the last two decades: 7.8 in 1981-1985, 7.6 in 1986-1990, 5.2 in 1991-1995, 3.9 in 1996-2000 and 3.5 in 2001 (Mesa-Lago 2000, and Table 5). The total sugar cane area sown declined by 22% in 1990-1999, from 1.76 to 1.38 million hectares, while the irrigated area decreased from 22% to 9% of the total area sown. The agricultural yield per hectare sank from 60 in 1989 (59.4 in the state sector and 62.8 in the non-state sector) to 34.1 in 1999 (31.5 and 34.4 in the state and non-state sectors, respectively). Weeds cover from 10% to 15% of the sown area and there is a severe scarcity of herbicides. Due to a decline in domestic production, as well as imports, the use of chemical fertilizers has decreased and has been partly replaced with natural fertilizer. Because of insufficient fuel, most of the transportation is done with animal traction and that, combined with the lack of spare parts, has reduced the number of cane cutters in operation and the capacity of the sugar-cane cleaning centers (CCE 1991; ONE 1991, 1999, 2000; Orrio 2001). Finally, the sugar industrial yield has steadily fallen under the Revolution: from 12.5 in 1961-1965, to 11.0 in 1981-1985, 10.7 in 1986-1990, and 10.6 in 1996-2000 (Mesa-Lago 2000; ONE 2000). Manufacturing: Five key manufactured products have been selected for the analysis of performance; these products played a key role in Cuba’s industrialization process before the crisis, mainly for domestic consumption but also for export. For all of them, output drastically shrunk in 1989-1993 and rose thereafter, but output in 1999-2000 was still below the 1989 level: -6% for electricity, 27% for cigars, -56% for cement, -77% for textiles, and -87% for fertilizers. Several factors have contributed to this negative performance: scarcity of fuel, lack of spare parts (most Cuban factories were built and equipped by the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, which no longer supply those parts), difficulties to acquire needed inputs abroad, and absence of foreign demand (except for cigars). According to Marquetti (2000), the level of decapitalization and technological obsolescence in various industrial branches is 30%. Fishing: Fishing was one of the major economic successes of the Revolution but its problems actually began before the crisis. The catch peaked at 244,000

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Cuban Communism

tons in 1986 and by 1989 had declined to 192,000 tons; the crisis reduced it to 88,000 in 1994, and there was a slow increase in 1995-2000 to 162,300 in 2000. Output in the latter year was 16% below the 1989 level and 34% below the 1986 peak. Agriculture: The non-sugar agricultural sector (both for domestic consumption and export) has had a poor performance and its recovery has been sluggish and unsteady; thus, in 2000, output was below the 1989 level in the following key staples: -48% for milk, -37% for eggs, -13% for rice and –6% for citrus. Similar declines occurred in other fruits and tobacco leave. Conversely the output of vegetables, tubers, corn and beans increased but, in per capita terms, output was either stagnant or lower (CCE 1991; ONE 1999, 2000, 2001; BCC 2001; ECLAC 2000a). The number of cattle heads peaked at 6.8 million in 1967 and sank to 4.6 in 1993, stagnated in 1994-1998, and decreased to 4.4 million in 1999; there were 0.83 heads per capita in 1967, 0.46 in 1989 and 0.39 in 1999. The decimation of cattle led to the fall in beef output from 289,000 tons to 152,000 tons, as well as in milk production (Mesa-Lago 2000; ONE 1999, 2000). The third agrarian reform introduced in 1993-1994 has been unable to solve the problems in agriculture, such as inefficiency and lack of incentives. The new cooperatives (UBPC) are highly dependent on the state, who in practice directs production and buys virtually all of their output at prices set below the market price, hence, creating serious disincentives. As a result, in 1997, the UBPC’s share of cultivated land was 57.6% but their share of total sales in the free agricultural markets was 3.6%; conversely the private sector shares were respectively 16.9% and 72.7%. In 1995-1996, 94% of UBPCs suffered losses and required state subsidies; by 1999-2000 the proportion had been reduced to 37%, still a high percentage. Another problem is the increasing size of the UBPCs, which makes them more difficult to manage. The UBPCs operate 74% of sugar cane plantations, which largely explains the failure of this sector. Finally, total cultivated agricultural land decreased by 13% in 1990-1997 (ECLAC 2000; Novoa 2001). Social and Labor Indicators Unemployment: Table 6 selects five key labor and social indicators of performance. Open unemployment was reduced from 7.9% in 1989 and 1995 to 5.8% in 2000, a decline of 26% (BCC 2001 gives a rate of 5.5% in 2000). The “equivalent unemployment rate” (open unemployment plus displaced workers receiving compensation), estimated by ECLAC (1998, 2000 a), peaked at 35.2% in 1993 but decreased to 25.1% in 1998 (the latest year available). The question is how this feat was accomplished when in 1995 from 500,000 to 800,000 workers in the state sector were considered surplus (disponibles) and should have been dismissed, and the small private sector is stagnant under increasingly tight regulations and taxes.

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111

Table 6 Cuban Labor and Social Indicators: 1989-2000 Indicators

1989

1993 1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

Open unemployment (% EAP)

% 2000 1989

7.9

6.2 6.7

7.9

7.6

7.0

6.6

6.0

5.8

-26

Social security expenditures (% GDP)

10.1

15.8 13.2

12.3

12.1

12.2

12.4

13.0

13.3

+31

Infant mortality (per 1000)

11.1

9.4

9.9

9.4

9.0

7.2

7.1

6.4

7.2

-35

University enrollment (thousands)

242

166 141

122

112

105

102

107

n.a.

-56

Sources: Infant mortality and university enrollment: 1989 from CCE 1991; 1993-1997 from ONE 1999; 1998-1999 from ONE 2000; 2000 from ONE 2001. Open unemployment from ECLAC 2000a, 2000b; BCC 2001 gives 5.5% for 2000. Social security includes health, pensions and social assistance, from Mesa-Lago 2001 and ONE 2001.

Some measures taken in 1996-2001 against self-employment and other private sector activities are: (a) 300% increase in licenses and 650% in fees to the self-employed; (b) taxes of $850 monthly for tiny restaurants (paladares) and $250 for a room rented in tourist areas (fines of $1,000 to $1,800 per guest are imposed for rental violations); (c) halting new licenses for paladares; (d) prohibiting private taxis to transport tourists; (e) closing of independent private galleries, allowing only state galleries to sell art work; and (f) a tax of 300 pesos on “video saloons” and of 800 pesos for rental of dresses (Bauzá 2001; Cawthorne 2001; Henken 2001). These measures led to a decrease in the number of registered self-employed workers from 208,500 at the end of 1995 to 156,600 in 1999 (ECLAC 1998; ONE 2000). Minister of Economy José Luis Rodríguez has declared on this issue: “It is not our policy to eliminate self-employment ... But we do not stimulate it because we do not believe it is the way to get the country out of its economic difficulties” (cited by Cawthorne 2001). A draft law circulating in 1995, which allowed Cubans to own and operate small business, went into limbo and has not been discussed in the last three years. Real Wages: Table 7 presents two indices of real wages in 1989-1999, converted to the year 1989 as a base: Togores’ index indicates a decline of 42%, while ECLAC’s index exhibits a decrease of 39%. The small wage increase in 1999 did not raise the purchasing power, because of the high prices in dollar shops and agricultural markets (prices in the latter did not change in three

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years, and rose in 2001). The lack of connection between wages and real prices is a disincentive to labor productivity and an obstacle for the improvement of population consumption (Triana 2000). A survey undertaken in 1999 by the Instituto Nacional para la Salud de los Trabajadores detected an increase of 41% in workers’ discontent (Garve 2001). Social Security: The cost of social security (combining pensions, health care and social assistance) has been climbing as a result of several factors: virtual universal coverage, very low ages of retirement, the maturity of the pension scheme, and the aging of the population (it is estimated that, by 2025, Cuba will have the oldest population of the region and there will be only two persons of productive age for one person of retirement age). Table 6 shows that social security expenditures as a percentage of GDP peaked at 15.8% in 1993, because Table 7 Estimates of Real Wages and Real Wage Indices in Cuba: 1989-1999 Source

1989

1993

1994

1995

189

184

186

195

Consumer price index

1.443

6.578

5.575

Real wage

130.98

27.97

Real wage index (1989=100)

100.00

Consumer price indexb

1996

1997

1998

1999

207

206

206

221

2.940

2.883

2.904

2.983

2.896

33.36

66.32

73.34

70.94 a

69.05 a 76.31

21.35

25.47

50.63

55.99

54.16 a

52.72 a 58.26

0.962

1.245

1.645

1.862

1.898

1.896

1.922

1.866

Nominal wage index (1990=100)

100.5

97.3

98.9

103.7

108.0

110.2

110.2

118.2

Real wage index (1990=100)

104.5

78.1

60.1

55.7

56.9

58.1

57.3

63.3

Real wage index (1989=100)

100.0

74.7

57.5

53.3

54.4

55.6

54.8

60.6

Togores Nominal average wage

ECLAC

a

Togores uses higher nominal wages than actual: 214 in 1997 (instead of 206) and 217 in 1998 (instead of 206); as a result, real wages are higher: 73.68 and 72.75 respectively; the author recalculated the real wage and the index based on actual figures.

b

Calculated by the author from ECLAC nominal and real wage indices.

Sources: Nominal average wage from CCE 1991, ONE 1999 and 2000. Togores 1999. ECLAC 2000a. The year 1999 are author’s estimates based on the official def lation rate of -2.9%.

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GDP decreased by 35% while social security expenditures kept rising. As GDP began to increase again, the proportional burden of social security declined and stabilized at about 12.2 % of GDP in 1995-1998 but, because social security expenditures expanded faster than economic growth, such burden rose to 13% in 1999-2000 and should continue growing in the future. Furthermore, there is an expanding deficit in the pension scheme, which is covered by the state (38% of total expenditures and 2.6% of GDP in 1999) and all health care is financed by the state (5.5% of GDP in 1999). The real average pension declined by 42% in 1989-1998 and the average monthly pension of 104 pesos in 2000 was equivalent to $5. The rationing system only provides food rations for one-third of the month (for about 25 pesos); other food and essential consumer goods must be bought with the remaining $4 in dollar shops and in the agricultural markets, where prices are very high (Mesa-Lago 2001b). The government is considering a significant reform of the pension scheme that may increase the age of retirement, implement workers’ contributions and incorporate the growing private sector (Gutiérrez and Peñate 2000). Health: The infant mortality rate continued to fall: it decreased from 11.1 (per 1,000 born alive) in 1989 to 6.4 in 1999, although it rose to 7.2 in 2000, for a decline of 35% over the period (Table 6). That rate was the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean (BCC 2000). Morbidity rates for eleven contagious diseases in 1994-1999 showed increases in six (chicken pox, hepatitis, syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis and typhoid), continuous non reported cases in five (diphtheria, malaria, measles, polio and tetanus), and no decreases (ONE 1999; MINSAP 2000). Data on nutrition are extremely difficult to find, but the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) shows the following changes in 1970-1997 in daily per capita supply: calories -6%, protein -23.9% and fat -27.7% (UNDP 2000). The number of physicians increased almost two fold in 1989-1999, and in the latter year Cuba had the highest proportion of physicians to population in the region: 58.2 per 10,000 inhabitants (MINSAP 2000; ECLAC 2000a). Actually there is a surplus of these professionals: “We are sending thousands of physicians free to provide their services ... in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. This is possible because of our abundant human resources” (Castro 2000). Thousands of physicians work as taxi drivers, waiters in tourist facilities and other occupations where they can earn dollars, thereby earning several times the salary paid in their profession. Education: University enrollment steadily diminished in 1989-1998, with a small increase in 1999, for a 56% decrease in the period (Table 6). The percentage of the population in the cohort age of higher education fell from 21% in 1989-1990 to 12% in 1998-1999, and while in 1993-1994 there were 31,105 graduates at that level, the number dropped to 10,706 in 1998-1999 (ECLAC 2001b; Orrio 2001). Two main reasons for these declines are: the lack of incen-

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tives for university graduates, who are unable to find jobs in the state sector and are prohibited from practicing their professions as self-employed, and reduced quotas for university enrollment set by the government. Distribution: A survey of the economic conditions of households in the city of Havana in March 2000 had the following findings: (a) the average income per capita was 198 pesos ($9.90 at the unofficial exchange rate); (b) 53.4% of households had a per capita income between 50 and 150 pesos ($2.50 to $7.50) and 14% less than 50 pesos; (c) 77.9% of food expenditures were in agricultural and private markets; and (d) 77.2% declared that their income was insufficient to cover expenditures (Oficina Territorial de Estadísticas de la Ciudad de La Habana, Encuesta sobre la situación económica de los hogares, cited by Pérez Villanueva 2001). In a previous paper I reported that inequalities had significantly expanded in the 1990s (Mesa-Lago 1998). Rationing has extended to all consumer goods but ceased to be a significant equalizer because the monthly rations cover less than two weeks of the minimum food requirements; the rest has to be bought in state dollar shops or in the agricultural and black markets, at very high prices, affordable only by those who earn or receive hard currency from abroad. Finally, there is a significant concentration in bank accounts: 12% of such accounts have 80% of the total deposits (5.3 billion pesos) and new banking accounts earning as much as 7% interest will increase such concentration (Triana 2000). Housing: “Housing is recognized as the gravest social problem affecting the nation ... the accumulated needs [housing deficit] are substantially higher than new housing construction, among other reasons because of the deterioration of the existing stock” (Triana 2000, p. 10). In the city of Havana the situation is particularly difficult: in 1999, out of 575,795 housing units only 57% were in “good shape” and the remaining 43% were “so-so” (regular) or in “bad shape”; the situation was worse in some poor neighborhoods (for instance, old Havana), where 75% of the dwellings were ranked as so-so or bad. In the survey cited above, 59.3% of the households reported construction problems and, although 98.3% had piped water, only 49.8% received water daily (Pérez Villanueva 2001). The Debate on Future Strategy Targets for the Medium Term (1998-2002) and the Year 2001 The V Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, held in October 1997, set very ambitious targets for the five-year period 1998-2002 (Mesa-Lago 1998). I contrast such targets with actual performance in 1998-2000 as follows: (1) GDP growth at an annual rate of 4% to 6% (it was 4.3% in 1998-2000); (2) sugar output increase to 7 million tons (actually 3.6 million in 1998-2001); (3) nickel production increase to 100,000 tons (output in 2000 was 71,400 tons, close to installed capacity); (4) tobacco leaf output increase to 50,000 tons (output in

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1999 was 30,562 tons); (5) two million tourists and gross tourism revenue of $2.6 billion (there were 1.7 million tourists and $1.8 billion in revenue in 2000); (6) oil needs met with increasing domestic production and savings from conservation (the domestic contribution to total oil supply was less than 23% in 1999); (7) 50,000 dwellings built annually (43,000 dwellings were built annually in 1998-2000); and (8) state pensions supplemented with individual savings accounts and life insurance (none of the two have materialized). None of these targets had been achieved by 2000 and, with the exception of tourism, they probably will not be met by 2002. The VI Congress of the CCP is scheduled for 2002; it will be interesting to see if the party evaluates the targets set by the V Congress. The economic targets set for the year 2001 are modest, with a few exceptions. The main targets, and my assessment of their feasibility, are: (1)

5% GDP growth (difficult target to meet; due to the poor sugar harvest in 2001, GDP grew at 3.5% in the first half of the year and growth at the rate of 6.5% in the second half will be needed; for comparison, GDP grew 7.7% in the first half of 2000 and 3.5% in the second half); (2) 14% increase in investment (improbable target; the annual rate averaged 8.7% in 1997-2000); (3) fiscal deficit at 2.5% of GDP (probable; same as in 2000); (4) 20% surge in exports, at least (exports decreased at an annual average of 2% in 1996-2000 and the poor sugar harvest of 2001 will conspire against this target); (5) 4% or less increase in imports (imports rose at an annual average of 5% in 1996-2000 and 12% in 2000, but the oil deal with Venezuela might help to achieve this target); (6) combining the two previous targets, a merchandise trade deficit of 3 billion pesos, for a reduction of 4.5% vis-à-vis 2000 (improbable; since 1992, the trade deficit has systematically risen); (7) 2 million tourists, a 14% increase over 2000, and 15% increase in gross revenue (average annual growth in tourists was 15% in 1996-2000 and 7% in gross revenue, the first might be feasible but the second appears difficult); (8) 4 million tons of sugar for a 14% increase (feasible but not easy target); (9) 5.7% expansion in nickel output (annual average increase was 7% in 19972000 and there is sufficient installed capacity to accomplish this target); (10) 3.4 million tons of oil, a 26% jump over 2000 (feasible; output rose at an annual average of 27% in 1998-2000); (11) 36% increase in cigar output (feasible but difficult; production declined 20% in 2000, and the planned increase will put output at 271,000 tons, below the 1999 level, but annual cigar increase averaged 13.5% in the good years 1997-1999); and (12) 10% in non-sugar agriculture (difficult to accomplish; agriculture as a whole, including sugar, grew at an annual rate of 4% in 1997-2000).

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In addition, the system of enterprise perfection, which was introduced in 1998 is planned to be fully implemented by the end of 2001 but, by the end of 2000 only 50 of 3,000 enterprises had such system in operation (Carranza 2001) and, by mid-2001, only 133 enterprises had been “approved to establish the system” (Ferriol 2001). No targets have been set for inflation, monetary overhang, other production lines and in the social area (targets from Rodríguez 2000; BCC 2001; Triana 2001; background data from ONE 1999, 2000, 2001; Frank 2001a). Cuban Scholars’ Analyses of Current Problems In the first half of the 1990s there was a lively debate in Cuba on alternatives for economic reform that was abruptly halted in mid-1996. In 2000-2001 there has been a modest revival of the analysis of economic problems and proposals for reforms. Limitations of time and space do not allow a thorough examination herein of all existing positions, hence, this section summarizes the views of five Cuban economic scholars: Carranza (2001), González (2001), Marquetti (2000), Monreal (2001), and Triana (2000). All of them praise the progress achieved, some explicitly reject neoliberalism, and virtually all express the need to work within a socialist framework. Although there are logical differences among them, the essential thrust in their identification of current problems and key guidelines for solutions is fairly similar. I have tried to faithfully translate and abridge the views of those scholars but am fully responsible for any misinterpretation of their views. First I will summarize their views on the problems and then the proposed solutions. Problems: (1) (2)

(3)

(4)

the progress achieved lacks solid support to guarantee the sustainability of the recovery and has been unable to rebuild the internal bases of capital accumulation (Marquetti); macroeconomic adjustment is still insufficient and continues to generate economic and social tensions; the process of change generates an internal tension between economic objectives and political effects (Carranza, González); the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries contributed high levels of capital accumulation prior to the 1990s, but there is no possibility to return to those favorable conditions; new investment has been insufficient and not played the key role required for long-term growth; it is impossible to restrict consumption further, as it is very depressed, and the only way out is to increase domestic efficiency and enterprise competitiveness (Marquetti); tourism, foreign investment, remittances from abroad and a few exports helped in the economic recovery of the 1990s, but their multiplier effects

The Cuban Economy In 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

(13) (14)

(15) (16)

117

are insufficient to keep dynamic growth and reduce external dependency; in 2001 still the economy has not recovered completely and is below the level of 1989 (Carranza, Marquetti); the sugar industry is in a depressed state which adversely impacts the recovery; the fall in sugar output has harmed manufacturing and the overall economy and reduced the access to international credit; the decline of the sugar share in total exports has not been the result of growth of other exports (Marquetti, Monreal); the majority (83%) of Cuban exports (sugar, nickel, tobacco and fish) are traditional, primary products, typical of underdeveloped countries, while only a tiny minority (7%) are manufactured or semi-manufactured products and have played a very minor role in generating exports; this results in excessive dependency on activities with a low level of value added (e.g., processing natural resources) at the expense of exports with high value added and technological complexity (Monreal, Carranza); tourism services do not involve industrial upgrading, are typical of underdeveloped countries, are not an indicator of progress toward higher modes of international insertion, and do not necessarily lead to overcoming development (Monreal); biotechnology has not made significant insertions in the international market; excessive and growing dependency on imports of essential food products (as well as fuel) curtail the import of intermediate and capital goods, which are crucial for economic growth (Carranza); there is an excessive imported component in the activities that generate hard currency, such as tourism (González); the overvaluation of the peso at the official exchange rate provokes negative effects in terms of incentives for exports (Triana); economic growth has not reduced the deficit in the balance of payments, an obstacle to further growth; access to external credit is scarce; available credit is short-term and very costly, hence, making difficult to pay it (Carranza, Marquetti); the dual currency in circulation and the dual exchange rate are problems that must be corrected (González); monetary liquidity significantly increased in 2000, 79 months after the inception of the program to fight it (desmonetización); there is a decreasing effectiveness of the original tools used to extract money from circulation because the majority of the population has less money to buy high-priced goods in free markets (Carranza); prices have not declined in six years in the agricultural markets thus fueling inflation and affecting population consumption (Carranza); there is a disconnection between wages (largely tied to an overvalued peso at the official exchange rate) and prices of goods in free markets (more connected with the unofficial exchange rate), hence provoking adverse effects: distortions in agricultural production due to differential rent between the price-regulated and unregulated sectors, relative stagnation in free markets outside of agriculture, obstacles to reestablish labor as the

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fundamental source of income, disincentives to labor productivity and to peasants, and obstacles for improvement in the population consumption (Carranza, Triana); (17) the conventional model of centralized physical planning is not viable, but there is no consensus on various proposals on the type of planning to follow and there is not an explicitly defined strategy of development either, key aspects which require discussion (González, Carranza); (18) the system of enterprise perfection is incipient and slow; there is actually a surge of “verticalism” and a trend toward enterprise concentration, and the process will generate surplus labor which will be difficult to employ elsewhere (Carranza, González, Triana); and (19) real wages have declined, and there is disguised unemployment, stratified income and significant concentration of bank deposits in a minority of the population (Triana, Carranza). Suggestions for Change: The partial modification of the economic structure in the 1990s was unable to transform it to the needed degree required to promote development within the current international context. The economy cannot grow, as prior to 1990, based on a model of extensive accumulation and low efficiency, only viable then because of the economic support from the Soviet Union and the socialist countries. It is unavoidable, therefore, to have a rigorous debate on the alternatives to cope with the effects of the crisis and to accelerate its solution through a more logical and viable development strategy (Carranza). There is a view that the slowdown of 1997-1998 was the outcome of the “relative paralysis” of economic reform (Marquetti). Overcoming the current crisis requires a model of intensive accumulation and higher efficiency, and this is only feasible with a “fundamental restructuring of the economy” and the completion of the economic reform with adequate coherence. The first decade of the 21st century is the time to face this challenge (Carranza, Monreal). Specific proposals are few and succinct: (1) the new strategy of development should be based on sectors that intensively use skilled manpower in activities of increasing technological complexity; this would increase labor incentives and solve the existing contradiction between skilled-based expectations and remuneration (Carranza); (2) the main growth potential is the domestic market, through an increase in its level of competitiveness; ministries should exert regulatory rather than fiscal functions; prices must be reformed (Marquetti); (3) the structure of exports should be radically transformed, increasing exports of manufactured products as well as services with significant value added, utilization of knowledge and technological complexity, thus promoting a reindustrialization process but export-oriented rather than geared to the domestic market as in the past; ways to insert the Cuban economy in the world market must be redefined (Monreal);

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(4) property relations and economic institutions should be transformed; different forms of ownership should work together; state property should be energized through more competition (González, Carranza); and (5) markets should be of buyers instead of sellers in order to promote competition, hence, reducing prices and improving quality; there must be more decentralization in management; the domestic economy must be adapted to the external adjustment and move progressively to the convertibility of the peso (González). I conclude this essay in the same way my previous one ended, recommending: open up the economy further; facilitate the expansion of the private sector; transform the UBPCs into real cooperatives, autonomous and with more incentives to increase production and profitability; allow university graduates to practice their professions as self-employed and authorize Cuban citizens and groups of workers to manage small and medium businesses, hence, creating enough jobs in the non-state sector to permit the dismissal of non-needed workers in the state sector; complete the banking reform and implement a comprehensive price reform; create a domestic capital market; allow foreign enterprises and joint ventures to hire, promote and pay their employees directly; establish a truly convertible peso; introduce a progressive income tax and workers contributions to social security and reform the pension scheme; and devise a social safety net to protect the most vulnerable groups of the population. References Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE). 2000.Cuba in Transition. Washington D.C.: Vol. 10. Banco Central de Cuba (BCC). 2000. Informe Económico 1999. La Habana, April. Banco Central de Cuba (BCC). 2001. Informe Económico 2000. La Habana, May. Bauzá, Vanessa. 2001. “Cuba’s Entrepreneurs Find it Tough,” Sun Sentinel, June 11. Carranza Valdés, Julio. 2001. “La economía cubana: Un balance breve de una década crítica,” University of London-Institute of Latin American Studies: Workshop Facing the Challenges of the Global Economy,” January 25-26. Castañeda, Rolando. 2000. “Cuba y América Latina: Consideraciones sobre el nivel y la evolución del Indice de Desarrollo Humano y el gasto social,” Cuba in Transition—Volume 10, pp. 234-253. Castro, Fidel. 2000. “Entrevista concedida a Felipe Mayor, el 28 de enero de 2000,” Granma, 22 junio 2000. Cawthorne, Andrew. 2001. “Private Entrepreneurs a Rare Species in Cuba,” Reuters, June 6. Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM). 2000. Investigación sobre el Desarrollo Humano y la Equidad en Cuba 1999. La Habana: CIEM/ PNUD

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Comité Central de Estadísticas (CCE). 1990. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 1989. La Habana. Del Barro Menéndez, Emilio. 2001. “En el sector de turismo, ni satisfacción ni complacencia,” and “Por influjo del turismo, creados o recuperados 250,000 empleos,” Granma, June 25 and 28. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). 1998, 2000a. La economía cubana: Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1st and 2nd editions. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). 2000b. Balance Preliminar de las Economías de América Latina y el Caribe 2000. Santiago. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). 2001a. Cuba: Evolución Económica Durante 2000. Santiago: LC/MEX/L.465, May 21. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). 2001b. Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2000. Santiago: February. Espino, María Dolores. 2001. “Cuban Tourism: A Critique of the CEPAL 2000 Report,” in this volume. Ferradaz, Ibrahim. 2001. Cited by Mario Jorge Muñoz, “El complejo mundo de la locomotora,” Granma, January 11. Ferriol Muruaga, Angela. 2001. “Reforma económica cubana e impactos sociales,” Paper presented at the Congreso de Latinoamericanistas y Caribólogos, Moscow, June 25-29. Frank, Marc. 2001a. “Se desacelera la economía cubana,” Nuevo Herald, June 27. Frank, Marc. 2001b. “France Freezes $175 Mln in Cuba Trade Cover,” Havana, Reuters, September 4. Garve, Lucas. 2001. “El pícaro, el gerente y la corrupción,” CUBANET, June 26. González Gutiérrez, Alfredo. 2001. “Aspectos estratégicos en el perfeccionamiento del modelo de planificación,” El Economista de Cuba, June 20. Gutiérrez Castillo, Orlando. 2000. “Cuba, turismo y desarrollo económico,” La Economía Cubana: Coyuntura, Ref lexiones y Oportunidades . La Habana: Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana/Fundación Friedrich Ebert, April: 125-142. Gutiérrez Urdaneta, Luis and Orlando Peñate Rivero. 2000. La Reforma de los Sistemas de Pensiones en América Latina: La Alternativa Cubana. La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales. Henken, Ted. 2001. “Condemned to Informality: The Self-employed Operators of Cuba’s New Bed and Breakfasts,” unpublished paper. León, Francisco. 2001. “The Prospect of Upgrading in Cuba: The European Factor,” “Workshop Facing the Challenges of the Global Economy,” cit. Marquetti Nodarse, Hiram. 2000. “Cuba reanimación del sector industrial,” Revista Bimestre Cubana, No. 13, July-December: 5-30. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 1998. “The Cuban Economy in 1997-1998: Policies and Performance,” Cuba in Transition. Washington D.C.: ASCE, Vol. 8: 1-8.

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______.2000. Market, Socialist and Mixed Economies: Comparative Policy and Performance–Chile, Cuba and Costa Rica. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ______. 2001a. “The Resurrection of Cuban Statistics,” Cuban Studies, No. 31: 139-150. ______. 2001b. “Las pensiones de seguridad social en Cuba: Diagnóstico y sugerencias de reforma.” Pittsburgh: Unpublished paper, March. Ministerio de Salud Pública (MINSAP). 2000. Anuario Estadístico 1999. La Habana. Monreal, Pedro. 2001. “Export substitution industrialization in Cuba,” Workshop Facing the Challenges of the Global Economy,” cit. Novoa González, Armando. 2001. “Las Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa y las granjas cañeras entre 1993 y el 2000,”La Economía Cubana en el 2000: Desempeño Macroeconómico y Transformación Empresarial. La Habana: Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana/Fundación Friedrich Ebert, April: 59-72. Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas (ONE). 1999. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 1997. La Habana. ______. 2000. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 1999. La Habana. ______. 2001. Panorama Económico y Social: Cuba 2000. La Habana, January. Orrio, Manuel David. 2001. “Mitos de la educación superior,” CUBANET, June 19. Pérez-López, Jorge. 2000. “Cuba’s Balance of Payment Statistics,” Cuba in Transition, cit.: 136-144. Pérez Villanueva, Omar Everleny. 2001. “Ciudad de La Habana: Desempeño económico y situación social,” La Economía Cubana en el 2000 ..., cit.: 35-58. ______. 2000. “Estabilidad macroeconómica y financiamiento externo: La inversión extranjera directa en Cuba,” La Economía Cubana: Coyuntura.… , cit: 17-41. Portal, Marcos. 2001. Minister of Basic Industry, cited in “Esperan producción récord de níquel en el 2001,” Nuevo Herald, June 17. Rodríguez, José Luis. 2000. Report on the Cuban economy, Granma, December 23: 1, 5. Rodríguez Castellón, Santiago. 2001. “Consideraciones sobre el sector energético cubano,” La Economía Cubana en el 2000, cit.: 18-34. Triana Cordoví, Juan. 2000. “La Economía Cubana en 1999,” La Economía Cubana: Coyuntura.…, cit.: 1-16. Triana Cordoví, Juan. 2001. “La Economía Cubana en el Año 2000,” La Economía Cubana en el 2000.… , cit.: 1-17. Togores González, Viviana. 1999. “Cuba: Efectos Sociales de la Crisis y el Ajuste Económico de los 90s,” Balance de la Economía Cubana a Finales de los 90s. La Habana: Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana, March: 82-112. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2000. Human Development Report 2000. New York: Oxford University Press.

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9 Labor Conditions in Revolutionary Cuba Efren Córdova and Eduardo García Moure One of the most outstanding and paradoxical characteristics of the Cuban Revolution has been the few benefits derived from it by the worker. From the outset, Castro alluded to past injustices and invoked the interest of the working class as the target for his plans and promises of well-being. The first year was marked by a flurry of offers and predictions, often extravagant, in regard to the wonderful destiny awaiting workers and peasants. Certain labor benefits were implemented in 1959, but by the following year difficulties and scarcities were starting to be announced. Conscious of an imminent geopolitical change, of the social price of transition, and the certain impact of the revolution’s other objectives, Castro warned the Cuban worker of the sacrifices that would inevitably have to be made in the near future. In fact, in November 1961, the 11th Congress of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) witnessed the loss of acquired rights by the working class. A few months later, the rationing system was installed that would so deeply affect living conditions. The worker had in fact begun early on to experience hardships both as consumer and producer. However, this was also a time of tremendous euphoria, with Castro taking advantage of it to steer the revolution into unforeseen levels of collectivization. So compelling were the promises and so profound the patriotic sentiment awakened by Batista’s fall that the working class was willing to accept the inconveniences, reverses, and hardships. Furthermore, the first 15 years of the revolution are replete with labor feats, the loss of more rights, and major contributions on the part of workers. However, it must not be overlooked that some groups from the lower strata of society had actually improved their lot compared to before. For many, the ghost of unemployment vanished for some time, seemingly overshadowed by what I have on other occasions called “quasi full artificial unemployment”; that is, the deceit of inflated personnel. Others found comfort in 122

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free medical care and education. And there were even those who, harboring feelings of hatred and envy, found the increasingly clearer policy of “equalizing from below” to be correct. The years went by, however, and when the Socialist Constitution was adopted in 1976 and it was declared that the State existed to carry out the will of workers (Article 9), workers could now be certain of several things: first, that in that Fundamental Law had been institutionalized very few rights in their favor; second, that their well-being in terms of earnings and benefits had not experienced any appreciable improvement; and third, that the regime continued to appeal for greater sacrifices and demand more effort. Only six of the Fundamental Law’s articles were devoted to labor, one of them demanding maximum effort of unpaid voluntary labor for society’s sake and another reinforcing work discipline. The labor code, which was not adopted until 1984, would attempt to tighten labor discipline even more (65 of the code’s 308 articles refer to this) and to ratify Castro’s little interest in recognizing workers’ rights. During the period, the wars in Africa and mounting subversion in Latin American made many realize that the issue of proletarian internationalism and the enhancement of Castro’s image were the revolution’s primary objectives. That these objectives were being carried out at the worker’s expense can be proven by examining the content and direction of the labor situation in Cuba. Work Conditions On the question of salaries and work hours, it was clear from the beginning that Castro’s labor regime was not going to be favorable to the worker. The government was too preoccupied with increasing capital and labor productivity that high salaries and long periods of rest were out of the question. Beginning with the very first regulations, the goal was to reduce the salary umbrella by establishing only a few categories or groups for those who set salary scales, while simultaneously flattening the salary pyramid, widening the gap between the lowest and highest salaries. It was believed that this would simplify the administration of salaries while paying tribute to Castro’s egalitarian plan for the country. Salary scales were established with great austerity, which, in some measure, helped increase social funds meant to satisfy the people’s needs—but also the amount of money available to the commander-in-chief to finance his security apparatus and far-flung exploits. Contributing to these objectives was the suppression of several salary supplements that existed prior to the revolution and which were the product of efforts to secure rights by pre-Castro unions. Even the supplement, which everywhere helped compensate for the exceptionally long number of hours worked, stopped being paid; the same often occurred with vacations that were never enjoyed. Even though those who had salaried positions before 1959 were spared the rigidity of the new salary system, the salaries they had been allowed to con-

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tinue enjoying were eventually frozen and gradually disappeared. Around 1970, the average monthly wage was 108 pesos, far below the pre-revolutionary wages existing at the time. Coupled with the austere way in which salaries were planned was the everpresent requirement that the revolutionary leadership demand more effort of workers whether by extending the normal hours of work, by means of voluntary work, or by mass mobilizations for agricultural activities, especially the sugar harvest. This demand sometimes assumed an obsessive character on the part of Castro and his collaborators. It was directed not only at the male workforce but also women and children. Just last year 4,400 secondary students were mobilized for the tobacco harvest in Pinar del Rio. There was also emphasis on night work, constant reminders to follow plans and rules, and the exaggerated manner in which socialism was followed. The consequences of excess work on the worker’s health did not matter. At the 16th CTC Congress, Castro railed at those who dared to insinuate that long shifts affected health, labeling them worms, spineless, and pseudo-revolutionaries. An attempt was made to justify low wages and long days by invoking the austere character of the revolution, the need to make sacrifices because of the imperialist blockade, and Cuba’s underdeveloped condition. No mention was ever made of the hidden agenda that absorbed a large part of the wealth generated by workers. From voluntary work alone, Castro probably garnered more than 2 billion dollars. And it was with regard to this type of work that in 1993 the International Labor Organization demanded the total eradication of its coercive aspects. Throughout the years, the main modifications to the system were associated with the emphasis that should have been given to moral and material incentives. Although the two would eventually coexist, it cannot go without mentioning that around the year 1970, there were 26 different medals and orders (work heroes, national vanguards, provincial vanguards, outstanding worker, etc.). The ultimate objective was to obtain the maximum amount of output possible, combining stimuli with discipline and punishment. Over time, these elements grew in importance, culminating in the Base Law on Labor Justice Organs (1992) and regulations pertaining to specific sectors (one on tourism includes 22 obligations and 46 prohibitions). This situation eroded even more during the period of rectification of errors. Castro was not pleased with the weight given by the Economic Management and Planning System to material incentives and decentralization of economic management. He also suddenly realized that companies were overstaffed and even though in a totalitarian regime mistakes can only be committed by the supreme power, the worker was blamed for the economy’s flaws. The result was a renewed emphasis on moral incentives, more pseudo-voluntary work, a more rigorous work atmosphere, downsizing, and more advantageous use of the workday.

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One would think that in this situation there would have been strikes and protests in Cuba, but this has not been the case. Faced with the authoritarian nature of the regime and the repressive security apparatus, many workers opt for passive resistance and a reduction in output. It is also possible for others to content themselves with the guarantee of a social net and quasi-full employment. However, though the supply of medicines has dwindled and education has never been entirely free, given the number of jobs demanded of the student, not one strike has been called nor has there ever been a concerted effort to protest. Some find relief in self-employment and illegal activities while others have chosen the relentless exodus that is bleeding the country. It is fitting to conclude this section by saying that the only areas that apparently have shown tangible progress for workers are social security coverage and maternity leave. Labor Relations The picture of collective labor relations in Cuba can be summarized in one word: immobilization. In 1960, Castro did away with the free union movement, forbid the creation of independent unions, and imposed the monistic union model. Forty years later, the situation is exactly the same: the formation of unions that are not part of the official and useless CTC is prohibited. There have been efforts to organize independent unions, with about a dozen groups now existing that call themselves confederations, federations, unions, and unitarian workers’ councils. None, however, are recognized by the government. Their leaders are arrested or harassed almost continuously, and their organizations are merely blueprints of unions or failed attempts. There even exists an umbrella organization, the United Force of Independent Union Organizations, that includes eight different entities, whose existence is hampered by both official repression and the fear or indifference of the masses. The CTC is not a legitimate workers’ organization but an appendage of the government and the Communist Party. It has never been a forum for open discussion, criticism, proposals, or alternatives to the official line. At none of its meetings have demands ever been proposed or complaints lodged; it only serves as a sound box for the regime’s demands and a transmission belt for political watchwords and production plans. Delegates to the CTC congresses systematically approve by unanimity issues prepared beforehand by government departments and the PCC. At one of its last meetings, the CTC agreed to support the official policy of assigning to state companies the economy’s responsibility despite the paralysis aff licting those companies. The CTC does not negotiate with or adopt conf licting attitudes toward foreign or mixed companies; its mission is to guarantee labor peace, keep foreign patrons happy, and supply more workers when others are laid off.

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Although the constitution reserves certain jurisdiction over the CTC, in practice, no one counts on union bureaucracy to make decisions. The function of the Executive Committee is limited to supervising leaders and cadres, while the latter are responsible for worker discipline. The Special Period The so-called special period in times of peace inaugurated by Castro following the disintegration of the socialist camp meant more sacrifices for workers. Despite food shortages, blackouts, and a transportation crisis, this period heralded the return of unemployment that the Socialist Constitution had claimed to have eliminated (Article 45). Despite the euphemisms used by the government to masque the actual situation (temporary layoffs, excess labor, available work), the threat of mass and long-term structural unemployment has hovered over the working population ever since. To redress this situation, several measures were adopted: 1) Workers were given the option of either being mobilized for agricultural work or receiving token unemployment benefits. 2) In 1993, the Basic Units for Cooperative Production (UBPC) was created, whose membership reached 142,000 within five year. The UBPC were mediocre cooperatives whose measures did not appear to be very successful. 3) Around the same period, limited self-employment was authorized. More than 200,000 workers became registered selfemployed workers, but the restrictions imposed on them soon stopped their growth. Awarded by a dramatic decline in the economy, the government opened the doors to foreign investment and offered all types of advantages, some of them bordering on those championed by neoliberal philosophy. While many workers found work in these companies, they suffered the injustice of being paid in worthless pesos while the government was paid in dollars. The duplicity has been immense, but neither the CTC has complained nor have there been signs of protest. The bulk of manpower continued working in the meantime in the bankrupt state companies. Although the government provided certain stimuli for those who worked in emerging sectors (tourism, nickel, and tobacco) and centralized companies (for which there are 18 different salary categories), workers suffered the double indemnity of the national currency’s devaluation and the economy’s increasing dollarization. In 1999, the mean monthly salary was 150 to 200 pesos, that is, between 7 and 10 dollars. In 1998, a salary scale of 128 to 325 pesos was established for technical jobs, supplemented by a bonus not to exceed 20 pesos based on job performance. Social security payments, which accounted for 50 percent of wages, fell dramatically. On the 40th anniversary of the revolution, the worker’s most pressing problem is how to survive.

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Conditions of Workers in Cuba The Solidarity of Cuban Workers (Solidaridad de Trabajadores Cubanos—STC) is a trade union organization formed in 1964 as a revolutionary, democratic, and independent expression of Cuban workers in order to support its members and the cause of independent labor unions in Cuba. It is currently based in Caracas, Venezuela. The STC has created a Documentation, Information, and Training Center (CEDOF) that specializes in the socioeconomic issue of workers and their organizations. We believe an analysis of this situation is necessary and, along with businessmen, intellectuals, university students, and politicians, are willing to conduct such an examination. We at the STC are convinced of the existence of an interrelationship among socioeconomic development, democratic political stability, and the situation of workers and their labor movement. These beliefs are based on a humanistic, democratic, and social concept of man, society, and experiences. Countries with greater socioeconomic development and political democracies maintain strong, active unions, collective hiring, social dialogue, and an alliance among businessmen, workers, and the government. In June 1999, 150 delegates from civil society in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, representing business organizations, unions, and myriad activities, debated ideas and interests and agreed by consensus to submit a proposal for integration to the Summit of Heads of State premised on socioeconomic development, political democracy, and the participation of independent organizations in civil society. These are the same criteria and objectives of the European Socioeconomic Council, MERCOSUR’s Socioeconomic Forum, the Andean Labor Council, the Central American Integration System, and Caribbean integration processes (CARICOM and AEC). Objectives and Aspirations of Peoples and Nations Beyond the diversity of beliefs, cultures, situations, existing social contradictions and the world’s ideological-political plurality lie common objectives and aspirations whose general principles are the following:

• A democratic civil society that respects human rights and pluralism in which • •

the market, government, and civil society, with the active participation of labor organizations, come to play. Autonomous economic development policies and programs supplemented by subregional and regional integration processes that take into account the globalization process. Social distribution policies that promote people’s access to productive employment, and fair and adequate salaries allowing them to satisfy their basic needs and have access to the goods and services market.

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• Education, knowledge development, transportation and communications, health and social security policies.

• A government that fulfills its role as guarantor of the common good, one that regulates and establishes norms for society, and serves as guardian and protector of the weakest in order to assure human and civil rights, justice, and peace. In the labor world, this translates into a productive national business class, one that is strong and dynamic; representative, independent unions; a democratic state; and an alliance among businessmen, workers, and government in which individual interests are expressed, respective roles are carried out, and policies for the common good are designed. We do not believe in the communist vision of the state nor the neoliberal vision of the market. Both have tried to impose one thought, and both have failed. A preliminary conclusion. The current direction of the Cuban government, guided by Marxist-Leninist thought and a one-party system, with a centralized bureaucratic economy, mass organizations, and the Single Workers Union (CTC), dependent on the Party and controlled by the state security apparatus, runs contrary to society’s evolution and is causing our nation to regress and forcing our workers into social and political economic impoverishment. The Cuban Economy Is in a Structural Crisis Despite promising announcements concerning the state of the economy (reminiscent of the promises and failures of Stalin’s five-year plans), the truth is that the Cuban economy is in a structural crisis. For the past year and a half, we at the STC, in cooperation with qualified Cuban economists and sociologists, have conducted a study, an assessment of reality, and have drafted an alternative socioeconomic proposal. Unfortunately, the government continues making the same mistakes out of fear of an opening and the independent creativity of the Cuban people. Current Source of Income

• The sugar harvest for the period 1999–2000, which, at best, will reach 4

• •

million tons (200,000 more than last year). The sugar harvest is important for creating jobs, but the competition posed by increased production in the United States, Europe, and certain Latin American countries, as well as the production of genetically produced foods, will reduce earnings from this sector. Family remittances from abroad, estimated between 1 billion and 1.2 billion dollars annually and expected to increase. Tourism. Official data indicate some 2 billion dollars in gross earnings. However, as pointed out by the experts, if one takes into account dollar-denominated expenditures and the fact that tourism packages are sold abroad by the

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• • •

•

• •

•

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capitalist countries that run the hotels, actual net earnings amount to only 20 percent of that figure, or 400 million dollars. Nickel production. While the government talks about increased production, we know that the international price of the mineral has fallen dramatically and there have been difficulties with Canadian partners. Tobacco. The difficulty in reaching goals and meeting production obligations is well known. Cuban agriculture, which in 1959 occupied a prominent position in Latin America, has plunged into a deep crisis. Eighty percent of foods and vegetables, according to Lage, are produced by the private sector. The AGROFAR— military farm units—produce for themselves and their families exclusively. An estimated 68 percent of lands belong to and are run by the government farms that control key crops (sugar, citrus fruits, coffee, and tobacco); 15 percent, agricultural cooperatives (also government-controlled); and the remaining 17 percent, micro- and small-sized businessmen who are the ones who keep people supplied, according to Lage. Imports and exports. The weakest aspect continues to be the relationship between imports and exports. The country is currently running a trade deficit of 2.7 billion dollars, based on imports totaling 4.3 billion dollars and exports of 1.6 billion dollars Foreign debt. Our foreign debt currently stands at 12.3 billion dollars with the Paris Club and 20 billion dollars with countries of the former Soviet Union. Earnings from manpower sales. Another aspect of our economy is the sale of Cuban manpower to other countries (teachers, doctors, athletes, artists). Although these people are hired by governments and businessmen, a large portion of their salaries is paid to the government. Many people strive to secure these assignments in order to leave the “communist paradise” if not definitely, at least temporarily. Workers who are self-employed or participate in the parallel market. Cuban workers spend most of their time “getting by” in the parallel market, selling goods and merchandise acquired in the workplace and sold through Socialist connections.

Insufficient and inefficient transportation, blackouts, and the deterioration of facilities and machinery exacerbate production and, in turn economic productivity and profitability. Second Conclusion. The economy is in a deep structural crisis that does not allow for sustained development, the creation of a productive Cuban business sector, nor the payment of worthwhile salaries or social benefits. The Government Is Isolating Cuba from Scientific-Technological and Economic-Social Changes Cuba is becoming isolated from scientific-technological changes in the field of computers and communications, which are the driving force behind the productive process and the ability to be competitive and profitable in the international market.

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It has been demonstrated that the ability to compete does not depend on cheap manpower, but rather on the technological and methodological capacity of the productive process. What Cuba offers is “geographical location,” “efficient, ideal, and cheap” manpower, and “social peace” (without collective hiring or social conflicts or strikes). Third Conclusion. Our scientific-technological policy is causing us to fall behind in the present and compromises our future. Political Isolation The Cuban people are suffering the repercussions of a dual isolation: that of an unacceptable, inefficient external embargo and repressive internal embargo. The ability of governments to resolve this conflict and their repressive capacity vis-à-vis the people affects economic and social development. This external and internal isolationism, to which we are opposed, prevents the people from developing their potentialities and makes them more backward and dependent on the government. Social Injustice and Ethical-Moral Deterioration Within this economic framework, Cuba has the lowest wages of any country in Latin America, including Haiti. Social benefits, which at one point included such salary perks as an education, health coverage, full employment, and social security, have deteriorated markedly. Each aspect is in a deep crisis that creates contradictions and serious social injustice in which the bureaucratic and political minority linked to international capital lives in the dollar economy while the majority of the population and workers are paid in pesos. Data indicate that more than 20 percent of Cubans have managed to survive through the dollarized economy and connections with the government elite, while the other 80 percent live in extreme poverty. The result is absenteeism, lack of social and work discipline, apathy, and corruption, all of which create an ethical-moral problem in Cuban society and especially in economic-social relations. Fourth Conclusion. Exploitation of the worker by the bureaucracy. Social justice, immorality. Totalitarian Obstinacy

• What affects economic-social development the most is totalitarian and bureaucratic inflexibility.

• The few openings that have taken place illustrate the initiative capacity of the Cuban people, the accomplishment of results, and the rejection of intervention by government bureaucrats.

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Increased labor productivity because of incentives, the business acumen of self-employed workers (small family-run businesses, property rentals), the output of independent peasant farmers and military farms, the creativity and productivity of those receiving stimulation in the dollar area and in the parallel market are examples of Cuban’s entrepreneurial capacity. Fifth Conclusion. There can be no solution to the economic crisis and social deterioration as long as there are no freedom and political democracy, which allow the Cuban people to express their ideas and develop their abilities. Actual Data Employment. An estimated 10 percent of structural unemployment is disguised with the names of those who receive subsidies and those who do not. No data exist on the number who work in the informal sector and the parallel market. Unproductive, fictitious employment exists, with no motivation or promise for the worker. According to Lage, the problem is more acute in the four eastern provinces. Construction, transportation, light industry, and ports have been affected the most. Although the introduction of new technologies, as Lage explains, would create jobs for some plant workers, factories would have to be upgraded or they would eventually be closed, creating yet more unemployment. “Technologies with more productivity,” Lage said, “help generate more income for the country, while at the same time reducing the number of jobs, aggravating the critical labor situation even more.” Lage ended saying that the national dilemma as far as labor and employment “will be resolved once and for all when the country’s economic recovery is accomplished.” The workers ask, when? Salaries. There has been an indefinite freeze on salaries in Cuba for more than 19 years whose growth has been pegged to productivity and a decline in excess liquidity, situations that are impossible to resolve due to the economic structural crisis. The current scale ranges from 100 pesos (4.54 dollars) to 45 pesos (20.45 dollars) per month. In May 1999, teachers, health workers, and police in Havana received a 30– percent increase in salaries. Food basket. The rationing card, implemented temporarily 38 years ago, offers fewer products every day: rice, beans, and certain pork products. The situation is worse in the countryside. As a supplement, the worker has the following options: Shop in governmentowned dollar stores, where four pounds of chicken cost the equivalent of one month’s wages or 53 percent of the average wage; farmers’ markets; or the black market, where a week’s bill amounts to 106 percent of the minimum wage and 53 percent of average wages.

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The basic basket. Buying power is reduced even more by paying rent and public services. An objective analysis shows that 10 minimum wages would be needed to cover the basic basket and survive, compared to five in Latin America. Work conditions. The deterioration of machinery and the environment increases risks and on-the-job accidents. Social security. The dollarized economy leaves retirees with 3.82 dollars a month and restricted access to food and medicine. Work hours. Cuba has the longest workweek of any country, 48 hours, to which must be coupled the time it takes to get to work due to a deplorable transportation system. Job discrimination. Related to ideological, political, and racial problems. Apartheid in use of accommodations. Cubans are also discriminated against in the use of public accommodations, restricted to tourists, those with dollars, and government officials. Government employment companies exploit the Cuban worker. This began with the government-owned company CUBALSE (Cuba at the service of the foreigner), and today there are many. Investors or foreign partners pay for workers’ services in dollars, while workers are paid in pesos. They are guaranteed ideal capitalist personnel (economically productive, socially passive, and politically loyal). Communist party cells and the CTC section ensure an ideal situation, social peace, and no strikes. This violates the International Trade Organization’s 95th Agreement on salary protection, which in its Article 5 states, “Salaries must be paid directly to the worker,” and in Article 6, “employers must be prohibited from limiting in any way the freedom of the worker to receive his salary.” Labor and Social Relations What are the instruments and channels of representation, defense, and participation available to the worker?

• The CTC, which is controlled by State Security and is under the direction of the Communist Party

• Collective hiring does not exist. • The right to strike, in practice, does not exist. Analysts of the implosion that occurred in the Soviet Union and communist countries agree that one of the reasons for communist society’s demise was the absence of a channel for the people and workers in which to express their opinions, air their problems and hopes and channel their needs. It increases social injustice and exacerbates the lack of productivity and passive forms of social protest.

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ILO’s Philosophy On June 18, 1998, in Geneva, the International Labor Organization adopted a declaration on basic labor principles and rights, which offers an answer to the challenges posed by internationalization of the economy. It provides a minimum number of rules on social functions that combine economic growth with social progress, and declared that all members, even when agreements have not been ratified, have an obligation as members of the organization. The agreements are:

• Freedom to associate, union freedom, and recognition of the right of collective bargaining.

• The elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor. • The abolition of child labor. • The elimination of discrimination to work and professions. None of these agreements have been fulfilled in Cuba.

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10 The Political Economy of Caudillismo Mary Katherine Crabb

Introduction The future of Cuba’s economy has been the subject of much recent debate in the social sciences and the popular press alike. Much of this research assumes that economic decentralization will be inevitable for Cuba in the post-Soviet era. These scholars also argue that increasing privatization will ultimately pave the way for a gradual transition to a free-market economy and corresponding democratic reforms in government. The recent increases in foreign investment and international tourism in Cuba are generally viewed positively by these researchers, as representing the beginning of a transitional period that will render the authoritarian, repressive policies of the communist state obsolete (De la Campa, 1997; Johnson, 1998; Marshall, 1998; Schiffres, 1998; Smith, 1996). A minority view however, holds that privatization of agriculture and increasing tourism and foreign investment will not significantly alter the authoritarian character of the present government. This point of view, most forcefully expounded by Miami activists such as the Cuban American National Foundation that are intent on maintaining the U.S. trade embargo, holds that any foreign investment in Cuba will ultimately be harnessed by the Cuban state to strengthen, rather than weaken its authoritarian control (Holmes, 1997). The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between political practices and recent economic reforms in Cuba from an anthropological point of view. In other words, to use a combination of historical and ethnographic data to speculate on how indigenous models of politics and government are likely to affect Cuba’s future, and to examine how recent economic reforms have been experienced and interpreted in one Cuban community. While some traditional economists may regard this micro-level, qualitative research as unscientific, oth134

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ers may find that the holistic approach of anthropology offers greater insight into recent economic trends than more conventional studies that do not include socio-cultural variables in their analyses. At the very least, micro-level research should be appreciated as a way to approach economic behavior in local, culturally-appropriate terms and generate empirical hypotheses for other, more quantitative researchers to explore. Economics and Political Culture in Cuban History This paper begins with the radical assertion that nearly all American researchers have misunderstood the relationship between politics and economics in Cuba for at least the past one hundred years. In other words, I will argue that uniquely American models of “government” and “the state” have been used to analyze events and processes in Cuba without taking into consideration the distinct culture, history and political traditions of the island itself. Historical accounts reveal that the “state” or public sector in Cuba has been conceptualized very differently from its North American counterpart, and this divergence has had a major impact on political processes and economic development on the island from the colonial period to the present. To elaborate, American politics has always been characterized by a rhetoric (although not necessarily a reality) of government that reflects the Lockean ideal of a “inalienable” and democratic social contract between government and governed. The role of the state in this context is viewed in limited terms, as serving to insure the optimal function of free markets and democratic processes for those granted rights of citizenship in the republic. Theory in economics and political science (such as modernization or convergence) implicitly reproduces this American model and often pathologizes states that do not conform to these ideals— rarely are these governments examined in terms of their own cultural logic. History reveals, however, that since the earliest colonial times the state has always been conceptualized quite differently in Latin America than in North America. Spain’s interest in her colonies was singularly extractive, and colonial “government” was geared primarily toward exploiting the natural and human resources of these territories. As such, the colonial “state” in Latin America involved no model of a social contract, provided little or nothing in the way of services to the native population, and often even hampered local economic development by imposing mercantilist trade policies and high taxes on any productive activity. The negative effects of these practices on the Creole population were described by a Cuban independence delegation to Washington in 1896: During her rule of four hundred years, Spain has not taken a single step tending to the development of the country or to the well-being of the people. Worse yet, her centralized, complicated and inefficient administration, dominated by a blind spirit of routine,

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has always looked upon every reform as a dangerous experiment, and unwilling and incompetent to act, has been a perpetual obstruction to all individual action even in private matters. But so soon as private effort and perseverance have succeeded in bringing into life a new industry or in developing those which have been languishing and decaying, the omnipresent hand of government has demanded a new tax or an increase of the existing one (Pierre, 1896:7).

Spanish colonial administration was rendered doubly ineffective by the fact that government posts were often dispensed as sinecures. Petty graft became an unquestioned and universal dimension of colonial life. In 1898 an American observer described municipal Spanish administrators in Cuba as, “pitifully bad; their constant aim being to do as little work as possible and to enrich themselves, at the cost of Cuba, as quickly as they could” (Porter, 1899:11). Despite a rhetoric of republicanism and nationalism during Cuba’s struggle against Spain, independence did not radically transform this model of government in Cuba. The post-colonial “state” during the early republican period (1902– 1933) was in many ways reminiscent of this earlier pattern of Spanish administration—government functioned as a parasitic entity that imposed heavy taxes that personally enriched the rulers (who often seized power by force) and provided little in the way of services to the Cuban population (Aguilar, 1972; Alvarez, 1942; Bonsal, 1912; Brooke, 1899; Chapman, 1927; Ferguson, 1946; Figueras, 1906; Guggenheim, 1934; Phillips, 1935; Phillips, 1959; Porter, 1899; Lamar-Schweyer, 1938; Lindsey, 1911; Norton, 1926; Ortiz, 1924; Roig, 1925; Schwartz, 1989; Thomas, 1983). One American journalist wrote in 1910, for instance, that in Cuba the government, “is considered a private privilege, to be exploited for the benefit of [the politician] and his friends” (Wright, 1910:141). Furthermore, Wright continued, the “citizens” of this new republic did not really view this practice was wrong or unjust, as it conformed entirely to their historic expectations of what “government” was supposed to do, “[Cuban peasants],” she wrote (p. 125), “ . . . observe that they are no longer subjects, to be oppressed, but they have by no means discovered that they are citizens, despite the fact that a republic has been declared in their name.” Many contemporary scholars have re-interpreted Cuba’s early parasitic government and political turmoil from a leftist or dependency perspective as resulting from U.S. imperialism and intervention under the Platt Amendment between 1902–1934 (Benjamin, 1974; Benjamin, 1990; Blasier, 1985; Paterson, 1994; Perez, 1988; Perez, 1995; Perez, 1983; Perez 1978; Perez, 1986). Louis Perez, for instance, has theorized that graft and corruption in Cuban politics in the early 20th century emerged as a form of resistance to U.S. neocolonial domination, stating that, “corruption . . . permitted Cubans to accumulate capital through which to challenge foreign control over property and production” (1986:142). While the negative impact of the United States as imperial power during this time should not be ignored, I believe that this interpretation of Cuban politics

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under the Platt Amendment is incorrect for the simple reason that it overlooks vital cultural continuities between the colonial and the early republican models of government. The over-bearing influence and meddling of the United States at this time certainly contributed to the instability of the post-colonial state, but I do not believe a convincing case can be made that U.S. imperialism was responsible for the persistence of caudillismo, graft and patronage in Cuban politics. The reason for this is simple: these traditions did not serve the interests of American or European capitalists and were actually viewed as a major hindrance to capitalist expansion in Cuba (Chapman, 1927; Crabb, 1998; Bonsal, 1912; Guggenheim, 1935; Hard, 1928; Jenks, 1929). These sources show that local elites were not rendered subservient to the needs of foreign capital in Cuba, and consequently this phase of Cuban history does not conform to the conventional definition of imperialist domination. In fact, it appears to represent the reverse—Cuban politicians proved quite adept at forcing capital (international and otherwise) to be subservient to them, rather than the other way around. Furthermore, conceptualizing the Cuban state during this time as an outgrowth of its parasitic colonial predecessor helps in understanding the long and violent history of revolutions and instability that characterized this historical period. After all, if control of the public sector is viewed as conferring personal rights to the national treasury and personal control over the army, there exists a powerful incentive for fomenting coups and intrigue. A strange historical amnesia seems to have affected many contemporary historians, however, and a good deal of this early turbulence, rebellion and revolution is not incorporated into present-day scholarship. Many historians speak as if there were only one “Cuban revolution,” instead of five; and only one unsuccessful “counterrevolution” instead of six or more. In reality, the period between 1902–1959 was characterized by a high level of political instability with rival factions frequently mounting armed insurrections against the Cuban state that, when successful, were termed “revolutions.”1 What I am hoping to illustrate with this historical data is that there are perhaps more continuities between the 1959 “revolution” and its predecessors than is conventionally understood. While many would view “pre-” and “post”revolutionary Cuba (like communism and capitalism) as polar opposites in both ideology and practice, I believe this dichotomy is in error. Instead I would like to posit that Cuba, throughout its twentieth century history (colonial, republican and “revolutionary”) has been characterized by varying degrees of political capitalism and caudillismo, largely as a legacy of its Spanish colonial heritage. Politics and Economics in a Caudillo State What is political capitalism? What is caudillismo? These two concepts are intricately linked: a caudillo is someone who practices political capitalism. Political capitalism describes the economic systems of countries under strong-man

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dictatorial rule. This configuration of politics and economics usually involves the appearance of a “free” market economy, but in reality economic exchange or accumulation of capital nearly always involves a significant political dimension. Many markets are not, in fact, “free,” but are deliberately controlled and manipulated to enhance the power of the caudillo in ways that may not be readily apparent to an outside observer. In the words of Scott (1972:52): Politically oriented capitalism, whatever particular form it takes, involves the granting by the state of privileged opportunities for profit. Such openings are available only to those with connections or to those who can pay for influence. The “capitalists” in these circumstances are often officials inasmuch as state administrators are best placed to take advantage of the opportunities. The militarized, non-electoral nature of caudillo regimes means that once in office, a leader has few constraints on his exercise of power. Given the wellknown observation that “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” it would thus be logical to expect these regimes to be characterized by absolute corruption. Indeed, history reveals that in many cases of strong-man rule, the entire governing body (essentially the whole “state” apparatus) became organized under the personal control of the leader and dedicated to enhancing his personal wealth, status and power. “Government” of this type has been described in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean during the twentieth century, including Nicaragua under Somoza (Chevalier, 1965; Guillermoprieto, 1994), the Dominican Republic under Trujillo (Goff and Locker, 1969; Galíndez, 1965), Venezuela in the “caudillo years” of the early 20th century (Wolf and Hansen, 1972), and Haiti under Duvalier (Scott, 1972; Trouillot, 1990). A key component of such a political economic system is the use of force to seize control of the state, and subsequent use of this “government” power to enforce monopoly or cartel-like control of certain lucrative businesses or industries. Political control is facilitated through economic domination. Dictator Rafael Trujillo’s use of the police and military to enforce his monopoly in Dominican industry provides a good example of these practices. According to one critic: Trujillo . . . saw in the entire economic process a source of dominion as potent as the army, as strong as the most rigid political structure. Funds collected from the public and from illicit operations were invested in every conceivable agricultural and industrial enterprise; monopolies usually followed. Import-export taxes and license fees facilitated the harassment and eventual takeover of corporations dealing in foreign trade, the lifeblood of the economy . . . It has been estimated that between 65 and 85% of the entire economy eventually ended up in his hands (Goff and Locker, 1969:279).

It should be noted that the Dominican Republic at this time was considered to have a dictatorial political leader, but a “free market” economy. Trujillo’s personalistic monopoly control of the public sector, and his overwhelming influence on the “private” sector were not taken into account in these conventional economic analyses. The reason for this is that many of these activities (i.e., the

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implementation and “enforcement” of monopoly control) took place in the “second” or “underground” economy and masked from public view. As detailed by Scott (1972), activities in this sector are often dismissed in conventional analyses as “corruption,” and are consequently not examined in terms of their political and economic implications. But, as Scott’s astute analysis reveals, this “corruption” often follows established laws and predictable patterns. Researchers who are able to discern these patterns (despite the obvious attempts to obscure them with inflammatory political rhetoric or state secrecy) have a tremendous advantage in making sense of economic trends in a given locale. As Scott (1972) has stated, “ . . . the surreptitious politics of this arena is so decisive that an analysis which ignored it would be not simply inaccurate but completely misleading.” Cuba: The State as Racketeer Scott’s assertion that any analysis that ignores the surreptitious relationship between the “second economy” and the exercise of political power will be shown to be particularly relevant to the case of Cuba. A good part of Cuba’s twentieth century political history (like that of its neighboring countries Haiti and the Dominican Republic) has been characterized by violent instability, personalism and caudillismo. Political power has most often been seized and maintained by force, and then strategically used to enforce the leader’s monopoly control over certain lucrative and ostensibly “free” markets (most notably the vice trade in Havana before 1959). In the United States this type of economic activity (use of violence to secure monopoly control over certain markets) is commonly known as “racketeering.” In Cuba, and in many other parts of the developing world, it has been known more simply as “haciendo politica,” or “doing politics.”2 It is difficult to find a satisfactory definition of the term “racket.” The American belief in the sanctity of free-market competition has meant that these common activities have become quite pathologized in this country and are viewed solely in criminal terms. The economic logic of racketeering, however, is lost in such a moralistic analysis, often to the detriment of effective understanding of these behaviors. One expert has described rackets as activities that “pollute legal markets” (Reuter, 1985). In other words, a racket is defined as a market where normal forces of supply and demand have been “illegally” tampered with, often through violence or other activities that are usually considered (in the United States at least) to comprise market “cheating.” When racketeering is introduced into the system, markets are no longer “free” although they may appear that way to an outside observer. One of the defining features of racketeers is a unique ability to insert themselves into strategic spaces between producers and consumers (and forces of

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supply and demand) and manipulate these key economic forces to their own advantage. Labor rackets in the garment industry in New York in the 1920s provide a classic example of this behavior. Brooklyn Gangster Lepke Buchalter organized a group of armed men under his control and forcibly took over numerous garment workers unions, then extorted payoffs from the management by threatening to call a strike and disrupt production. If union members complained about these practices, the gangsters could then threaten to call a strike and keep the workers unemployed indefinitely—thus destroying their livelihood. In other words, by using violence and coercion, both labor (the unions) and capital (the factory owners) were rendered subservient to the racketeers. The outstanding economic advantages conferred by these practices were described by one American gangster as follows: Controlling the union brought home . . . an important truth: control a work force and you control the livelihoods of countless families sustained by those jobs. By threatening union members with loss of work, the gangsters could marshal the efforts of husbands, wives, sons, and daughters in support of virtually any scam the gang could dream up . . . what had started out as merely another form of extortion—squeezing money out of rich businessmen in exchange for smooth labor relations—soon became an endless source of revenue (Giancana, 1992:72).

Racketeering and market “cheating” are often viewed in moral terms in American culture as inherently criminal and therefore pathological. From a purely economic perspective, however, rackets make good sense, generate outstanding returns and can be quite stable over time. It is easy to imagine how in a truly laissez-faire economy with no government regulation, racketeering could become much more commonplace. This observation is important, because it implies that rackets could naturally evolve from free-market competition under certain circumstances unless there is consistent policing to prevent them from doing so. In the United States, racketeers have traditionally used pay-offs to secure police protection for their activities. According to several published narratives (whose validity may be questionable) (Giancana, 1993; Gosch and Hammer, 1974; Messick, 1971) this is essentially an equal-opportunity situation as far as the police are concerned. It appears that any aspiring racketeer or vice merchant can secure cooperation through payment of the correct “protection” price in the United States. In Cuba (and much of Latin America), however, a very different pattern has been manifest. Spain’s mercantilist trade policies meant that during the long colonial era authoritarian state power was never employed to police “free” markets, but instead to enforce monopoly control for the colonial government (Pierre, 1896; Pratt, 1950; Robert, 1953). The legacy of four hundred years of Spanish rule is that political and military power have been in many cases viewed as conferring sole rights of monopoly enforcement and economic domination in certain lucrative markets.

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In this context, it is the caudillo’s economic monopoly, not free trade that is policed by agents of the state, and those who challenge this monopoly who are viewed as criminals and subject to political sanction. Certainly it is easy to imagine Trujillo, Somoza, Machado, Duvalier or any of the other traditional Latin American strong-men responding in a such a way to an aspiring businessman naive enough to try and undersell him in the marketplace or “cut in” on one of his established businesses. The line between crime and politics is rarely absolute in any society, and it has often been configured differently in Latin America than in North America. In a caudillo state, rival politicians are competing for rights of monopoly enforcement over key markets that come with the “legitimacy” of political office. “Crime” is defined by those in power as those activities that challenges this control, and these political/economic enemies are often targeted for arrest or expulsion. In these markets, entreprenuership is inherently subversive. When politics become criminalized, then “crime” is subsequently politicized. Cuba’s early years of violence and political turmoil provide a powerful example of this pattern. A total of sixteen amnesty and immunity bills were passed in the Cuban senate between 1902 and 1923. These bills effectively rendered elected officials immune from any type of criminal prosecution whatsoever while in office. According to historian Charles Chapman (1927:524), The majority of those who received the favor of these laws were the worst sort of criminals, who for political reasons (to assist congressmen in retaining their posts) were allowed to escape the penalties they had incurred . . . The protection afforded by Congress to members of its own body committing crimes, through the interpretation given to congressional immunity [meant that]. . . . as a result, there was no law which congressmen and their friends need obey.

The key lesson to draw from these amnesty and immunity bills is not so much one of moral outrage that “crime” was excused for politicians and their followers, but that these “criminal” acts remained prohibited for the rest of the population. In other words, politicians were free to engage in a number of activities that remained prohibited for everyone else, and used this advantage to consolidate their power by “legally” eliminating their political/economic rivals. An aspiring politician, therefore, would often begin his electoral “campaign” by trying to “muscle in” on the established economic territory of those already in power. This would inevitably lead to his arrest, since those in power used criminal penalties to protect their market control. Almost every Cuban president between 1902 and 1959, for example, was either imprisoned or forced into exile by the “state” for “haciendo politica” at some point in his political career.3 An inevitable consequence of this type of political/economic organization is increased militarization. Between 1910 and 1920 the size of the Cuban army tripled from 10,000 (under Gómez) to over 30,000 (under Machado). According to

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one observer, “If the United States army were in the same proportion to the population it would be six times its present size . . . The inflated army is a political army” (Norton, 1926:81). The size of this (already inflated) army was doubled again during the Batista years, and reached a high of around 45,000– 50,000 in the late 1950s. Given that Cuba had no real enemies at this time, the purpose of this vast military apparatus was primarily to secure and enforce the president’s (i.e., the caudillo in power’s) economic monopolies. This practice generated an inevitable tendency for military expansion—a new ruler who seized power (such as Fulgencio Batista after the “revolution” of 1934) had to purge his predecessor’s followers from the army and build himself a new, larger army capable of effectively combating the recently demobilized forces of the previous caudillo. Long periods of martial law became increasingly common throughout the 1930s and 1940s as new leaders sought to control the economic disorder and political violence that inevitably erupted after a transfer of power. With an expanded army, more and more markets could become targeted for takeover by the state. Machado, for instance, even put meat and milk distribution under monopoly control of the army (Beals, 1934). Batista expanded this practice many times over, putting almost all secondary education, the national lottery, gambling concessions and even the police force under military control. The New York Times expressed concern about this trend in an editorial dated May 25, 1936: Military authorities [in Cuba] wrested power from nearly every branch of the government and their encroachment upon civil affairs caused much dissatisfaction. The police, formerly under the Department of Interior, were incorporated into the army; into military reserve corps thousands of public employees were inducted, and recently soldiers were granted police authority in every district of the republic. The army boasts that more than 700 schools, whose teachers are members of the army, have been established; and the administration of state charity was in a large measure turned over to military authorities by recent decrees.

This increasing militarization meant that the scope of Cuba’s “revolutions” became hugely amplified over time with major segments of the economy and society reconfigured after a new leader seized power. I would like to argue that the events of 1959 should be seen as the final culmination of this trend. Following this “revolution,” all private businesses in Cuba (foreign and local) became nationalized, all forms of entrepreneurship eventually declared “counterrevolutionary,” and the entire economy was placed under monopoly control of the caudillo in power. Some scholars may take exception to this assertion—after all, such a perspective necessarily involves dismissal of forty years worth of Cuba’s humanitarian political rhetoric and implies that a major Cold War provocateur was perhaps only an “opportunistic” socialist. What the study of previous Cuban “revolutions” reveals, however, is that ideology (left, right or centrist) has nearly always

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been strategically deployed in order to justify or defend an armed seizure of power. Socialism appears to be no exception. Fidel Castro, in fact, is not even the first Cuban leader to opportunistically embrace socialism to justify his takeover of the Cuban state. The precedent for such an ideological facade was actually set back in 1934 by Castro’s immediate predecessor Fulgencio Batista, who declared himself to be a “progressive socialist” and “anti-imperialist,” after seizing power in the “revolution” of 1934 (New York Times, July 5, 1936). Market Reforms in Contemporary Cuba Cuba began experimenting with foreign investment and selective privatization in the early 1980s. Free farmers markets were first opened in 1980, and CIMEX (the first of the “sociedad anonimas”) was set up in 1983. The effects of these initial attempts at reform, and subsequent reversal with the “rectifications of errors” policy of 1986 have been explored by a number of scholars from a variety of academic disciplines (Del Aguila, 1994; Eckstein, 1993; Eckstein, 1997; Perez-Lopez, 1997; Perez-Lopez, 1995; Perez-Stable, 1993; Roca, 1993; Valdés, 1997; Zimbalist and Eckstein, 1987). Rather than recapitulate this extensive literature, I will instead (in the interest of space) leap forward to the present moment and focus on how recent economic reforms have been experienced and interpreted in one Cuban community. This ethnographic data will reveal that, rather than employing legislation to facilitate “privatization” or a transition to “free” markets, the current Cuban government appears to be using its uncontested power to orchestrate the postSoviet transition in ways that reinforce rather than diminish its political control. Analysis of recent activities from the “second economy” reveals how the Cuban state is inserting itself into strategic spaces in newly “privatized” markets in order to manipulate both labor and capital, and supply and demand to its own political/economic advantage. In the spring of 1997 the Cuban government initiated a new series of measures designed to intensify penalties for economic crimes such as workplace pilfering, black marketeering, illegal housing practices (such as renting rooms to foreigners), prostitution, and illegal self-employment. Called the “campaign against indiscipline and inefficiency,” it was widely publicized in Cuban newspapers such as Granma, Juventude Rebelde and Trabajadores, but appears to have received little attention from the American press. The campaign against indiscipline portrayed individuals engaged in illicit “second economy” activities as “counterrevolutionary,” and called upon organizations such as the CDR to aggressively police their neighborhoods to stamp out these criminal behaviors. The newspaper Trabajadores, for instance, ran an editorial on April 18, 1997 that read, “Nothing threatens us more today than these outbreaks of laziness, irresponsibility and corruption. Like crime and illegality, they are equivalent to a perpetual invasion by the enemy.”

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The more extremist newspaper of Oriente province, Sierra Maestra, actually insinuated that these acts of “indiscipline” were the local equivalent of an imperialist plot to destroy the revolution. On June 21, 1997 an editorial stated, “These social indisciplines embody a great danger for the survival of the Revolution, and play into the hands of imperialists who seek to destroy us, to liquidate and subvert us by making us weak and divided.” Increased neighborhood surveillance was justified with the argument that it was necessary to go backwards (to the more repressive days of the 1960s) in order to gain the momentum to leap forward (presumably into a utopian future). Granma, for instance, defended the campaign against indiscipline as “the only way [for the revolution] to definitively advance” (May 3, 1997). The effects of these policies were immediate and severe in the neighborhood where I lived and conducted my research. Before the campaign against indiscipline began, a steady stream of black marketeers appeared at the house every day offering a variety of foods for sale at discount prices. Enterprising produce vendors also purchased fruits and vegetables at the farmers markets in the morning and roamed the streets throughout the day, re-selling at a slight markup to elderly women who had no transportation to the market. Several families in the neighborhood rented rooms to foreign tourists, and one jinitera lived openly with her German boyfriend. By early June, however, the flow of black market and produce vendors had all but stopped. The few that did appear told tales of being waylaid and searched by the police on their way into the city. Often they had their contraband seized and significant fines imposed. One woman from whom I bought a chicken wearily described how she was forced to increase her black market sales in order to make enough money to pay the fines she had already incurred. Another neighbor told of having agents from the Ministry of the Interior arrive at her house and forcibly evict the two Canadian tourists who were renting rooms from her (this was two months before the housing law regarding rentals was passed). On June 3, a neighborhood CDR meeting was convened to discuss the “campaign against indiscipline.” As a foreigner I was not allowed to attend this meeting, but the events that transpired there openly became the subject of neighborhood gossip for many weeks. According to several reports, many residents were singled out during this meeting for their assorted acts of “indiscipline” and warned that if they didn’t desist, penalties or fines would be incurred. People complained privately that it was well known that those in charge of this meeting (the vigilance committee of the CDR) had far from perfect records in any of these areas, but that everyone was completely powerless to point out this selective enforcement without being subject to retribution. As one man put it, “I had to stay quiet, otherwise they’ll report that I’m not showing the proper ‘revolutionary spirit.’” This intensification of CDR black market policing also appears to have had tremendous psychological effects on the population as well. Given the intensity

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of the economic crisis in this city, many people were forced to rely almost exclusively on the black market for such vital necessities as eggs, f lour, chicken, milk, coffee, cheese and meat. Even commodities as basic as table salt could be difficult to obtain in the peso economy. The possibility of being penalized for buying these meager essentials on the black market threw everyone into a quiet uproar, and many saw it as a blatant attempt to force them to purchase their foods in the costly diplotiendas. In other words, many people implicitly understood these harsh new policies as examples of the state using police powers to eliminate unwanted economic competition in the informal sector. The campaign against indiscipline was widely perceived as motivated not by socialist ideals or a need to defend Cuba against enemy “imperialists,” but instead as a transparent attempt by the Cuban government to use laws, regulations, political rhetoric and taxation to harness the hard currency (and political resistance) that circulate in the “second economy.” In other words, by criminalizing certain activities (ostensibly on moral grounds) the state can use “legitimate” sanctions to covertly eliminate political/economic competitors and maintain its monopoly control of the economy. The housing law that was passed in the summer of 1997 provides a good example of this practice. This law was intended to “legalize” the common practice of renting rooms to foreign tourists by imposing a tax on those who engage in this activity. Many American observers no doubt applauded this as a gesture of “privatization” on the part of the Cuban government. A closer look, however, reveals that the effect of this legislation is actually the opposite of its stated intention—the taxes are so high and so inflexible (it is a flat monthly rate, rather than a percentage of income earned)4 that many have been forced to abandon renting altogether or else continue renting clandestinely. Those found to be renting “illegally” are assessed a $400 (hard currency) fine for the first offense. Subsequent offenses can be penalized by confiscation of the house itself. According to one source in Havana, Ministry of the Interior agents have recently embarked on a methodical campaign to entrap illegal renters by impersonating foreign tourists. The combined result of these practices is that a significant percentage of rental revenues that were previously in “private” hands have been forcibly co-opted by the state—either through “legitimate” taxation or penalty “fines.” A more obvious example of this behavior is found in the policing of tourist zones. Recently renovated areas in Old Havana such as Calle Obispo and the Plaza de Armas now have at least two policemen stationed on every block. Police patrol beaches, nightclubs and heavily touristed areas of Vedado as well. Ostensibly this is to “protect” tourists from petty theft and harassment from jiniteras. In reality, it appears that the state has decided to enforce its monopoly on tourist services by arresting those who attempt to undersell it in the “second” tourist economy. Frequently these individuals serve as informal conduits

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that re-direct foreign visitors (and their hard currency) away from expensive state restaurants and hotels and into paladares and private homes. Large yellow school buses and military trucks are now stationed at key tourist areas (usually on a less-traveled side street away from immediate view). Police scour every surrounding block, randomly checking identity cards of anyone who looks like they might be jiniteando. Those with suspect work histories or previous offenses written on their carnet de identidad are hauled away to the buses, and at the end of the day all those arrested are taken to a central processing area where they are assessed hefty fines. On several occasions these buses have also been seen circulating through touristed areas late at night rounding up prostitutes—sometimes as many as two or three hundred in a single sweep. Again, these practices should be seen as a means of re-directing money earned through “private” enterprise back into the hands of the state and its foreign partners. The Cuban government’s policies in the retail sector are also quite revealing. With the legalization of dollars in 1994, it appears the state has used its control over both the dollar and peso economies to maximize its own hard-currency earnings. This was accomplished by selectively reducing the availability of vital goods in state stores such as soap and cooking oil and cracking down on black marketing, thus forcing many Cubans to purchase these goods for dollars in the diplotiendas. As the economic crisis intensified, many basic foods that were ostensibly available through rationing (such as powdered milk) often never appeared, and families were increasingly forced to depend on remittances from relatives living abroad or else look for ways to earn scarce dollars in the second economy. As anyone who has ever shopped in a diplotienda can report, the experience is a humbling one—in a monopoly, where demand always exceeds supply, consumers are offered few choices and little in the way of respect. Crowds are common, goods seem wildly overpriced, quality is poor and customer service nonexistent. The idea of consumer protection appears to be foreign as well. One elderly woman I knew was forced to purchase a new refrigerator in a diplotienda. This small, Italian-made refrigerator cost $650 and broke within two weeks. The diplotiendas do not accept returns or exchanges, even for defective appliances (consumer complaints are also viewed as vaguely subversive), and she was forced to spend even more of her hoarded dollars to have it repaired. This incident with the refrigerator is especially significant because it ultimately gave me greater insight into the relationship between culture, labor and politics in Cuba today. I happened to be visiting this woman on the day her refrigerator was being repaired. As the repairman stopped for a break, I asked him if he was a “cuentapropista”—a licensed self-employed worker. He looked at me slyly and gave a derisive laugh. “I don’t work for Fidel,” he said dismissively, shaking his head. This comment struck me as unusual since I had always assumed that licensing workers for self-employment signified that they no longer “worked for Fidel.”

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Further conversations with this repairman (the refrigerator broke frequently) and others I knew who worked entirely in the informal economy convinced me that most Cubans view even “licensed” self-employment and other efforts at “privatization” exactly in these terms. Licensed self-employment or “private” enterprise is still “working for Fidel” because a percentage of the returns must be surrendered to the “state.” Given that government in Cuba has always been viewed in personalistic terms these taxes are not perceived to be “public” moneys contributed for the common good, but are instead understood as the equivalent of tithing a percentage of one’s earnings directly into Fidel’s own pockets out of personal loyalty. This inability to conceptualize an impersonal, disinterested “public sector” is important because it underscores the relationship between work in the “second economy” and resistance to political authority. Job performance has always been used as a measure of political loyalty or revolutionary fervor by the Castro government. Those who have no special fondness for the revolution show their ambivalence by not working very hard, or by deliberate displays of incompetence. Those who are actively opposed to Castro often opt out of formal sector employment all together or else deliberately parasitize their workplaces through theft to support themselves in the second economy. Conversely, the government often chooses to punish dissidents by barring them from employment. In other words, a job is something the state provides to the politically loyal and takes away from those suspected of dissent. Career advancement if often contingent on political participation rather than actual job performance. These practices have generated a cultural model of labor that appears to equate any earnest work effort (in the formal sector) with political submission. This attitude appears quite deeply engrained in popular consciousness. In other words, Cubans seem to view all governments as equal in this regard since most people have no experience with any other type of labor organization. This attitude is likely to prove quite persistent and may have a major impact on future privatization efforts since the “work ethic” of the labor force appears linked to political participation. Furthermore, individuals who work entirely in the second economy are likely to resist incorporation into any political system, since they intuitively distrust “government” intrusion in their activities. “Free” enterprise is always understood as work in the informal sector in Cuba today. Privatization has not led to any substantial changes in the politicization of labor since the state has relinquished practically none of its control over the Cuban workforce—foreign firms do not hire their workers directly, but contract for them with state agencies. The state charges foreign firms in hard currency for this labor, yet often pays the workers only Cuban pesos (although some now earn mixed salaries and those in tourism are allowed to keep tips). Workers who are sent abroad to work must remit a percentage (in some instances as high as 30–40%) of their earnings back to the Cuban government.

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Maintaining control of the labor force in this way gives the Cuban government the potential to exploit both labor and capital to its own advantage in exactly the same way as racketeer Sam Giancana described for the mafia-controlled labor unions in the United States. Political control of the labor force means that the threat of permanent unemployment or demotion is often sufficient to keep workers at least outwardly submissive. Stories of Cuban workers who lost their jobs over minuscule ideological infractions have been widely publicized by anti-Castro activists. The other side of this equation, however, has not received much consideration—foreign businesses in Cuba may be quite vulnerable to this type of political extortion as well. Certainly it would be naive to expect the Cuban government to refrain from employing such a potentially powerful strategy for reinforcing its power. Conclusions Most of the scholarly research on Cuba’s post-Soviet transition has been conducted with the specific goal of influencing U.S. foreign policy with respect to the trade embargo. Most economists argue that increasing privatization is incompatible with communism and that the transition to a free market economy will render Castro’s authoritarian politics obsolete. From this point of view, the U.S. embargo is actually seen as a major impediment to this transition, since it drastically constrains Havana’s ability to attract foreign investment. Others, however, insist that sanctions are more important than market reforms in weakening Cuba’s authoritarian policies. These individuals argue that the embargo must be maintained, or even strengthened, in order to weaken Castro’s political control. The result of this on-going dispute is that U.S. policy has stagnated into an impossible knot of contradictory impulses. The embargo is retained, yet many policymakers and American citizens view it as an obsolete relic of the Cold War. Privatization has been put forth as a means of engineering a political transition, yet has become increasingly penalized by legislation such as the HelmsBurton act. Many Cuban-Americans appear to be privately in favor of loosening trade (or at least travel) restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba for the sake of their divided families, yet they also seem compelled to support the embargo out of desire to maintain ideological solidarity against Castro. The possibility of a workable policy initiative emerging from such a deeply conflicted arena seems unlikely. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is not to lobby for any specific position with regard to the lifting of the U.S. embargo. My personal view is that there are many compelling reasons for lifting trade restrictions, but perhaps other good reasons for keeping them in place. History reveals, for example, that American businessmen have not always had an easy time in Cuba even during the “capitalist” era. The different political cultures of these two countries has

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meant that every time Cuban government officials failed to conform to the American model of government American businessmen have inevitably appealed to the State Department to intervene on their behalf. In the 1920s, for instance, a group of American plantation owners protested a new Cuban law that forced them to transport their sugar on a certain railway that was wholly owned by the Cuban politician who had sponsored the bill (Hard, 1928). The State Department, tiring of constant accusations of imperialism from the Cubans, declined to intervene in these affairs, leaving the American businessmen vulnerable to similar acts of political extortion. This example raises a number of compelling issues for the current situation with regard to American investment in Cuba. If the embargo were lifted would Castro be likely to use this traditional caudillo strategy of “legal” political extortion against American businesses to maximize his own power and economic control? If so, would the United States be willing to engage in acts of “imperialist aggression” (i.e., actively intervening in a sovereign nation’s political decisions) to protect its capital investments? Given the long-standing political tensions between Cuba and the United States, it could conceivably be argued that the embargo is serving to decrease hostilities by preventing these types of potentially volatile political/economic conflicts from erupting. On the other hand, the embargo does not seem to have had any success as far as its intended purpose of economically punishing the Cuban leadership. As I have outlined above, caudillos are quite adept at deflecting economic difficulties away from themselves and onto their citizenry. Many activists have convincingly argued that those who appear to be suffering most from the economic crisis are the Cuban people. Furthermore, these economic difficulties among the population do not seem to have been translated into political problems for the government in the way U.S. policymakers have hoped, and therefore seem even more difficult to justify on humanitarian grounds. So what, if anything, is to be done? Sadly enough, every conceivable direction of change seems to offer as many problems as solutions, and the present policy is anything but satisfactory. Perhaps then, the fundamental message of this paper should be taken as one of caution, or as a caveat for those who would seek to “save” Cuba through any American policy initiative. After all, history has shown that “saving” Cuba can be a tricky business. On numerous occasions (1898, 1906, 1912, 1917, 1919, 1921, 1933 and 1961)5 America’s attempts at “salvation” have brought only disaster, and has left behind a century’s worth of nationalist resentment, xenophobia and anti-Americanism in its wake. Notes 1.

There were “revolutions” of this sort in 1906, 1917, 1933, and 1952; and failed insurrections (traditionally organized from South Florida) in 1907, 1910, 1912, 1924, 1931 and throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

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Archival police records in Cuba use the phrase “haciendo politica” to describe a variety of acts. In some instances it referred to the use of violence against political competitors, in others cases it is used to mean electoral fraud or voter intimidation. I also saw it used to refer to violent acts directed at the economic activities of the opposition party, such as burning a cane field, raiding a farm or stealing revenues from an opposition casino. Some historical documentation is in order to support this statement. Cuba’s first president, Tomás Estrada Palma was exiled for his political activities against Spain in the late 1800s. Estrada Palma is unique in Cuban history in that after he was deposed from power he did not attempt to re-take the presidency by force and instead retired to an ancestral farm in Bayamo. Estrada Palma’s successor, José Miguel Gómez went into exile after losing the 1905 election. During his exile he helped organize the “revolution” of 1906 that eventually put him in power. After his term of office, Gómez attempted to return to power in the 1917 insurrection. This attempt failed and he was imprisoned briefly before being allowed to escape into exile in Miami. Gómez successor, Mario Menocal successfully held on to power for two terms, then was deposed in the violent 1921 elections. Menocal went into exile in Miami, then unsuccessfully attempted to return to power in a 1931 insurrection against Machado, after which he was briefly imprisoned. Menocal’s successor, Alfredo Zayas narrowly escaped imprisonment by hiding out in a friend’s country estate following the insurrection of 1917. Zayas’ successor, Gerardo Machado openly imprisoned his political enemies during the last years of his term. Machado’s opposition retaliated by assassinating and violently looting the homes of Machado supporters once they obtained power in the “revolution” of 1933. The details of Fidel Castro’s imprisonment during the Batista years are well known. $250 American dollars must be paid to the state for each room rented, per month, regardless of whether or not the rental units are occupied. A percentage of gross revenues is assessed at the end of every fiscal year as well. No food can be provided in these rentals, or else a fine will be incurred. 1898, Spanish-American War; 1906, second U.S. occupation of Cuba; 1912, troops sent during a racial uprising in Oriente province; 1917, troops sent during the “revolution” of 1917; 1919, Enoch Crowder sent to re-vamp Cuba’s electoral code; 1921, Crowder returns to supervise elections; 1933 Sumner Welles sent to engineer Machado’s resignation; 1961, Bay of Pigs invasion.

Bibliography Aguilar, Louis (1972) Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Alvarez del Real, Evelio (1942) Patrias Opacas y Caudillos Fulgurantes. Havana: La Veronica.

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Benjamin, Jules (1974) The United States and Cuba: Hegemony and Dependent Development, 1880–1934. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Benjamin, Jules (1990) The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in an Age of National Liberation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Blasier, Cole (1985) The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Bonsal, Stephen (1912) The American Mediterranean. New York: Moffett, Yard and Co. Brooke, John R. (1899) Annual Report of Major General John R. Brooke, U.S. Army Commanding the Division of Cuba. Havana. Chapman, Charles (1927) A History of the Cuban Republic. New York: Macmillan and Co. Chevalier, Francois (1965) The Roots of Personalism. In, Dictatorship in Spanish America, Hammill, Hugh, ed. New York: Alfred A Knopf, pp. 35–51. Crabb, Mary Katherine (1998) Decline of the State, Growth of the Nation: Nationalism and Caudillo Politics in Early Republican Cuba. Paper presented at the Bastards of Imperialism Conference, Stanford University, Stanford, California. De la Campa, Román (1997) Investing in Cuba. Dissent, 44(3):24–25. Del Aguila, Juan (1994) Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution. Boulder: Westview Press. Eckstein, Susan (1993) Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eckstein, Susan (1997) The Limits of Socialism in a Capitalist World Economy: Cuba Since the Collapse of the Soviet Block. In, Toward a New Cuba: Legacies of a Revolution, Centeno, Miguel and Font, Mauricio, eds., Boulder: Lynn Rienner, pp. 135–150. Fergusson, Edna (1946) Cuba. New York: Alfred Knopf. Figureas, Francisco (1906) La Intervención y su Politica. La Habana. Galíndez, Jesús (1965) A Report on Santo Domingo. In, Dictatorship in Spanish America, Hamill, Hugh, ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 174–187. Giancana, Sam and Giancana, Chuck (1992) Double Cross. New York: Warner Books. Goff, Fred and Locker, Michael (1969) The Violence of Domination: U.S. Power and the Dominican Republic. In, Latin American Radicalism, Irving Louis Horowitz, et al. (eds) . New York: Random House, pp. 249–291. Gosch, Martin and Hammer, Richard (1974) The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. New York: Dell Books. Guggenheim, Harry (1934) The United States and Cuba. New York: Macmillon. Guillermoprieto, Alma (1994) The Heart the Bleeds: Latin America Now. New York: Alfred Knopf. Hard, William (1928) Charles Evans Hughes, A Pan-American Statesman. Review of Reviews, 77:36–48.

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Holmes, Kim (1997) Special Report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Heritage Foundation. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1950) Report on Cuba. Washington DC. Jenks, Lelend (1929) Our Cuban Colony. New York: Vanguard press. Johnson, Arthur (1998) The Biggest Hazard in Cuba is Guys like Jesse Helms. Canadian Business, 71(5):4. Lamar-Schweyer, Alberto (1938) How President Machado Fell: A Dark Page in North American Diplomacy. Habana: La Casa Montalvo Cardenas. Leuchsenring, Emilio Roig (1925) A Disillusioned Cuba. Living Age, 324:512–515, March 7. Lindsey, Forbes (1911) Cuba and her People of Today. Boston: L.L. Page and Co. Lockmiller, David (1938) Magoon in Cuba: A History of the Second Intervention, 1906–1909. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Marshall, Jeffery (1998) The Political Viability of Free Market Experimentation in Cuba: Evidence from Los Mercados Agropecuarios. World Development, 26(2):277–288. Messick, Hank (1971) Lansky. New York: Berkeley Books. Norton, Henry Kittredge (1926) Self-Determination in the West-Indies. World’s Work, 51:76–84; 210–218; 321–328. Ortiz, Fernando (1924) La Decadencia Cubana. Habana: Imprenta La Universal. Paterson, Thomas (1994) Contesting Castro: The United States and the Cuban Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Perez, Louis (1978) Intervention, Revolution and Politics in Cuba, 1913–1921. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Perez, Louis (1983) Cuba Between Empires 1878–1902. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Perez, Louis (1986a) Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902–1934. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Perez, Louis (1986b) Aspects of Hegemony: Labor, State and Capital in Plattist Cuba. Cuban Studies, 16:49–47. Perez, Louis (1988) Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Perez Louis (1995) Essays on Cuban History. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Perez-Lopez, Jorge (1995) Cuba’s Second Economy. New Brunswick: Transaction Press. Perez-Lopez, Jorge (1997) Cuba’s Second Economy and the Market Transition. In, Toward a New Cuba: Legacies of a Revolution, Centeno, Miguel and Font, Mauricio, eds., Boulder: Lynn Rienner, pp. 171–186. Perez-Stable, Marifeli (1993) The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press. Phillips, Ruby Hart (1935) Cuban Sideshow. Havana: Cuba Press. Phillips, Ruby Hart (1959) Cuba: Island of Paradox. New York: McDowell Obolensky.

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Pierre, Fidel (1896) Cuba. New York: Cuban Delegation to the United States. Porter, Robert. Industrial Cuba (1899) New York: Putnams. Pratt, Julius (1950) America’s Colonial Experiments. New York: Prentice-Hall. Reuter, Peter (1985) Racketeers as Cartel Organizers. InThe Politics and Economics of Organized Crime, Alexander, Herbert and Caiden, Gerald, eds. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, pp. 49–65. Robert, W. Adolphe (1953) Havana: Portrait of a City. New York: Coward-McLann. Roca, Sergio (1993) The Commandante in his Economic Labryinth. In, Conf lict and Change in Cuba, Baloyra, Enrique and Morris, James, eds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 86–109. Schiffres, Manuel (1998) A Capitalist in Cuba. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, 52(3):150–154. Schwartz, Rosalie (1989) Lawless Liberators: Political Banditry and Cuban Independence. Durham: Duke University Press Scott, James (1972) Comparative Political Corruption. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Smith, Wayne (1996) Cuba’s Long Reform. Foreign Affairs, 75(2):99–112. Thomas, Hugh (1983) Cuba, the Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper and Row. Valés, Julio (1997) Economic Changes in Cuba: Problems and Challenges. In, Toward a New Cuba: Legacies of a Revolution, Centeno, Miguel and Font, Mauricio, eds., Boulder: Lynn Rienner, pp. 187–200. Wolf, Eric and Hansen, Edward (1972) The Human Condition in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press. Wright, Irene (1910) Cuba. New York: MacMillan. Zimbalist, Andrew and Eckstein, Susan (1987) Patterns of Cuban Development: The First Twenty-Five Years.” In, Cuba’s Socialist Economy Toward the 1990s, Zimbalist, Andrew, ed. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

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11 Market-Oriented Marxism: Post-Cold War Transition in Cuba and Vietnam Julie M. Bunck The unraveling of the Soviet superpower and the transformation of its former Eastern bloc allies shocked the world’s remaining Marxist regimes. By the early 1990s, the vision of a vanguard Marxist-Leninist party spearheading a global struggle against capitalism appeared farfetched to all but the truest of believers. Equally important, the new leaders in Moscow spun shut the economic spigot through which bountiful assistance had long flowed to loyal client states. Suddenly, the Marxist-Leninist leaders of Cuba and Vietnam found their economic wellsprings to have run dry and their ideological legitimacy to be under furious attack. To what extent are the experiences of these two regimes comparable? How has each responded, thus far, to the challenges of the post-cold war era? How has each regime weathered the economic storm in which the Soviet and East European Marxist states foundered and sank? Whose prospects for immediate economic development appear rosier and why? In addressing these questions, I do not attempt to predict the political future of the two countries. I confine myself to analyzing the post-cold war developments that have already occurred. I compare the revolutionary experiences and economic transitions of Cuba and Vietnam, focusing on four cardinal factors: economic policy, national culture, leadership, and regionalism. In addition, this essay discusses some of the more troublesome obstacles each country faces today. The Shared Revolutionary Experiences of Cuba and Vietnam Cuba and Vietnam have long maintained strong links to the Soviet Union. Within two years of gaining power, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement de154

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clared itself Marxist-Leninist and allied itself with the Soviet Union. Over the following quarter-century, the Cuban economy relied ever more heavily on Soviet subsidies and trade with the Eastern bloc. In Vietnam a close relationship with the Soviet Union developed during the protracted civil war between American-supported South Vietnamese troops and Soviet-backed North Vietnamese forces. This conflict culminated in the communist North’s victory in 1975, creating a unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Thus, while the Soviets began to court Cuba only after the Castro regime seized power, vows had long since been exchanged and the marriage consummated in the case of Vietnam. After gaining power, the Marxist-Leninist regimes in Cuba and Vietnam pursued highly ideological policies, both internationally and domestically. The leaders of both regimes viewed their countries as springboards for Marxist-Leninist movements throughout the world. To promote revolutionary insurgencies and support Soviet global goals, the Castro regime sent military advisers, soldiers, and other personnel to trouble spots that included Afghanistan, Angola, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. The Vietnamese government exerted its influence in Southeast Asia and further afield. Vietnam overthrew the neighboring Marxist regime and Chinese client state in Cambodia and installed a more malleable socialist government there. The Vietnamese then forcibly resisted a Chinese invasion aimed at punishing Vietnam for meddling in Cambodia. Vietnam also supported, at least rhetorically, an array of Soviet activities throughout the developing world. Both the Cuban and Vietnamese governments also relied heavily on MarxistLeninist ideology to justify their domestic policies. Immediately after gaining power, true to Marxist doctrine, Fidel Castro and his revolutionary comrade from Argentina, Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara, moved to transform Cuba’s chief prerevolutionary political and economic institutions. The regime promised to provide full employment, initiate agrarian reform, eliminate capitalism and illiteracy, promote social and political equality, ensure universal education and health care, and create “authentic” democracy.1 Simultaneously with its rhetorical pronouncements and its assault on many traditional institutions, Castro’s government also sought to replace certain aspects of pre-revolutionary Cuban culture. Adhering to pure Leninist philosophy, the leadership regarded sweeping cultural change as an urgent objective. In ignoring the pragmatic Soviet notion that cultural change must rest on a secure economic foundation, Fidel Castro viewed building a socialist economy and a communist culture as necessarily complementary undertakings. Over the next decades the Castro government dedicated extraordinary political capital—time, energy, and financial resources—and employed a wide range of strategies in attempting to bring about extensive cultural change.2 Similarly, immediately after reunification Vietnam embarked on an extensive effort to transform institutions in the south. The Vietnamese government, headed by General Secretary Le Duan, moved quickly to collectivize farms and raise

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agricultural production levels while eliminating private businesses. In addition, the leadership carried out a vigorous literacy campaign, promoted social and political equality, and provided various social services to Vietnamese citizens. One year after victory, at its Fourth Party Congress in 1976, Vietnam’s Communist Party stated explicitly that it would seek to promote cultural transformation as well as economic development.3 Thus, during its first decade in power, the leadership dedicated vast resources and much energy to re-educating and reorienting citizens for life in a communist society. The government moved to transform the values and attitudes of culturally “incorrect” Vietnamese citizens. Thousands upon thousands of intellectuals, religious leaders, and soldiers from the South were killed, harried into exile, or—more commonly still—forced into “re-education” camps to be taught the virtues of “real” democracy. Thus, promoting proper values and attitudes stood as one of the preeminent goals of Vietnam’s Marxist regime. Despite, or perhaps on account of, the vigor with which the two governments carried out these ambitious policies, both countries faced critical economic problems by the end of the first revolutionary decade. In 1968 Castro’s government launched the widely heralded Revolutionary Offensive—a spectacular effort to eradicate material incentives, abolish retail trade, and mobilize Cuban society to surpass previous sugar production levels. By 1970, as the leadership focused almost solely on pressing citizens to harvest a record-breaking 10 million tons of sugar, Cubans struggled in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis marked by widespread mismanagement, a flourishing black market, increasing vagrancy and worker absenteeism, and rapidly falling nonagricultural production levels. Mass austerity occurred in the wake of strict rationing and severe shortages of food and consumer goods. Similarly, by the early 1980s Vietnam confronted raging inflation, famine conditions in the north, acute food shortages elsewhere, and declining national agricultural production. Thus, both governments discovered that the revolutionary goals announced with such optimism and fanfare could not be fulfilled with any immediacy. To raise production levels and to mold new citizens, simultaneously and instantaneously, proved a tall order indeed. Economic Policies Adopted and Objectives Sought Despite the similarity in problems faced by (Cuba and Vietnam after a decade of revolutionary rule, the two governments confronted these difficulties by pursuing very different objectives and adopting varying policies. Fidel Castro responded by significantly strengthening Cuba’s economic and political ties to the Soviet Union. The Cuban regime, economically desperate by the early 1970s, bowed to pressure to adopt Soviet planning and management mechanisms. In response to the Kremlin’s urging, Castro invigorated the Cuban Communist Party, adopted a new constitution on the Soviet model, and momentarily shelved

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his long-touted emphasis on cultural transformation. Instead, the government focused attention on strengthening the island’s economic base and initiating material rewards to increase production levels. Castro agreed to follow the Soviets’ lead on where and how to become involved in wars of national liberation, and he permitted more Soviet access to the island for intelligence operations. In return for Castro’s cooperation and concessions, the Soviet Union provided formidable, indeed unprecedented, levels of economic and military assistance to strengthen the economy and secure the regime. With generous Soviet help, living standards in Cuba improved modestly throughout the latter half of the 1970s and into the 1980s. As Moscow’s chief ally in the Caribbean, Cuba increasingly linked the Kremlin with the developing world. Fidel Castro stood as an international spokesman for revolutionary movements across the globe, and Cuban soldiers contributed substantially to Marxist insurgencies from Angola to Nicaragua. In the short term, such mutual back-scratching proved beneficial. The regime could allege that Cubans enjoyed a higher quality of life than citizens in many other comparable developing countries. This reliance on the Soviet Union and the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) “sheltered Cuba from the storm of economic collapse” that was battering so many other Third World states.4 Indeed, Cuba enjoyed an illusion of prosperity, one tied to its extraordinary dependence on the Soviet Union.5 Throughout the 1970s, the Castro regime crafted policies designed to prevent Cuba from stumbling once more into the painful economic crises of the late 1960s. In fact, between 1975 and 1985 the government actually initiated limited market-oriented reforms. In the early 1980s, for example, the Castro regime authorized open farmers’ markets, introduced material incentives to increase production, permitted some self-employment, and allowed managers of state enterprises to hire their employees freely. The fear of unleashing capitalism and arousing anti-revolutionary sentiments and behavior, however, prompted the government to abandon these experimental reforms before much positive impact could be felt. After 1986, Cuban leaders faced another, even larger, problem: a deteriorating relationship with the rapidly changing Soviet Union. At that time, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were supplying approximately 84 percent of Cuba’s imports. (See table 1.) By the end of the 1980s, the Soviet bloc was providing Cuba with more than $4 billion a year in economic aid, about $400 per capita, equal to nearly 20 percent of Cuba’s gross national product.6 Moscow began to hint that the Soviet Union aimed to weaken its Cuban ties and increasingly pressured Cuba to meet its sugar commitments to the Soviet Union. Moreover, it signaled that, with improving U.S.-Soviet relations, Cuba might no longer qualify as a vitally important ally. Despite the warning signs, the Castro regime devised no effective strategy to respond to these new developments. Rather, mindful of

158

Cuban Communism Table 1 Cuba’s and Vietnam’s Trade with the Soviet Union, 1983–1989 (as % of total foreign trade) 1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

Cuba

81.6

85.4

86.0

86.0

83.4

81.8

75.4

Vietnam

68.8

65.3

64.7

70.8

—

—

—

Sources: Direction of Trade Statistics, International Monetary Fund; Jorge Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 125.

Cuba’s vulnerability and dependence, Cuban leaders quietly endured the withdrawal of aid and criticism from Soviet journalists and officials who publicly questioned the USSR’s economic and military aid and Moscow’s special trade relationship with Cuba.7 However, they recognized that Soviet economic reforms directly threatened the island’s political stability. In fact, in 1986 Castro launched the Rectification Campaign, an emphatic public rejection of Gorbachev’s perestroika. Rectification sought to move the Cuban economy away from the market by reducing material incentives, rewarding moral imperatives, and recentralizing economic decision making. The leadership also launched an ambitious food program to promote self-sufficiency. All efforts failed. Thus, at a time when creative economic policies might have averted, ameliorated, or postponed the economic blow, no substantial positive changes occurred. Instead, the Cuban regime continued to seek economic refuge under the protective wing of a terminally ailing superpower. By the late 1980s, the facade of economic stability behind which the Cuban government had hidden for nearly two decades began to crumble. The collapse of the Soviet bloc exposed the extent of Cuba’s reliance on Moscow and its satellites. The December 1990 Soviet-Cuban trade agreement revealed deep divisions between the two governments. The next year, Moscow further scaled back its Cuban commitments.8 Even as the Soviet Union was disintegrating in 1991, the Cuban regime made no bold, strategic countermove. As late as the Fourth Party Congress of September 1991, the regime was still muddling along with economic policies that appeared antiquated even by the standards of the dwindling club of states that fancied themselves communist. As a consequence, between 1989 and 1994 Cuban exports dropped by 80 percent and Cuba’s gross domestic product fell by half.9 Not until late 1993 did the Castro leadership accept and attempt to resolve its painful predicament. As an unprecedented economic crisis swept the island, the Cuban regime adopted significant reforms. It legalized the circulation and use of the dollar and authorized self-employment in 160 occupations (on a limited and tightly regulated basis). In 1994 the regime reintroduced free produce markets,

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imposed taxes, allowed privately owned restaurants to open, and transformed state farms into cooperatives.10 The government also eased foreign investment regulations, passing a law in 1995 allowing foreigners to own 100 percent of Cuban businesses and real estate and protecting them from expropriation without compensation.11 By early 1995, foreign investors had committed $1.5 billion, equal to $136 per capita. Despite these changes, two factors continue to hinder Cuba’s ability to rebound economically. First, the U.S. embargo, which Washington tightened in 1990, 1994, 1995, and stringently in 1996, curbs Cuba’s ability to recover.12 More important, the regime itself has clearly limited the extent to which it will open the economy. For example, the Castro leadership refuses to allow citizens to own or operate small or medium-sized industries. Vietnam never relied on the Soviet Union for economic aid to the extent that Cuba did—a state of affairs that brought short-term drawbacks but long-term advantages. By the early 1980s, Vietnam, like Cuba, faced serious economic problems: food shortages, economic mismanagement, low production levels, growing numbers of fleeing refugees, and the phenomenal expense of resisting the Chinese and occupying neighboring Cambodia. Though still safely within the realm of Marxism-Leninism, the Vietnamese government chose options and sought objectives quite different from those selected by Fidel Castro. The economy’s state of ruin forced Vietnam’s communist leaders, most especially influential Politburo member Nguyen Van Linh, to conclude that Vietnamese society would profit from certain profound economic changes. Rather than stumbling into ever heavier reliance on the Soviet Union, the Hanoi leadership agreed that Vietnam needed to raise domestic production considerably and to decrease external dependence. The leaders agreed to focus on diminishing the annual $1 billion ($14 per capita) in Soviet economic aid on which the Vietnamese had come to depend.13 To alleviate domestic tension by increasing the food supply, the Vietnamese Communist Party, partially adopting China’s model for economic recovery, introduced modest market-oriented reforms in 1980. Most important, in both agriculture and industry the government experimented with “output contracts,” which allowed families in cooperatives to sell on the open market any excess they produced above their state quota. These limited incentives, initiated in several provinces, increased the level of production significantly. And in early 1981 the government extended such market-oriented reforms throughout the country.14 Although Vietnam’s economy began to recover, the inflation that accompanied the recovery undermined the gains.15 In response, skittish leaders temporarily abandoned the market reforms—a brief retreat. In December 1986, after the death of hard-line General Secretary Le Duan, the party chose Linh to succeed him. Inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev, Linh quickly introduced his own limited version of perestroika, a far-reaching policy of economic renovation or doi moi.16 The government legalized private entrepreneurship in a wide range

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of small and medium-sized enterprises and abandoned collectivism in agriculture. The party also agreed to reduce its daily administration of the economy. Doi moi marked a decisive move toward a free-market system. With certain cardinal exceptions, such as fuel, electricity, public transport, and food staples, market forces drove down prices of commodities. Within one year after the inauguration of doi moi, the Vietnamese economy had expanded more than in the entire preceding decade.17 As Vietnam nears the end of its first decade of doi moi, economic progress has been impressive. In 1989, while Moscow steadily cut back deliveries to Vietnam of fuel, fertilizer, steel, chemicals, and cotton, the Vietnamese harvested a record-breaking rice crop, and the economy expanded by 7.8 percent, compared with an average annual 5 percent growth over the prior decade.18 By 1991 the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had collapsed and the flow of assistance had ceased. The Vietnamese economy, however, continued to surge. Gross domestic product increased by 8 percent in 1993 and grew at a slightly better rate in 1994 (see table 2). Inflation held steady at around 11 percent in 1994 and remains there, roughly I percent of the late 1980s rate. Profiting from a relatively stable currency, total trade in 1994 soared 30 percent. Indeed, Vietnam now stands as the world’s third largest exporter of rice, after Thailand and the United States.19 Once the U.S. lifted its embargo on trade and investment last year, pledges of foreign investment—primarily from Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong—skyrocketed.20 Foreign direct investment increased from a little over $3.5 billion in January 1994 to more than $18 billion (approximately $234 per capita) in commitments by April 1996.21 During the last several years, numerous countries, including Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Great Britain, France, and the United States, promoted investment, assistance programs, and academic and technological exchanges in Vietnam. Normalization of Vietnam-U.S. relations in July 1995 prompted a marked increase in Table 2 Economic Growth in Cuba and Vietnam, 1984–1994 (in percent) 1984 1985

1986

1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994

Cuba

1.2

–3.9 2.5

1.0

–7.3 –12.5 –5.0 —

—

Vietnam

7.0

2.5

7.8

5.1

8.8

5.1

6.0

8.6

8.1

Sources: Vietnam: Economic Report on Industrialization and Industrial Policy, report no. 14645–VN, Document of the World Bank, October 17, 1995; Adam Fforde and Anthony Goldstone, Vietnam to 2005: Advancing on All Fronts (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 1995), 11; Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy, 121; Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Cuba and the Downfall of Soviet and East European Socialism,” in Cuba After the Cold War, edited by Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 180.

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American investment, with corporations ranging from Coca-Cola to Mobil Oil to Bank of America now operating in the country.22 In summary, the Vietnamese, recognizing the economic storm on the horizon, began to chart their own course as early as 1980 and held to that course for much of the decade, even as fellow Marxist regimes sailed off in other directions. The Hanoi leadership responded to the economic crisis not by increasing the nation’s dependence on the Soviets, but by embracing market reforms and maintaining Vietnam’s long-sought political and economic independence. By the end of the 1980s, Vietnam had managed effectively to wean itself from Mother Russia. In contrast to events in Eastern Europe, Vietnam also manifested its independence from Moscow by steadfastly resisting the fundamental political changes that were occurring in the Soviet Union. Although in the late 1980s Van Linh did initiate his own narrower version of glasnost in which the party relaxed its control over the press, these policies lasted only a short time. At the Seventh Party Congress in June 1991, the party, seeing Linh as a radical reformer with a glasnost-type vision, replaced him with a more hard-line conservative, Do Muoi, whom the party elite judged to be better equipped to achieve economic changes without revamping the political structure of society. The Thorny Issue of Cultural Transformation The goal of creating a revolutionary culture is clearly derived from Marxist ideology. Karl Marx argued that the pernicious influence of capitalism, intrinsically destructive to human beings and their societies, estranges and alienates citizens, foments human greed and selfishness, and spawns unnecessary materialist desires.23 According to Marxist doctrine, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, the ensuing transformation of institutions, and the creation of socialism would liberate mankind. However, for the Marxist master plan to succeed, a socialist regime must re-educate its citizens so that they know how to think and behave in their new society. As two of the more doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist regimes, both Cuba and Vietnam initially viewed cultural transformation as central to the success of their revolutions. Cuban and Vietnamese leaders thus believed that the creation of a Marxist utopia depended upon their success in molding a socialist conscience among citizens. And they plainly viewed their pre-revolutionary cultures through an ideological prism, seeing many of their society’s most pervasive attitudes as products of their country’s historical experience with Western capitalism and imperialism. These capitalist-imperialist attitudes undermined revolutionary goals. The regimes thus sought to transform or replace these attitudes with more appropriate beliefs and values. Both governments viewed the transformation of culture with the utmost seriousness, and each expended tremendous energy in carrying it out. The

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traditional citizen, burdened with an unacceptable false consciousness, had to be transformed into Marx’s ideal citizen. In their efforts to transform culture, leaders employed an array of incentives, including material and nonmaterial rewards, and strategies such as mass mobilization, moral persuasion, re-education, compulsory labor, public humiliation, harassment, deprivation, and incarceration. What is appropriate revolutionary consciousness? In general terms, these governments urged citizens to be obedient and eager to toil, deferential and loyal to authority, non-materialistic and incorruptible, selfless and state-oriented.24 As one Vietnamese intellectual explained, after Vietnam was reunified, “individualism was repressed . . . to serve the common cause. . . . Only the struggle for the country was praised. All other demands of the heart or for individual happiness were silenced.”25 The “new man” would combine all of these qualities into mental, physical, and ideological strength. This effort to overhaul society’s traditional culture proved to be a formidable task for both regimes, but it was especially challenging for Cuban leaders. The revolutionary culture that Castro envisioned differed starkly from Cuban reality. For instance, almost immediately after seizing power, the leadership set out to destroy pre-revolutionary attitudes toward manual labor and to create new attitudes conducive to the realization of Marxism-Leninism in Cuba. Citing Marx, Castro argued that Cuba could not progress smoothly toward socialism without first thoroughly imbuing the people with a transformed labor ethic devoid of the historical influences of colonialism, slavery, and Western capitalist domination.26 Leaders urged Cuban citizens to think of manual labor as honorable and necessary, as an enriching element in daily life.27 “Work,” Che Guevara explained, “must be engaged in happily, to the accompaniment of revolutionary songs, amidst fraternal camaraderie and human relationships which are mutually invigorating and uplifting; . . . work must be man’s greatest dignity; . . . work will be a social duty as well as a true human pleasure and the maximum act of creation.”28 The regime urged Cuban citizens—traditionally individualistic, competitive, oriented toward self and family, suspicious of authority, and disdainful of manual labor—to change their attitudes and behavior fundamentally to meet revolutionary standards and goals. But despite its efforts, the Cuban government largely failed to sway its citizens. Asking so much from citizens and providing so little in return ultimately led to frustration and failure. For thirty-five years, the Cuban regime has battled such debilitating labor problems as demoralization, vagrancy, and absenteeism, which resulted in plummeting production. Cuba’s labor culture by the mid-1990s barely resembled the ideal socialist culture that the government had long sought to create.29 Vietnam’s Marxist leadership also recognized the importance of a hardworking, highly productive work force. The Le Duan government incessantly implored citizens to labor selflessly to promote the success of Vietnam’s socialist “libera-

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tion.” Vietnam’s communist leaders, however, enjoyed a substantial advantage over the Castro regime. Traditional Vietnamese culture, dominated by ancient Confucian values but also containing elements of Buddhism and Taoism, viewed manual labor as honorable and valuable—indeed, as one’s fundamental obligation to society. Vietnam’s culture, like those of many other Asian countries, long stressed the profound importance of individual toil and sacrifice to promote the common good. “The Vietnamese,” a Foreign Ministry official explained, “have collectively viewed toil as a required service to the country. This has always been seen as a profoundly important duty—long, long before the liberation.”30 The Vietnamese regime, then, had only to strengthen a wellestablished, deeply rooted attitude toward manual labor that already drove Vietnamese society. Confucianism and Buddhism and the attitudes and forms of behavior they engender provided a solid foundation for the revolutionary regime’s effort to promote a wide array of Marxist-Leninist attitudes and values. For centuries, Vietnamese society has emphasized social harmony (what the Vietnamese call yin), communal cooperation and an orientation toward the group rather than the individual, and unabashed loyalty and deference toward authority. Moreover, Vietnamese society stresses the importance of social duty, loyalty (trung), discipline, and perseverance (nghia).31 To ask Vietnamese citizens to adopt the ideal characteristics required for a socialist society along Marxist lines seemed neither radical nor absurd. Indeed, a strong element of continuity existed between the traditional Vietnamese culture and that which the regime aimed to create. Cuba’s revolutionary leaders, however, aimed to destroy the old and create something new, a decidedly more difficult task. The Nature of Leadership It is increasingly clear that in attempting to cope with cataclysmic political changes Cuba has been burdened by the personality and whims of Fidel Castro. While he may be credited with the Revolution’s triumph and its early successes, Castro’s tenacious grip on power and his inclination to control all aspects of Cuban governance have repeatedly silenced more pragmatic views and stifled serious political reform. The Cuban regime might be viewed as a dysfunctional member of the post-cold war community of states, unable to develop in a normal and healthy manner as long as Castro is intent on retaining absolute political control. This problem of centralized, unchallengeable, and inflexible decision making has slowed and hampered the evolution of Cuban policies, just at a time when international developments require more flexible, creative, and novel policy making. A central distinction between the historical experiences of these two countries, then, is the continued presence of a powerful, domineering personality in Cuba, but not in Vietnam. Vietnam’s charismatic Marxist leader, Ho Chi Minh,

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founder of Vietnam’s Communist Party and of socialist Vietnam, died in 1969, well before the “liberation.” Thus, the post-1975 government neither contended with a single manipulative personality nor benefited from the experience of its primary founding father. Rather, Ho Chi Minh left to the party the legacy of his vision, principles, and rhetoric. The revolutionary leaders built upon his myth and appealed to his words and goals but never had to contend with a personality cult or a revered leader intent on retaining personal power. Perhaps as a result, the Vietnamese government in the 1980s changed policies readily and, with relative ease, adopted a less ideological approach to problems confronting the nation. In fact, Vietnamese leaders customarily reached group decisions on the basis of fairly wide-reaching input from party members. No single leader, with the possible exception of Le Duan, thoroughly dominated the political process. The Vietnamese regime proved to be quite predictable and steady in its policy making, yet it made substantial changes when they were deemed necessary to preserve independence and promote development. The problem with the Vietnamese approach to decision making has emerged in microeconomic, not macroeconomic, issues. While foreign investors have pledged large sums and have eagerly awaited final government approval, construction is actually under way in only a small fraction of these projects. The problem stems largely from Vietnam’s communitarian, unanimous decision-making process in which required permits are granted only after scores of officials have been consulted and decision makers have reached unanimity. Since no official wishes to be blamed for approving foreign investment that is later seen as ill-advised, proposed construction often languishes for months and even years while decision makers discuss endlessly the merits and deficiencies of particular projects. Marxist regimes with more centralized decision-making processes, such as those in Cuba and China, have a somewhat better record than Vietnam does in speedily turning foreign investment projects from paper proposals into reality.32 Thus, while neither Vietnam nor Cuba has an unblemished record in instituting new economic policies for the post-cold war era, they have struggled with different leadership problems and different consequences. The Vietnamese regime proved able to change economic policies swiftly and flexibly. However, the Vietnamese bureaucracy has slowed the positive impact of those changes. The Cuban regime moved more slowly and reluctantly, in large part because of Castro’s fears that sweeping economic changes might threaten his grip on power. However, Cuba’s more centralized decision-making process has enabled foreign investors to get their projects on the island up and running somewhat more efficiently. The Role of Regionalism Since their respective revolutionary triumphs, both Cuba and Vietnam have been members of the now dwindling global community of socialist states. Over

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the last decade, however, champions of globalism—with its emphasis on broad, far-flung associations bringing together states around the world—have been superseded by advocates of regionalism.33 Under regionalism, states hope to find common loyalties and values among neighbors with whom they share similar domestic and international problems. Regional organizations aim to help states to work together closely and regularly to solve pressing issues and advance mutual interests. Regionalism of this sort has been described, in metaphorical terms, as a snowball—one that in theory will grow by accretion, taking on more and more states that will aim to work together in relative harmony.34 The development of the European Coal and Steel Community into the European Economic Community, and the EEC’s development into the European Union illustrate how a regional grouping can snowball under the right conditions. In some parts of the world, however, neighboring states appear less likely to snowball than to engage in a snowball fight. Regionalism may fail to integrate neighboring states so long as divergent interests and age-old enmities threaten to break up potential regional groupings. How, then, to assess the regional prospects of Cuba and Vietnam? Once members in good standing of the global family of socialist states, by the early 1990s both found themselves orphaned. Vietnam, however, quickly found relatively congenial neighbors. In July 1993, the United States removed the restraints that had long interfered with potential International Monetary Fund and World Bank assistance to Vietnam. In February 1994, the United States lifted the trade embargo it had imposed since the days of the Vietnam War. Such diplomatic coups finally removed the practical and psychological barriers that had once isolated the Vietnamese economy. Within two months of the end of the embargo, key officials from Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, and the Philippines visited Vietnam, including Singapore’s elder statesman and senior minister, Lee Kwan Yew, and Philippine President Fidel Ramos. During this same period, Hanoi’s communist party chief, Do Muoi, traveled to Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand; as a result, Vietnam came to play an increasingly active role in the UN and other international forums. In July 1995, the United States normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam and opened an embassy in Hanoi—a decision that was greeted with euphoric celebrations in many parts of the country.35 Finally, in August 1995 Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the increasingly influential regional organization that includes Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Within four years of the downfall of the Soviet Union, Vietnam had more than compensated for the deterioration of its principal global association by aggressively pursuing regional ties and vastly increasing diplomatic and economic contact with the West. Thus, the Vietnamese government countered the disintegration of its former global family by adopting a regional support system that encouraged the regime

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to establish a different focus, seek new objectives, and expand its markets and trade partners. The rapidly developing “little tigers” of Asia, especially Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea, have begun to invest heavily, promote the development of infrastructure, and provide guidance on economic and even political transition. Moreover, despite its Marxist-Leninist political orientation, Vietnam has been able to engender enthusiasm among capitalist investors. A country of more than 70 million people, Vietnam boasts a potentially large consumer market and a literate, highly disciplined, low-cost labor force. As one optimistic British official with an international aid agency stated, Vietnam “is on the verge of a great leap forward.”36 Cuba, on the other hand, has remained more economically isolated since the downfall of the Soviet bloc. Certain of the Latin American and the Caribbean countries have somewhat increased their trade with Cuba; however, on the whole they possess limited resources and many struggle themselves with grave economic difficulties. Although Castro has been encouraged by various Canadian and European investments, Cuba’s neighbors seem unable and unwilling to create an economic snowball in the region. Despite repeated efforts at regional economic integration and cooperation in Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, none has achieved especially noteworthy success to date. Cuba has joined the new Association of Caribbean States, but it has little to offer the Cuban regime. And, given the hostile relations between the United States and Cuba, no one expects Cuba to become a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the foreseeable future. Thus, in contrast to Vietnam, no unified neighboring family of states has reached out and offered Cuba a new identity and purpose in the post-cold war era. The most economically powerful states in the region—Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina—have, at most, hinted faintly at rhetorical support for Castro but have not offered significant economic assistance. While perhaps Mexico has offered Cuba the most tangible economic and political support, the recent economic crisis in Mexico has undermined its ability to offer substantial assistance. And, rightly or wrongly, Cuba’s superpower neighbor continues to embargo trade with the island and refuses to normalize relations. As productivity has fallen, the Castro regime has also failed to replace the Soviet bloc with new global trading partners, in large part because Cuba has few exports that other countries need or want. In agriculture, for instance, the market for Cuban sugar is nowhere near as extensive or lucrative as the market for Vietnamese rice. Thus, although over the past couple of years a few European countries have slightly increased trade with the Castro regime, Cuba’s trade with Spain, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands has actually decreased. And while trade with Japan and some ASEAN countries has improved somewhat, trade with Africa, especially Egypt, has dropped considerably. On the whole, Cuba has not been able to find new partners with whom to associate and prosper. Nor has it generated significant new markets, regional or

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global. Consequently, the island has witnessed a 73 percent drop in overall trade during the 1990s—a development in stark contrast to that in Vietnam.37 Cuba and Vietnam: Facing Similar Challenges Despite the marked differences between the post-cold war transitions that Cuba and Vietnam are currently undergoing, both governments continue to face certain common problems. First, both regimes confront the ever more apparent challenge of bridging the slowly burgeoning gap between traditional socialist rhetoric and modern capitalist reality.38 Marxist states have traditionally justified authoritarianism by pointing to the advantages of a command economy. After their revolutionary victories, each regime quickly nationalized private property, closed private schools, eliminated market competition, regulated prices, controlled resource distribution, and intimidated religious leaders into exile or silence. The leaders argued that the grand task of eradicating capitalism and imperialism and creating a more just socialist economy required a powerful oneparty state wholly intolerant of dissent. Today, as the two countries experience substantial economic transitions, the revolutionary goals of ensuring full employment, prohibiting foreign ownership of enterprises, and creating equality by controlling resource distribution have been ignored or set aside. With capitalism on the ascendant, citizens, foreigners, and even officials are openly scrambling to advance their economic interests. In Havana, a new message reportedly dominates society: “If you can produce and sell, you can get rich!”39 “Everybody is selling something in Vietnam,” a recent article explained. “What matters now is making money.” A Vietnamese doctor remarked in May 1994: “I am very afraid . . . for most people money is too important . . . everyone in [Hanoi] is corrupted.”40 Both regimes have sought to reinvigorate their agricultural sectors by turning to unmistakably capitalist strategies. Vietnamese leaders have turned over virtually all agricultural property to farmers so that they may produce and sell their crops on the open market. The Castro government has likewise transformed most state-owned farms into cooperatives where salaries are based on production levels. Cuban law, however, continues to require cooperatives to sell approximately 80 percent of their crop to the state at prices set by the government well below market prices. Consequently, in Vietnam agricultural production levels have surged, while in Cuba the production levels of cooperatives continue to decline. Both regimes support experimental commercial markets in which citizens can buy surplus items such as shoes, baskets, house plants, dried fish, plastic products, and bicycle wheels, all for prices established on the basis of supply and demand.41 Likewise, both regimes now condone self-employment, allowing citizens to undertake petty trades such as plumbing, carpentry, hairdressing, and shoe repair.42 The regimes vary considerably, however, in the degree to which they regulate these activities. The

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Vietnamese regime has allowed much more freedom in self-employment than has the Castro regime. Reestablishing the open market and eliminating the command economy creates a serious legitimacy problem for these governments. Citizens continue to ask difficult questions. If the regime is no longer attempting to create a communist society with full employment and even distribution of resources, but instead is embracing free-market capitalism, what then justifies the continued rule of this Marxist-Leninist government? Why should lifelong Marxists be directing a capitalist economy? Why are Marxist societies lagging so far behind their capitalist neighbors? And, why should foreigners but not citizens be given special tax incentives, opportunities to own property with guarantees against expropriations, and—in Cuba—special stores, hotels, and restaurants?43 Such difficult questions are exacerbated by the widespread popular suspicion that officials may be lining their own pockets. Official corruption in both countries is flourishing. Within the last decade in Vietnam a privileged class has emerged. Certain party members and midlevel officials regularly accept payoffs; some are amassing wealth. As the prime minister observed in a blunt December 1993 report to the National Assembly: “The state of corruption plus incapabilities, red tape and . . . lack of a sense of discipline among numerous officials in various state machines at all levels and branches . . . [have] jeopardized the renovation process and brought discredit to the party’s leadership and state management.”44 Similarly, at Cuba’s Fourth Party Congress in October 1991, the leadership repeatedly denounced corruption among party officials. Trafficking in personal privileges, providing favors and sinecures, and other such abuses of power have become common.45 With the substantial increase in foreign investments, the Castro regime has warned it will severely punish Cubans who are caught accepting favors or requesting bribes.46 Cuba and Vietnam have also both had to contend with rapidly rising social and economic inequality, long considered by both regimes to be an unacceptable evil. This new materialism appears most prominently in the rush to acquire and spend U.S. dollars. For decades the Cuban government prohibited citizens from possessing American currency. Citizens caught with dollars faced stiff penalties, including incarceration. Most with dollars stashed them away and waited for a change in Cuba’s political and economic climate. Then, in July 1993, desperate to attract hard currency and to lure back the money of Cuban exiles, the Castro regime legalized the greenback, once a reviled symbol of imperialism.47 Immediately, those citizens who had been holding dollars illegally were better off than loyal, law-abiding citizens who had refused to participate in black market activities. The legitimacy of Castro’s past policy collapsed, and the rush to obtain dollars soon amounted to a national pastime.48 Special hard-currency stores stocked with imported food, clothing, and electronics sprouted up around the island. Cubans with dollars had the means to improve the quality of their lives far more readily than those without access to American currency.

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Although official rhetoric promoting equality seems to have subsided, Vietnamese citizens and officials still complain that the fruits of capitalism are not being evenly distributed. With Vietnamese citizens scrambling to earn money on the side—by moonlighting at such jobs as working in the tourist trade or repairing televisions or bicycles—the creative, lucky, or clever ones, or those receiving substantial sums from abroad, are accumulating wealth more quickly than others. These disparities create considerable tension in a society accustomed to the rhetoric of equality. In a feeble attempt to stem the discontent brought about by such matters, neither government has entirely ceased its anti-capitalist rhetoric. The result looks suspiciously like double-talk. And, the evident contradictions between rhetoric and reality contribute to the legitimacy problem. A November 1994 Granma article lamented changes in the daily language of Cuban citizens. “Let there be no mistake,” the article read, “revolutionary language must not change, because our principles have not changed.”49 Likewise, in 1992 Carlos Lage, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, stated that the leadership would promote a “socialist opening to the capitalist world.”50 For Marxist regimes, the task of preserving the old political system within a rapidly evolving capitalist economy may prove increasingly challenging. For instance, as recently as 1993 no piece of paper was to be copied in Hanoi without the approval of a party official. With the economic opening, such restrictions were lifted. Now, photocopying shops in the capital abound, and customers openly reproduce even such sensitive documents as the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Vietnam is now deeply in the midst of an information revolution—telephone lines continue to multiply, stacks of television sets line Hanoi’s shopping streets, and stores teem with stereos, radios, and fax and photocopying machines. While such tools are necessary to modern capitalist enterprise, the ease of communication through such media fuels the population’s rising expectations and poses unprecedented difficulties for internal security. Cuba and Vietnam have also both had to contend with newly flourishing religious activities, which may in part amount to a form of concealed political protest. Although both regimes long promoted atheism, both came to tolerate Christian and Buddhist worship as part of their newly opened societies. Thousands of citizens in both countries have responded enthusiastically.51 Indeed, the Catholic Church in both countries seized the opportunity to criticize the Marxist regime openly. In Cuba, Catholics are attending mass in record numbers and celebrating religious feast days. Moreover, believers in Afro-Cuban religions are also practicing their faith more openly.52 Likewise in Vietnam, a country that once had the largest Christian population in Asia outside of the Philippines, Catholicism is again thriving. On Sunday mornings, standing-room-only crowds of hundreds of Vietnamese believers pack into Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi. According to

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one journalist, during the week before Christmas 1994, the Catholic churches were “jammed, with people standing ten deep on the steps, and lines fifty feet long to the confessionals.”53 Last year the pope appointed a cardinal for Cuba and a cardinal for Vietnam, a form of political protest often used by the Vatican to influence repressive societies.54 Youths also have rebelled against society in both countries. Over the past five years, young Cubans have become more willing to protest and more vocal in their dissent. Juvenile delinquency, including drug abuse and crime, suicide (now the sixth leading cause of death on the island), truancy, defection, public protests, and other disrespectful acts plague the Cuban regime.55 Likewise, in Vietnam the party has had to confront increasingly hostile groups of youths who come to show their disrespect in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and other major cities, by baiting police in late-night illegal motorcycle racing. Large crowds of teenagers routinely gather to watch the motorcyclists race through the city streets, occasionally at speeds exceeding seventy miles per hour. In 1994 alone, at least fifteen bikers died and dozens of bikers and spectators were injured.56 Crowds of motorcycle spectators also engage in late-night “cop-sassing”: shouting insults and occasionally throwing rocks at police dressed in riot gear.57 According to one official, many of the protesters are the sons and daughters of party members who have the money to buy motorcycles and who can threaten the police with party sanctions if their children are arrested.58 Although the Vietnamese government originally dismissed such pranks as youthful high jinks, officials have become increasingly concerned about these activities and more willing to view such behavior as “antisocial.”59 Conclusion As the regimes of Cuba and Vietnam steadily integrate their economic systems into the global market, they confront an array of common obstacles, from establishing new trade relationships to bridging the gap between socialist rhetoric and capitalist reality, from eliminating corruption to preserving the authority of the ruling party. Despite the evident similarities between their historical predicaments, Vietnam seems to be moving into the post-cold war era more quickly, effectively, and surefootedly than is Cuba. Certainly, the Vietnamese economy appears to be developing more rapidly and integrating into regional and global markets less painfully than is the Cuban economy. Several factors may help to explain Vietnam’s relative advantages. First, Vietnam never relied upon the Soviet bloc, economically or militarily, to the extent that Cuba did. More important, as early as 1980 the Vietnamese regime, recognizing the need for substantial policy changes, began to reassert Vietnam’s economic independence and adopt market-oriented economic reforms. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, Vietnam had fully asserted its economic independence. Since the late 1980s Vietnam’s economy has surged.

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Equally important, in this period of profound market transition Vietnam’s traditional culture, a hybrid of ancient Confucianism and socialist engineering, remains a valuable asset. For the most part, the Vietnamese labor force is not prone to absenteeism and vagrancy. Vietnamese workers tend to be deferential to party authority, disciplined, hardworking, and willing to sacrifice for national development. These cultural advantages help to explain why Vietnam has enjoyed a smoother economic transition in the post-cold war era than Cuba. The nature of Vietnam’s leadership may also help to explain Hanoi’s relative economic success. The Vietnamese government, never having to contend with a powerful authority figure like Fidel Castro, has been able to change policies readily and to adopt a less ideological, more pragmatic approach. The Vietnamese government has thus proved to be steady and predictable, although perhaps at times hampered by its eagerness to promote a broadly communitarian, unanimous decision-making process. Finally, Vietnam, unlike Cuba, has been blessed with dynamic and economically progressive neighbors oriented to regional concerns. Vietnam’s neighbors have energetically reached out to Hanoi, providing economic guidance, promoting infrastructure development, investing in a variety of projects, and inviting Hanoi to join ASEAN, one of the world’s more prestigious and increasingly powerful regional organizations. Vietnam, an abandoned orphan only a few years ago, has joined a new family of supportive states. This support system has promoted and abetted Vietnam’s economic recovery. These factors—economic policy, national culture, the nature of leadership, and regionalism—help to explain Vietnam’s relative advantages thus far in responding to the challenges of the post-cold war world. Nevertheless, the road ahead will test the flexibility, creativity, and limits of both governments as they try to develop market-oriented Marxism and avoid abrupt collapse. Notes 1.

2.

3.

Marifeli Pérez-Stable, “Charismatic Authority, Vanguard Party Politics, and Popular Mobilizations: Revolution and Socialism in Cuba,” Cuban Studies 22 (1992): 5. See Julie Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); Richard Fagen, The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969); Tzvi Medin, Cuba: The Shaping of Revolutionary Consciousness (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990). Frederick Z. Brown, “Vietnam Since the War: 1975–1995,” Wilson Quarterly 19:1 (winter 1995): 76.

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4. 5.

6.

7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

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Maurice Halperin, Return to Havana (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994), 75. Cole Blasier, “The End of the Soviet-Cuban Partnership,” in Cuba After the Cold War, edited by Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 73. Andrew Zimbalist, “Treading Water: Cuba’s Economic and Political Crisis,” in Cuba and the Future, edited by Donald E. Schulz (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 7–8; see also Halperin, Return to Havana, 69; Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” and “Cuba’s Economic Policies and Strategies for Confronting the Crisis,” in Cuba After the Cold War, edited by Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 133– 257. Brundenius and Zimbalist argued in 1989 that the magnitude of Soviet aid to Cuba had been overstated as a result of faulty methodology (The Cuban Economy: Measurement and Analysis of Socialist Performance [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989]; Cuba’s Political Economy: Controversies in Cubanology, edited by Andrew Zimbalist [Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1988]). Jorge Pérez-López, however, rejects their methodology, based on Cuban official prices, as inappropriate for constructing indices that ref lect economic growth. Susan Kaufman Purcell, “Cuba’s Cloudy Future,” Foreign Affairs 69 (summer 1990): 113; Robert Legvold, “The Revolution in Soviet Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 68:1 (1988/89): 86; K. W. Ellisen, “Succeeding Castro,” Atlantic Monthly (June 1990): 38; see also Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 110; Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics after the Fourth Party Congress, edited by Jorge Pérez-López (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994). Blasier, “The End of the Soviet-Cuban Partnership,” 88–89. Miami Herald, 21 October 1994, IC. See Jorge Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995); see also Julio Carranza, Luis Gutierrez, and Pedro Monreal, Cuba la reestructuración de la economía: Una propuesta para el debate (Havana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1995). See Washington Post, 6 September 1995, Al, A25; Washington Post, 9 September 1995, C2–C3; Washington Post, 12 September 1995, A14. The Libertad Act of 1996 severely tightens the embargo and warns foreign companies doing business in Cuba that they could face lawsuits in U.S. courts. Brown, “Vietnam Since the War: 1975–1995,” 79; Vietnamese government official, interview by author, Hanoi, 8 November 1995. However, the contrast between Soviet economic assistance to the two dependent states is striking: between 1981 and 1985, the Soviets provided $22,072 million in

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14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

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military and nonmilitary aid to Cuba. Soviet aid continued roughly at that level between 1986 and 1990. Vietnam received far less Soviet aid. Nonmilitary aid to Vietnam reached only $6,150 minion between 1981 and 1985 (Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” 180; Vietnam: A Country Study [Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1989], 321). Brown, “Vietnam Since the War: 1975–1995,” 79. David Wurfel “Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective,” in Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism: Doi Moi in Comparative Perspective, edited by William S. Turley and Mark Selden (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), 24. Brantly Womack, “Political Reform and Political Change in Communist Countries: Implications for Vietnam,” in Turley and Selden, Reinventing Vietnamese Socialism, 282. See Vo Nhan Tri, “The Renovation Agenda: Groping in the Dark,” in Vietnam Today: Assessing the New Trends, edited by Thai Quang Trung (New York: Taylor and Frances, 1990). World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, May 1995. Douglas Pike, “Uncertainty Closes In,” Asian Survey 24:1 (January 1994): 65, see also Peter Janssen, “So Much for Theory: Now for Practice,” Asian Business, April 1994, 43. Brown, “Vietnam Since the War: 1975–1995,” 80–81; Vietnam Investment Review, 7–13 March 1994,1. Vietnam Business Journal, June 1996, 11; Vietnam’s Economy: 1986–1995 (Hanoi: Gioi Publishers, 1995), 165. See State Committee on Cooperation and Investment Hanoi, Vietnam, July 1995, see also Vietnam: Economic Report on Industrialization an’ Industrial Policy, report no. 14645–VN, Document of the World Bank, 17 October 1995 Investment in Vietnam has slowed over the past six months. New York Times, 11 July 1995, 1; Washington Post, 11 July 1995, Al. Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961) 20–21, 25, 63, 151; Joseph Cropsey, “Karl Marx,” in History of Political Philosophy edited by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 809, 824–85; John McMurtry, The Structure of Marx’s World-View (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 20. Marxists approach the concept of the state in theory and practice with curious ambivalence; see Michael Ross Fowler and Julie Marie Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and Application of the Concept of Sovereignty (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 128–30. Far Eastern Economic Review, 1 September 1994, 55. See Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State, 127–28. Ibid., 125–26, Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, trans. and edited by Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 611.

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28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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Quoted in Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State, 125. Ibid., 182–84. Vietnamese government official, interview by author, Hanoi, 15 March 1995. Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 15–24. The Castro regime’s enactment of a comprehensive foreign investment law in September 1995 will likely speed up the process for approving foreign investment. The new law sets a sixty-day limit for approval of projects, and those involving less than $10 million can be decided at the ministerial level. Nevertheless, for most foreign investment projects this law requires approval by the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, a unit tightly controlled by Fidel Castro. See Washington Post, 12 September 1995, A14. See Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (New York: Random House, 1956), 102. Ibid. See New York Times, 11 July 1995, 1A; ibid., 12 July 1995, 1A; Washington Post, 12 July 1995, 1A. Far Eastern Review, April 1993, 22. See Mark Falcoff, “Cuba’s International Relations,” Cuba in Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Cuban American National Foundation, 1993), 49–55; see also Ariel Terrero, “Tendencies de un ajuste,” Bohemia, 28 October 1994. See, for example, Enrique A. Baloyra, “Where Does Cuba Stand?” in Cuba and the Future, edited by Donald E. Schulz (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 32. Miami Herald, 28 October 1994, 14A; see also Archibald R. M. Ritter, “Cuba’s Economic Strategy and Alternative Futures,” in Cuba at a Crossroads, edited by Jorge Pérez-López (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 14–15. Washington Post, 15 May 1994, A32. Newsweek, 25 April 1994, 39; Miami Herald, 14 November 1994, 10A; Washington Post, 15 May 1994, A32. Miami Herald, 30 November 1994, 9A. See Mesa-Lago, “Cuba’s Economic Policies and Strategies for Confronting the Crisis,” 203–04; see also Washington Post, 12 September 1995, A14; ibid., 9 September 1995, C1–C2; ibid., 6 September 1995, A1, A25. Vo Van Kiet, Vietnam in 1993 and Socio-Economic Prospects for 1994–1995 (Hanoi: Gioi Publishers, 1993), 10. Juan M. del Aguila, “The Party, the Fourth Congress, and Counter-Reform,” Cuban Studies 23 (1993): 71–90. Washington Post, 12 September 1995, A14. Ibid., 25 July 1993, A1, A22. One Cuban remarked, “If you don’t have ‘The Dollar,’ you don’t have anything.” Newsweek, 25 April 1994, 38. Miami Herald, 8 November 1994, 12A.

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50. Baloyra, “Where Does Cuba Stand?” 32–33. Vietnamese officials also continue to espouse the rhetoric of socialism. As one party official explains, the path is new, but “the goals are still the goals of socialism” (Washington Post, 15 May 1994, A32). 51. Nonoska Pérez Castellon, “Coping in Cuba: The Internal Opposition Movement,” in Falcoff, Cuba in Crisis, 29–30. 52. On 7 September 1994, on the Feast of the Virgin of Regla, Cuban citizens packed Havana’s Iglesia de Regla (Charles Lane, “The Long, Long Goodbye,” New Republic, 3 October 1994, 15–18). 53. Hardy C. Wilcoxon, Jr., “Vignettes of Vietnam,” Virginia Quarterly Review 51:1 (winter 1995): 65. Vietnam today boasts twenty-five dioceses, thirty bishops, and some 200 priests. 54. The Vietnamese government’s increasing openness toward religion is reflected in the rebirth of other religions including Protestantism, Taoism, Confucianism, and various forms of Vietnamese Buddhism. 55. See Bunck, Law, Power, and the Sovereign State, 80–86. 56. Eastern Economic Review 1 September 1994, 54. 57. Vietnamese government official, interview by author, Hanoi, 13 April 1995. 58. Vietnamese government official interview by author, Hanoi, 15 March 1995. 59. Vietnamese government official interview by author, Hanoi, 13 April 1995.

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12 Waiting For Godot: Cuba’s Stalled Reforms and Continuing Economic Crisis Jorge F. Pérez-López A decade after Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union began to dismantle the Communist Party’s monopoly over politics and economics, Cuba remains a bastion of socialist orthodoxy. President Fidel Castro, Cuba’s undisputed leader for more than four decades, not only continues to be an unabashed proponent supporter of socialism, but lately he has stepped up his criticism of multi-party democracy and capitalism, predicting the imminent triumph of socialism.1 The inefficiencies of a socialist, centrally-planned economy, coupled with the shocks associated with the sudden disappearance of economic and trade relations with the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries, sent the Cuban economy into a tailspin at the beginning of the 1990s. Although economic performance improved somewhat in the second half of the 1990s, Cuba continues to be enveloped in an economic crisis that has substantially eroded the living standards of the population. At the peak of the economic crisis, when the very survival of the regime was threatened, the Cuban leadership reluctantly instituted a handful of economic reform measures. The slight economic rebound in the second half of the 1990s relieved the pressure on the leadership for additional measures and effectively stalled the reform process. President Castro stated in late July 2000 that the period of policy experimentation with economic reform measures was over and Cuba “could begin anew, slowly but based on a solid foundation, to build socialism.”2 Prospects for meaningful political and economic reforms in Cuba under Castro appear dim, as do those for sustained growth in the economy and in the standard of living. 176

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The Crisis of the 1990s According to official statistics, the Cuban economy experienced strong economic growth in the first half of the 1980s. The global social product (GSP), the broadest measure of economic activity under the national income accounting system used by the socialist countries, grew at an average annual rate of 7.3 percent during 1981-85.3 Economic performance during the second half of the 1980s was very sluggish, however, with GSP essentially unchanged between 1985 and 1989 and actually contracting by 3.9 percent in 1987. The economic slowdown of the second half of the 1980s coincided with the ideologically motivated “rectification process” (proceso de rectificación de errores y tendencias negativas) that concentrated economic decision-making in the hands of the state, did away with the few market-oriented mechanisms (such as farmers’ markets), and used moral incentives to motivate workers. At the end of the 1980s, Cuba’s economy was very closely intertwined with the economies of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist countries. In 1989, for example, the Soviet bloc countries bought 75.4 percent of Cuba’s total exports and provided 80.9 percent of all imports. Over the period 1983-89, these countries accounted, on average, for 83 percent of Cuba’s exports and imports.4 The Soviet bloc countries were the primary markets for Cuba’s exports of sugar, nickel, citrus, alcoholic beverages and tobacco products. In 1998, they took nearly 91 percent (by value) of Cuban sugar and a similar share of nickel exports. They were also Cuba’s main source of food, raw materials, fuels, machinery and transportation equipment. In 1988, the last year for which this calculation can be made using official Cuban foreign trade statistics, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe provided the following shares (by value) of Cuba’s total imports:

• Food: 100 percent of condensed milk, butter, cheese, and wheat flour; 89 • • • • •

percent of wheat; 87 percent of lard; 63 percent of canned meats; and 57 percent of corn. Raw materials: 100 percent of lumber, railroad ties, cotton. Chemicals: 96 percent of fertilizers; 86 percent of rubber. Fuels: 99 percent of oil and oil products. Manufactures: 85 percent of steel plates; 80 percent of steel pipe; and 70 percent of tin plate. Machinery: 100 percent of buses and sugarcane lifters; over 90 percent of diesel engines, tractors, backhoes/cranes, tractor parts; more than 80 percent of automobiles and parts for agricultural equipment; and more than 70 percent of turn-key plants, agricultural equipment, automobiles, certain ships.5

From the 1960s through 1989, the Soviet bloc countries also provided most of the external resources to underwrite Cuba’s economic and social development.

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They routinely extended credit to finance trade imbalances, granted technical and financial aid for specific development projects, and provided military assistance. They also extended extraordinarily beneficial trading terms to Cuba, purchasing sugar at prices that far exceeded world market prices and selling oil at below-world-market prices and allowing Cuba to re-export the oil to earn hard currency. To illustrate:

• In 1987, the contract price of Cuban sugar exports to the Soviet Union was

•

the equivalent of 41.90 U.S. cents/pound, while the average world market price was 6.76 U.S. cents/pound, a more than six-fold margin of preference. The preference margin was even higher in other years in the 1980s.6 From the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s, the Soviet Union sold oil to Cuba at below-market prices in nonconvertible currency and allowed Cuba to reexport this commodity to the world market as a means for the island to obtain scarce convertible currency. In 1983-85, oil and oil products re-exports actually overtook sugar as the island’s most significant convertible currency export, accounting for more than 40 percent of total convertible currency revenues in those years, twice the share generated by sugar exports.1

According to Cuban sources, between 1981 and 1985, the Soviet Union alone provided Cuba with 1.8 billion rubles in development assistance (mostly loans), while the East European socialist countries granted about 1 billion rubles and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or COMECON) a similar amount.2 Through 1986, the Soviet Union assisted Cuba in completing 360 development projects, and another 289 were in progress.3 Enterprises built with financial and technical assistance from the Soviet Union accounted for 15 percent of Cuba’s gross industrial output, 100 percent of steel plates, 90 percent of steel products, 70 percent of nitrogen fertilizers, 70 percent of electricity, 65 percent of textiles, 50 percent of mixed fertilizers, and 50 percent of the products of the metalworking industry.4 Economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago has estimated that the flow of resources from the Soviet Union to Cuba during the period 1960-1990 amounted to more than $65 billion, with about two-thirds of these transfers in the 1980s alone. Nearly 40 percent of the flow of resources (about $25.7 billion) took the form of repayable loans—credits to finance bilateral trade deficits (27 percent) and development credits (13 percent)—and about 60 percent ($39.4 billion) was in the form of nonrepayable price subsidies.5 To put these figures in context, Mesa-Lago’s estimate of a flow of Soviet resources equivalent to $21.7 billion over the period 1986-90 translates into an annual average of $4.3 billion per annum. Since Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) during this period averaged about 20.5 billion pesos per annum, the resource flows from the former Soviet Union amounted to 21.2 percent of Cuban GDP.6 By comparison, the share of inflow of external resources to GDP in 1990 for other countries in the region was: Costa Rica, 3.2 percent; Dominican

Sources: Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, Anuario estadístico de Cuba 1989 (La Habana, 1991) and information from the Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas (ONE) in the Statistical Appendix to Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, La economía cubana: Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa, Revised Edition (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000).

Table 1 Selected Cuban Economic Indicators , 1989-98 (in million pesos, unless otherwise noted)

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Republic, 3.6 percent; El Salvador, 2.5 percent; Guatemala, 1.5 percent; Honduras, 12.4 percent; Jamaica, 2.5 percent; and Panama, 0.4 percent.7 The Special Period In August 1990, while the socialist bloc crumbled, the Cuban government declared an economic austerity program aimed at “resisting” change and maintaining power. Cuba was said to have entered a “special period in time of peace” (período especial en tiempo de paz), a severe economic crisis triggered by disruptions in imports of oil and other raw materials. As Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began to break up the state’s monopoly over foreign trade and emphasize exchanges at world market prices in hard currency, the Cuban economy began to feel the aftershocks. Sugar exports to Eastern Europe fell sharply in 1990. East Germany, Cuba’s largest market in Eastern Europe disappeared overnight. In August 1990, Cuba announced significant shortfalls in supplies of imported oil and oil products and other commodities (e.g., newsprint, paper, and textiles) from the Soviet Union. In a 1991 speech Castro stated that the Soviet Union delivered only 75 percent of the goods pledged for the preceding year.8 Cuba’s ability to import machinery and spare parts from Eastern Europe was impaired by the shift in trade terms to market prices and hard currency. Special Period Policy Responses Beginning in August 1990, Cuba launched an economic austerity program to conserve energy and raw materials, increase food production, secure new markets for exports, and intensified campaigns to attract foreign investment, particularly in the tourism industry, and implement managerial reforms.9 The Cuban government, at this time, was unwilling to accept that the political and economic changes that were sweeping Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were irreversible. Havana still harbored the illusion that economic support from the socialist bloc could be reestablished. The inadequacy of the Cuban government’s response, which lacked any meaningful reform, is evident from the official statistics reported in Table 1. Thus, between 1989 and 1993:

• GDP contracted by 31.6 percent, probably the largest decline over a four-year period in twentieth-century Cuba.

• Gross domestic investment fell from 19.4 percent of GSP in 1989 to an abysmally low 4.3 percent of GDP in 1993.

• The fiscal deficit mushroomed from 6.7 percent of GDP in 1989 to 30.4 percent in 1993, as losses of state enterprises mounted and the government attempted to maintain social services at pre-crisis levels. The money supply rose from 20.0 percent of GDP in 1989 to 66.5 percent in 1993.

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• Merchandise exports contracted by 78.9 percent and imports by 75.6 percent. • Production of almost all key agricultural and industrial products plummeted, causing sharp reductions in consumption and the standard of living. The economic crisis adversely affected the standard of living. Both the quantity and quality of the goods and services consumed by the population deteriorated severely. Even public services like health care, which had been insulated from previous economic adjustments, suffered reductions. For example:

• Rationing of consumer goods, which had been eased somewhat in the 1970s

•

•

•

and 1980s, was reinstated and expanded to cover such additional items as bread and eggs. Existing monthly rations for adults were reduced sharply— for example: rice from 5 to 2.5 pounds, sugar from 4 to 2.5 pounds, and coffee from 4 ounces to one ounce. To ration available electricity, the government instituted a schedule of rotating blackouts throughout the island. During the summer of 1993, electricity cuts stretched from 12 to 16 hours, with some cities in the interior of the country experiencing up to 20 hours per day without electric power. Public transportation, particularly in Havana, deteriorated severely, with the number of buses in service declining from 1,200 to 500 in May 1993 because of the lack of spare parts and fuel. Buses outside of the capital at the end of 1992 were running on less than 20 percent of the routes they had covered three years earlier. More than 43,000 individuals suffered from visual and neurological disorders caused by poor nutrition.10

Stalled Economic Reforms As used in this article, the term “economic reform” means policies designed to promote a transition from a socialist or state-controlled economy to one more amenable to the market place. Such transition has three components: !

!

!

Stabilization: Ensure, essentially through monetary and fiscal policies, that inflation is low and budget and balance of payments balances are sustainable. Liberalization: Decentralize decision making, end price controls and liberalize markets, including the exchange and trade system to ensure that the domestic market is subject to the discipline of international competition. Restructuring: Create the necessary institutions that support the operation of a competitive market, including tax collection systems, independent central banks, privatization of state enterprises, break-up of monopolies and an effective safety net.

Beginning in the summer of 1993, when the economy bottomed out, the Cuban government instituted limited reforms to revitalize the economy. Additional measures were introduced in 1994, but the pace of reform slowed down

Table 2 Chronology of Cuban Economic Reforms

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subsequently, as the Cuban leadership postponed politically sensitive measures such as restructuring state enterprises, legalizing small businesses, and freeing prices and labor markets. Ominously, the relative economic improvement in the second half of the 1990s has strengthened the hand of those who favored maintaining the political and economic status quo and paralyzed essential structural reforms. As is clear from Table 2, there have been no liberalization measures since 1996 and those that were implemented in 1995 and 1996 were narrowly focused on the external sector.11 Stabilization: Cuba’s macroeconomic situation in the early 1990s was dismal. There were serious balance-of-payments imbalances, no ability to borrow in international markets, large government budget deficits, very high levels of repressed inflation (expressed through physical shortages and rampant black markets), and large cash balances held by the population. The first economic reform undertaken by the Cuban government in the summer of 1993 was to decriminalize the holding and use of hard currency by Cuban citizens.12 This action was designed to stem the booming black market for goods and hard currency, and to close the balance-of-payments gap by stimulating hard-currency remittances to Cuban citizens from relatives and friends living abroad. To give concrete meaning to the dollarization policy, the government created special hard-currency stores that sold items not available for pesos and liberalized travel to the island by relatives and friends of Cuban citizens. The government took other steps to accommodate the consumption needs of locals holding hard currencies. In September 1995, for example, the Cuban National Bank began to accept hard-currency deposits from individuals and to pay interest, also in had currency, on such deposits. And in mid-October 1995, the government created foreign currency exchange houses (Casas de Cambio, CADECA) where Cuban citizens could buy and sell hard currencies for pesos at rates close to those prevailing on the black market. Closely related to dollarization was the December 1994 decision to create a new currency, the convertible peso, to gradually replace the U.S. dollar and other foreign currencies on the island. The convertible peso, valued at par with the U.S. dollar, would eventually be the currency used in the tourism sector and in authorized hard-currency outlets. Incentive payments to workers in tourism, oil extraction and tobacco—industries that generate hard currencies—would henceforth be made in convertible pesos rather than in hard currencies. In May 1994, the National Assembly of People’s Power adopted a resolution calling for strict adherence to the budget law and for reducing expenditures and increasing revenues at all levels of government. On the expenditures side, the National Assembly directed the Executive to take concrete steps to reduce subsidies to cover enterprise losses, stimulate personal savings, increase revenue collection through price hikes on non-essential goods and services, and develop a comprehensive tax system that would be equitable, foster production and work effort, and raise sufficient revenue to balance the state budget.

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On the revenue side, the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers decreed increases in the prices of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, gasoline, electricity, public transportation, postage, and telegrams. It eliminated subsidies to workplace cafeterias and imposed fees for certain items formerly provided free of charge, such as school lunches, some medications, and tickets for sports and cultural events. Another source of government revenue, the collection of fees and taxes on self-employed workers, will be discussed below. At about the same time, the Council of State adopted a broad statute that would allow the state to confiscate the assets and income of individuals who had obtained them through “improper enrichment” (enriquecimiento indebido) as a way to stem the booming black market.13 The law granted the government sweeping powers to confiscate cash, goods, and assets of individuals found guilty of profiteering and provided for retroactive application of sanctions against this offense. Seizures ordered the Office of the National Prosecutor in “improper enrichment” cases cannot be appealed to higher authorities. Finally, in January 1999, the Cuban government declared a new “revolutionary offensive” to combat economic crime, including a crackdown on illegal vendors, taxi drivers, agriculture brokers, persons renting rooms in their homes, and call girls (jineteras).14 President Castro convened an extraordinary session of the National Assembly in February 1999 to consider amendments to the Penal Code.15 On February 17, the National Assembly increased sentences for a wide range of crimes, including the unauthorized slaughter of cattle, exporting or appropriating items considered to be part of the nation’s cultural patrimony, art forgery, and prostitution. The legislation also imposed stiffer sentences for prostitution, sexual procurement, and trafficking of migrants and minors, and defined money laundering as a crime.16 Liberalization: In 1993 and 1994, Cuba took limited steps to reduce the state’s role in the economy by liberalizing and expanding self-employment, reforming the structure of agricultural production, and allowing some products to be sold outside traditional state distribution channels. In 1995-96, Cuba liberalized some elements of the external sector, particularly as related to foreign investment, but Havana has not taken significant liberalization steps related to domestic markets since 1994. To legitimize the booming black market for personal services and handicraft production, and to absorb the large number of unemployed and underemployed workers, in September 1993 the Cuban government authorized self-employment in more than 100 occupations, primarily in the transportation, home repair and personal services sectors.17 Self-employed Cuban workers faced severe restrictions. They had to be licensed, could not hire others, were required to pay fees and taxes to the government, and were subjected to rules on how they sold the goods or services they produced. Professionals holding a university degree could not become selfemployed. Since education and public health services continued to be supplied by

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the state, physicians, dentists, teachers, professors and researchers were excluded from self-employment altogether. Twenty other occupations were added in October 1993.18 Additional occupations were designated for self-employment in June 1995 and June 1996, bringing the total number of authorized occupations to 162.19 In July 1995, the Ministry of Labor authorized university graduates to become self-employed, provided their self-employment occupations differed from those for which they were trained (e.g., an engineer could be self-employed as a messenger or a taxi driver). Also in September 1993, the Council of State broke up large state farms into Basis Units of Cooperative Production (Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa, UBPC).20 These cooperatives would have the use of the land they worked for an indefinite period of time, own the output they produced, and be able to sell it to the state through the state procurement system (acopio) or through other means, have their own bank accounts, and elect their own management. The rationale for the policy change was that the shift from state farms to cooperatives would give workers greater incentives to increase production with the least expenditure of material resources. In late September 1994, Cuba authorized the creation of agricultural markets, locations at which producers of selected agricultural products could sell a portion of their output at prices set by market forces.21 Before an agricultural producer— whether a private farmer, a cooperative member, or even a state enterprise – could use the new markets, sales obligations to the state procurement system had to be met. Vendors had to rent stalls and pay sales taxes. In most respects, the agricultural markets authorized in September 1994 were similar to the farmers’ free markets (mercados libres campesinos, MLC) created in 1980 and scuttled in 1986. In October 1994 the Cuban government announced that it would also allow artists and artisans to sell their output in specially established markets. Havana first passed legislation allowing foreign investment in 1982. This initiative generated very little interest among potential investors until the 1990s, when Cuba began an aggressive campaign to attract foreign investment. In 1992, the National Assembly of People’s Power, the top legislative body, passed several amendments to the 1976 Constitution clarifying the concept of private property and providing a legal basis for transferring state property to joint ventures with foreign partners. Cuba has been particularly active in seeking foreign investment for its mining sector. The National Assembly passed a new mining law, aimed at facilitating foreign investment in exploration and production of oil and minerals in December 1994, and it became effective in January 1995. In September 1995, the National Assembly adopted a new foreign investment law that codified the informal rules under which joint ventures had been operating and introduced some minor innovations to the legal framework for foreign investment. For example, the new law raised the 49 percent maximum foreign

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ownership to 100 percent. The new law also simplified the process for screening foreign investment and explicitly allowed foreign investment in real estate. In June 1996 the Council of State implemented legislation creating export processing zones (zonas francas y parques industriales). Regulations establishing an official registry of export processing zone operators and investors and issuing special customs regulations applicable to foreign investments locating in the zones were issued in October 1996. Restructuring: Cuba has also taken some tentative steps to create an institutional framework that could support a market-oriented economy. The government has created a tax collection system and restructured the banking system. In August 1994, the National Assembly approved a new and very broad tax code, to be implemented gradually beginning in October 1994.22 The new system levied taxes on enterprise income, including joint ventures; assets; sales; consumption of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, domestic electrical appliances and other luxury goods; utilities; tourism; transportation; transfer of property, including inheritances; and use of natural resources. The law also foresaw employer contributions to social security, toll roads, airport taxes, and advertising. The taxes were phased in beginning in October 1994. After the nationalization of private banks in 1960, the Cuban National Bank (Banco Nacional de Cuba, BNC) operated as both a central bank and a commercial bank. Under a centrally planned system, the BNC’s main function was financing the implementation of the national economic plan through the national budget. In 1978, the BNC created a People’s Savings Bank (Banco Popular de Ahorro, BPA) that for the first time allowed interest-bearing savings accounts. In 1984, it opened the International Financing Bank (Banco Financiero Internacional, BFI), which operated solely with hard currencies. Foreign investors used BFI for their transactions. Cuba has taken a number of corrective steps to convince foreign investors that its financial sector is capable of supporting their activities. In 1994, Cuba granted a license to ING Bank of Holland to operate in the island, the first foreign bank to be so permitted since 1960. In 1995, similar licenses were issued to the Société Genéralé de France and to Spain’s Banco Sabadell. Other foreign banks have subsequently been allowed to establish representative offices in Cuba. To expand the number of financial service available to foreign investors and semi-autonomous enterprises, the BNC created the New Banking Group (Grupo Nueva Banca, S.A., GNB), a holding company for a new network of new financial institutions that includes an International Bank of Commerce (Banco Internacional de Comercio, BICSA) similar to BFI, an export-import bank by the name of National Financier (Financiera Nacional, S.A., FINSA), the alreadymentioned CADECA foreign exchange houses, and an Investment Bank (Banco de Inversiones, S.A.). Long-expected legislation to reform the banking system was finally passed by the Council of State in May 1997. Decree-law No. 172 established the Cuban

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Central Bank (Banco Central de Cuba, BCC) as an autonomous and independent entity assigned traditional central banking functions, and restructured the BNC to perform strictly commercial banking functions. Decree-law No. 173, passed at the same time, set out the legal framework for registration and operation of commercial banks and financial institutions under the supervision of the BCC.23 Too Little, Too Late The experiences of Eastern Europe, Russia, Latin America, even China and Vietnam have generated a vast literature on the transition to a market-oriented economy, including the appropriate scope, pace, and sequencing of specific policy actions. With more than a decade of accumulated experience, there are few technical mysteries about how to reform an economy, provided there is the political will to do so. Far from a comprehensive blueprint, the reform measures Cuba has taken to date represent a survival strategy—modest, opportunistic steps from the government and the Communist Party to cope with the economic crisis and still remain in power. Cuba’s reform experience in the 1990s were tardy and apathetic. The Castro regime delayed the requisite actions to engineer a transition, instead taking tentative and limited steps only when unavoidable. Moreover, Cuba’s leadership has been apathetic, uncommitted, and wavering even with respect to the limited reform measures adopted. In some instances, policies were later modified, thus reminding all parties that the changes are reversible. Cuba’s economic reform morass, then, is not the result of the lack of a conceptual framework to carry out a transition. Rather, Castro and the Cuban leadership are unwilling to accept the political consequences of economic reform. They are willing to accept economic stagnation, falling standards of living, and slower economic growth rates in order to preserve their overwhelming influence over the island’s polity. A new rectification process to reverse the meager liberalization and restructuring measures implemented in the 1990s is not out of the question. Tardy Reforms: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began their transition to market economies at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. Market-oriented reforms also took hold in Latin America at about the same time, as market liberalization, privatization, and democratization spread across the continent. China and Vietnam have followed their own paths of reform since 1978 and 1986, respectively. In contrast, Cuba did not begin to implement economic reforms until the summer of 1993, when the economic crisis threatened the regime’s survival. In fact, in the second half of the 1980s, as the Eastern European states and even the Soviet Union were experimenting with partial economic reforms within a socialist system, Cuba was moving in the opposite direction. Castro experimented with the so-called rectification process, which Mesa-Lago characterizes as a

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counter-reform, a reversal of the early 1980s’ trend away from decentralization and toward the use of market mechanisms.24 Rectification not only froze the introduction of market-oriented measures, but arguably brought about a regression with respect to market-orientation that made Cuba less well prepared to assimilate economic reforms institutionally in the 1990s. The Cuban government has postponed essential economic reforms because of their potential to erode its political power base. For example, the rationalization of state enterprises and the closing of inefficient plants have been under discussion for several years. But action has been postponed indefinitely because it would displace workers and stir up opposition to government policies. In March 1996, Minister of Defense and Vice President Raúl Castro strongly criticized some of the economic changes that had been instituted. Lashing out at the foreign influences associated with tourism and at the wealth acquired by self-employed individuals, he called for renewed ideological vigor to defend communism. Raúl Castro’s broadside squelched an incipient domestic debate on alternative approaches to economic reform being carried out by academics in government-supported think tanks, thereby shutting off discussion and dissent, and signaling that decision-making would remain within the upper echelons of the Party-state.25 Lack of Commitment: Cuba has also back-tracked on reforms. For example, after self-employment was authorized in September 1993, there was an explosion of home restaurants commonly called paladares (after a chain of restaurants in a very popular Brazilian soap opera). Initially, the government reacted to the phenomenal growth of paladares by banning them, arguing that they were inconsistent with the authorized forms of self-employment. In 1995, the government reversed course and explicitly authorized paladares provided they sat 12 or fewer customers and complied with a stiff schedule of monthly fees and taxes. The restriction on number of customers and the stiff levies reduced the number of private restaurants and adversely affected their growth. At the end of 1995, approximately 208,000 workers had been authorized to engage in self-employment. This represents fewer than 5 percent of the economically active population of 4.5 million workers and about one-fifth of the estimated 1 million workers who would be subject to dislocations in an overall rationalization of state enterprises. New fees and taxes levied on self-employed workers beginning in February 1996 severely affected the sector. For example, work permits for self-employed taxi drivers jumped from 100 to 400 pesos per month and for manicurists from 60 to 100 pesos. By January 1998, the number of self-employed had fallen to about 160,000—down from about 209,000 in March 1996—and it has continued to fall under the weight of regulation and taxation.26 The foreign investment law of 1995 authorized foreign participation in the real estate sector and free trade zones. These two areas have been quite successful in attracting foreign associations, with numerous joint ventures engaged in the design, construction, and sale (to foreigners) of luxury condominiums as

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well as the establishment of import and warehousing operations in the exportprocessing zones. Cuban nationals, however, facing a deteriorated housing stock and prohibited from purchasing real estate, viewed the luxury condo business very negatively.27 In May 2000, the Minister for Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation confirmed that the two Cuban-government-operated enterprises (Cubalse, S.A. and Corporación Cimex) involved in condominium development would seek to purchase all available units from the 17 ongoing projects, and would henceforth rent them to foreigners. Havana also declared an indefinite moratorium on real estate joint ventures.28 Meanwhile, in February Vice President Carlos Lage criticized the free trade zones, charging that they mainly benefited Western corporations through cheap labor and other benefits, and indicating that the existing zones would be studied “to see what role they can play within our conception of development” and placed under strict supervision.29 These actions and statements are hardly consistent with an open door policy for foreign investment and a commitment to protect the rights and interests of foreign investors. Cuban officials have also hinted that they are planning to eliminate the policy that allows foreign currency to circulate on the island. This policy is believed to be responsible for attracting very large remittances from abroad to Cuban citizens. Boosted by the relative strength of the Cuban economy in 1999, Francisco Soberón, the president of the Banco Central de Cuba, told reporters in early 2000 that Cuba was considering returning to the exclusive use of the peso in the domestic economy. According to Soberón, “Cuba will never have dollarization of its economy and, as soon as conditions permit it, the only currency that will circulate within the country will be the Cuban peso.”30 The Continuing Economic Crisis As the 1990s drew to a close, the Cuban economy continued to struggle with the twin problems of an inefficient, centrally planned economy and insufficient levels of foreign resources to support vigorous growth. The discussion that follows analyzes the Cuban economy through 1998, the last year for which reasonably complete information is available. The discussion is based primarily on the official statistics reported in Table 1, supplemented with information on the balance of payments. Macroeconomic Performance According to the official Cuban statistics presented in Table 1, the precipitous fall in GDP that occurred between 1989 and 1993 was arrested in 1994. By 1998, GDP was 15.2 percent higher than in 1993, the trough of the economic downturn, but 21.2 percent lower than in 1989, the last “normal” year before the onset of the crisis. Vice President Carlos Lage reported in early 2000 that the

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economy grew in 1999 by 6.2 percent, a very high growth rate considering the wide range of ills affecting the economy that year.31 Gross domestic investment as a percentage of GDP fell from about 20 percent in the late 1980s to about 4 percent in the early 1990s. It climbed to 6-7 percent in the second half of the 1990s, a significant improvement but still insufficient to sustain future economic growth. Cuba’s most significant economic success during the 1990s was probably in macroeconomic stabilization: !

!

The budget deficit as a percentage of GDP skyrocketed from about 7 percent in 1989 to more than 30 percent in 1993, as the government propped up the lifeless state-controlled economy at the same time that the substantial flow of resources from the former socialist countries dried up. Austerity measures implemented in 1994 brought down the budget deficit from 30 to 7 percent of GDP in that year, and subsequently to 3 percent or lower. Monetary liquidity, the cash balances in the hands of the population, had similarly skyrocketed to 67 percent of GDP in the early 1990s as the government increased the money supply while the availability of consumer goods shrunk. By the second half of the 1990s, liquidity had fallen by 30-40 percent, a substantial improvement although still very high compared to the 20 percent level in 1989.

The much despised International Monetary Fund would be proud of the remarkable internal financial adjustments made by the Cuban government! External Sector The external sector continues to be the Achilles’ heel of the Cuban economy. The dearth of external resources limits growth and hampers a full recovery. Table 1 shows that merchandise exports and imports both recovered from their low levels of the early 1990s, but remained below their pre-1989 levels. The statistics on the Cuban international balance of payments for the period 1989-98 in Table 3 illustrate the structure and magnitude of the flow of foreign resources into and out of the island. In addition to merchandise trade flows, balance of payments statistics also convey information on two-way transactions in services, payments to factors, transfers and capital flows. Table 3 shows that Cuba ran surpluses in services trade every year during 1989-98, with the surpluses being quite sizable after 1994. The positive balance in the services sector presumably reflects the favorable performance of the international tourism industry. Revenue generated by tourism rose by 535 percent between 1990 and 1997, first exceeding the 1 billion peso mark in 1995 and reaching over 1.2 billion pesos in 1997. In 1991, tourism surpassed nickel to become the second largest source of export revenue, after sugar, and in 1994 it became the top generator of export revenue. However, gross revenue figures include a signifi-

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Note: By convention, a negative change in international reserves is a gain in such reserves.

Sources: 1989: Statistical Annex, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, La economía cubana: Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa, Revised Edition (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000); 1993-96—Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Anuario estadístico de Cuba 1997 (La Habana, 1999), p. 117; 1997-98—Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Cuba en cifras 1998 (La Habana, 1999), p. 36.

Table 3 Cuban Balance of Payments, 1989-98 (in million pesos)

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cant import component and therefore overestimate the contribution of tourism to the net flow of resources into the economy.32 A more meaningful measure of tourism’s contribution to the flow of international resources would be net revenue. Unfortunately, this information is not available, although experts estimate that net revenue probably represents 30-40 percent of gross revenue. In the balance of payments methodology, transfers are flows of resources from one economy to another for which there is no quid pro quo. According to Cuban official statistics, transfers, primarily in the form of remittances from relatives or friends residing abroad, were a negative 48 million pesos in 1989, meaning that in 1989 Cuban citizens or organizations transferred out of the country 48 million pesos more than was transferred in. In 1993, net transfers were 263 million pesos, in 1995, 645 million pesos, and in 1998, 820 million pesos. Transfers have been Cuba’s most significant source of convertible currency since 1996, exceeding gross revenue from sugar and nickel exports and net revenue from tourism. The behavior of the capital account of the balance of payments neatly encapsulates Cuba’s foreign resource flow crisis: While in 1989 Cuba received capital inflows amounting to more than 4.1 billion pesos, in 1998 the corresponding flow was 413 million pesos, roughly one-tenth of the level a decade earlier. In addition to the disappearance of resource flows form the Soviet Union, another factor that has affected Cuba’s capital inflows in the 1990s has been the island’s very limited access to Western capital markets, a result of Havana’s defaulting on its hard-currency debt in the 1980s. In 1982, Cuba requested a rescheduling of its foreign debt to Western creditors, and since 1986 it has been in technical default, servicing only interest but not principal. As shown in Table 1, Cuba’s foreign debt in convertible currency, which amounted to US $6.2 billion in 1989, climbed to US$11.2 billion in 1998, or by nearly 81 percent. The fact that the debt grew does not necessarily mean that Cuba actually obtained fresh loans. The value of the outstanding debt is affected by several factors, among them the accumulation of unpaid interest and relative changes in the value of currencies in which the debt was contracted vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar. A new source of capital flows in the 1990s was direct foreign investment, which had been proscribed in Cuba since the nationalizations of foreign property in the 1960s and was reauthorized pursuant to the 1982 foreign joint venture law. Direct investment on the island amounted to 54 million pesos in 1993, 564 million pesos in 1994, 5 million pesos in 1995, 82 million pesos in 1996, 442 million pesos in 1997, and 297 million pesos in 1998. These figures suggest that overall foreign direct investment during 1993-98 amounted to slightly under 1.4 billion pesos, a significant inflow of foreign capital considering Cuba’s capital inflows crisis, but tiny in comparison with the flow of resources from the former Soviet Union and the socialist countries during the 1980s.

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Physical Production Physical production statistics in Table 1 illustrate the continuing crisis in the agricultural, electricity and manufacturing sectors, which together accounted for over 40 percent of GDP in 1998.33 In contrast, the mining sector, which was the recipient of substantial foreign investment, performed well, with nickel production recovering strongly after a fall between 1989 and 1993, and oil production increasing steadily. Nickel output—all exported—was 45.2 percent higher in 1998 than in 1989, while oil production was 133.7 percent higher. The mining and quarrying sector contributed 1.2 percent of GDP in 1998. Socialist Cuba’s agricultural sector, built on the Soviet model of large stateowned enterprises and heavily dependent on imported machinery, fuel and fertilizer, was severely affected by the disruption in imports flows at the beginning of the 1980s and has yet to recover. Production of seven agricultural and fisheries items in Table 1—sugar cane, viandas (root crops plus plantains), vegetables, cereals, citrus, fish catch and milk—declined between 1989 and 1993. Only with regard to two items, viandas and vegetables, did production levels in 1998 exceed those of 1989, and then by fairly small margins of 8.7 and 5.4 percent, respectively. Since population grew by 5.6 percent over this period, the gain in production of these staple food products in per capita terms was essentially nil. For the remaining 5 agricultural and fisheries items in Table 1, physical production levels in 1998 were substantially below those of 1989: !

!

!

sugar cane output was lower by 57 percent despite the break-up of large state farms and their restructure into cooperatives (UBPCs) and a national campaign to revitalize the sugar export sector; milk output was lower by 64 percent, cereals (mostly rice) by 33 percent and fish catch by 30 percent; citrus output, which is consumed domestically and exported, was lower by 30 percent.

Electric power generation fell from 15.2 billion kilowatt hours (kwh) in 1989 to 11.0 billion kwh in 1993, or by nearly 28 percent. Cuba’s electricity generation system, consisting mostly of thermoelectric plants fueled with oil and oil products, was hard-hit by reductions in such imports from the former Soviet Union. Blackouts and brownouts were frequent in 1993. Electricity output recovered in the second half of the 1990s in part because of the increased availability of oil from domestic sources, but output in 1998 was still 7.2 percent lower than in 1989. The output of cement, steel, paper, beer, rum, cigarettes and cigars declined sharply between 1989 and 1993, in some cases very sharply (paper, 89 percent; cement, 72 percent; steel, 69 percent). The only manufactured product in Table

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1 for which production recovered fully between 1989 and 1998 was rum, for which output rose by 5.1 percent. Paper production actually declined after 1993, with output in 1998 at a level 92 percent lower than in 1989 and 27 lower than in 1993. For the remaining manufactured products in Table 1, production recovered in the second half of the 1990s, but output in 1998 was still lower than in 1989 by the following percentages: cement, 54.4 percent; steel, 12 percent; beer, 47 percent; cigarettes, 29 percent; and cigars, 13 percent. Concluding Observations Economic reforms that would move the nation in the direction of a market economy are frozen, as Cuba awaits President Fidel Castro’s exit as head of state. It is increasingly clear that no meaningful liberalization or restructuring measures will occur during this tenure as Cuba’s undisputed leader. In the meantime, the Cuban economy continues to struggle along, trapped in a low-growth path associated with foreign resource flow constraints. The decade of Special Period austerity succeeded in maintaining Castro and his regime in power, but brought about great economic hardship and took its toll on the Cuban population. By most standards, Cuba in 1998 had not yet recovered the levels of economic activity reached in 1989. Meaningful economic growth and improvement of the standard of living will only occur after political and economic market-oriented reforms are implemented. Notes 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

E.g., “Castro ve su modelo superior al neoliberal,” El Nuevo Herald (April 7, 2000), p. 13A; Gerardo Tena and Carlos Batista, “Castro pide al G-77 ‘demoler’ al ‘siniestro’ FMI,” El Nuevo Herald (April 13, 2000), p. 9A; Juan A. Tamayo, “Castro predicts capitalist collapse,” The Miami Herald (June 23, 2000), pp. 1A, 2A; and “Castro ataca agriamente a la democracia,” El Nuevo Herald (July 15, 2000), p. 10A. Pablo Alfonso, “El socialismo castrista ‘sale del closet,’” El Nuevo Herald (31 July 2000). The socialist countries used the Material Product System (MPS), while Western countries used the so-called System of National Accounts (SNA). The main indicators of aggregate economic activity under the MPS are the global social product (GSP) and the gross material product (GMP), while those of the SNA are the gross national product (GNP) and the gross domestic product (GDP). Jorge F. Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 124. Jorge F. Pérez-López, “Swimming Against the Tide: Implications for Cuba of Soviet and Eastern European Reforms in Foreign Economic Relations,” Jour-

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7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

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nal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 33:2 (Summer 1991), pp. 136-138. Based on statistics reported in Jorge F. Pérez-López, The Economics of Cuban Sugar (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), pp. 140141. Jorge F. Pérez-López, “Cuban Oil Re-Exports: Significance and Prospects,” The Energy Journal 8 (1987). Ernesto Meléndez Bachs, “Relaciones económicas de Cuba con el CAME,” América Latina (Moscow), no. 7 (1987), pp. 95-96. José Luis Rodríguez, “Las relaciones económicas entre Cuba y los países socialistas: Situación actual y perspectivas,” mimeo (1989). A. Bekarevich, “Cuba y el CAME: El camino de la integración,” in Academia de Ciencias de la URSS, Cuba: 25 años de construcción del socialismo (Moscow: Redacción Ciencias Sociales Contemporáneas, 1986), p. 98. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” in Mesa-Lago, editor, Cuba After the Cold War (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), p. 148. The Soviet assistance levels are from Mesa-Lago, loc. cit. The GDP estimates at constant prices of 1981 (20,385 million pesos in 1986; 19,934 million pesos in 1987; 20,664 million pesos in 1998; 20,960 million pesos in 1989; and 20,349 million pesos in 1990) are from Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, La economía cubana: Reformas estructurales y desempeño en los noventa, Revised Edition (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000), Statistical Appendix. Calculated from data on aggregate net resource flows and GDP in dollars contained in World Bank, World Development Report 1992 (Washington: Oxford University Press, 1992), World Development Indicators Appendix, Tables 1 and 23. Fidel Castro, “Speech at the Opening Session of the IV Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, on October 10, 1991,” in Gail Reed, editor, Island in the Storm (Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 1992), p. 40. For a description and evaluation of the Cuban economic strategy of the early 1990s, see Jorge Pérez-López, editor, Cuba at a Crossroads: Politics and Economics after the Fourth Party Congress (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), particularly: Sergio G. Roca, “Ref lections on Economic Policy: Cuba’s Food Program”; María Dolores Espino, “Tourism in Cuba: A Development Strategy for the 1990s?”; Jorge Pérez-López, “Islands of Capitalism in an Ocean of Socialism: Joint Ventures in Cuba’s Development Strategy’; and Andrew Zimbalist, “Reforming Cuba’s Economic System from Within.” These points have been extracted from Jorge F. Pérez-López, “Cuba’s Socialist Economy Toward the Mid-1990s,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 11, no. 2 (June 1995), pp. 129-132.

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17. For description and analysis of the measures see Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Are Economic Reforms Propelling Cuba to the Market? (Coral Gables, Florida: North-South Center, Univerisity of Miami, 1994) and Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva, “Cuba’s Economic Reforms: An Overview,” in Jorge Pérez-López and Matías Travieso-Díaz, editors, Perspectives on Cuban Economic Reforms (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press, 1998). 18. “Decreto-ley No. 140,” Gaceta Oficial (August 13, 1993) and “Informa Banco Nacional de Cuba sobre uso de las monedas libremente convertibles,” Trabajadores (August 15, 1993). 19. “Decreto Ley No. 149—Sobre confiscación de bienes e ingresos obtenidos mediante enriquecimiento indebido,” Gaceta Oficial (May 4, 1994). 20. Olance Nogueras, “La ‘ofensiva’ del gobierno limpia las calles habaneras,” El Nuevo Herald (January 25, 1999), p. 11A and Geraldo Tena, “Aplican una política de mano dura contra la delincuencia,” El Nuevo Herald (January 30, 1999), p. 16A. In a replay of 40 years ago, Chief Prosecutor Juan Escalona announced that prostitutes who have been rounded up would be subject to a “process of social rehabilitation in internment centers, as preventive measures taken earlier had not been successful.” See “Enviarán a internados a las jineteras,” El Nuevo Herald (February 7, 1999), p. 20A. 21. “Reforma penal para combatir delitos,” El Nuevo Herald (February 9, 1999), p. 8A. 22. “Ley No. 87—Modificativa al Código Penal,” Granma Electronic Edition (March 2, 1999), at http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu. 23. “Decreto-ley No. 141—Sobre el ejercicio del trabajo por cuenta propia,” Gaceta Oficial (September 8, 1993). The actual list of occupations was contained in a joint resolution issued by the State Committee on Labor and Social Security and the State Committee on Finance. See “Resolución Conjunta No. 1 CETSS-CEF,” Gaceta Oficial (September 8, 1999). 24. “Amplían lista de oficios autorizados para trabajo por cuenta propia,” Granma (October 22, 1993). 25. Benjamin Smith, “The Self-Employed in Cuba: A Street-Level View,” Cuba in Transition—Volume 9 (Washington: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 1999), p. 50. 26. “Decreto-ley No. 142—Sobre las Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa,” Gaceta Oficial (September 21, 1993). 27. “Decreto No. 191—Sobre el Mercado Agropecuario,” Gaceta Oficial (September 20, 1994). 28. “Ley No. 73—Del sistema tributario,” Gaceta Oficial (August 5, 1994). 29. “Central Bank of Cuba established,” Granma International Electronic Edition, no. 25 (1997) at http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu. 30. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Cuba’s Economic Counter-Reform (Rectificación): Causes, Policies and Effects,” The Journal of Communist Studies 5:4 (December 1989), p. 98.

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31. For a very well documented description and analysis of this repressive maneuver by the Cuban government see Maurizio Giuliano, El Caso CEA: Intelectuales e Inquisidores en Cuba (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998). For a summary of one of the reform proposals by Cuban academics that were the subject of Raúl Castro’s attack see Julio Carranza Valdés, Luis Gutiérrez Urdaneta and Pedro Monreal González, “Reforming the Cuban Economy: A Proposal,” in Jorge Pérez-López and Matías Travieso-Díaz, editors, Perspectives on Cuban Economic Reforms (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press, 1998). 32. Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann, The Cuban Way: Capitalism, Communism, and Confrontation (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1999), p. 99. 33. Pablo Alfonso and Raúl Rivero, “La vivienda: Odisea cubana,” El Nuevo Herald (May 6, 2000), p. 17A. 34. “Government confirms intention to purchase all unsold condominium units,” Economic Eye on Cuba (22 May 2000-28 May 2000), at http:// www.cubatrade.org/eyeon2000h.html. 35. “Free trade zones criticized,” Economic Eye on Cuba (21 February 2000-27 February 2000), at http://www.cubatrade.org/eyeon2000c.html. 36. Wilfredo Cancio Isla, “Contemplan desdolarizar la economía,” El Nuevo Herald (May 3, 2000), p. 21A. 37. “Cambios en la economía,” Granma International Digital Edition (January 5, 2000). 38. Gross revenue from tourism includes, among others, the value of imported goods and services associated with consumption by tourists; the foreign exchange cost of capital investment; payments that leave Cuba in the form of profits, interest payments, royalties, management fees, payments to travel agents and so on; the cost of advertising and promoting travel to Cuba; the overseas cost of training service personnel; and aviation receipts from airlines and airport fees. 39. The sectoral contribution to GDP in 1998 was as follows: agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, 6.9 percent; mining and quarrying, 1.2 percent; manufacturing, 29.0 percent; electricity, gas and water, 3.1 percent; construction, 4.0 percent; commerce, restaurants and hotels, 20.9 percent; transportation, warehousing and communications, 5.8 percent; finance, real estate and business services, 4.0 percent; and community social and personal services, 25.0 percent. Calculated from official statistics in Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Cuba en cifras 1998 (La Habana, 1999), p. 30.

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13 Cuba’s Transition from Communism to Political and Economic Freedom Antonio Jorge The Cuban transition is a peculiar one involving great disadvantages and obstacles as well as very favorable elements in the initial stages of transition. Given the indisputable fact of the marked success of the Cuban developmental practice that was pursued during the pre-Castro era in the period 1940-1958, the strategy herein recommended conforms in principle to its spirit and purposes: a resurgent nationalist spirit; economic diversification; enhanced efforts at the modernization of the economy and the polity; growing technicalization in the productive and administrative spheres; an accelerated movement toward social integration; socially progressive legislative programs; an institutional order oriented toward creating a more humane and close-knit society in greater control of its own destiny; a more active mode of political management; the organization of the labor movement, and; vigorous entrepreneurial activity. These elements in a synergetic fashion constituted some of the most salient characteristics of the period that ended in Cuba at the close of the 1950s. The ideological thrust of the epoch did not simply consist of accelerating the rate of economic growth; rather, it aspired to engage in a nation building and social reconstruction type of endeavor in the revolutionary spirit of “La Generación del Treinta.” The institutions created and legislation enacted during that period called for a new kind of social contract among society’s classes and functional groups. The future cannot and should not seek to mimic the past mechanically. The program that is most feasible and desirable in a case of arrested development in a semi-modernized country, such as that of Cuba at the time of the Revolution, consists of a creative reinterpretation of the institutions, cultural essence, and national character of the people so that the latter may evolve freely but consis-

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tent with their ethos and without losing the sense of their own identity. Anything else would risk embarking on a costly, laborious, and probably unsuccessful program. Cuba is a small nation with a lop-sided, open economy still marked by high levels of sectoral concentration. However, it has great potential for socioeconomic progress, made possible by a vivacious and well-educated people who are independent, intelligent, and alert. It is located on a strategically situated island with an abundant and productive natural environment. Faced with a disastrous situation, Cubans will shortly be in search of a social market type of system that will agree with their particular history, cultural traits, and economic possibilities. That system should be able to maintain a dynamic balance in the macroeconomic sphere in order to pass safely over the hurdles of a competitive international panorama in constant flux while promoting the sound and balanced internal development of the economy in a climate of social justice, economic efficiency, and rationality. The difficult art of promoting and channeling individual and private activity in an atmosphere of constructive freedom while avoiding the extremes of excessive intervention and chaotic laissez faire is the challenge posed by the task of creating a new political, social, and economic order in Cuba at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Strategy With that in mind, let us move on to detail some of the principal premises and principles which serve as a basis and frame for recommendations. These emanate both from a gradualist, balanced growth type of strategy for reconstruction and development (see appendix) and also the particular modus operandi of the processes of decollectivization and desocialization that the Cuban society will encounter. Of extraordinary importance is the need for the adequate coordination in time and the appropriate sequencing of the means of macro and micro structural change (organizations and institutions), with the liberalization, austerity, and stabilization measures to be adopted—such as monetary and fiscal policies in general and also those specifically related to prices and subsidies—with adjustment policies. These would be geared toward increasing market competitiveness and efficiency and might include freer trade, exchange rate simplification, corporate governance reform and profit maximizing behavior, labor market mobility, economically rational banking system, and the like. At the end of the restructuring stage of the economy, the basic structural changes and the policies of liberalization, stabilization, and adjustment will be fully coordinated and harmonized with each other. It would be practically impossible to try to orchestrate instantaneous achievement of all types of changes—consider the danger and proven costs of trying overly ambitious solutions contained in the model known as the big bang approach to transition.

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Not opting for the solution of the immediate and total transformation of a socialist to a market economy (Big Bang), does not mean that the alternate form, excessive gradualism, is exempt from dangers of its own. Lacking coherence and balance, slow and desultory change does not constitute a feasible option. Gradualism should not be confused with inertia nor with the search for halfway solutions that are not really such. An inescapable condition of a sound gradualist strategy is to effect structural transformations according to a preconceived blueprint that clearly outlines the path to a social market economy that will replace the socialist model. Collectivist systems and, in general, highly planned systems, inevitably engender a technical-bureaucratic apparatus of enormous proportions and are usually endowed with low productivity and efficiency. The opposite tends to be the case in advanced market economies. The transformation and adaptation of the technical-bureaucratic mechanism in going from the first to the second model should take place gradually, together with the progress of the real processes of socioeconomic reconstruction and development. As the social market economy begins to emerge and spread throughout the economic expanse of the nation, the state apparatus will be gradually modified in a parallel fashion. In any case, the requirements of the socioeconomic development process, the need for public orientation and involvement, and the coordination between the state and private activities dictate the permanent presence of professional and technical teams to design and implement frameworks and contexts of policies and regulative controls of the economy, which themselves should be of a mainly indirect nature. These professional and technical teams should also help with programs of cooperation and assistance, which are indispensable in mapping out a general direction for the economy to follow and also in achieving its macroeconomic balance as well as in minimizing the costly collective risks and errors, which, in the case of small economies, imply disastrous consequences for the social welfare of the population. The processes of reconstruction and development will doubtless also be heavily conditioned by the availability of external finances. In the case of Cuba, international institutions and capital markets as well as governments, banks, and private investors will mostly facilitate the means, which will represent relatively modest sums by present world financial standards. Another vital element is the formation of areas of economic integration, such as custom unions, areas of free trade, and common markets, which at present are gestated in various geographic areas. These indicate the direction toward which the world and the international economy will be moving at least in the next 20 or 30 years. Cuba must necessarily accommodate its economic future to that transcendent event. Such mega changes will profoundly condition its policies with regard to free trade, foreign direct investment, and the allocation of resources to key sectors, industries, and economic activities. This will impart a more cosmopolitan and open character to the Cuban society and economy.

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In turn, these movements of economic agglomeration will probably make economic negotiations and corresponding bilateral treaties between Cuba and other countries more difficult to reach and will tend to condition them more forcefully. The economic experience of collectivist as well as individualistic systems has demonstrated conclusively that the only inducements capable of sustaining the productive effort of a people are the material incentives. The case of Cuba is one of the most eloquent examples of this assertion. Nonetheless, given the extreme poverty of Cuba, it will be necessary to demonstrate the reality of an immediate economic improvement in order to gain commitment to a program of reconstruction and development. Obviously, this will require the availability of corresponding external financial resources. The total resources required for that “demonstration effect”—together with the emergency aid that the extreme economic deterioration of the country and the initial dislocation that the inauguration of a new system will provoke—would amount to perhaps between $5 and $10 billion dollars. Although a relatively large figure in absolute terms, it would be completely feasible to negotiate and obtain this sum in international financial markets or from other alternative sources such as official international aid and funds from non-governmental organizations from different nations. Adequate human resources are needed to obtain those ends. The Cuban workforce possesses the basic knowledge and training necessary for the professional, technical, administrative, and operational tasks that an economy at subpeak development requires. The Achilles’ heel in this area would be represented by (a) inappropriate economic motivations and attitudes, and (b) the unavailability of sufficient entrepreneurial talent. Sufficient human talent exists in Cuba, at least in the raw. The general availability of economic-oriented talent would be a reasonable assumption in light of the experience of peasant and black markets, the Mariel exodus, the rapid economic acculturation of that population into the U.S. economy, and the proven skills of the Cuban exile group. Recommendations Based on the above, it is possible to suggest the following preliminary recommendations as an illustration of certain objectives to adopt and sequences of movements to be followed in conceptualizing appropriate policies for reconstruction and development. Policies of agricultural diversification and of rational, partial economic selfsufficiency should enjoy maximum priority in the dual programs of reconstruction and decollectivization. These should be applied as much to the production of basic goods for general consumption as to primary activities in general as well as to agribusiness and cattle ranching. Priority should also be given to light industry for the production of consumer goods and intermediate manufacturing in general. Here we must include the

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reconstruction and development of the broad base already existing in the 1950s in the field of semi-durable consumer goods as well as the gradual expansion of the production of industrial raw materials—the latter in close connection to the growth and needs of the national agro-industrial complex. Proximate forward and backward linkages among sectors and activities will be established at the lower or close-to-market level of the production matrix, following the logic of a developmental balanced growth type of strategy. This succinctly formulated program would yield optimum results along a gamut of fronts and would also accomplish several related objectives: (a) it would serve to reestablish personal and private initiative and the free enterprise system relatively quickly and substantially in the society; (b) it would contribute decisively even during the short-term to the diversification and stability of the economy and to a high degree of direct involvement and self-determination regarding national social identity and the proper pale of economic policy; and (c) it would be of great value as well in the promotion of the country’s domestic and external financial stability. The stimulation of entrepreneurial activity and the accelerated increase in the production of highly necessary consumer goods would affect the first two objectives. These, in turn, would facilitate the attainment of affordable and stable equilibria in price levels, a high level of employment, and the continued expansion of the gross national product (GNP). A domestic increase in the output of tradable commodities and a favorable or equilibrated trade balance would promote the third objective, financial stability. Stimulating increased savings of hard foreign exchange with the consequent accumulation of reserves in convertible currency would also be a factor. The outlined program would facilitate the gradual and orderly transition from a collectivist, centralized economy to a healthy market system economy through systemic, natural growth and spontaneous expansion. Growth of a market system economy under those conditions would result primarily from the energizing of the personal and private initiative of economic agents, who at present are being repressed by the political system. In turn, the program in question would constitute the best vehicle and the easiest, least bureaucratic road toward introducing reasonably free markets for goods, services, and real inputs of all kinds. It would also serve to create, once the process is launched, financial (money and capital) and credit markets in general and at a later date the corresponding institutions for their operation. This general approach would undoubtedly represent the least complicated path, the one necessitating the least government intervention over the longterm, and also the least upsetting one in relation to the existing matrix of economic activity. It would thus maximize the organic growth of markets and the corresponding development of the economic institutional order. The described strategy and policy package would stimulate the process of structural evolution toward an entrepreneurial and individually-oriented market type of economy. At the same time, it would make possible the staggered intro-

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duction of highly sensitive stabilization policies, such as the withdrawal or cancellation of existing subsidies for production and consumption activities and the concomitant limitation on salary increases. After an initial period of adjustment this render unnecessary other unpopular measures, such as the freezing of savings and the drastic increases in various taxes and levies and many other restrictions that would otherwise distort the pattern of supply and demand for domestic consumer and investment goods as well as the demand for imported goods. The solution we are sketching avoids sudden breaks or discontinuities in the economic process with their consequent deflationary aftermath in terms of reduced production and employment. It also precludes the forced policy reversals that inevitably follow in their wake and lead to errors and contradictions in economic and social decisionmaking, such as those that have often taken place in Eastern Europe. We surely must learn from them in order to avoid repeating their mistakes. Finally, the proposed path is the one that most easily adapts to the Cuban situation, to the country’s level of underdevelopment and catastrophic impoverishment; its minuscule market, limited productive resources, and available cultivable land; relatively small population; climate; topography; insufficient and dilapidated energy infrastructure, transportation, communications, and distribution networks; and many other economic and sociopsychological factors (anomie and alienation) that are to be taken into consideration to conceptualize the correct or optimal strategic approach to desocialization and development. As a new social and economic reality gradually emerges, new basic structures will begin to take shape. Organizations and institutions, incentives, motivations and forms of behavior will concretize. Some of these are essential, while others support the conformation of a modern market economy that will prove socially compatible with the historical and cultural characteristics and aspirations of the Cuban nation and its people. This gradualist, balanced, and organic process is probably the only one that can solve the antinomies and contradictions that a radical change in the socioeconomic system would present to the policymakers. Moreover, this paradigm minimizes the unavoidable economic risks associated with the profound transformation of the production matrix that must take place in Cuba. It will also mitigate the adverse effects of erratic fluctuations, as is the case with the price of tradable commodities in world markets, because of its emphasis on diversification and the preferential production of final consumer goods. Furthermore, a low-level, balanced type of strategy allows for the measured application of the principle of comparative advantage and the exploration of its dynamic, unfolding possibilities. Finally, and most importantly, the model under consideration calls for and strongly favors the rapid privatization of existing productive assets and the accelerated creation of new ones for use by direct producers, mostly small- and medium-sized domestic entrepreneurs and businessmen. This course, in turn, fits with the overarching and encompassing requirements of nation building and

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modernization in Cuba under the aegis of a newly formed civil society through the agency of its nascent middle sectors and their role in the society. The solution of the apparently unsolvable puzzle resides in the growth and expansion of the structural and functional networks that make up the material substratum of a social market economy. To reiterate, if we proceed according to the norms of a natural economic system, solutions will surface after a relatively short period. Among these are the establishment of quasi-rational price systems; the determination of a rate (or, perhaps provisionally, multiple rates) of foreign exchange, which would ultimately correspond to the parity of the real purchasing power of domestic and foreign currencies and would flexibly adapt to intervening endogenous and exogenous economic fluctuations; the emergence of a pattern in the interweaving of particular businesses, projects, activities, industries and sectors, and in the allotment of resources in the process of implementing investment strategies; the creation of financial, banking, and credit systems in general; and answers to still other problems and issues which, due to their circular character, would seem to frustrate any attempts at a simultaneous solution. The above strategy does not exclude, but instead is complemented by, the fostering and stimulation of certain key projects for economic maintenance and development in areas where Cuba enjoys a clear comparative economic advantage, either presently or potentially. These projects can contribute to the stability and acceleration of the economic growth of the nation, providing substantial income in convertible currency. Among these are the sugar industry, tourism, fishing, oil refining, biotechnology and, to a lesser extent, mining. Other products for export, such as liquors and rum, tobacco, citrus fruits, and other lesser fruits and vegetables were included in the preceding considerations under the agricultural sector, but they should also receive special attention in the designing of a development strategy because of their present or future importance in the area of foreign trade. They can contribute much during the reconstruction phase and over the long term to the general development and expansion of the national economy. The economic future and welfare of Cuba and the Cuban people make special development projects not simply important but imperative. Therefore, the creation of specific development activities should be facilitated in every way possible without delay. The mechanics of the decollectivization and desocialization of the projects and activities just mentioned—which constitute, by virtue of their magnitude, entire industries and even whole economic sectors—are to operate, in effect, as relatively autonomous centers that will not initially be totally integrated into the general strategy of investment and reconstruction. The disruption of their normal functioning would endanger their economic viability, marginal as it is in most cases. The pace and mode of expansion of the development projects; their links and connections with other sectors, industries, and activities; the need for resources and, by extension, their accounting price systems;

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related technologies; and use of economic factors will not be governed at first by the discipline and norms of an inchoate general social market system. If that were to be the case, many of the special activities would prove to be uneconomical in nature, perhaps in some instances even producing a negative value-added. The market, of course, will consistently expand in a measured, consistent fashion until it eventually comes to occupy the total extent of the national economy, absorbing the initially autonomous key development projects. How can this apparent conflict between the needs and individual mechanics of the development process and the desocialization and reconstruction policies of the national economy be solved? The only formula for the reconciliation of the two processes and sets of policies is a gradual integration of the initially autonomous projects, industries, and special development sectors into the general organism of the social market economy. This should be done sensibly, through a process of successive approaches, rather than trying to force the pace and courting the collapse of a bankrupt and rickety economy. Pending Issues During Transition We cannot consider in this preliminary outline the full impact and implications of a whole series of diverse political and economic decisions and policies and their effect on the processes of reconstruction and development. Solutions to some of those issues will become apparent once these processes begin to unfold. Other questions will require explicit political treatment for their settlement, perhaps in some cases through a mechanism involving popular consultation. Let us briefly cite the following items as examples of the kinds of issues in need of resolution: I. The role of foreign resources in the reconstruction and development of the national economy. a. Public Loans i. From international institutions ii. From foreign governments iii. From private institutions 1. for public use 2. for private use 3. payment conditions b. Private Loans (provision of foreign capital to private companies with out foreign participation in ownership) i. Limits imposed by these loans on domestic entrepreneurial autonomy ii. Payment conditions c. Direct or Indirect investments: Conditions for acceptance

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i. by types of industries or activities ii. by amount of investments iii. by magnitude and means of foreign participation in domestic companies’ property iv. regarding conversion and repatriation of profits v. regarding transfer of technology Conditions and restrictions on: vi. Labor policy and training of native personnel vii. Administrative participation by nationals viii. Manipulation of costs and prices to the detriment of the national economy, especially in the case of some practices by multinational firms ix. Collusive production policies, especially on the part of some multi national and transnational firms x. Contracting of foreign loans and their conditions by firms xi. Tax policy (often conditioned by international fiscal treaties) and other levies. xii. Economic and accounting methods to be used in the evaluation of productive assets and the currency exchange rate to be applied in calculating the evaluation II. Commercial treaties and agreements: a. Negotiated with international institutions. For example, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) or other agreements with groups and blocs of nations (areas of free trade, custom unions, groups or blocs of producers and/or consumers of certain products, common markets and other arrangements). b. Negotiated bilaterally, whether instruments and protocols are of a general nature or related to specific products III. International fiscal treaties IV. Reception of economic and technological aid from foreign countries V. Agreements with international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, which commit the state to adopt certain economic and political programs as a counterpart to the provision of financial aid or assistance on the part of those bodies VI. The return of confiscated property to former owners or some form of equivalent compensation One may conclude from the above that both the processes of decollectivization and desocialization and the strategies for reconstruction and development will be heavily impacted by the preceding six points, although each of them will bear unequally on individual sectors, industries, activities, and particular projects, and on their manifold operations. These operations may relate to the volume of production or exportation, investments and prices, credits and loans, fiscal obligations and

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other tax measures, quality controls and production specifications, policies for sales and market penetration, the adoption of acceptable competitive practices, and innumerable other issues. In a general way that the projects, industries or special activities, particularly in their international projections, may be substantially affected by the policymakers’ detailed outlook on the previous set of provisos. The foregoing considerations reinforce the conclusion that not only is each process of desocialization unique but, further, these processes cannot be precisely planned or minutely anticipated. Given the large quantity of individual changes taking place, the nature of the relationship among them, and the patterning and timing of those interactions, policymakers will inevitably be forced to exercise their judgment in steering the course between antithetical values and preferences. Obviously, all of these parametric limitations and caveats do not detract from the validity of the overall direction and objectives of the process of decollectivization. They only serve to warn us about the many perils and obstacles lying in the path to the ultimate end. The eventual application to the Cuban case of all the mentioned factors will, in some respects, be much easier than in the case of other socialist societies, while it promises to be more arduous in other areas. The magnitude of the misfit provoked by the Revolution between its originally postulated political and socioeconomic model for the nation, as well as its much touted developmental and investment strategies on the one hand, and the actual objective needs and capacities of the society and the desires and expectations of the people on the other, is so abysmal that much improvement and alleviation will occur from the mere cessation of the regime now in place. Cuba’s socioeconomic condition will be in a position to start improving only if the yoke of its present political and social system is lifted. It is essential to realize that this is a necessary condition if the adoption of systemic policies and measures that would turn the society around is to take place at all. Desperately needed competitiveness, efficiency, and productivity gains; the exploitation of economic dynamic comparative advantage; the introduction of appropriate technologies and recapitalization of the production plant and infrastructure; the rebuilding of advantageous market ties; the introduction of a rational incentive system and effective managerial methods; the redressing of structural imbalances and sectoral disequilibria; and still many other fundamental improvements will be made possible only by the termination of the present regime’s institutional order. Cuba’s Advantages in the Transition Process Paradoxically, Cuba, in some regards, is in a better position to show rapid and sustained advance than perhaps all Eastern European countries, with the possible exception of former East Germany. The distortions imposed by the socialist system have been greater in Cuba than anywhere else. Also, the unrelenting

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attempt to remake the nation’s cultural past in order to reshape it to the specifications of the regime may end up facilitating a return to fundamental aspects of that past. As the experiences of Eastern Europe show, once the repressive policies are discontinued, those societies reacting in a reflex-like fashion go in search of their roots and seek to establish continuity and coherence with their traditions and historical antecedents. In the end, as historical experiences demonstrate, cultures are not as malleable as totalitarian regimes would like them to be. Cuba is a society that was essentially Westernized long ago and which is located at the junction between the two hemispheres of the Americas. Cuba’s path to modernization in the past, as will surely be the case again in the future, is squarely within the tradition of the Western world. There are direct consequences stemming from that condition, which are relevant to Cuba’s future politicoideological and socioeconomic model for desocialization and development and its concomitant strategy and policies. Among other things, these elements will strongly contribute to the appearance of an individually oriented and entrepreneurial driven type of market economy, albeit functioning within the socially responsive framework and kind of social contract characterizing the pre-revolutionary period. The implications of private ownership and personal initiative in Cuba are obvious and manifold. The ramifications range from a rapid and effective privatization mode, which would clearly devolve control and responsibility of economic decisionmaking to actual producers, to labor and social legislation compatible with a politicized population and an organized labor movement. Let us hope that the necessary pluralistic and democratic political structures required by the inner logic of these socioeconomic arrangements will come to pass. Cuba’s Disadvantages in the Transition Process Amidst our hopes for a successful institutionalization of the Cuban transition, it should not be forgotten that there are peculiarities to the Cuban case that adversely condition at the macroeconomic level the intent to reorient the economy and society towards the market. Among other effects, these characteristics hinder the efforts to reestablish advantageous economic and financial relations in the international area. At present, Cuba does not even fit the economic mold of a backward European economy with all of its attendant disadvantages. Cuba’s openness, extreme poverty, underdeveloped production structure, foreign indebtedness, and need for short- and long-term financial requirements all pose an array of difficulties whose solution resides more in the bailiwick of political policymaking and political economy than technical economics. In essence, Cuba needs to negotiate the concession of favorable commercial and financial relations while it buys time to address the fundamental agenda of introducing basic domestic structural and functional changes.

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The Future: Back to the Spirit of the Past The future program for action will require the skills of the statesman far more than those of the technician. In reality, there are no hermetic or arcane secrets to be discovered, no magic formula to be devised for the transition to political and economic freedom. Cuba will shortly be back to step one, namely, the period after the Second World War. The period 1945-1958 has to be revisited and scrutinized with great care in order to resume the socioeconomic and intellectual trends that, extending back to the unfinished revolution of the 1930s, instilled meaning and continuity to Cuba’s public policy, despite the profound upheavals that disrupted the political life of the nation. The long delirious period of the Castro Revolution will appear in historical perspective as a costly and painful detour but not one that threw Cuba off its course permanently. It is clear that the only way back for Cuba is total systemic change. The existing maze of irrational values, organizations, institutions, functions, and norms, must be disassembled in order to make room for a new nation and society. After more than four decades of unspeakable despotism than half-hearted “solutions,” “changes,” or “reforms,” whose end points are unknown and whose prospects are uncertain and problematic, the Cuban people deserve better. The probably unattainable ideal to be pursued by the transition program would be to harmonize politics and economics optimally, in order to create a maximally efficient and stable politicoeconomic system endowed with rapid growth that would also share its benefits equitably among all Cubans. This vision would require conjoining our intellectual position in the philosophical, social, and ideological areas with decisions of a political nature, and even those with others, which are strictly technical and economic in nature. Furthermore, that symmetry would have to be maintained from one period to the next in an equilibrium that was at the same time both dynamic and stable. That theoretical ideal, of course, would clearly be utopian and unachievable. Social engineering is a nonexistent subject. All material systems—whether organic, mechanical, or social— are subject to changes and entropy. Nevertheless, Cuba must strive for the creation of a society that will fully respect all individuals, their dignity, and their rights: a free, socially solid, participative, and progressive society. No better way exists of fulfilling the frustrated expectations of the Cuban people in the last half-century and affecting the transition from totalitarianism to political and economic freedom.

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14 Economic Organizations and Post-Castro Cuba Ernesto Betancourt The transition started in Cuba before the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and was given a tremendous push by the Special Period that resulted. As long ago as the 1980 Mariel exodus, the regime was forced to introduce economic reforms that were the start of an economic opening. The dissident movement, which started in the mid and late 1970s, is the seed of the political opening feeding an incipient civil society. Glasnost and perestroika challenged Castro’s Stalinism, which had already regressed into harsher totalitarian rule in response to the initial threat posed by the dissidence and the farmer’s markets of the early 1980s. The Special Period in the early 1990s forced an initial economic opening that Castro started to halt as soon as the worst period of economic collapse had passed. Cuba’s Special Period was not a transition to a competitive democracy with a free market. Instead, the regime moved to a non-competitive political regime, insisting on perpetuating one-party rule under Castro. The most significant economic change, the legalization of the possession of U.S. dollars, has perpetuated a dirigiste economy along with an opening to foreign investment and decentralized management of state enterprises. Applying Transition Lessons to Cuba In order to make itself more attractive to foreign investment, and perhaps even to gain access to economic assistance from the European Union, the regime kept repression at a lower level, reducing harassment of opponents and reserving harsher reprisals and imprisonment for harsher violations. The result has been that opposition to the regime has expanded: the dissidence movement has bloomed from human rights denunciation to independent journalists, libraries, professional associations, labor unions, and agricultural cooperatives despite denial of universal rights of assembly and association, which are formally recog210

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nized in the Cuban Constitution. The result in political terms is similar to the experience the World Bank reported in the case of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): a non-competitive political regime. The economic results have also been similar to those found by the World Bank in the CIS. An oligarchy from within the Cuban nomenklatura has emerged as rent-seeking insiders who control state enterprises under decentralized management and in partnership with foreign investors. Perhaps the largest and most influential, Business Administration Group, S.A. (Grupo de Administración de Empresas S.A—GAESA), is centered in the Ministry of the Armed Forces (Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas—MINFAR) and is headed by General Julio Casas Regueiro, with Raúl Castro’s son-in-law as general manager. Basic Industries Minister, Marcos Portal, married to a niece of Raúl and Fidel Castro, was described by the Center for Defense Information as a power to be dealt with in the succession promoted by the regime. These rent-seeking managers are trying to increase internal enterprise efficiency with the introduction of modern management methods, such as quality control, in a nationwide effort called Perfeccionamiento Empresarial (Enterprise Enhancement)—a process of management reforms to improve the efficiency of state enterprises. This is a pointless exercise because economic efficiency at the micro or enterprise level, besides being hindered by external dis-economies, is made meaningless at the macro level by a context in which prices are set administratively. New entrepreneurs have no free access, and market allocation of capital to ensure a competitive market environment does not exist. A similar situation that led Aslund to reach the conclusion that a privatization effort is essential to ensure a successful transition to a market economy.1 The insiders’ oligarchy within Cuba’s current regime has access to dollars and shows manifestations of the same corrupt practices identified within the non-competitive political regimes in the CIS, such as asset stripping, tunneling, and blocking of reforms, that may threaten their privileged status. The regime even established a new Ministry of Audit and Control in 2001 to cope with fraud. Castro’s high-handed decision against the practice of accounting in Cuba, including banning it for years from university curricula, severely hurt the profession. In the last few years, an effort to restore it as an integral part of enterprise management has been underway, but it has had limited success. In fact, it is the main reason the majority of enterprises have not qualified for the process of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial. At the annual meeting on its accomplishments for 2001, the Ministry of Finance and Prices reported that only 180 out of 382 accounting and internal control systems submitted for approval under the Perfeccionamiento Empresarial program were considered satisfactory; 202 were rejected. 2 Insider managers are not interested in improving accounting records that could reveal asset stripping and tunneling actions related to their corrupt practices.

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The Cuban Political Transition At some point in the Cuban transition process, the need will emerge to create a forum similar to the roundtables that emerged in Eastern Europe. No method exists to predict what will generate the need for such an instrument. Possibilities include a health problems or the passing of Castro, a policy split between insiders favoring more economic liberalization to calm popular unrest and hardliners advocating harsher repression to deter that unrest, or a coup d’etat by younger unknown elements in the armed forces. The roundtable in Cuba will have to include representatives of the four groups of stakeholders mentioned above. In the Cuban case, the main difference will be the presence of representatives of overseas Cubans. However, it will have to address issues such as the freeing of political prisoners and the abolition of mass organizations, such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, that have become associated with regime repression. In the survey of Cuban public opinion undertaken in 1999 by the University of Florida, interviews of over 1,000 recent arrivals revealed that the Communist Party had a most hated rating of 77 percent and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution of 71 percent.3 The repressive agencies are equally unpopular, and the problem of their abolition will have to be contemplated in light of the public order situation at the time. The roundtable will have to take into account such levels of unpopularity with the opposition at the time of transition not only in the determination of its composition but also in the priorities of its agenda for action. The Organization of American States (OAS), with ample participation of overseas and national Cuban lawyers and through its Inter-American Commissions of Human Rights and the regional body of jurists, could provide assistance to deal with the actions required from the roundtable in restoring the rule of law. Then, there is the issue of calling for elections. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned an elaborate International Federation of Electoral Systems (IFES) study of this issue that could be made available to the roundtable. The OAS has ample experience in supervising elections, so it can be called upon to provide technical assistance in this respect. As to the overall creation of the roundtable itself, the experience of countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland could be extremely useful. They benefited from the lessons of the Spanish transition at the time of Franco´s death. When transitions were taking place in Eastern Europe, “Madrid became the Mecca for transition actors from Eastern Europe with visits by figures such as Havel, Roman, Mazowiecki, and Yeltsin to talk to Spanish political leaders.”4 The European Union or the respective national assistance programs would certainly be happy, when the time comes, to facilitate access for Cuban roundtable leaders to the experiences of those who worked in European transitions, including, of course, the Spanish.

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Privatization as the Central Transition Process The transition to a post-Castro regime should be defined as a process of moving from a non-competitive political regime to a competitive political regime, centered on a process of privatization that allows for the emergence of new enterprises as quickly as possible to provide the overwhelming majority of employment and value-added. As stakeholders in the post-Castro Cuba to be built through this transition effort, the following groups should be represented in the roundtable and transition government, which means their interest and aspirations should be recognized: ! !

! !

all Cuban citizens residing on the island; insiders from the nomenklatura of the current regime and its supporters who are willing to accept the end of the party monopoly of power; dissidents, victims of regime repression, and oppositionists in general; and overseas Cubans willing to continue to be engaged in Cuba, particularly in the reconstruction of Cuba’s economy.

It is suggested that the roundtable or the transition government request advice from the World Bank on how to set up a privatization scheme to attain in as short a period of time as possible the transfer of ownership of the nation’s productive capacity to private owners. The scheme will have to satisfy certain criteria. Citizens should be able to acquire a share of their workplaces in the case of small enterprises. The agricultural cooperatives—Basic Units of Production Cooperative (Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa—UBPC) and others—should be sold to their members, offering special credit facilities if necessary. Medium-sized enterprises should be placed in the market to be acquired by management and workers or sold to the highest bidder. Large enterprises, already in joint ventures, should be privatized following transparent bidding processes, but nothing is to be given for free. Consideration should be given to allotting additional rights for acquisition of enterprises to: i) those whose properties were confiscated without compensation, whether foreign or national; ii) those who were victims of regime repression; and, iii) those who were sent to fight overseas by the regime and did not get any assistance in reintegrating to Cuban society at the end of their internationalist service. In view of the Eastern Europe experience, the mechanisms of how to do that should be left to the technical expertise of the advisory team. It is evident that a preparatory phase will be required: !

! !

to strengthen the ability of the banking system to provide effective lending and supervision for new and restructured enterprises; to establish open access procedures for the creation of new enterprises; and, to enforce hard financial discipline to eliminate rents and subsidies.

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As the experience in Eastern Europe reveals, privatization should be the central process of the transition effort in Cuba. Substantial technical and financial assistance will be required to undertake the design and implementation of that Cuban privatization effort. That effort should include transitory measures to reinforce governmental institutional capacity in order to avoid, to the extent possible, asset stripping and tunneling. In order to ensure that production is activated and not paralyzed by the complex process involved, enterprise governance should be included as a specific objective of the privatization effort. This, in turn, should be considered in the agenda for assistance from international organizations as a priority topic. If at all possible, work should be started by the suggested preparatory work task force or working group. Assistance to Reform National Policies Cuba will require massive technical assistance to transform the present noncompetitive political regime’s economic policies and institutions into those of a competitive democracy. This will involve changes in macroeconomic, monetary, banking, and fiscal policies. Learning from the experience of previous transitions,5 due attention will be necessary to the parallel changes required in institutions, in sociological and organizational terms. Additionally, training will be needed for cadres of people to form the new public administration and emerging private sector. These individuals will need to change their behaviors in order to work in the new competitive environment. This effort will involve the largest component of the international organization assistance that Cuba will require. This will be increasingly true as the assistance is directed at sectors such as private banking, trade and services, not to mention agriculture and small and medium-sized enterprise, all of which face serious market distortions in the current Cuban economic environment. The assistance for fiscal and monetary policy and stabilization will have to be requested from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The assistance for other policies related to structural adjustment as well as other sectoral efforts is usually split among the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the European Union, and national efforts. Assistance will have to be one of the first assignments for the joint staff working in preparation of the consultative group meeting. Here, the role of overseas Cubans could be critical to transition success thanks to a felicitous convergence of the Eastern Europe experience and unique conditions peculiar to the Cuban situation. One of the lessons from the successful transitions linked new enterprises with levels of economic growth, while shortening the recession caused by the initial systemic changes. Cuba has access to a rich source of entrepreneurs for small and medium-sized enterprises, which are usually ignored by multinational corporations, yet have been found to be the biggest source of employment and value added.

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The ongoing impact of remittances in the Cuban Balance of Payments reflects the importance of entrepreneurship. Pedro Monreal estimates the flows of remittances to be around $500 million per year and recognizes that some may represent investments to facilitate family reunification. Writing in the magazine Encuentro, Monreal, the staffer of the CEA who was attacked by Raúl Castro in 1996, suggests that encouraging investments by overseas Cubans “could be one of the most efficient ways of obtaining access to investment resources.”6 Overseas Cubans can be more than a mere source of investment capital. As important as capital is, overseas Cubans can also be a significant source of entrepreneurship, technological, managerial, and marketing know-how. To realize the magnitude of that potential, it is worth considering the summary information from the 1997 U.S. Economic Census7 bearing in mind that this refers only to domestic U.S. enterprises and does not include the many Cuban-owned enterprises in countries such as Venezuela, Spain, Mexico, and South and Central America, nor the thousands of Cuban managers and technical staffers working throughout the world in multinational corporations. According to this census, the United States has 125,273 Cuban-owned firms, of which 89,682, or around 70 percent, are located in Florida. For purposes of our study, we will limit ourselves to firms with paid employees, of which there are 30,203 nationally and, again, around 70 percent, or 21,033, are located in Florida. If only a fraction of the owners of these firms can be encouraged either to enter into partnerships with relatives or friends still left in Cuba with some experience as self-employed entrepreneurs or to make direct investments in totally new enterprises, Cuba could experience a much more significant recovery than if they are ignored, or, even worse, discouraged from participating in the transition. The actions required to attract these potential stakeholders in a successful transition should be part of an ad hoc survey of the Transition Project. They will involve the regular legal guarantees of respect for the rule of law and prompt court proceedings that are accepted as essential requirements of any development policy based on market economies, since they are of equal motivational impact for foreign and domestic investors. They will also require some specific recognition or participation in the round table to give them assurances that they will be heard and treated fairly. Overseas Cuban entrepreneurs represent a most powerful source of knowhow and resources that, if properly encouraged to participate in the Cuban reconstruction, could make the Cuban case an exceptional success story in transitions. Outline of International Assistance Program The assistance program required from international agencies in the Cuban transition should be started in the pre-transition period. This has already been

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Cuban Communism Table 1 U.S. Cuban Enterprises with Paid Employees

Industry Group (SIC)

Firms (Number)

Sales and receipts

Employees ($1,000)

Agricultural, Forestry and Fishing services

306

115,133

1,567

Mineral industries

10

4,416

37

Construction industries, subdividers,and developers

2,985

2,453,231

15,706

Manufacturing

1,411

2,396,536

21,064

Transport, Communication,and Utilities

1,954

1,043,697

9,042

Wholesale Trade

2,512

7,498,145

17,590

Retail Trade

6,080

4,477,661

35,979

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate industry

1,732

873,541

5,565

Service industries

12,520

4,753,582

67,039

Not classified

718

257,252

2,839

TOTAL

30,203

23,837,193

176,428

Source: 1997 US Economic Census

commented in a previous paper.8 In essence, it is suggested that the U.S. government, as the largest contributor to the IMF, the World Bank, and the IDB, request that these agencies form a preparatory working group or task force to start formulating a tentative program of assistance to Cuba during the transition. This request must be made by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the related costs financed through a grant from USAID. Since the present Cuban government is not an active member of any of these organizations, they cannot formally object to such a request. At present, the Inter-American Dialogue is promoting cooperation between these agencies and the present Cuban government through a grant from the Ford Foundation. This cooperation is heavily influenced by the whims of the present Cuban government, which allows or denies the participants from these agencies entrance to Cuba depending on the willingness of the Dialogue to submit to Cuban vetoes on whom they may contact in other activities. For example, the project was suspended when the Dialogue invited Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) President Jorge Mas Santos to address one of its meetings. Under such a coercive atmosphere, it is unlikely that any serious research work, much less related to a post-Castro Cuba, can be undertaken.

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Castro expressed a basic philosophical disagreement with the World Bank and the IMF during his speech at the Monterrey Summit on March 22, 2002 when he said that “their prestige is below zero” and accused them of promoting genocidal policies. Castro rejects both neoliberalism and globalization, two basic tenets of the policies of these agencies. Therefore, under present unofficial arrangements, the staffers from these agencies going to Cuba may be mere props for Cuban propaganda efforts. If they do any planning for assistance, they may have to renounce the principles that guide the stabilization and structural adjustment efforts of their agencies. In either case, what they are doing does not advance preparation for transition assistance. Preparatory Work Before Transition Assistance Even under expedited procedures, it takes a year from the moment a country decides to apply for membership in these agencies to the moment disbursements start.9 Therefore, it would be advisable to consider other organizational options for these agencies to start the preparatory work required so that the time frame is collapsed as much as is feasible. The Helms-Burton legislation, under Section 202(e), provides the basis for the U.S. government, through its directors at these agencies, to request that planning for assistance to a transition government in Cuba be started by creating a joint preparatory working group or task force. If the statutes or policies of these agencies forbid using their financial resources in any work related to non-member countries, USAID can provide a grant to sustain such efforts. The results of the preparatory work should be tentative plans contingent on the decisions to be made, at the proper time, by the authorities that emerge in a transition government in Cuba. The setting up of a flexible rollover plan, properly sequenced in a computerized PERT system, should be one of the basic outputs of the preparatory stage. Emergency Assistance The first task that will require attention is the emergency assistance necessary to restore—from whatever their deteriorated state is—ports, highways, railroads, bridges, telecommunications, and power generation. In this stage, supplies of food, medicines, and spare parts will also be required to compensate for shortages in domestic output or imports. The World Food Program may also have to be involved, but, since Cuba is a United Nations member, and Cuba is at present a recipient of food assistance, it is not feasible for that agency to participate before an actual transition starts. Depending on the level progress attained in preparatory work, USAID and other country donors are likely to have to provide financing for initial emergency assistance. The World Bank could schedule rapid disbursement of Balance of Payment adjustment loans to

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reach effectiveness or disbursement stage as early as possible. Emergency social fund programs to alleviate poverty and generate employment will be essential as well. The IDB would also need to schedule emergency program loans, preferably jointly with the World Bank and other donors for early disbursement. The transition government should proceed to finalize access to the Cotonu Agreement and to establish the framework agreement for cooperation with the European Union, if they are still pending at the moment of the transition. Assistance will be required to set up the roundtable for transition preparation. This work could be requested from the European Union, at the proper time, or from the Czech, Hungarian, or Polish governments as well as from Spain. If at all feasible, work should start during the preparatory stage. Cuba will also need assistance from the OAS in meeting democracy and human rights requirements as demanded by the Democratic Charter approved on September 11, 2001 in Lima, Peru. Monetary Stabilization In these endeavors, the main focus will be necessary changes in monetary and fiscal policies to move toward a market economy as well as to secure the financial assistance to ensure currency and price stability while undertaking structural reforms. The IMF is the leading agency in such efforts, and membership in this organization is also a prerequisite for being a member of the World Bank. The IMF is the source of financing for stabilization agreements and also provides assistance in the formulation and administration of fiscal policies including tax, customs, and budget and of monetary policies including establishing an independent central bank as well as bank supervision regulations and agency. It also assists in restructuring foreign debt, developing policies and procedures for conducting transparent open market operations, organizing an efficient payments clearance system among commercial banks, and regulating the operations of the exchange market. The Paris Club could play a role in helping the transition government deal with the foreign debt. The debt with the West, except the United States was reported in Carmelo Mesa-Lago’s presentation to the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy in 2001 to reach $11 billion.10 Cuba also has a large debt with the former Soviet Union that was surrogated to Russia and that Cuba has rejected. Failure to solve this disagreement is one of the factors preventing progress in Cuba’s efforts to reach an agreement with the Paris Club. Parallel to these efforts and complementing them to attain sound macroeconomic management would be those related to structural adjustment. The World Bank is usually the leading institution providing the policy and financial assistance related to the structural adjustment of an economy at the macroeconomic level, an effort that, in the case of Cuba, will have enormous ramifications. The IDB, as the leading source of international financial assistance in the hemi-

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sphere, should share this effort with the World Bank. This means that Cuba will also have to join this agency, of which it has never been a member, and IDB membership requires the country to be a member of the OAS, in which Cuba’s present government is suspended. So, the transition government will have to rejoin the OAS first. Structural Adjustment In line with the lessons of transition in Eastern Europe, the central focus of the structural adjustment will be attainment of a successful privatization that provides the framework for encouraging the emergence of a competitive market in which new enterprises flourish. It must satisfy the aspirations of all stakeholders previously identified in the future of Cuba: the people at large, those around Castro who are at present willing to join the future, the dissidents, and the overseas Cubans. Structural adjustment will also require new policies to ensure financial and market discipline and encourage entrance of new enterprises. In targeting poverty pockets and unemployment, complementary loans to a social emergency fund, which must be created, would be necessary. Assistance to social emergency funds usually involves other sources of financial assistance beyond the international lending organizations, including the European Union and country programs. Productive and Social Sectors At this stage, some assistance will overlap. Structural adjustment efforts will require, depending on the situation prevailing in the country at that time, that assistance be provided to cope with both productive and sectoral problems facing the country. The IDB and the World Bank have developed many joint efforts in these areas in the hemisphere and the transition government will have to draw upon their joint experience. Therefore, both the World Bank and the IDB would be the leading lending institutions providing both technical assistance for policy guidance and financing for sectoral, productive, and social rehabilitations or restructuring necessary to attain the required goals. State Reform Parallel to the policy changes of the transitions in Eastern Europe must be a massive reorganization of the public sector as well as of the legislative and judicial apparatus along with retraining cadres in both the public and private sector. A new organizational culture will have to replace the one associated with the present regime, as happened in Singapore after independence. Finally, a meeting of a consultative group should be convened to mobilize resources from external donors willing to participate in assisting the country as

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well as private sector international banks. Cuba would be likely to attract many donors interested in participating in its reconstruction. As mentioned before, the World Bank, due to the wealth of experience it has accumulated on systemic transitions, would be the logical agency to prepare and manage the consultative group. However, the transition government may prefer the IDB, the largest source of financial assistance in the hemisphere. A matrix has been prepared indicating the outline of the reform effort required in the Transitional Assistance Program and the potential role of the various international actors to provide a map of all potential participants in the provision of assistance to the transition government in this extraordinary undertaking. Institutional assistance for state reform and training activities should be scheduled parallel to or preceding the proposed assistance for policy reforms. This will ensure that organizational structure and culture change accompany the desired policy changes. The Role of the Cuban Nation In the end, however, all of the international assistance must complement the national effort. The responsibility for the future of Cuba will fall upon the shoulders of the Cuban people and its transition government. The proposals considered here represent a synthesis of the lessons learned by others in similar efforts at systemic transitions from command economies and totalitarian rule into market economies and democratic rule. These examples cannot be transferred intact; they merely provide useful guidance about the experience of other nations facing similar challenges. It will be up to Cuban society to free the creative capacity of the citizens already organized in a vigorous civil society and implement an effective and committed state leadership that will ensure success. International agency assistance is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. The potential for success is there, but it will require a new spirit to ensure that in this new century, Cuba learns from the lessons of the past two centuries and takes the road of tolerance and hard work that will provide its people with the freedom, peace, and prosperity it hopes for and deserves. Notes 1. 2. 3.

Aslund, Anders. 2002. Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 261. Granma. 2002. “Balance Anual del Ministerio de Finanzas y Precios.” March 16. Roberts, Churchill, Ernesto Betancourt, Guillermo Grenier, and Richard Schaeffer. 1999. Measuring Cuban Public Opinion: Project Report. Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida.

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Pridham, Geoffrey. 1994. “Democratic Transitions in Theory and Practice.” In Democratization in Eastern Europe, Geoffrey Pridham and Tatu Vanhanen, eds., London: Routledge, 29. 5. Nunberg, Barbara. 1999. The State After Communism: Administrative Transition in Central and Eastern Europe. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, Regional and Sectoral Studies. 6. Monreal, Pedro. 1999. “Las remesas familiares en la economía cubana.” Encuentro. 14 (Fall): 61. 7. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1997 Economic Census Minority - and Womenowned Businesses, Available at http://www.census.gov/csd/mwb/. 8. Betancourt, Ernesto F. 2000. “Selected Technical Assistance Needs for Democratic and Institutional Transformation During the Cuban Transition.” Studies in Comparative International Development, 34 (Winter)4: 60-61. 9. Quijano, Carlos N. 1994. ¨The Role of International Organizations in Cuba´s Transition,¨ paper presented at the Cuba Transition Workshop, sponsored jointly by Shaw, Pittman, Pott, and Thowbridge and the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE). 10. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 2002. “The Cuban Economy in 1999-2001: Evaluation of Performance and Debate on the Future.” Cuba in Transition, 11: 4.

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Part 3 Society

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15 Searching for Civil Society in Cuba Damian J. Fernandez The term civil society is not a transparent one. On the contrary, it has several levels of meaning and a long genealogy stemming from different philosophical currents.1 The conceptual challenge is compounded by the normative dimension of the term. Civil society is a value, a project for society. In Eastern Europe intellectuals and labor unions (principally Solidarity) used it this way. A minimalist liberal definition portrays civil society as composed of the voluntary associations autonomous from the state that articulate different interests and identities in the public sphere. To reduce it to its most basic unit, the members of civil society are non-governmental organizations that mediate between the state and the family. Although this minimalist version of the concept is useful, the Cuban case will show that the relationship between civil society formation and the state is not necessarily nor exclusively oppositional, nor clear cut. Rather, the demarcation of “autonomy” is quite blurred as is the alleged separation between the public and the private. This is not exclusive to the Cuban case. An examination of the ways in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) interlink with state organs in other places reveal multiple shades of autonomy and dependence. The personal and the private are closely linked to the public and in very concrete ways to the development of civil society. Although the concept of civil society has a broader liberal subtext that carries notions of individualism, privacy, pluralism, secularism, free market, and social classes, the empirical evidence presented below argues that civil society can form in non-liberal ways, including in a quasi-corporatist fashion by emerging from socialist mass organizations and within a nominally Marxist state in a state-dominated economy. Another non-liberal source is organized religion (i.e., Catholicism in the Cuban case). Moreover, civil society can also emerge from what is usually labeled pre-political relations, that is networks of friends, neighbors and family members. 225

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Civil society has two main aspects: quantitative/institutional and qualitative. The quantitative/institutional is the organizations (and the rules that regulate them) that form civil society. The qualitative is basically the political culture and the modus operandi of civil society. Most discussions of civil society have focused primarily on quantitative dimensions: the number and capabilities of independent groups. The reason behind the emphasis on the institutional aspects is that the existence of organizations outside the control of the state, specifically in totalitarian and authoritarian contexts, is a significant indicator of change in state-society relations and indicative of the potential for regime transition. The quantitative focus also echoes a key concept of democratic theory, pluralism. Emphasis on the quantitative has resulted in the neglect of a more slippery, but as important, side of civil society, the qualitative. The assumption is that civil society in and of itself is positive because it contributes to political openness and democratization. That is, civil society by definition is civil. This tautology requires uncoupling. As part of the social world, the institutions of civil society will express the political culture of the society as it represents a variety of interests. One should not assume that these cultural codes and interests are necessarily civil nor liberal, and may in fact undermine civility, not to mention democracy in the long run. Sources of Civil Society Formation One of the fundamental questions that has not been explicitly posed in the literature is “Where does civil society emerge from?” The literature refers to the resurrection of civil society, the emergence, formation and development of it, but it does not identify where it is to be found before reaching institutional form, specifically in one party socialist states. Rau in his study of civil society in Eastern Europe argues that civil society “emerged from nothing.”2 His answer is unsatisfactory, for something cannot emerge from nothing. Civil society must be found somewhere. In Cuba, and elsewhere, it is found in cloaked or informal fashion in society, within the bureaucracy of the maximalist socialist state that incorporates many interests and potential cleavages within it, and in the non-state controlled sector (small and weak as it may be). Changes in those three arenas have fueled the formation of a proto-civil society on the island. By proto-civil society I mean the increasing visibility and number of small and not so small groups and institutions voicing different interests and expressing diverse identities within and without the framework of the Party/State. The process of emergence has been slow, conflict-ridden and oscillating between small victories for those working for openness (despite severe repression) and those opposing the formation of alternative autonomous associations. But the bulk of self-constituted associations are merely attempting to survive undetected by the state (this is the case

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of most of the networks operating in the underground economy, some human rights associations especially in the 1970s and early 1980s, and state organs, such as intellectuals or cultural producers). Why is a proto-civil society emerging in Cuba? Where is it emerging from? The reasons behind the emergence are sociopolitical and economic at multiple levels: individual, local, national, and international. The process is the result of state-related factors (such as public policies; international forces outside the control of the state (namely the breakdown of the socialist camp, the setback suffered by the official ideology, and the termination of the Soviet sponsored trade and aid regime); dynamics at the grassroots of society (the emergence of new actors with distinct identities and interests different from those of the homogenizing practice of Cuban socialism) and within sectors of the Party and state bureaucracy (particularly, the intellectuals, among whom the notion of reform and civil society holds normative appeal). Compared to the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Cuban proto-civil society is somewhere between a defensive stage in which private individuals and independent groups actively or passively defend their autonomy, identity and interests vis-à-vis the state and an emergent stage in which groups place limited demands in a wider social arena.3 On the island one finds a hybrid of the defensive and emergent stages of civil society formation identified by an increasing number of human rights, dissident, professional, religious and single issue organizations (i.e., environmental, cultural) that have staked alternative positions, articulated limited demands and defended new identities. As the gap between socialist promise and performance widened in the 1980s, new generations came of age, and the regime implemented a series of economic reforms, the tendency toward a proto-civil society has been strengthened. The sources of proto-civil society formation in Cuba are basically four: (1) the state, its bureaucracies, its mass organizations and its policies that are generating different interests and cleavages; (2) the private sphere and the informal relations of everyday life in which and through which small groups of family members and friends engage in a variety of economic and socio-political activities; (3) the traditional non-governmental organizations that survived after the Revolution of 1959 (primarily religious in character); and, (4) global civil society whose organizations are establishing contacts in Cuba, sponsoring affiliates or generating joint activities with Cuban counterparts. The main obstacle to the development of this proto-civil society into a civil society is the refusal of the government to allow greater space for autonomous groups to coalesce. The structure of opportunity, namely the unwillingness of the government to endorse political reforms, thwarts expansion. Contrary to the case of former socialist societies, what is missing in Cuba is a reformist state, in the political realm, that provides the opportunity for greater articulation, organization and mobilization of self-constituted groups.

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Cuba in the 1990s: Decentralization, Informalization, and Pluralization State-society relations in Cuba have experienced important changes since the mid 1980s marked by greater diversity within Cuban society and increased levels of autonomy, processes that are basic to civil society formation. These changes are the result of three broad interrelated dynamics: the establishment of a modicum of organizational autonomy within state and mass organizations (i.e., the process of decentralization), the strengthening of informal networks of friends, family members and acquaintances that are channels of informal resistance and accommodation (i.e., the process of informalization), and the creation or strengthening of independent organizations mostly from the pre-revolutionary (1959) era (a process of pluralization, concomitant with proliferation and fragmentation of social groups and a relative increase in autonomy). Decentralization After the breakdown of the socialist block post 1989 and the elimination of trade and aid regime that had sustained the island’s economy until 1990, the Cuban economy declined about 45%, real wages were reduced by half, and about a third of the labor force found itself unemployed or underemployed.4 The establishment of semi-autonomous economic enterprises and mixed firms (foreign and national, mainly in the tourist sector), the legalization of over a hundred categories of self-employment (about 4% of the population), the agrarian reform that emphasized cooperatives (instead of state farms) that now could sell their surplus in open markets, and the dollarization of the Cuban economy, among other reforms implemented in the early 1990s, were part and parcel of the government’s realization that new policy instruments were needed to navigate the troubled waters of economic crisis. Microenterprises mushroomed in the areas of food provision, crafts, and some services. (Many of these were later closed due to taxes and licensing requirements). Foreign investment was allowed into the Cuban economy, mainly in the tourist sector. The reforms resulted in a modest decentralization and destatization of the Cuban economy and greater space for autonomous economic action for pockets of Cuban society. Since the mid-1980s organizations within the purview of the state have increased their autonomy. This attempt at decentralization points to the attempt to reinvent Cuban socialism in the midst of crisis. As the state was unable to deliver material and non-material goods as it once had, which facilitated the process of coercion and consensus, groups within and without the state—namely intellectuals, religious believers, cadres involved in the semi-autonomous stateenterprises, cuenta propistas (self-employed)—started to explore alternative policies and safeguarding their corporate autonomy in a very limited and tenta-

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tive manner. The debates among economists since the mid 1980s as to what was the best policy course for the nation is an additional example of the phenomenon. Other components of the state, for instance the National Association of Peasants (ANAP) and individuals or groups outside the ANAP have pushed the limits of autonomy by taking positions that are not always those favored by the top leadership. ANAP negotiating ability increased as a result of the food) crisis, the ANAP has acted in some occasions as a quasi-independent group by defending the interest of its members against of those of the state. Moreover, groups of peasants who own their own lands have established independent cooperatives. Decentralization and the dual processes of informalization and pluralization has led to partial destatization by default. Economic and organizational reforms, including the new administrative measures of self-financing and perfeccionamiento empresarial required of state institutions, although modest in comparison to those implemented in other socialist countries and timid in relation to the crisis at hand, have had a dramatic impact on state-society and intra-state relations. Together these reforms are an acknowledgment that the state can no longer function as in the past; the government can not be the exclusive guarantor of employment, equity, or welfare (and in no small measure the source of meaning and identity) New actors and private initiative have assumed a larger role on the Cuban stage. Decentralization and destatization are not limited exclusively to the economic sphere, neither are they the result of economic factors solely. In fact these dual dynamics predate the Special Period (1991), which marks the beginning the severe economic conditions. Research centers affiliated with the Central Committee of the Party (notably the Centro de Estudios de America or CEA, the premier social science think tank) had managed to carve out for themselves a privileged space with a degree of autonomy. Key members started to believe that they could act as if they were in practice non-governmental organizations (which is what official policy considered them, at least since the mid 1980s). CEA researchers started to advocate alternative policy prescriptions within narrow margins and behaved as if they were not appendages of the party.5 The official youth organization, the Union de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC), did not fare much better in containing the youth at the grassroots. Since the 1960s it had faced serious problems in convincing the Cuban youth to act in prescribed ways.6 In the 1980s scores of young artists, writers, and professionals of all sectors abandoned the country or the mass organizations that represented them, seeking to pursue their work elsewhere or on their own. Those who sought alternative milieus resorted to an iconoclastic vocabulary and to selfgenerated cultural groups such as Padeia, Vigia, and Arte Calle. In the 1990s films, book, journals, and visual arts have been produced independently from the state, at times in collaboration with foreign entities. Those who stayed

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within the parameters of the state institutions sought to express themselves in ways not necessarily palatable to the orthodoxy of the state (of which the Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba is a revealing case study).7 Others rejected the system by copping out; they found in the informal economy or in criminality a way to deal with material and non-material issues. Many became apathetic towards politics, especially the collective ethics of Cuban socialism, opting for more individualistic approaches to life.8 In doing so these individual have been redefining the relationship between the state and society in small but highly significant ways, pushing the limits of autonomy, individualism and differentiation within the boundaries of Cuban socialism. Other mass organizations, such as the Federation of Cuban Women, have been largely paralyzed and succumbed to atrophy. Their members, as a result, are less attached to those organizations; a process of destatization by default has unfolded. The processes of decentralization and destatization and the formation of a proto-civil society has entailed a contestation of the boundaries between the public and the private. While private homes have become centers of cultural encounters (tertulias), paladares, or houses of worship (casa cultos), public spaces became privatized in special ways. Art group Arte Calle exhibited in non-sanctioned public spaces, religious processions have been allowed to flock the streets, jineteras (prostitutes) beckon potential customers in the Quinta Avenida (a principal boulevard), and youth gather to listen to U.S. pop music in the Malecon. Public institutions have harbored individuals and events that push the borderline of the officially permissible. Such is the case of La Casa de la Cultura Roberto Branley in Havana. Popularly known as “el patio de Maria,” the Casa de la Cultura has been renamed by the vox populi after the woman who, against official obstacles, has opened the doors of the institution to many marginal young Cubans. During the 1990s two of the main pillars of popular support for the government and its base of legitimacy, namely social equity and socialist welfare (i.e., access to education and health), were undermined as a result of the new economic conditions.9 Economic scarcity resulted in the formation of alternative networks of distribution and solidarity outside the state and to a lesser extent of production, outside of the socialist economy.10 The informal economy became one of, if not the, principal sources of exchange on the island. Cubans, accustomed to social equity and reliance on the state for their basic economic well being, now had to learn lessons of self-reliance. Entrepreneurship at a micro level reemerged as did marked social differentiation as some Cubans (those who received dollars from abroad or had access to the greenback due to their role in the new economy or those who operated small businesses as paladares or a taxi) became rather wealthy. These policies have unwittingly opened more space for independent and semi-independent social groups that eventually will create their own interest-based sectoral identities and constitute a potential pressure group of sorts.

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Informalization Economic factors were not the only causes of the cleavages within the old model of state-society relations of Cuban socialism that hinged on the charismatic leadership of Fidel Castro, the single party, and the mass organizations that mobilized a unified and uniform population. The gap between theory and practice in Cuban socialism in tandem with the economic crisis undermined this model and fueled discontent and everyday forms of resistance. Confronted with the reality that many Cubans did not seem to engage with the system as they had in the past and facing a changed international context that favors democratic governance, the government in the early 1990s adopted a discourse that legitimized diversity within pluralism and attempted briefly to create una cultura polemica (a democratic political culture that would encourage different perspectives).11 In 1990 and 1991 the government attempted to encourage participation and expression especially through the llamamiento (call) for the Fifth Party Congress. Although the exercise of broader freedom of expression embodied in the llamamiento was short-lived, during the 1990s the government continued its rapprochement with the Catholic Church, lifted the restriction on believers joining the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), implemented a limited, but symbolically important, electoral reform, and amended the Constitution to define Cuba as a secular, not an atheist, state. International development in terms of human rights norms and changes in one-party states have had a demonstration effect that encouraged the rise of dissidents inside the island.12 Informal behavior of everyday life and networks of family members and friends at the grassroots are a fundamental source of the building blocks of civil society. The “informal” realm of the private sphere where friends and family interact constitute an alternative source of norms to the state and state institutions. Groups of socios (buddies), friends and family conduct transactions in the black market and facilitate all sorts of social practices, resulting in the regime of sociolismo (cronyism) not socialismo (socialism). These networks form the infrastructure of the politics of affection, politics that revolve around who you know, who you love and are based on personalism and personal exceptionalism. The genesis of human rights, dissident groups and independent professional associations are also to be found in these private relations, in the politics of affection among trusted friends and family members. At the grassroots Cubans dealt with the economic crisis by resorting to a host of informal mechanisms and the networks outside the purview of the state. Social informality, expressed through a wide range of everyday forms of behavior (from graffiti to hustling tourists) that carry an anti-state bias, became pervasive. It served both as a mechanism of resistance and accommodation to the state and its policies. Particularly since the 1980s (but much earlier as well) society challenged covertly the socialist state by not conforming to the officially prescribed patterns of behavior.13 Socios (buddies) and family members facili-

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tated transactions in the black market. The culture of illegality flourished as people tired to resolver (make ends meet), sobrevivir (survive) and bisnear (to do business). The informal economy relies on networks of distribution that constitutes an alternative to the official economy. Individuals with strong network connections can be said to have network capital, which has been an important source of economic activity in other socialist regimes in transition.14 But, how civil are these networks? What sort of contribution can we expect them to make to the formation of a civil society? Religion from Without and Intellectuals from Within The organizations of the prerevolutionary civil society and transnational NGOs have fed the incipient proto-civil society in Cuba. As the official institutions failed in representing and accommodating new interests and identities, social institutions of prerevolutionary society, principally the Catholic Church and religion in general, have experienced a renaissance since the 1980s. Greater number of Cubans sought comfort both spiritual and material in faith. Changes in official policy opened doors for Catholics and believers in general as they were allowed to join the Communist Party and the constitutional change (1996) declared Cuba a secular (not an atheist) state. The Catholic Church is the only autonomous social actor with a national reach. Attendance to service, baptisms and vocations are on the rise. In 1994 14,000 baptisms were recorded and in 1998 70,081, a five fold increase. Mass attendance has doubled since the early 1990s (estimates indicate that around 100,000 Catholics attend). The Catholic Church publishes around two dozen publications (including flyers, magazines, bulletins, and journals) some of which are parish based and others have greater distribution throughout the island. The most important ones at the national level are Vitral, Aqui la Iglesia and Palabra Nueva (the last two published in Havana). Dozens of grassroots religious groups have been formed bringing together Cubans from all walks of life and devoting themselves to a number of religious and charitable activities. The women and youth groups are noteworthy due to their activism. The work of the Centro de Formacion Civica in Pinar del Rio province is also of particular significance as it has tackled a broad agenda of social issues, including democratization and human rights. The moral capital of the Cuban Catholic Church has multiplied throughout the 1990s, a trend underscored by the papal visit of January 1998. The Pope’s masses provided the first opportunity to bring tens of hundreds of thousands of Cubans together outside the purview of the state. The Catholic Church is organized in 11 dioceses, 247 parishes (as of 1996) and around 650 churches. It has one cardinal, 13 bishops, almost 300 priests (representing about 1 per 35,000 inhabitants), almost 50% are foreign born and are located in Havana. The Catholic Church has two seminaries (with 90 seminarians), several nursing homes, nurseries and related health services, a print-

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ing shop, a series of small scale development projects (vegetables gardens, livestock raising, micro-enterprises, cooperatives) and a host of other activities at the grassroots. Among these are cultural events, youth, women and family encounters, civic and educational activities, religious processions, missionary teams, meetings of alcoholics anonymous, pastoral work in prisons, and soup kitchens. Many of these activities are supported by CARITAS. The most impressive indication of the growth of the Church in Cuban society is the number of groups affiliated with it and their expansion into Cuban society. The establishment of dozens of lay organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church ref lects the reach of the growing reach of the institution and the institutional development of civil society despite less than favorable conditions. These groups have wide ranging interests; they include Christian workers (Movimiento de Trabajadores Cristianos, who organized a public procession in Easter in Havana), women (La Legion de Maria, which caters to the sick and the old), and the Union of Catholic Press (Union Catolica de Prensa or UCP). Many are affiliates of international organizations; for instance, the UCP is a subsidiary of the Union Catolica Latinoamericana de Prensa and Regum Christi Movement is connected to a group of Mexican Catholics that has developed methods for distance learning. The international dimension of civil society formation is important in three ways: through affiliations, through the provision of resources and through the establishment of NGO-supportive norms. One of the lay protagonists within the Church is the Centro de Formacion Civica y Religiosa led by Dagoberto Valdes in Pinar del Rio. The Centro describes itself as “an educational program available to all Cubans … to foster the rights and duties of citizenship.” Established in 1992 and approved by the bishops a year later in response to the “apathy” and “uprootedness: that Cuban society has experienced due to the “totalitarian and omnipresent” system of government. The leadership argued that there was a “need to differentiate partisan politics form the common good, the center is guided by a humanistic perspective that encourages the need to recapture the essence of man as an individual.…” The main goal of the Centro is to train lay personnel in the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and open a space for dialogue and participation in an effort to create “communities of participation and life in civil society” by encouraging active citizenship for the betterment of society. The Centro employs language such as pluralism, human rights, civil community, participation, and rule of law. Influenced by Catholic social thought, but not embracing liberation theology, the Centro addresses in its civic education manual a wide gamut of themes, ranging form the rights of workers to Cuban history, from the economy to the sources of democracy. Its perspective on society, the economy and politics can be labeled holistic social development, which has its basis on Catholic social dogma. The center receives financial support from the Venezuelan Asociacion Solidaridad y Fraternidad Elio Aponte Gonzalez among other donors. The Church has become a distribution point of food and medicine, replacing part of the social

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welfare role of the Cuban state. It has also helped publicly and behind the scenes human rights activists and has defended the right of “Concilio Cubano,” an umbrella organization for dissident groups (now defunct), to convene. As the only independent institution with a national reach on the island, the Catholic Church finds itself in a privileged but difficult position due to its own social weakness and government-imposed constraints. The state restricts the number of priests it allows into the country, controls the church’s access to media, prohibits religious schools, and limits the activities of church charities and public manifestations of religious practice (such as open air masses and processions). Civil Society from Within Not all elements contributing to a proto-civil society are external to the state. The case of several groups of intellectuals show that within the organizations of the state pockets of autonomy, potential resistance, and the origins of a potential civil society can be found. The dynamics of intellectual life in Cuba also reveals that the relationship between civil society and the state is interlocking and complex. The history of state-intellectuals relations in revolutionary Cuba has been fraught with friction, in spite of state control through organizations and the forced adherence to the official ideology that permeates intellectual institutions at least nominally.15 Since 1959 the revolutionary leadership (and later organs of the state and the PCC) attempted to cultivate good relations with the intellectuals and the artists. Good relations were defined by the guideline “within the revolution everything, outside the revolution nothing.” Cultural, research and academic institutions have been the arenas in which tensions and conflicts have unfolded between the “state” (the top leaders and the dogmatic elements of state institutions, for instance the Departamento de Ideologia of the Communist Party). These institutions have helped define and implement standards of appropriate behavior, socialized individuals, and controlled them by rewarding those who tow the line and punishing others who do not. For over thirty years the formula has worked with some minor, albeit significant, problems for the top leadership. Since the late 1980s, however, subgroups in the social sciences and in the arts (filmmakers, visual artists, and pop musicians) started to act in ways that suggest an incipient civil society in its emergent stage. Some individual intellectuals and at least one center (the Centro de Estudios sobre America) have expressed policy alternatives within a “pro-revolutionary” parameter (i.e., economic reforms and limited political changes, specifically in terms of municipal government) and have voiced concerns that up to that point have remained in the hidden transcripts of society. The example of the Centro de Estudios de America is the most revealing for it shows how a group of scholars can question from within the dominant policy choices and, when confronted with state repression in 1996, exhibit a corporate

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spirit. The CEA until 1996, when most of its best and brightest were reassigned after the intervention of the Party’s Central Committee, constituted an organization of the proto-civil society even if the Center was sponsored by the Party and the State. In the margins, leading CEA intellectuals were crafting a measure of space and autonomy to study with a critical eye the situation inside the island. Although they showed a sense of esprit de corps when confronted by the highest echelons of the Party in 1996, none of those chastised for pursuing a degree of autonomy reneged on their “revolutionary commitment” to Cuban socialism, reflecting the nuanced nature of their relationship with the state. That gray area of civil society formation deserves attention in one-party state systems for it is there where fissures can be found. From that uncertain and unchartered terrain a few organizations, generally formed by intellectuals or artists have come into existence trying to stake their claim as NGOs. The tendency to seek distance from the state without breaking with it is represented by Pablo Milanes, one of the artists most closely identified nationally and internationally with the revolution due to the popularity of his music. In the early 1990s Milanes created a private foundation (Fundacion Pablo Milanes). The foundation, a self-described, non-governmental organization had as its purpose “to collaborate in the effort to preserve our music and all the arts, and also to create specific programs that foster our works and promote independent projects”.16 The interest in autonomy is clear. What is more oblique is the criticism of official institutions such as the Ministry of Culture that have not been very efficient in fulfilling their responsibilities. The fate of such organizations, like the Fundacion, is not a happy one. The Fundacion ceased to exist due to opposition from state officials. Another factor propelling the dynamic of distancing from the state is the demography of intellectual regeneration. A new wave of intellectuals and artists, especially the latter, coming of age in the mid 1980s have demanded, at times openly and at others less so, greater freedom of artistic expression, that is autonomy. Better educated that the prior generation and removed from the epic saga of the revolutionary struggle, they have been faced with the gap between promise and performance in Cuban socialism, which in turn has led them to question the bases of the regime. The influence of intellectual currents such as deconstructionism and postmodernism that are critical of Marxism (and metanarratives in general) shored up the position of these younger intellectuals vis-à-vis the state. The dynamics associated with informalization and destatization are evident in the patterns of intellectual life in Cuba in the late 1990s and early 2000, which is a prerequisite for greater autonomy and therefore to feed into civil society. Destatization in this case means being less reliance on the state to provide the resources for intellectual production, pursuing self-generated projects and international connections. The result is that authors publish their works through foreign presses, academics secure research or lecturing opportunities

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abroad, and film and video producers make their work without state subsidy or with minimal support in what constitute basically an individual enterprise. The process of destatization and privatization of intellectual product is not only a result of the economic and political strains inside the country, but also of the international norms of the academic communities. The Centro de Estudios de Europa (CEE) as well as the CEA have led the way in terms of receiving international grants and participating in exchanges and professional meetings. Through these venues they have come face to face with of an international epistemic community whose norms include that of autonomy of expression and peer review. These norms have helped shore the work of the individuals who were pushing the line of the permissible inside Cuba. The process of distancing from the state and seeking autonomous forms of action and expression is not transparent, automatic or easy. State officials, especially hardliners and party loyalists, attempt to rein in those centers, subgroups or individuals who are pushing the envelope. They do so by coercion or cooptation. Yet, material and moral interests act as incentives for destatization and privatization. While the government at times has allowed intellectuals to cultivate international connections, especially those that bring foreign currency, after 1996 a series of restrictive measures have been placed to curtail the connections with the outside and the potential autonomy that those can generate. The Social Institutional Landscape of Cuba in the 1990s By the late 1990s the institutional landscape on the island was as variegated as it has been since the late 1960s. After reviewing the types of organizations operating within the Cuban political system a typology can be outlined. In addition to the informal networks that operate day to day at the grassroots and throughout the society in general in a culture of illegality, there are three main types of organizations: Controlled Governmental Organizations (CONGOS), Government Oriented Organizations (GONGOS), and Non-Governmental Organizations (NONGOS). These three types are measured by the degree of independence or autonomy from government control. The categories are fluid in that some organizations may garner greater independence or, on the contrary, may be reined in by the state. Generally speaking, the more recently established associations have greater autonomy. The CONGOS (a label the Cuban government does not employ) are the stateaffiliated mass organizations and agencies that are slowly trying to distance themselves from the central command but they still toe the party line. CONGOS include the Federation of Cuban Women, the Confederation of Cuban Workers, and the Union of Communist Youth, among others. These organizations owe their existence to the Revolution of 1959 and the establishment of the socialist state. They have been loyal regime sustainers, but since the late 1980s they are

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attempting to carve some room of autonomy to respond to the new challenges placed by the grassroots and the economic conditions. A small number of Government Oriented Organizations (GONGOS) (a label that the Cuban government does not recognize either) exists on the island. GONGOS are semi-corporatist institutions in that they enjoy some privileges from the state (i.e. legal recognition and, therefore, the right to operate) but have greater autonomy than CONGOS. The only legal way to establish a nongovernmental organization in Cuba is through a corporatist procedure: another state bureaucracy has to sponsor the new association. To establish such an institution one must have strong personal connections and unblemished revolutionary credentials. GONGOS are of very recent creation, dating to the mid 1980s, the height of official interest in creating NGOs to attract funds from overseas granting agencies. Only a handful of GONGOs have been created; their status is very much in question in the late 1990s. At least one, the Fundacion Pablo Milanes is defunct. The other prototypes of the GONGOS are the Centro Felix Varela (whose director and founder, Juan Antonio Blanco, has lived in Canada since 1997) and the Centro Martin Luther King. The Felix Varela has been able (up to the late 1990s) to deal with new issues (Gay rights, for instance) and sponsor novel events (such as open air concert fund-raisers and local development initiatives). GONGOS can be conceptualized as within-regime-reformers who advocate greater political space while supporting socialism in general. Although they seem to be regime sustainers, GONGOS lessen the hegemony of the state and the CONGOS and in this way contribute to the formation of civil society. The Sociedades Anonimas (quasi-private firms), the joint venture enterprises (between the Cuban state and foreign capital), and the recently established cooperativas (known as UBPCs) are somewhere between GONGOS and CONGOS, which suggests another level of liminality, fluidity and ambiguity in the process of civil society emergence that make purists of all stripes uncomfortable. Non-Governmental Organizations (NONGOS) are those organizations that fit neatly into the standard, liberal notion of non-governmental organization, a category that implies independence from the state. Although the Cuban government has its own list of approved NGOs, those are better viewed as CONGOS or GONGOS. NONGOS in Cuba consist of a number of religious, professional, fraternal and dissident organizations. CARITAS Cuba, the humanitarian associated affiliated with the Catholic Church, is a prime example of an NGO operating inside the island. Many of the NGOS in Cuba have links with international counterparts. Dissident and opposition groups are part of the growing number of NGOs, some of which have strong ties to the Cuban community living in the United States, Europe and/or Latin America. Their space has been limited and their activities are fraught with risk. Yet, they continue to pursue their agendas and new NONGOS, albeit small, continue to be established.

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Will Cuba Have a Civil Civil Society? State-society relations in Cuba since 1959 point to the limits of state power to mold society at will and the long-term inefficiency of state directed mass organizations. The results are apparent in the 1990s. The government, while sustaining the reins of power at the macro level, has encountered increasing difficulty in sustaining legitimacy and governability at the micro level of “la calle” as evidenced by the rise of criminality, the black market, unlicensed self-employment, and a host of “anti-social” behavior such as jineterismo (prostitution especially directed at tourists) and, in the most dramatic of cases, riots in Old Havana in August 1994. Economic reforms in and of themselves, divorced from political reforms, do not lead to civil society formation, at least not in the short run. On the contrary, economic reforms might strengthen rather than weaken the government in the near future. The case of China is illuminating in this regard, as local and mid level party cadre and state bureaucrats benefit from the reforms as national economic managers and foreign entrepreneurs form coalitions with them and funnel resources and privileges to them as their positions are strengthened.17 Beyond the reforms discussed, the Cuban government has not undertaken measures to accommodate or encourage the incipient civil society. On the contrary, human rights groups (in operation since the 1970s) and other independent professional associations (of more recent creation) have been dealt with severely. The Law of Associations, the legislation that regulates the formation of legally recognized organizations, is tightly restrictive. The state, however, has used the notion of civil society for its own interests. In the mid 1980s, the Cuban government encouraged the establishment of semiautonomous groups. The state has allowed some of its agencies NGO status for financial as well as political reasons explained above. But several important factors are militating against the expansion of civil society in Cuba. The principal one is the state that has not conducted political reforms of substance. The state has not redefined the rules of the game and has not expanded the social space necessary for NGOs to thrive. The trend seems to be steering in the opposite direction: greater control. The case of the repression of intellectuals in the CEA and at the University of Havana, the rumored draft version of a new law of associations (which allegedly will make the establishment of GONGOs more cumbersome, if not impossible), the heavy taxes on paladares and the selfemployed all seem to point in this direction. As of early 2000 the hardliners inside the party and the State are in control. The structure of opportunity under the present conditions is not conducive to the legal recognition of GONGOS or NONGOS, nor to the strengthening of groups and their influence in society. Yet, opposition groups continue to proliferate and grow, which shows that structures of opportunity are not the only determinant of human political agency. Sociopolitical factors, such as fear and the retreat to the private—what Albert Hirschman identified as the cycle of shifting involvements—conspire against

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civil society formation and consolidation.18 Cubans, tired of politics and mobilization, are seeking to satisfy their interest and find meaning in the personal realm, trying to be free from politics. The demands that the economy of survival places on individuals in terms of time and energy leads to a necessary selfcenteredness. Combined with a heavy dosage of fear (due to the regime’s repressive tactics against dissenters), these tendencies and attitudes are a poor conduit for civic participation in independent organizations, particularly given the risks associated with such activities. Most Cubans are not ready or willing to join alternative organizations outside the direction of the Party and the government. On the contrary, many have divided loyalties and seem disoriented in reference to the future. The confrontation with the U.S., always a factor in Cuban politics, also reduces the space for civil society by polarizing the debate as to the future of the nation. The processes that are creating the embryonic proto-civil society paradoxically might contribute to erode its civility. The fact that destatization is largely by default argues against the possibility of “thickening” of civil society. Informalization might contribute to the creation of a proto-civil society but tends to undermine its civility at the same time. Informality has resulted in an endemic culture of illegality as Cubans try to resolver. The networks of the informal sector sow the seeds of autonomy and concurrently nurture incivility and civic myopia in so far as they socialize individuals to break the norms of the state and circumscribe cooperation among small circles of family and friends. Proliferation and fragmentation of groups is insufficient to create a vigorous civil society in opposition to the state. Hyperfragmentation tends to undermine concerted action. Although in the short to medium term independent organizations do not have the wherewithal to launch a campaign to redefine the political system from the bottom up, the Varela Project notwithstanding, the proto-civil society that has been in formation since the mid 1980s is important symbolically and practically speaking. The organizations of the emergent civil society can exert a demonstration effect that others will follow, pushing for reform and ushering transition. Once, and if, the state initiates a process of apertura we can expect the proliferation of groups in the public arena. That, in and of itself, will not guarantee the civility of civil society though. The currency of the notion of civil society, the demonstration effect of other countries, the gap between theory and practice in Cuban socialism, and the economic crisis all indicate that civil society, regardless of how long it takes and what specific form it will assume, will be established in Cuba. Once the state opens the door, even a bit, the expansion of civil society will unfold. But the expansion of civil society will not guarantee a democratic turn. That responsibility falls directly on political society. Furthermore, the quality of civil society continues to be an open and troubling question. As in the past, and given the sources of civil society formation on the island, incivility might not be far in the horizon.

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Notes 1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

John A. Hall, ed., Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991). Zbigniew Rau, “Introduction,” in The Reemergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. Z. Rau (Boulder, Westview Press, 1991), 1-24. Marcia A. Weigle and Jim Butterfield, “Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes: The Logic of Emergence,” Comparative Politics (1992): 1-21. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Cambio de regimen o cambios en el regimen? Aspectos politicos y economicos,” Revista Encuentro Otono/Invierno, 6/7 (1997): 3643. Maurizio Giuliano, “El caso CEA,” Ediciones Universal (1998). Damian Fernandez, “The Politics of Youth: Accommodation and Resistance,” in Conf lict and Change in Cuba, eds. E. Baloyra and J. Morris (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1993). Peter Johnson, “The Nuanced Lives of the Intelligentisia,” in Conf lict and Change in Cuba, eds. E. Baloyra and J. Morris (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 137-163. See also Bobes. Dominguez Marifeli Perez-Sable, The Cuban Revolution (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993). Jorge F. Perez-Lopez, Cuba’s Second Economy (New Brunswick, Transaction Press, 1995). Marifeli Perez-Stable, “La crisis invisible: La politica cubana en la decada de los noventa,” Primavera/Verano, 8/9 (1998):56-65. See Fernandez, and del Aguila. Damian Fernandez, Cuba and the Politics of Passion (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2000); Susan Eckstein, Back from the Future (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994). Endre Sik, “Network Capital in Capitalist, communist and Post-Communist Societies” (Working paper 212, The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 1995). Johnson; Bobes. Proposiciones, 1, 1, p.3. Margaret Pearson, China’s New Business Elite: The Political Consequences of Economic Reform (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997); David L. Wank, “Bureaucratic Patronage and Private Business: Changing Networks of Power in Urban China,” in The Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of Political Decline in China and Hungary, ed. A.G. Walder (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995), 153-184. Albert Hirschman, Shifting Involvements (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1982).

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16 The Conventionalization of Collective Behavior Benigno E. Aguirre The conditions, characteristics, and consequences of social control processes for collective behavior (defined by sociologists as “the emergent and extra-institutional social forms and behaviors” [Lofland 1981, p. 411]) traditionally have been important to specialists in the area (Park and Burgess 1924, pp. 785– 864; Smelser 1963, p. 17). Sometimes, though, studies of collective behavior ignore the larger sociocultural setting from which the collective behavior emerges and is regulated, especially its links to social movements (Marx and Wood 1975, p. 372). Even as the similarities between collective and institutionalized behavior are identified (Weller and Quarantelli 1973; McPhail 1969), Robert E. Park’s insight that institutions and social structures of every sort may be regarded as products of collective action remains largely unheeded; little attention is paid to how collective behavior becomes a conventionalized instrumentality of social movement organizations (Milgram and Toch 1969, p. 601; Zurcher 1979, p. 19), whether by informal evolution or formal guidance. Conventional crowds (Blumer 1951) as well as crowd conventionalization (Turner and Killian 1957) are well-known examples of collective behavior. As Smith indicates, the term “conventionalization” denotes collective behavior’s I would like to thank the staff of the Interlibrary Loans Office of the Sterling C. Evans Library, Henry C. Dethloff, and Kenneth White for their assistance. Larry Boyer, A. Schaffer, Jim Copp, E.L. Quarantelli, Jerry Gaston, and two anonymous reviewers read and criticized earlier versions of this paper, and I thank them for their comments and suggestions for improving the manuscript. I am indebted to my Cuban friends, who must remain anonymous, for helping me understand many things about collective behavior in Cuba. I appreciate their patience and good humor throughout our conversations. I am solely responsible for the contents of this report. Requests for reprints should be sent to B.E. Aguirre, Department of Sociology, Texas A&M, College Station, Texas 77843. 241

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becoming regularized and predictable, displaying “characteristics of control facilitating and disposing their recurrence” (Smith 1968, p. 172). The conventionalization of collective behavior is an important sociological problem (Marx 1980) of immense practical interest to the contemporary world in which revolutionary governments manipulate instances of collective behavior for their own ends (Turner and Killian 1957, pp. 143–61). This chapter focuses on how collective behavior becomes conventionalized. It describes the social setting for certain collective behaviors in Cuba and shows how the revolutionary government has partially conventionalized them. These Cuban data, collected from a kind of social organization different from that of the United States, can enlighten us about frequently neglected questions. I propose to identify the prevailing forms of collective behavior occurring in Cuba and to offer a sociological analysis of the collective behaviors produced by the institutions of the Cuban revolution. The Setting In revolutionary Cuba, politics is characterized by the political mobilization of the masses, a system directed by the Cuban Communist party and by the mass organizations which requires the constant, direct, nonvoting participation of the people in government programs. The dynamics of this system of political mass mobilization are not well understood; the social organization of one of its constituents, the collective behavior of the people, has not received much attention. Scholars of the Cuban revolution have emphasized the historical antecedents of the revolution, the actions of the revolutionary elite, and the broader aspects of social change brought about by the revolution, such as the emergence of new institutions and the setting of public policy (but see Domínguez 1978, 1982; LeoGrande 1978; Fagen 1972). My focus in this chapter is on the actual instances of collective behavior occurring in Cuba, their social organization, and their relationships to the institutions of the revolution. The four parts of the chapter are (1) a discussion of the procedures used in the analysis; (2) a description of the institutional context of collective behavior in Cuba, showing the importance of two mass organizations, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions; (3) descriptions of five forms of collective behavior abstracted from the data: political gatherings, testimonials of solidarity, ceremonials of reception, celebrations of death, and joyful crowds; and (4) an assessment of the implications of these findings for theories of collective behavior. Procedure The 1966–81 weekly summary editions of Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist party (PCC) were analyzed for information about collec-

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tive behavior in Cuba. This information came from articles on outdoor events involving large numbers of people in spatial and temporal proximity. To simplify the analysis, the Granma editions were selected on alternating six-month periods. Those published during the first six months of 1966 were scanned first to identify relevant articles for the content analysis, followed by the issues of Granma published during the last six months of 1967. This sampling rotation was used throughout the 16 years under study to preserve the historical continuity of the collective behavior events of interest. There were three exceptions to this rotation. Granma’s weekly review series began publication on February 20, 1966, and the 1966 content analysis was extended to include the months of July and August of that year. The analysis also includes the October 1976 Granma editions covering the mass mobilization to protest the terrorist bomb explosion aboard a Cuban Airways plane off the coast of Barbados and the July and August 1978 issues of Granma covering the Eleventh International Festival of Students and Youth in Havana. From the articles I tried to obtain information on the time and place of the events, the number of participants, the extent of planning and organization, and the relationships of the mass organizations and other official agencies of the government to the event. The dates of the editions cited appear in parentheses. The Granma Weekly Review series overrepresents news about events in the city of Havana and its environs, so that incidents of collective behavior in other parts of the country could not be studied satisfactorily. This would be a serious problem if my goal were a count of these events. It was not. Instead I tried to identify general forms of collective behavior in Cuba. Given the homogeneity of the culture, these forms, though obtained from material which overrepresents Havana, correspond closely to social practices elsewhere on the island. A more complete analysis of the Cuban mass media involving several newspapers and journals (Nichols 1982) perhaps would provide information on other forms of collective behavior such as panics, rumors, fads, sport victory celebrations, acquisitive crowds, or religious cults, news of which is systematically excluded from Granma and thus could not be included in this study. Similarly, information about collective behavior not supportive of the regime is excluded. Moreover, I did not have sufficient time and resources to analyze instances of collective behavior in the turbulent first years of the revolutionary government during the phase of the active anti-Castro social movement and the mass protests (Montaner 1981, pp. 193–204). I also obtained information from 18 Cuban refugees, whom I helped resettle after their arrival in 1980 during the Mariel to Key West sealift. With the exception of one person from Cienfuegos, the informants were from metropolitan Havana and were mostly males in their twenties and thirties who had been blue-collar workers in Cuba. These key informants clarified a number of social processes as these surfaced in Granma.

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The forms of collective behavior identified (mass political gatherings testimonials of solidarity, ceremonials of reception, celebrations of death and martyrs, and joyful crowds) are abstractions of specific empirical instances of collective behavior occurring during the period 1966–81. They are static, summative descriptions of sociocultural complexes rather than unique events or precise numerical counts of traits. Their identification is for analytic purposes only. The structural features of the five forms are sufficiently different to warrant their separate treatment. Nevertheless, in real life the forms may lack mutual exclusiveness because the instances of collective behavior they represent often occur in spatiotemporal proximity or succession. Following Lofland (1981) I used collective emotion as the major analytic criterion for the five forms; the collective emotions of death, political struggle, and joy (approximating Lofland’s [1981, p. 415] three fundamental emotions of fear, hostility, and joy) led to the alternative instances of collective behavior studied in this report. In conjunction with the dimension of dominant emotion, other criteria were used to specify additional subtypes of collective behavior within each of the three categories: place of occurrence, recurrence and scheduling through time, stationary or mobile character, and avowed purposes. This approach to collective behavior emphasizes the emotional and behavioral aspects of collective behavior instead of viewing collective behavior as a “departure from convention,” perhaps a more common view of the field. None of the forms of collective behavior identified in this study is unique to Cuba. Collective emotions surrounding death, joy and politics are nearly universal emotions, giving rise to instances of collective behavior in almost every culture. Moreover, the three forms of collective behavior introduced by the revolutionary government (political gatherings, testimonials of solidarity, and ceremonials of reception) occur elsewhere as well. They have their precursors in China’s mass campaigns (Bennett 1976) and in the USSR’s mass political rituals (Lane 1981). In this sense their occurrence in Cuba is derivative. Nevertheless, from the perspective of traditional political culture in Cuba these forms are new; they represent a significant cultural creation of the revolutionary state. The Institutional Context It is not productive to try to understand instances of collective behavior in Cuba during 1966–81 as autonomous from and in opposition to the established institutions. The opposite is more nearly true: instances of collective behavior are the result of purposeful, goal-oriented, rational, manifest, and institutionalized activities. In Cuba, collective behavior—the scheduling of events; the resources needed to carry them out; the logistics of their displacement, concentration, and dispersal; the ideological justification and approval of the acts—is the product of established mass organizations and state agencies under the control of revolutionary elites (Gonzalez 1974, pp. 153–76; Thomas 1983).

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Two mass organizations are important for structuring and controlling collective behavior events: the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC). Other mass organizations—such as the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) (Randall 1981, pp. 132–35; Azicri 1981), the National Association of Small Peasants (Mesa-Lago 1978, pp. 97– 101), and People’s Power (Kenworthy 1983)—cooperate with the CDR and the CTC and often take a leading role in the production of collective behavior events (e.g., for FMC rallies: August 28, 1966; August 31, 1968). In many cases, however, the pivotal mass organizations are the CDR and the CTC (Lewis, Lewis, and Rigdon 1978, p. 534); the CDR’s domain is the neighborhood, the CTC’s, the workplace. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution The CDR is permanently engaged in a number of activities, the importance of which, since CDR’s founding in September 1960, have changed from an initial emphasis on armed struggle against terrorism, sabotage, and violent counterrevolution to a present-day ubiquitous social mechanism of revolutionary socialization. (For a history of the CDR see Domínguez 1978, pp. 261–67.) The CDR maintains close organizational ties with the Committee of Revolutionary Orientation of the Central Committee (CC) of the PCC, the Ministry of Interior, the National Police, the CTC, the FMC, other mass organizations, and other ministries and institutes of the government. The CDR could not be as effective as it is without their support. The CDR is an exceptional mass organization with a membership of 6 million (about 80 percent of the adult population of Cuba). It is organized pyramidically (Salas 1979, pp. 296–329), with a national directorate headed by a coordinator and vice-coordinator at the top. At the next level are the CDR provincial committees. Each province is divided into regions or sections made up of CDR zones or municipalities, each with its own regional CDR committee. At the bottom, each zone CDR supervises city block or base CDRs, the most numerous subunits of the CDR (Butterworth 1980, pp. 110–11). Each city block CDR has a president, secretary, and treasurer who are elected annually by the members of the committee. Base CDRs are made up of subcommittees (frentes) in charge of different organizational functions among the neighbors. Thus there are frentes in charge of vigilance, finances and savings, education, voluntary work, upkeep of public places, public health, recreation, collection of reusable material, and ideological work and study. The internal division of labor in the other higher levels of the CDR organization could not be determined either in this study or from the available literature (Butterworth 1974, p. 188), although it possibly reflects the major organizational concerns identified so far (Salas 1979, p. 304; LeoGrande 1979, p. 53). Zonal jurisdictions are purposely kept small, usually encompassing a score or fewer base CDRs (Butterworth 1980, p. 110) to make it possible for zone and

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city block leaders and members to know each other personally and in order to assign responsibility to specific individuals for carrying out the numerous activities of the organization. The jurisdictions of zone CDR committees overlap the jurisdictions of the lowest organizational level of the National Police, the zone police substations (Salas 1979, p. 278). This interorganizational overlap facilitates efficient social control, for once the residence of someone suspected by the police or internal security is known, the authorities can activate their agents in that person’s zone; the agents, in turn, can contact the proper CDR committee members for current, authenticated information on the suspect’s friends, visitors, family, biography, work history, present-day activities, participation in revolutionary programs, and overall moral revolutionary character (Lewis et al. 1978, p. 553). This can be done retrospectively as well since the official identification card of every adult gives the person’s residential history. The CDRs made 180,000 reports to the police from 1977 to 1918 (Domínguez 1982, p. 47). The CDRs are of enormous importance in many other aspects of the daily life of the people (Yglesias 1969, pp. 283–93). For example, in order to change residence, permission must be secured from the appropriate base CDR to transfer the family food identification card to the new address. Repairing or remodeling a house requires a certificate from the CDR to request the necessary (and scarce) building materials from People’s Power, the organization in charge of their distribution (Harnecker 1980, pp. 209–17; LeoGrande 1979, pp. 53–60). Or, to give another example, letters from base committees vouching for the correct revolutionary orientation of individuals help in gaining access to membership in the Union of Cuban Communist Youth (UJC) and to professional university programs and other avenues of upward social mobility (Butterworth 1980. pp. 100– 101: Salas 1979, p. 52; Lewis et al. 1978 p. 534). The CDR, centered in the place of residence, will be shown to be an important force in structuring some types of collective behavior in Cuba. There is another key spatiotemporal dimension which is also closely regulated: the workplace. The Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions Almost every Cuban in the labor force is a member of the CTC (Mesa-Lago and Zephirin 1971, pp. 160–68; Domínguez 1978. pp. 271–79). Usually in work places there are a manager for the enterprise; technical cadres; member(s) of the PCC; secretaries of the CTC, UJC, and FMC; an industrial security personnel or members of the Committee for Physical Protection (Salas 1979, p. 279) who are in charge of labor safety, the control of theft, and the physical protection of the plant (Mesa-Lago 1978, pp. 82–97; 1982; Salas 1979, pp. 330–66). Work discipline is enforced through several practices. The major problems are loafers, absenteeism, negligence, fraud, carelessness, inferior product qual-

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ity, disobedience, and other matters adversely affecting productivity (Loney 1973). Serious episodes of indiscipline involve the Ministry of the Interior and the local security personnel or “economic police” (Policía Económica). Workers have individual files or work records (Salas 1979, p. 339) which contain information on their work history, level of technical training and proficiency, frequency of voluntary labor contributions, absences, and number of merits and demerits. Every place of work has production assemblies in which the workers analyze production problems (Domínguez 1982, p. 39). In these assemblies, there is discussion of absenteeism, lateness, mistreatment of consumers, lack of respect toward superiors, relative fulfillment of production norms, and future production goals allocated by central planning personnel. Decisions based on labor merits are made about which of the workers in the work unit will receive the right to purchase television sets and other permanent consumer goods allocated to the unit. Labor merits are earned by voluntary work, participation in revolutionary acts, passing educational courses, and acting as a voluntary teacher. Lack of discipline, wastefulness, inefficiency, and having been punished or admonished at work are considered demerits (Mesa-Lago 1973, p. 32). The CTC selects advance (model) workers annually on the basis of labor merits accumulated during the preceding years (Harnecker 1980, p. 18). Exemplary work centers have the privilege of flying the Banner of the Heroes of Moncada and workers from these centers have special benefits (MacEwan 1975, pp. 89–93). The CDR and the CTC help create instances of collective behavior in Cuba. Encouraging participation in mass mobilizations is an important responsibility of these mass organizations. Their roles will be shown following a discussion of the major types of collective behavior. Types of Collective Behavior The variety of forms of collective behavior present in a society at any given time is limited (Tilly 1978, p. 151). Only five major forms of collective behavior could be identified in this study: the joyful crowd, the celebration of death and martyrs, the mass political gathering, the testimonial of solidarity, and the ceremonial of reception. Each form stands in a different relationship to the established traditions of the culture and to the revolutionary organisms of social control (Salas 1979). Joyful crowds and celebrations of death and martyrs have rich traditional roots in the Cuban culture antedating the revolutionary triumph and are occasions of preferential behavior reflecting attachment to a line of behavior which has an overwhelming expressive meaning to the individual (Goffman 1961, pp. 88–90). The other three forms of collective behavior (the political gathering, the testimonial of solidarity, and the ceremonial of reception) are new to the cultural landscape. They represent, in comparison with the other two forms, occasions

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of deferential behavior or commitment in which the persistent participation of persons over time is predominantly for instrumental reasons. These are the three forms in which the coercive nature of the revolutionary institutions that structure collective behavior is strongest. The Stranger: The Choreography of Political Gatherings Mass political gatherings are either stationary or mobile, as in parades. They are carefully structured events in which the CDR and the CTC have considerable influence. The revolutionary institutions’ successes in the orderly production of political gatherings result from their ambitious use of space and, to a lesser extent, of time. In conjunction with their control of the social organizations of the neighborhoods and the places of work, their control of the space and time dimensions of the gatherings are the key factors. Most gatherings occur during the daytime, and persons participate in them as members of residential, school, or work-related groups which have their preassigned specific physical locations in the pattern of the gathering. What may appear to the untrained eye as an immense sea of anonymous faces of persons temporarily detached from their customary social relations to participate in the jornadas of the revolutionary calendar is instead a publicly acknowledged, carefully rehearsed, and studied choreographic exercise of groups who are firmly attached to existing institutions and occupy clearly specified and lasting niches. La Plaza de la Revolucíon—The most massive examples of political gatherings occur in Revolution Square, Havana’s civic center. The square is approximately 4.6 million square feet, too small to hold the stationary gatherings of close to 1.5 million people which occasionally are held there. On such occasions the open areas of surrounding government buildings are pressed into service, adding approximately another 2 million square feet of space. Towering over the square is the statue of the apostle José Martí y Pérez, a 426–foot-high monument overlaid with 10,000 tons of white marble. The square was used first on May Day 1959, four months after Castro’s victory. The successful execution of political gatherings is a complex exercise in interorganizational coordination. In each city block, CDR members canvass the residents to ascertain whether they intend to participate in the upcoming gathering. There are legitimate reasons for not participating. For example, the elderly, the sick or infirm, mothers (or other child-care providers) in charge of infants and very young children, members of mass organizations or of agencies assigned to vigilance and other services, and workers involved in production are not expected to attend. Persons in these categories who rearrange their affairs so that they may attend nonetheless are given special recognition as committed revolutionaries. Neighbors without these bona fide reasons face unmitigated pressure to conform. No one is required by law to attend the gatherings but everyone finds it

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advantageous to do so. For individuals attendance builds up a certain amount of moral capital in their relations with the CDR and other mass organizations and government agencies. This capital is exchanged later on for relative advantages in other areas of life (Salas 1979, p. 305). A few days after a gathering, diplomas are distributed among the participants as symbolic reminders of the promissory exchange nexus. The list of names of would-be participants collected by the block CDR members is passed on to the zone CDR committee, which arranges for transportation. Neighbors meet at a prearranged time and place, usually in front of the zone CDR’s office, travel together as a group with their CDR leaders to a preassigned point located on streets near the square, and return there to go home after the gathering. Zone CDR groups (and groups from other organizations) carry placards with their identifying names and numbers and this information is used for assembling them in the square. Apparently, on-site coordinating units direct the movement of the participants from their points of disembarkment to their preassigned locations in the square. This implies the existence of an official plan which divides the square into smaller spaces. These spaces are then assigned to specific groups on the bases of certain commonalities; FMC groups, CDR groups from the same municipality, and CTC groups from the same industry or occupational or professional categories occupy adjacent spaces in the square. A similar mobilization, paralleling that of the CDR, occurs in all work centers. Under the direction of the CTC, and as part of a regional mobilization plan in which the various representatives of the different mass organizations and the party serve as coordinating links, a segment of the labor force (participation is limited by the labor needs of ongoing production) goes to the gatherings. Workers and their local organizers leave their work centers in groups and return to work after the gathering is over. These arrangements lead logically to the characteristics of mass political gatherings in Cuba: their enormous size, the control of emotion, and the fact that mechanisms of social control continue to regulate individuals’ behavior. Anonymity in the political gathering is reduced. Granma (May 8, 1966) describes the 1966 May Day celebration in which approximately 1 million people participated. The article speaks of an old man, poorly shaved, retired, who reportedly entered the parade lines, passed by the reviewing stand at the base of the José Martí Monument, and then asked a militiaman for permission to leave because he was too old to continue with the rest. The union members with whom he joined in the parade recognized him immediately as a stranger; he was not a member of their group! The intent of the Granma article is to celebrate the man’s patriotism, but the unintended message—and from my viewpoint the more important one—is that a stranger can be recognized among a million faces. Multiplied untold numbers of times throughout whole provinces, the impact of the mobilization efforts of the CDR, CTC, and other mass organizations on daily patterns of social ordering is overwhelming. Again, Granma (May 11, 1980)

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documents the effects, this time with photographs. On May Day 1980 in the midst of the incidents in the Peruvian Embassy and the subsequent Mariel-Key West sealift, 1.5 million people from Havana Province went to Revolution Square to listen to Fidel Castro’s speech. They began to assemble in the morning, the stationary rally started at 5 P.M., and Castro began his hour-and-a-half speech three hours later. The pictures in Granma show well-known main thoroughfares of Metropolitan Havana (Línea Street, intersections of L and Twenty-third Street and Twelfth and Twenty-third Streets in Vedado, Thirty-first Avenue in Marianao) completely deserted during that day, and the article calls this “yet another indication of the fact that everybody was in the Square on May Day” (May 11, 1980). That this was true is doubtful. Total surveillance and control and perfect interorganizational coordination and linkages are not possible. Nevertheless, the empty streets are ample proof of the exceptional effectiveness of the mobilization apparatus. Castro recognized this accomplishment in his speech that evening: On the way to this meeting this afternoon. I could see, once again, the incredible sight of absolutely empty streets. How could I have imagined the size of this meeting? I thought it would be very big. I thought it would be the biggest in all the 21 years of the revolution: but it was really impossible to imagine its magnitude. . . . They say that I am organizing the march. They say that I am organizing it. They say, that was organized by Castro. It was really the mass organizations that organized it. . . . The Party can’t organize the march; it simply can’t: the march can be organized only by the mass organizations, this rally can be organized only by the mass organizations. [May 11. 1980]

The Twenty-sixth of July.—The Twenty-sixth of July commemoration is the best-known example of the recurrent, scheduled, stationary political gathering. It marks the date of the 1953 attack on Moncada Garrison in the city of Santiago de Cuba by a group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro, and the emergence of Castro as a national leader. Information reported in Granma expands and confirms our knowledge of the political gathering as an analyzable form of collective behavior. The historic Twenty-sixth of July cannot be encompassed by the construct, political gathering. It is a collective effervescence, the apex of the revolutionary calendar, and a date of quasi-magical significance, a combination of Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and Christmas. It includes almost three weeks of festivals, dances, caravans, and assemblies throughout the island; it is a period of collective reflection, reverence, inspiration and reaffirmation, sober record taking, and proud public recognition of work well done. The preparations for the Twenty-sixth of July are detailed and all-encompassing; for example, in 1978 the main rally to celebrate the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the attack on Moncada Garrison was held in the Twenty-sixth of July School City (the garrison itself) in Santiago de Cuba (August 6,1978). A national committee and provincial organizing committees were set up; the national com-

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mittee was made up of subcommittees in charge of supplies, transportation, cultural and recreational activities, rallies, meetings and exhibits, and agitation and propaganda. There were also two working groups, one to look after both the foreign delegations invited to the main rally and the diplomatic corps accredited in Cuba, and the other to look after the surviving men who had fought in the attack and the relatives of those who had died (April 9, 1978). Even as far back as 1966 the various provinces had their own slogans (e.g., that of the Province of Matanzas “all canefields cleaned and fertilized by the twenty-sixth”) and special activities (e.g., in the Province of Havana, discussion of the “History Will Absolve Me” speech made by Castro during his trial in the aftermath of the Moncada Garrison attack); CDR members adopted new goals to which they pledged themselves; work centers met in assemblies to discuss the meaning of the Twenty-sixth of July (July 17, 1966); and local governments held municipal assemblies in every municipality in the country to report their activities to their neighbors and to honor the Twenty-sixth (July 10, 1966). In 1968 the Twenty-sixth of July was celebrated in Revolution Square, Santa Clara, Las Villas Province. The gathering started at 9 A.M. (July 21, 1968). Castro and other dignitaries on the speakers’ platform were joined by over 2,000 vanguard workers and other outstanding youth; students; farmers; women; members of the armed forces, CDR, FMC, and other organizations; and winners of special emulations (June 2, 1968). In conjunction with this event Granma reports the major tasks of the mass organizations which show that the Twenty-sixth of July as a political gathering—that is, as the assembling of hundreds of thousands of people at a given place and time to listen to the revolution’s leaders—is deeply enmeshed in the larger, established pattern of the social organization of the country. The symbol of the “Twenty-sixth” justifies the leaders’ demands on the people to perform meritorious acts at work and elsewhere. Moreover, the claims of this quasi-magical, vital myth have been redirected and reexpressed, not in the form of a political gathering but in agricultural work. In 1969, there was no mass political gathering; instead, people were mobilized to honor the Twenty-sixth of July through work in the sugarcane fields to fulfill Castro’s goal of 10 million tons of sugar cane for that year (August 3, 1969). The attempt failed (LeoGrande 1979, pp. 49– 50), but the remarkable powers of the mass organizations were shown once again. Parades.—The May Day Parade is the most recurrent and massive example of a scheduled nonstationary political gathering. Although parades differ from stationary gatherings, the preplanning and control by organs of state power also operate here. The CTC is the mass organization primarily responsible for the May Day Parades. In 1966 Lázaro Peña, a member of the Central Committee (CC) of the PCC and secretary general of the CTC, presided over the CTC organizing committee of the May Day Parade. Peña’s organizing committee stressed the need

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for uniformity among the participants, warning against a “desire for individual distinction that might exist within the [various] unions.” Preparations involved flash meetings in work centers of Havana to urge workers to participate, the issuance of slogans for the occasion, the decoration of work centers, and trial parades to achieve maximum efficiency. Trial parades complete with standard bearers, Pioneers, militia members, students, teachers, members of the CDR and FMC and workers were held in regional units of the CTC and in municipalities throughout the province. The minister of labor and other government officials presided over these trial parades. The 1966 parade began at 3 P.M. with 25 unions, separated into blocks of workers from the same labor union, participating. Each block was made up of forward-facing lines of 25 participants. Other mass organizations participated, but only residents of the western provinces of Havana Pinar del Río, and Matanzas marched in the celebrations in Revolution Square. The 1974 May Day Parade started at 4 P.M. with the playing of the national anthem and a 21–gun salute and lasted three hours. Castro, other dignitaries, and invited guests paraded to their seats in the presiding stand at the base of the José Martí Monument. Hundreds of vanguard workers sat on bleachers in front of the reviewing stand. Other workers occupied their assigned places along the parade’s route. Roberto Veiga general secretary of the CTC, and Ramiro Valdés, member of the Political Bureau of the PCC, spoke; the parade started immediately afterward. More than 140,000 workers (organized into 23 unions), students, a gymnastic tableau of 2,340 workers, and other persons paraded past the reviewing stand. A military band concluded the proceedings (May 12, 1974). In subsequent years the descriptions in Granma of the structural features of the May Day Parade do not vary appreciably, although they detail an increasing elaboration of the ornamental features of the event. Thus, by 1976 the parade began at 3 P.M. with the singing of the national anthem by a 2,000-voice choir of the Havana provincial branch of the CTC, accompanied by a 400–piece band from the National Trade Union of Arts and Entertainment Workers (May 9, 1976). The organizational principles established by the mid-1970s endure to this day; the scheduling of participation during the daytime, structuring of the parade and rally in groups of people who know one another, the careful use of the sideline space of the parade route, the use of vanguard workers and committed revolutionaries as human barriers in front of the reviewing stand to add to the security of the persons in it, and the use of the parade to recognize meritorious work toward the goals of the revolution. Participation in the May Day Parade, either as invited guests in the reviewing stand or in front of it, or as participants in the parade itself, is an honor—a means to encourage moral rather than material motivation among the people.

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Not only are Vanguard Workers and Heroes and Heroines of Labor recognized in such events, but work centers which have won various emulations are also invited to participate. These uses of parades (and stationary gatherings) for recognition of revolutionary merit indicate how collective behavior is manipulated by the Cuban state. With appropriate modifications, these general principles of organization are used repeatedly in other unscheduled parades. Such evolving traditions illustrate a process of elite tactical learning or cultural accumulation: the use of normative and material resources developed through trial and error by such organs of state power as the CDR and the CTC in subsequent mobilizations of the masses in support of state policy. The March of the Fighting People is a recent example of nonrecurrent and nonstationary political gatherings. It occurred during the period in which, on removal of the Peruvian Embassy’s guards by the Cuban government, thousands of Cubans entered that embassy’s grounds soliciting political asylum (Domínguez 1981, pp. 56–57). The march was organized by the CDR and made to coincide with the celebration of the anniversary of the Victory at the Bay of Pigs, April 17, 1961. More than 1.5 million people marched by the Peruvian Embassy on Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue), Havana. The march lasted 13 hours. People from 15 municipios throughout the city and from municipalities throughout the province of Havana participated in blocks. There were areas of concentration, where people from these different political entities assembled prior to marching, and areas of mobilization (the route of the parade itself) (April 27, 1980). Granma refers to the Municipio of Tenth of October, which had gathered more than 100,000 people but could not enter the area of mobilization because of the lack of space. This was so despite estimates that the march moved so rapidly that over 100,000 participants passed in front of the embassy every hour (April 27, 1980). Almost a month later, on May 17, a second March of the Fighting People, again organized on the same principles, occurred in Havana to protest the May 2 incidents in front of the U.S. Interest Section (in which disaffected Cubans had protested the long wait to obtain U.S. visas). This second march began at 10 A.M. Almost 2 million Cubans marched down the Malecón (seafront drive), passing by the building which houses the U.S. delegation in Havana. The control of emotion evinced in these two occasions is noteworthy. Hundreds of thousands of people were showing strong feelings against the American and Peruvian diplomats, encouraged to express such feelings by their revolutionary leaders, and yet the marchers were uniformly capable of limiting their acts to respect the property and person of these foreigners. During the march, 2,400 unarmed militia personnel guarded the Embassy of Peru (April 27, 1980). In addition to the recurrent scheduled parades, previous embassy incidents are another source of systemic learning which undoubtedly helps explain the

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effectiveness of the social control mechanisms in these two marches. For example, in 1970 two Swiss diplomats were kept inside the U.S. Embassy in Havana for four days against their will because a large hostile crowd surrounded the building, demanding the release of 11 Cuban fishermen who had been apprehended by U.S. Navy personnel off the coast of the Bahamas (May 24, 31, 1970). The Testimonial of Solidarity The testimonial, a variety of collective hostility (Lofland 1981, p. 428), is another form of collective behavior that occurs in Cuba. Testimonials are organized by the CDR, CTC, and other mass organizations to mobilize the Cuban people in support of the government’s foreign policy. They offer opportunities for citizens to prove their revolutionary identifications to their fellows and to participate, however symbolically and vicariously, in the drama of international politics. They serve as a vehicle for socializing the people into the Marxist eschatology of the international class struggle. Testimonials are frequently part of a complex of activities associated with official national declarations of solidarity, such as the weeks of solidarity with the people of the Dominican Republic (May 1, 1966) and Vietnam (March 31, 1968), the five days of solidarity with the people of Uruguay (July 6, 1975), the International Conference of Solidarity with the Independence of Puerto Rico (September 21,1975), the month of solidarity with the Korean people (July 6, 1969), and the International Seminar on the Eradication of Apartheid (June 6, 1976). As compared with political gatherings, testimonials are much more frequent, smaller, and more localized. They often occur in places such as parks, schools, factories, or clinics which previously have been named for the country in question, for example, Heroic Vietnam Dam, Nguyen Van Troi Park, Pedro Albizu Campos School (Puerto Rico), and Presidente Allende School for the Training of Elementary School Teachers. Thousands of testimonials have been held, justified by various occasions. One dominant theme is the protestation of the “imperialist” actions of the U.S. government or those of its local surrogates. For example, U.S. actions in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Puerto Rico, Chile, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, and Mozambique have occasioned testimonials of solidarity. The subjugation of racial and other minorities in the United States has also occasioned testimonials: thousands gathered at the monument to the Maine in Havana to express their solidarity with the struggling “Afro-North American people” in their fight against racism (August 27, 1967); three years later the killing of Kent State University students brought about a similar response (May 10, 1970).

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Testimonials are more than acts of protest. Protest is juxtaposed with the belief in the inevitability of the revolutionary victory in the ongoing worldwide struggle against the United States and its capitalist allies. The CTC organized flash rallies of workers to celebrate the downing of the three-thousandth American warplane over North Vietnam, and students held similar rallies (July 7, 1968). Revolutionaries throughout the world who die in the struggle or who suffer political imprisonment and revolutionary organizations that are participating in national liberation struggles are also the subjects of testimonials. The largest testimonial of solidarity was occasioned by the death of Chilean president Salvador Allende. Five massive political gatherings took place; moreover, from the morning of September 14 to the evening of September 19 a continuous line of mourners passed by the José Martí Monument in Revolution Square to sign a book of condolences (September 23, 1973). I could not obtain detailed information on the organization of testimonials. Probably they are organized the same way as political gatherings with groups from various mass organizations used as building blocks. In contrast to political gatherings, testimonials occur in changing physical settings, so that the location of the various groups in the testimonials is much less certain; this probably makes the social control of the participants more problematic. Whether this is the case must await further investigations of collective behavior in Cuba. My notes show that the frequency of testimonials has decreased during the late 1970s. However, because of the limitations of my sources, this is only an impression. The Ceremonial of Reception As with political gatherings and testimonials of solidarity, the ceremonial of reception, which began in the late 1960s, is a relatively new form of collective behavior in Cuba. Like these other forms, it is a culturally developed pattern for mobilizing people in support of the goals of the state. Like excited crowds, ceremonials are a marginal type of collective behavior (Lofland 1981, p. 441). They are welcoming acts that begin with the arrival of an invited guest, usually a head of state, at the José Martí International Airport. In contrast to testimonials, ceremonials have recurrently stable physical locations: the airport itself, the known routes from it to the diplomatic protocol residences of the government in Miramar (a subdivision of the city of Havana), and the routes on which Fidel Castro subsequently takes the foreign dignitaries to a few well-chosen agricultural and industrial projects located in most instances in the province of Havana (e.g.. Genetic Cattle Project) and in the cities of Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, and Santiago de Cuba. Ceremonials have their rituals and orderly sequence of events, understood by everyone but perhaps the strangers for whom the occasion has been organized. They take place in the late morning or early afternoon and vary in their

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complexity in accordance with the statuses of the foreigners and the subtle symbolic elements of foreign policy. In its most developed form, the ceremonial of reception includes diplomatic rituals offered to the honored guest at the time of arrival at the airport, that is, the greeting by Fidel Castro and other leaders, the 21–gun salute, the playing of the national anthems of the two countries by the Band of the General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), and a review of ceremonial honor troops. The occasion also includes a large and enthusiastic assemblage at the airport itself and on both sides of the streets on the route driven on by the open motorcade carrying Fidel Castro and his guests, with the people waving a sea of flags of the visitors’ country and cheering the guests wildly. All of this takes place on streets lined with posters and banners of welcome. As with political gatherings in Revolution Square, the space along each side of the streets on the route from the airport to the protocol residences is carefully allocated to specific subunits of such mass organizations as the CTC, the CDR, the FMC, and the UJC. The same mobilization strategy used in political gatherings is used in the ceremonials of reception. The overall effect on the visitors must be quite pleasant, for the route is almost 24 kilometers long. Apparently, the invited guests are welcomed by a mass of individuals disconnected from the activities of their daily lives, but, in reality, these individuals are surrounded by their neighbors, workers, loved ones, and associates. Therefore, their presence (or absence) in the ceremonial is noted by significant others and is a meaningful act in the broader contexts of their lives. Ceremonials of reception are associated with other forms of collective behavior. Usually the visitor is taken on tours of the countryside and of industrial projects in Cienfuegos, Santa Clara, and, most often, Santiago de Cuba. Receptions and political gatherings are organized in these locations, and the visiting dignitary has the opportunity to speak to a Cuban audience. In a very few occasions a giant political gathering to honor the visiting dignitary is conducted in Revolution Square, Havana. At times ceremonials of reception establish the locales for future testimonials of solidarity. Thus, Marien Ngouabi, president of the People’s Republic of the Congo, inaugurated a senior high school (República Popular del Congo High School) in Artemisa, Havana Province, during his visit to Cuba in September 1975 (September 28, 1975). Similarly, Erich Honecker, president of the German Democratic Republic, formally opened a cement plant (the Karl Marx Cement Plant) in Cienfuegos which had been partly funded by his country (June 8, 1980). And, of course, the political gatherings that are a part of a reception also at times occur in these allegorically named places. For example, during his recent official stay in Cuba, Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos spoke at a rally held in the President Agostinho Neto School in the Isle of Youth (March 30, 1980). Finally, some empirical instances of collective behavior straddle the line between ceremonials and testimonials. On November 5, 1979, a huge throng

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of people congregated on Salvador Allende Avenue in response to a call issued by the CTC for them to express their solidarity with the Puerto Rican people, and Lolita Lebrón, Oscar Collazo, and other Puerto Rican political prisoners who recently had been released from prisons in the United States and welcomed to Cuba were present and honored during the afternoon’s proceedings (November 18, 1979). The Celebration of Death and Martyrs Celebrations of death and martyrs and joyful crowds represent traditional instances of collective behavior in Cuba in which people get together to act out their internalized expectations. These two forms existed prior to the revolution. In comparison with the testimonials of solidarity and the ceremonials of reception, and even perhaps with most political gatherings, the existential justifications of these forms are closer to the historical experiences and daily lives of the people. They represent continuity of cultural forms in the ever-changing social organization of the revolutionary society. The government uses these two traditional forms of collective behavior to lend legitimacy to the newer forms of collective behavior used in mass mobilizations, and they too are regulated by the agencies of state power. The theme of death and martyrs, so much a part of Hispanic culture, occasions instances of collective behavior in Cuba. The revolutionary government has adapted this traditional aspect of the culture, linking its own struggles with this deeply felt need of the Cubans to remember their honorable dead. The ongoing redirection of cultural patterns can be detected in the makeup of the contemporary pantheon of martyrs deemed worthy of remembrance. Not all honorable dead are included; history is rewritten anew, at least partly, by every generation, and the dead are affected by these reinterpretations; they, too, have their own cycles of popularity (Kearl and Rinaldi 1983). The number of celebrated heroes who died in the struggle for Cuban independence from Spain has diminished: José Martí, Antonio Maceo, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and the eight medical students from the University of Havana who were executed by Spanish authorities on November 27, 1871 make up the short list of persons whose deaths are currently remembered and honored (December 14, 1975: March 10, 1974: December 9, 16, 1973: February 15, 1970: December 3, 17, 1967: February 3, 1980). Martyrs of political struggles in this century can be divided into those who died before Fidel Castro’s rise to political prominence and those who died afterward. The first category includes persons whose intellectual positions could be easily integrated into the contemporary revolutionary ideology. Again, it is a relatively short list of names: Julio Antonio Mella, Jesús Menendez, Eduardo Chibás, and Antonio Quiteras (August 21, 1966; May 15, 1966; February 1, 1973; August 24, 1969; February 3, 1974). Most martyrs honored today are in the

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second category, they died either during the struggle against Fulgencio Batista’s government or in defense of the present-day government. The latter, the most recent dead in the pantheon, died while occupying social positions in the revolutionary society: as members of Cuba’s diplomatic corps in Portugal (May 2, 1976) and Canada (April 16, 1972); as internationalist teachers in Nicaragua (November 1, 1981; December 13, 1981); as acting members of the CDR (May 11,1980); as military personnel defending the coasts (April 26, 1970) or the land area surrounding the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo (May 29, 1966): as casualties in the Battle of Girón; and as victims of sabotage in Cuba (March 10, 1968), of attacks on the fishing fleet, or of traffic accidents (April 9, 1972). Other martyrs in this group are the young men and women who died October 6, 1976, in the bomb explosion aboard a Cuban Airways plane off the coast of Barbados while on their way to represent Cuba in a regional sports meet (October 24, 1976). However, in spite of some brief recognition (September 23, 1979), those who died in the recent military campaigns in Africa (Gonzalez 1977, pp. 9–10; Domínguez 1981) are excluded from the status of martyrs. The most famous of the current heroes is Camilo Cienfuegos, the popular commander who disappeared at sea in 1959 and around whose memory a cult has emerged. Every year thousands of meetings and marches to the sea occur throughout Cuba, and young children throw flowers into the gulf in homage to him (November 4, 1979; October 16, 1965; November 7, 1971; November 2, 1969). Ernesto (Che) Guevara (who died in Bolivia in 1967) is also an important figure in this group, as is his lieutenant, Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider (Tania). With time, of course, even old soldiers (e.g., Celia Sánchez, Lázaro Peña) die of illnesses and infirmities, and this natural process of attrition continues to add revolutionary heroes to the pantheon. Celebrations of death have their characteristic structure and rituals. An ongoing practice is the intensification through rituals of the collective memory of the martyrs of the pantheon. There are various types of intensification ceremonies, from the solemn annual commemorations of the dates of the ultimate sacrifice of specific individuals, usually in the form of pilgrimages to their tomb, to the collective remembrance that occurs every year on the Day of the Martyrs of the Revolution, July 10 (August 7, 1966). The rededication of the ashes is the most culturally complex manifestation of these occasions of intensification; the remains are exhumed and subjected to physical manipulations which invest them with higher social prestige and status, such as the urn’s being carried in a procession and made the focus of a solemn public ceremony attended by the leaders of the revolution. After these ceremonies, the ashes are then housed in a more fitting permanent resting place (September 7, 1975; January 11, 1976; August 7, 1977; March 26, 1978). The other important social-processing ritual of death is the funeral procession. The official funeral processions for the revolutionary elect reflect the customs of the general population (August 14, 1977; October 8, 1965), among

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whom, because the dead are still very much part of their social lives, the handling of the funeral processions retains the unspecialized character of an earlier America. What has changed in these official funerals has been the trappings of power available to the state. The social organization of martyred death grants legitimacy to the revolutionary government, thus supporting its claims to be the true depositor and guardian of the nation’s patriotic honor. The dead live and, recognized by the revolution, continue to work on its behalf. Thus, the solemnity of the Twenty-sixth of July derives from the remembrance of those who died in the attack on the Moncada Garrison. Guevara died in Bolivia and in Cuba Fidel inaugurated the Land Clearing Trailblazers Brigade in his honor (November 5, 1967; December 31, 1967), and nationwide work drives (October 12, 1969) and month-long ideological campaigns are carried out to pay homage to Guevara and Cienfuegos (November 4, 1979). The observance of the memory of the dead solidifies the relationship of the revolutionary government to the Cuban nation. Joyful Crowds Collective joys (Lofland 1982) are the other form of collective behavior identified in this study. People have fun together in Cuba as elsewhere, and their fun is not necessarily in accordance with the relevant officially approved definitions of what feelings and activities are appropriate for given occasions. Much collective euphoria in Cuba occurs in such official secular acts not solely devoted to fun as the inauguration of industries and other plants and projects (December 16, 1979). The enormous size of most political gatherings and the fact that crowd polarization is at a minimum, with only a small proportion of the participants close to the speakers’ platform (Milgram and Toch 1969: Marx and Wood 1975), ensure the existence of tangential, interstitial social definitions of the situation and accompanying activities which may include merriment and entertainment; the very structure of these collective occasions allows the existence of micro social worlds, fleeting yet enjoyable moments of relaxation and disassociation from the more serious business at hand. The massive parades also permit joyful occurrences. Perhaps they are even more conducive to merriment than stationary gatherings because in them the spatiotemporal dimensions of the relevant enforceable and enforced official definition of reality are quite limited; most of the time the participants are not performing in front of the reviewing stand (or other central focus of the event) and are left to their own devices in the company of their fellows. Ceremonials of reception are also conducive to collective joy, for presumably people participate to show their happiness in and appreciation of their guests. Moreover, they are similar to parades in that the participants’ performance is quite short; most of the time they must wait for their moment to cheer the

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moving focus of collective adulation. Under these conditions merriment is encouraged, and the culturally appropriate gestures of merriment occur. It is not known whether the cause of the merriment is the relatively unknown strangers or the more immediate and personal relationships of group members. My guess, however, is that most participants enjoy their outings mostly for the second reason. Secular collective joys also occur during occasions designed for gaiety and jubilation. However, the business of revolutionary politics is never fully disassociated from collective proletarian joys (May 9, 1976); the latter is preamble to the former. Street dances and other joyful events, such as Children’s Day (July 15) (August 12, 1979) and the International Pioneers’ Camp in Varadero (August 7, 1977; August 19, 1973), occur throughout the country prior to the Twenty-sixth of July and the May First anniversaries. National and international art festivals usually occur prior to political occasions (July 22, 1979; July 23, 1967). Humor festivals also occur at these times (July 16, 1978); Santiago de Cuba hosts the Twenty-sixth of July main ceremony even as its carnival winds down (July 15, 1973; July 23, 1967). The same is true of Havana’s carnival, which in 1967 was moved from February and March to the weekends prior to July 26 (March 12, 1966; July 10, 1966). Similarly, carnivals of music (December 13, 1981) and festivals of cinematography (December 16, 1979) occur prior to the January 1 celebration of the end of the Batista regime. The information in Granma on the social organization of carnivals is scanty. Apparently people participate with their unions. Each union has its group of dancers, float, and candidate for the carnival queen contest (February 27, 1966). A carnival commission, as well as the Commission of Revolutionary Orientation of the CC of the CPC, organizes the proceedings. The latter is the same party unit that is in charge of synchronizing the activities of the various mass organizations in other types of collective behavior: thus perhaps the same procedures developed for these other occasions are used in carnivals as well (July 5, 1970). In 1970, the work of these bodies included the scheduling of activities and the designation of the areas of the city Havana that were to be used for the festivities. These areas were assigned to “production and service agencies” (unions?), which were responsible for the festive activities that occurred in them. The agencies prepared stands, band platforms, dances, and entertainment programs (July 5, 1970). Carnival queens are elected every year (July 5, 1970; July 18 1971; July 16, 1972; July 15, 1973), and outstanding workers are chosen to escort the star and starlets during the inauguration balls (July 15, 1973). In 1971 Georgette, the star of the Carnival of Havana, was escorted by a fisherman who recently had been released from prison in the United States (July 18, 1971). One of the most massive occasions of collective joy was the Eleventh Festival of Youth and Students. The festival was preceded, in 1977, by a National Youth

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and Student Festival which honored the Twenty-sixth of July (July 24, 1977). It took place in Havana during July 28–August 5 1978 (August 6, 1978). The festival consisted of political debates and seminars, parades, gymnastic displays involving almost 15,000 performers (May 21, 1978), ceremonies, street dances, and a huge rally on Revolution Square (February 12, 1978). More than 18,000 young foreigners were in attendance. On July 31 these youngsters met FMC and base CDR members who had earlier rehearsed their welcome. The hosts had cleaned and decorated the streets and had prepared food and amateur theatrical performances for the foreign delegates (July 2, 1978). The five centers for political debate in the festival had “prearranged topics revolving around anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship the Festival’s watchwords” (July 2, 1978). Commissions, debates, parades, and public forums were also carefully organized by at least four committees: the Permanent Commission of the International Preparatory Committee; the National Preparatory Committee (NPC), chaired by Fidel Castro; the Organizing Committee of the NPC; and the Support Committee of the Organizing Committee of the NPC (May 21, 1978). Conclusion The various forms of collective behavior in Cuba are conventionalized and used by the institutions of the revolution. The forms are interrelated. Joyful crowds create the background for massive political gatherings, celebrations of death solemnize them, and testimonials of solidarity and ceremonials of reception socialize the people in the symbolism of the international class struggle and the communist ideology. Instances of collective behavior represent important instrumentalities of the socialist state. The conventionalization and manipulation of collective behavior are central to the purposes and goals of the revolutionary government. Collective behavior keeps alive the political ideology of the elite; maintains gemeinschaft linkages among the Cuban people and the elite; and, by encouraging the people to participate in revolutionary programs, provides the basis for identifying the lukewarm, the potentially deviant, and the true believer. The participation expands the amount of time the average person must devote to matters of concern to the government and consequently contracts his or her private life; it serves to maintain hatred of the United States while preserving ingroup-outgroup boundaries and a sense that Cuba is an embattled country, thereby strengthening the people’s solidarity and loyalty to the ruling elite. The conventionalization of collective behavior in Cuba has implications for our understanding of social control. Instead of using internalized social standards, the government manipulates the behavior of masses of people to channel individuals’ behaviors (Janowitz 1978; Troyer 1983). Particularly in the new forms of collective behavior established by the revolutionary movement, social

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behavior is not regulated through the presence of legitimate standards of social conduct in the individual’s conscience. Instead, the structures of social domination make it profitable for people to conform to the expectations of the state. The hope of the revolutionary movement is that these practices of social manipulation will eventually create a new socialist man. Such a prototypical human represents, however, a drastic departure from the cultural ideal of anarchic individualism. That collective behavior might be subservient to state policy should not be surprising; it is an illustration of how some kinds of social organization can focus collective behavior more effectively than other kinds of social organizations. Indeed, it may be that in the modern world with its emphasis on planning and social control conventionalized collective behavior may become more prominent than in the past. And it might not only become so in communist states. Zurcher (1979, pp. 21–22) refers to the “business of collective behavior,” lucrative enterprises devoted to the generation of fads, spontaneous crowds, political support, mass hysteria, and the manipulation of public opinion and tastes through propaganda and advertising. Clearly, planned collective behavior is often functionally equivalent to more spontaneous incidents, for instance, in the generation of solidarity in social organizations. Such planned events may preclude the disruptions which often accompany the latter. Even as cross-cultural comparative studies come to characterize the social science specialty of collective behavior, increasing attention needs to be devoted to the study of the conventionalization of collective behavior and its manipulation by revolutionary movements in power throughout the world. The link between this specialty and the field of comparative politics is long overdue, for such intellectual cross-fertilization would be instrumental in developing knowledge from which to derive generalizations and testable hypotheses about the topic. However tentative the findings of this research, I believe that future research will underscore a basic premise revealed by it: it is theoretically and empirically unfruitful to think of collective behavior in Cuba as spontaneous, irrational, unplanned, or without lasting consequences. Nor is it fruitful to think of it as the behavior of alienated and isolated persons. On the contrary, the integration of individuals into the process of revolutionary reconstruction increases their participation in instances of collective behavior and ensures that their participation is controlled (Zurcher and Snow 1981, pp. 451–53; Waldman 1976). References Azicri, Max. 1981. “Women’s Development through Revolutionary Mobilization: A Study of the Federation of Cuban Women,” Pp. 276–308 in Cuban Communism, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.

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Bennett, Gordon. 1976. Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leadership. Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, University of California. Blumer, Herbert. 1951. “Collective Behavior.” Pp. 67–121 in Principles of Sociology, edited by Alfred McLung Lee. New York: Barnes & Noble. Butterworth, Douglas. 1974. “Grass-Roots Political Organization in Cuba: A Case of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.” Pp. 183–206 in Anthropological Perspectives on Latin American Urbanization, edited by Wayne A. Cornelius and Felicity M. Trueblood. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. ———. 1980. The People of Buena Ventura. Relocation of Slum Dwellers in PostRevolutionary Cuba. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Domínguez, Jorge I. 1978. Cuba: Order and Revolution. Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press. ———. 1981. “Cuba in the 1980’s.” Problems of Communism (March-April), pp. 48–59. ———. 1982. “Revolutionary Politics: The New Demands for Orderliness.” Pp. 19– 70 in Cuba: Internal and International Politics, edited by Jorge I. Domínguez. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Fagen, Richard R. 1972. “Mass Mobilization in Cuba: The Symbolism of Struggle.” Pp. 201–24 in Cuba in Revolution, edited by Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson R. Valdes. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Goffman, Erving. 1961. Encounters. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Gonzalez, Edward. 1974. Cuba under Castro: The Limits of Charisma. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 1977. Complexities of Cuban Foreign Policy.” Problems of Communism (November-December), pp. 1–15. Harnecker, Marta. 1980. Cuba: Dictatorship or Democracy? Westport, Conn.: Hill. Janowitz, Morris. 1978. “The Intellectual History of Social Control.” Pp. 20–45 in Social Control for the 1980s: A Handbook for Order in a Democratic Society, edited by J.S. Roucek. Westport. Conn.: Greenwood. Kearl, Michael C., and Anoel Rinaldi, 1983. “The Political Uses of the Dead as Symbols in Contemporary Civil Religions.” Social Forces 61 (3): 693–708. Kenworthy, Eldon. 1983. “Dilemmas of Participation in Latin America.” Democracy 3 (81): 72–83. Lane, Christel. 1981. The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Study—The Soviet Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. LeoGrande, William M. 1978. “Mass Political Participation in Socialist Cuba.” Pp. 114–28 in Political Participation in Latin America, edited by J.S. Booth and M.A. Seligson. New York: Holmes & Meier. ———. 1979. “The Theory and Practice of Socialist Democracy in Cuba: Mechanisms of Elite Accountability.” Studies in Comparative Communism 12 (1): 39–62. Lewis, Oscar, Ruth M. Lewis, and Susan M. Rigdon. 1978. Neighbors: Living the Revolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Lofland, John. 1981. “Collective Behavior: The Elementary Forms.” Pp. 411–46 in Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives, edited by Morris Rosenberg and Ralph Turner. New York: Basic. ———. 1982. “Crowd Joys.” Urban Life 10 (4): 355–81. Loney, Martin. 1973. “Social Control in Cuba.” Pp. 42–60 in Politics and Deviance, edited by Ian Taylor and Laurie Taylor. Baltimore: Penguin. MacEwan, Arthur. 1975. “Incentives, Equality and Power in Revolutionary Cuba.” Pp. 74–101 in The New Cuba: Paradoxes and Potentials, edited by R. Radosh. New York: Morrow. McPhail, Clark. 1969. “Student Walkout: A Fortuitous Examination of Elementary Collective Behavior.” Social Problems 16 (4): 441–55. Marx, Gary T. 1980. “Conceptual Problems in the Field of Collective Behavior.” Pp. 258–74 in Sociological Theory and Research: A Critical Appraisal, edited by H .M. Blalock, Jr. New York: Free Press. Marx, Gary T., and James L. Wood. 1975. “Strands of Theory and Research in Collective Behavior.” Annual Review of Sociology 1:353–428. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 1973. “Castro’s Domestic Course.” Problems of Communism (September), pp. 27–38. ———. 1978. Cuba in the 1970s: Pragmatism and Institutionalization. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, and Luc Zephirin. 1971. “Central Planning.” Pp. 145–84 in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, edited by Carmelo Mesa-Lago. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Milgram, Stanley, and Hans Toch. 1969. “Collective Behavior: Crowds and Social Movements.” Pp. 507–609 in The Handbook of Social Psychology, edited by G. Lindzey and E. Aronson. Reading. Mass: Addison-Wesley. Montaner, Carlos A. 1981. Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction. Nichols, John Spicer. 1982. “The Mass Media: Their Functions in Social Conflict.” Pp. 71–112 in Cuba: Internal and International Affairs, edited by Jorge I. Domínguez. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Park, Robert E., and Ernest Burgess. 1924. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Randall, Margaret. 1981. Women in Cuba: Thirty Years Later. New York: Smyrna. Salas, Luis. 1979. Social Control and Deviance in Cuba. New York: Praeger. Smelser, Neil J. 1963. Theory of Collective Behavior. Glencoe. Ill.: Free Press. Smith, Thomas. 1968. “Conventionalization and Control: An Examination of Adolescent Crowds.” American Journal of Sociology 74:172–83. Thomas, Hugh. 1983. The Revolution on Balance. Washington, D.C.: CubanAmerican National Foundation. Tilly, Charles. 1978. From Mobilization to Revolution. Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley. Troyer, Ronald J. 1983. “Social Control in the People’s Republic of China.’’ Unpublished manuscript, available from author on request.

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Turner, Ralph H., and Lewis M. Killian. 1957. Collective Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Waldman, Loren K. 1976. “Mass Society Theory and Religion: The Case of the Nazis.” American Journal of Political Science 20 (2): 319–26. Weller, Jack, and Enrico Quarantelli. 1973. “Neglected Characteristics of Collective Behavior.” American Journal of Sociology 79 (November): 665–85. Yglesias, José. 1969. In the Fist of the Revolution: Life in a Cuban Country Town. New York: Random House. Zurcher, Louis A. 1979. “Collective Behavior: From Static Psychology to Static Sociology.” Unpublished manuscript, available from author on request. Zurcher, Louis A., and David A. Snow. 1981. “Collective Behavior: Social Movements.” Pp. 447–82 in Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives, edited by M. Rosenberg and R.H. Turner. New York: Basic.

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17 The Internet and U.S. Policy toward Cuba Taylor C. Boas Authoritarian leaders in the information age are confronted with an unmistakable dilemma. On the one hand, the Internet and associated information and communication technologies offer enormous economic potential for developing countries, and the increasingly interconnected global economy thrives on openness of information. On the other hand, the information revolution poses new challenges for regimes that rely on centralized political control. Mexico’s ruling party, for example, opened to the world in the early 1990s and relaxed its hold on the media but then chafed under pressure for further political reform by Internet-empowered supporters of the Zapatista movement. Currently, China weighs its growing Internet economy against the protests of the Falun Gong, whose members have organized mass demonstrations using e-mail and the World Wide Web. In countries where they can get access, networks of dissidents, activists, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have shown that the Internet can be a useful tool in pressuring an authoritarian regime to change. So far, however, Cuba has been successful in staving off such political dangers of the Internet. Unlike the telephone, which facilitates one-to-one communication between dispersed individuals, or radio and television, which allow for one-to-many broadcasting from a central location, the Internet is a many-to-many medium that permits each user to send to, and receive from, a multitude of recipients and sources. As such, it does not lend itself to centralized control. The interconnected, transnational nature of the Internet complicates the task of censorship. Readily available tools to conceal identity and the encryption embedded in commercial software make it harder for authorities to keep watch on their citizens. Inexpensive pricing (compared to international phone and fax calls) facilitates networking among civil society actors. While none of these factors mean that governments will fail to control the technology, each poses new and 266

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significant challenges to regulators in democratic and authoritarian regimes alike. Indeed, the dictator’s dilemma is real—but it may not be insoluble.1 Protest does not equal democratization, and the Internet has yet to take a lead role in the demise of any authoritarian regime. Conventional wisdom may suggest that information-age dictators are doomed to downfall or economic extinction, but authoritarian regimes do not give up so easily, and few accept the inevitability of their decline. Most have sought to control the Internet in some way, minimizing subversive use of the medium while extracting tangible benefits. Different regimes have taken different approaches, and some are quite willing to err on the side of caution, promoting access to the Internet where it directly benefits the regime and restricting it everywhere else. Such strategies are inevitably a compromise between political control and economic dynamism, but compromise is not capitulation. While an all-good-things-go-together optimism pervades much of today’s thinking about the Internet’s political impact, many authoritarian regimes are successfully staving off the dictator’s dilemma. Cuba is a case in point. In the aftermath of the Cold War, the United States has increasingly sought to promote democracy in Cuba by technological means. Since the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, international telecommunications have been strategically exempted from the U.S. embargo, and U.S. policy has attempted to engage the Cuban people through greater information flow. During this period, the Cuban government has slowly but steadily allowed the development of its connection to the Internet. Contrary to the hopes of U.S. policymakers and Cuban exiles, however, the information revolution has failed to vanquish the Cuban revolution. Almost a decade after the regime first began to experiment with international computer networking, it is as authoritarian as ever. Hardliners are firmly in control of the government, and the government is still firmly in control of the Internet. Cuba’s cautious response to the Internet has been shaped by the economic and political incentives the regime has faced, as well as the dynamics of its antagonistic relationship with the United States. Information initiatives of U.S. policy, combined with its firm opposition to the Cuban government, have heightened the security concerns of regime hardliners and encouraged them to maintain centralized control over the Internet. To minimize the threat that the new technology could pose while still profiting from its potential, Cuba has chosen to regulate the Internet by promoting access where it benefits the regime and restricting it where potentially subversive. For Cuban NGOs and dissident groups from across the political spectrum, this strategy means that an organization’s access to the Internet—and its potential use of the medium for logistical operation—varies directly with its orientation toward the government. In such an environment, the Internet has brought no political change to Cuba, and it is unlikely to do so anytime soon.

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U.S. Policy and the Cuban Political Environment As with almost all political decisions the Castro regime has made in its 41 years, its response to the challenges of the Internet has been profoundly influenced by its relationship with the United States. Information and communication technologies have figured prominently in U.S.-Cuba relations since the early days of the Cuban Revolution—the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began clandestine radio broadcasting to Cuba as early as 1960, and U.S. Information Agency (USIA)-affiliated Radio Martí has beamed politically oriented programming toward the island since 1985. In the past decade, this age-old form of public diplomacy has been expanded into new media. Inspired by the role attributed to information flow in the demise of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, policymakers of the 1990s began to focus on opening up Cuba’s closed society by improving the country’s telecommunications linkages to the outside world. The development of this new thinking led to the passage of the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) of 1992, which marked a significant shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba. While maintaining firm opposition to the Cuban government and tightening certain aspects of the economic embargo, the CDA also sought to provide “support for the Cuban people” by facilitating humanitarian donations from U.S. NGOs, encouraging people-to-people contacts, and increasing information flow between the two countries. A major component of these provisions was the promotion of telecommunications services, previously prohibited under the embargo. As then-Congressman Robert Torricelli, sponsor of the legislation, wrote in a 1991 op-ed: We should allow increased phone service with the island. We should provide facsimile machines to human rights, church, and professional organizations, which would permit them to speak over the head of the Cuban government to fellow democrats throughout the world.2

Combining containment of the Castro regime with engagement of its population was an awkward marriage at best: a compromise that sought to infuse a new approach into a traditional hardline Cuba policy while appeasing the Cuban-American political lobby and assuring the right that the United States was not getting soft on Cuba. While U.S. policymakers had hoped that Cuba would prove receptive to the initiatives, the Cuban government quickly labeled them as a Trojan horse designed to undermine the Revolution from within.3 This interpretation was not unique to Cuban officials. While most policymakers in the United States described the Cuba policy as the promotion of a peaceful, democratic transition, others employed more hard-line language. In April 1998, for instance, Marc Thiessen, press spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that “the debate on Cuba has to be about ways to subvert the Castro regime.”4

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Beyond the question of language, however, the actual process of implementing the people-to-people initiatives of U.S. policy has shown that intentions go beyond simply encouraging rapprochement between the civil societies of both countries. Because the CDA requires that a U.S. NGO obtain a Treasury Department license for aid donations to Cuba, the U.S. government effectively retains veto power over the participation of any given applicant, many of which have long been critical of the embargo and the United States’ hard-line policy toward Cuba. According to Richard Nuccio, former special adviser to the president on Cuba, administration officials in recent years have adopted the view that there are both “dangerous” and “good” NGOs interested in working in Cuba, and they have taken a close look at the political orientation of the proposed Cuban partner when ruling on license approval. The balance has been further tipped toward anti-Castro groups with the passage of the 1996 Helms-Burton (Libertad) Act, which authorized the president to “furnish assistance … for individuals and independent [NGOs] to support democracy-building efforts for Cuba.” Grants administered to U.S. NGOs under this provision have been directed overwhelmingly toward groups that strongly oppose the Cuban government and stand behind U.S. policy.5 In Cuba, concerns over U.S.-led subversion have strengthened the hand of hardliners within the regime who invoke frequent national security threats to justify the quashing of reform, attacks on internal opposition, and minimal opening to the outside world. Crackdowns on Cuban dissidents have increased since the active promotion of the CDA’s people-to-people initiatives. In February 1996, the government arrested 100 members of the human rights group Concilio Cubano; further arrests have followed in the years since. 6 In 1999, it passed an “antisubversion” law that mandates lengthy jail terms for independent journalists and others who are considered accomplices in U.S. efforts to undermine the regime. Much of the recent restrictions on political space, however, have been directed not at the traditional target of open opposition, but rather at the new NGOs that many have held up as potential initiators of peaceful reforms from within.7 A notable casualty of the new political climate in Cuba was the Center for Study of the Americas (CEA), a think tank purged in 1996 for its progressive economic and political ideas and close relations with U.S. academics.8 Internet Regulation by Access Restriction Around the time that policymakers in the United States were formulating the CDA, Cuba began experimenting with international computer networking, setting up an e-mail link through occasional long-distance phone calls to an Internet service provider (ISP) in Canada. The initial Cuban decision to establish this connection was a relatively low profile and noncontroversial one, but some in the United States soon began to notice the e-mail service and took an interest in

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exploiting this new medium for their information initiatives. In 1992, a RAND report to the under secretary of defense for policy by Cuba scholars Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt specifically mentioned the recently established email connection and urged the United States to “build bridges across computer networks … in the expectation that freer information flows should foster pluralist tendencies.”9 In 1993, the cultural attaché of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana obtained two e-mail accounts with the approval of network administrators and posted information on U.S. policy to an electronic bulletin board in Cuba; the accounts were swiftly withdrawn in response.10 As the United States began to implement the CDA in the first half of the decade, and as it began to appear that it would incorporate the Internet into this policy, the Castro regime became more concerned about the subversive potential of full Internet access. According to the founder of Cubaweb, the official government website, most officials considered the Internet “an influence coming from the North,” the land of “the enemy.”11 When a direct link was finally established in 1996, therefore, it was accompanied by a law that sought to establish strong centralized control over any use of the Internet within Cuba. Access to the Internet would be selective, the law stated, and would be granted “in a regulated manner … giving priority to the entities and institutions most relevant to the country’s life and development.”12 In the years since, such prioritization of Internet access has been central to the government’s strategy for reaping positive returns from the medium while guarding against the possibility of subversion. Despite Cuban concerns over the destabilizing aims of U.S. policy and the political dangers that the Internet might present, there are many reasons the regime has chosen not to ignore this new medium. For one, Cuba has long realized the potential benefits that information technology can bring to traditional areas of development such as education and health care. As a result, it has consistently strived to promote the use of computers and the Internet to support these social gains of the Cuban Revolution. The Ministry of Public Health’s network “Infomed,” for instance, features online medical journals, pharmaceutical databases, and an e-mail list service for distributing health alerts to doctors and hospitals. Youth computing clubs offer classes in computer use and programming, as well as e-mail access (albeit domestic only) for many of their members.13 Furthermore, the Internet offers a political benefit to a regime that has long sought to counter international criticism and improve its image without fundamentally changing its system. Externally oriented Internet resources such as the government’s official Cubaweb site (www.cubaweb.cu) provide an opportunity to show an “official face” to the world and tell the regime’s version of domestic and international events. A variety of state publications are available online, including the international edition of the Communist Party newspaper Granma, which can be read in six languages. A 1997 article from the online version states the Party’s perspective quite clearly: “It’s somewhat paradoxical

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that the Internet, created in the United States and almost 70 percent operated from that country, has become an effective tool enabling this weekly to bring to the world what the world wants and is rarely able to know about Cuba: the truth.”14 The greatest immediate benefit of the Internet for Cuban regime, however, may be economic. The medium has proved a boon for Cuba’s growing tourist trade, both as a means to advertise through various government-sponsored sites and as a vehicle to book reservations, check flight times, or support credit card authorization. A website for online money transfer lets exiles send funds to their Cuban relatives, another key source of foreign currency. The regime has undertaken efforts to make the Internet available to Cuban firms and foreign joint ventures operating in the country, and several ISPs offer increasingly reliable service to these commercial customers. Furthermore, Cuba has long sought to be a scientific and technological power of the developing world, and it has privileged the use of the Internet in its growing biotechnology industry, including the online marketing of its products. Clearly, the Internet offers numerous benefits to the Cuban government, but it also poses an undeniable threat to an authoritarian regime that wishes to stay in power. If opposition groups and NGOs supportive of change could use the Internet to facilitate their logistical organization and transnational networking, they would likely bring greater pressure on the regime for its reform or outright replacement. Concern for this possibility is compounded by worries over the destabilizing potential of U.S. policy and the growing independence and international contacts of certain NGOs. The Cuban leadership clearly believes, as Vice President Raúl Castro claimed in an infamous 1996 speech, that “the glasnost which undermined the USSR and other socialist countries consisted of handing over the mass media, one by one, to the enemies of socialism.” In response to this threat of Internet use by the opposition, Cuba has been particularly cautious in its strategy for Internet regulation. Rather than allowing widespread, market-driven access and trying to control Internet content through censorship, Cuba has promoted Internet access only where it directly benefits the regime and has restricted it everywhere else. As a result, Internet users constitute only a tiny minority of the country’s population of 11 million; 1999 figures claim that there are 25,500 e-mail accounts that can send messages internationally, and only 2,000 computers with direct access to the Web.15 E-mail or Web access is permitted only through the workplace, and users share a single account much more frequently than they are allowed individual access. Outside of the workplace, there is no access available, not even for the lucky few with enough hard currency to afford it. Cuba has no Internet cafes or connections in public libraries and no ISPs that will offer service to the average paying customer. The few that are granted Internet access in Cuba enjoy uncensored access; there is no evidence that the regime burdens itself with the technologically challenging task of purifying the content of a global medium. Arguably, it

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does not need to—those with Internet access are already sympathetic to the government’s point of view. Internet Access among Cuban NGOs Cuba’s strategy of restricting access to the Internet effectively means that potential opponents or initiators of reform in civil society are denied the opportunity to use the medium for logistical organization. A look at Internet access and use among Cuban NGOs and dissident groups makes this fact abundantly clear.16 For 16 organizations surveyed during the summer of 1998, the level of Internet access that each had been granted was directly correlated with its orientation toward the government. Cuban NGOs operating in the areas of environmental conservation and sustainable development—social priorities that the Cuban government shares—almost universally enjoyed access to international e-mail. Several Cuban think tanks, also relatively pro-government in their orientation, received similar levels of e-mail access, and one had been granted the rare privilege of full Internet access with the ability to browse Web pages outside of the country. In addition, two protestant religious organizations in the good graces of the government had been e-mail users for many years. Such NGOs shared macro-level goals and priorities with the state and only rarely came into disagreement with officials about specific approaches to projects or activities. The picture was quite different for NGOs that emphasized their neutrality or dissidents that openly criticized the regime. While sympathetic religious organizations had long enjoyed access to e-mail, the famously neutral Catholic charity Caritas endured an interminable delay for an official ruling on its request and still has not received access. Three dissident groups, openly critical of the government and continually subject to harassment by authorities and neighborhood committees, had no access to computer communications of any sort, could not use fax machines or place international phone calls, and constantly had their local telephone communication monitored. Several had received donated computers from supporters abroad, which they used for such tasks as word processing and database management, but authorities eventually confiscated the machines under the guise of “registering” them. In such an environment, serious use of the Internet to organize independence from or opposition to the regime is a distant prospect indeed. Relatively pro-state organizations in Cuba with access to e-mail have found it to be an effective tool for networking with foreign NGOs, forming alliances with organizations that can provide funding and logistical assistance in carrying out their activities in Cuba. Several NGOs sympathetic to the regime use their international e-mailing capacity to help organize protests against U.S. policy toward Cuba, such as the Friendshipment Caravan that circumvents the embargo to bring unlicensed aid donations to the island. Each of the surveyed NGOs with

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access to e-mail rated it as their number one means of international communication, and many said that it had had a significant impact on the functioning of the organization. It is quite clear that use of the Internet can support transnational networking efforts among organizations aligned with the regime. As for its potential use by those who oppose the regime or seek significant reform, Cuba’s strategy of Internet regulation by access restriction appears to have the medium well under control. With no access to computers at all, and minimal access to telecommunications of any sort, critical or even neutral organizations will not be following the example of the Zapatistas or Falun Gong anytime soon. Conclusion Cuba is a prime example of why the development of information and communication technologies—even antihierarchical, many-to-many technologies such as the Internet—does not necessarily favor a democratic political system. The introduction of the Internet in any authoritarian country may present a new set of challenges to the regime, but its actual impact will be mediated by intervening social factors—among them the way that the government chooses to regulate the technology. Authoritarian regimes will base their approach to the Internet, and specific regulation strategy, on the combination of threats and benefits that they perceive from the medium. In the case of Cuba, concerns over the subversive potential of U.S. policy have encouraged the country’s hardliners to err on the side of caution when approaching the Internet, maintaining strong centralized control through a strategy of access restriction. This approach has allowed the regime certain economic, political, and social gains, while guarding against Internet use by dissidents and NGOs that might seek political opening or openly oppose the government. Certainly, Cuba cannot reap as much economic benefit from its state-restrained Internet as authoritarian regimes like China and Singapore, which promote widespread, market-driven access to the technology. Whether this presents a dictator’s dilemma to which Fidel Castro will succumb, however, is far from certain. Since the 1992 passage of the Cuban Democracy Act, an important element of U.S. policy has been predicated on the assumption that furthering the information revolution in Cuba will contribute to openness within its society. While the theories behind CDA were first conceived before the Internet was on the radar screen of U.S. policymakers, the new medium has been incorporated into this strategy as it has developed in Cuba and has posed challenges to other authoritarian regimes around the world. Other media, such as the telephone, have had a measurable impact on the island; international phone service has dramatically improved communication between Cubans and relatives in exile, and it has facilitated the work of independent journalists, who dictate their reports by phone to colleagues in Miami. The Internet, supposedly the most

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unrestrainable of information and communication technologies, has not had comparable effects. The Cuban government has developed a stable regulatory strategy for the Internet, and all other things being equal, it is unlikely to alter this approach. Changes in other variables, from U.S. policy to Cuba’s economic health, might influence the regime’s response to the Internet, but the Internet alone will not bring democracy to Cuba. The case of Cuba also offers a larger lesson for interpreting the dictator’s dilemma in the information age. While Cuba’s experience does not invalidate the idea that the diffusion of the Internet can pose significant challenges to authoritarianism, it does show that authoritarian regimes of the information age have more options than simply democratization or economic decline. Governments may opt for a less risky approach, limiting access to the medium while still securing some economic benefits. Networks of dissidents and reform-minded NGOs have shown that they can use new technological tools to place pressure on their governments, but their information-empowered activism is limited by their access to technology, a factor over which regimes can choose to retain full control. In many countries around the world, the Internet may eventually work to the detriment of authoritarian rule, but such an outcome is never a foregone conclusion. Let us not assume that the dictator’s dilemma will be resolved in favor of democracy simply because we might like it to be so. Notes 1.

2.

3.

4. 5. 6.

Though the concept itself has been more widely invoked, the term “dictator’s dilemma,” applied to the Internet, was coined by Larry Press and developed in Christopher R. Kedezie, Communication and Democracy: Coincident Revolutions and the Emergent Dictator’s Dilemma, (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1997). Robert G. Torricelli, “Let Democracy Shine through an Open Door; We Don’t Have to Accept Castro to Increase Ties with Cuba,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1991, M5. See frequent speeches by Fidel Castro after 1994 (especially July 26, 1995) and also Vice President Raúl Castro’s report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party on March 23, 1996 (reprinted in Granma International, April 10, 1996). Tom Carter, “Lawmakers with Cuban Ties Try to Raise Heat on Castro,” Washington Times, April 24, 1998, A1. Ana Radelat, “U.S. Approves New Helms-Burton Grants as Cuba Cracks Down on Dissent,” CubaInfo 11, no.3 (February 22, 1999): 1-2. Administration official Richard Nuccio has argued that the February 1996 crackdown on Concilio Cubano came in direct response to efforts by European Commission vice president Manuel Marín to “close the gap” in U.S.Cuba relations and encourage reform along the lines of the U.S. policy.

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

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While European initiatives may have played a role, however, they clearly did so only in the context of cooperation with the United States on the already established strategy. See Nuccio, “Cuba: A U.S. Perspective,” in Robert N. Haass, ed., Transatlantic Tensions: The United States, Europe, and Problem Countries (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1999). With the onset of economic difficulties at the beginning of the 1990s, the Cuban government began to allow the formation of NGOs that could supplement its development efforts and more easily attract funds from foreign donors. A variety of associations have sprung up in the past decade, promoting such causes as sustainable development, conservation, religious charity, and social, political, and economic research. All NGOs that exist legally are registered with the Cuban Ministry of Justice. Almost all operate autonomously, but they are rarely openly critical of the state. Many, however, favor decentralization of political power and novel solutions to economic problems. See Gillian Gunn, “Cuba’s NGOs: Government Puppets or Seeds of Civil Society?” Cuba Briefing Paper Series 7 (February 1995). See Carollee Bengelsdorf, “Intellectuals under Fire,” In These Times, September 18, 1996: 27-29; Maurizio Giuliano, El Caso CEA, Intelectuales e Inquisidores en Cuba: ¿Perestroika en la Isla? (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998). Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, Cuba Adrift in a Postcommunist World (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1992), 73-74. On the history of Cuban computer networking, see Nelson Valdés, “Cuba, the Internet, and U.S. Policy,” Cuba Briefing Paper Series 13 (March 1997); MOSAIC Group, The Global Diffusion of the Internet Project: An Initial Inductive Study (McLean, Va.: Center for Information Strategy and Policy, 1998), . Geri Smith, “Yahoo, Stay Home,” Business Week, November 29, 1999, 206. The text of Decree-Law 209, Acceso desde la Republica de Cuba a Redes Informáticas de Alcance Global, is published in Gaceta Oficial de la Republica de Cuba, Año 94, no. 27, edición ordinaria (September 13, 1996): 423424 (translation by the author). See ; MOSAIC Group, The Global Diffusion of the Internet Project. “GI Digital Edition: One Year Old,” Granma International, April 30, 1997. Jesus Martínez, “The Net in Cuba,” Matrix News 901 (January 1999). These numbers have likely increased since then, but not significantly. All of the following data is based on confidential interviews with the author, conducted in Havana, Cuba, between August 15 and September 13, 1998.

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18 Women, Family, and the Cuban Revolution* Marisela Fleites–Lear One afternoon in the 1920’s, the Tenerife civil guard came to look for my grandfather, Anselmo González. He was in big trouble for refusing to go to the African War. My grandmother Ernestina, seven months pregnant, watched as he slipped out the back door. Never knowing if Anselmo would ever return, she waited. The weeks turned to months, then years. When the baby she was carrying (my Aunt Isolina) turned seven, Anselmo reappeared, telling stories of a “promised land” where white people were welcomed, a new republic rich with recent investment from the United States. With the money he had managed to save while he was away, the family pulled up stakes and moved to Cuba. Ernestina and Anselmo established a homestead in Havana Province where they scraped out a rudimentary living by working the fields. Seven more children followed Isolina, but not one was able to attend a decent school. Their only education was from an itinerant teacher who offered lessons in exchange for milk and beans. During the Machado dictatorship, the family lived in constant fear of the Rural Guard, who were always threatening them for “contributions.” Fed up, they moved to the big city, Havana. When my mother was fourteen, the family bought a little bodega (corner store) in Habana Vieja (Old Havana). The sons helped in the store and the daughters worked, one as a telephone operator, another as a dressmaker; the * This paper was presented in the Latin American Studies Association” Congress, September 1995, Washington D.C. I would like to thank my father, Dr. Gilberto Fleites, for his collaboration in gathering information for it, as well as Jaime Kibben, a San Francisco based filmmaker, for his inappreciable help editing it. 276

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prettiest daughters got jobs as sales clerks in the fashionable department stores along Calle Neptuno. The family pooled their money and somehow survived, crowded together in quarters above the bodega. Ernestina was a typical Spanish-Cuban woman of that day: Catholic, poor, illiterate. Her life was limited to the house, her children, and her husband. She had her babies at home and never went to the doctor. However, Ernestina accepted her lot without question or protest, as did the majority of peasant women in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Ernestina’s youngest daughter Susana, my mother, was a beautiful, intelligent, and strong-willed young woman who learned easily and liked to read novels. Romantic and creative, she wrote naïve poems about love and castles. In 1956, she met the man who would become my father, a young doctor from a poor rural family who had just finished his studies at the University of Havana. After a year of courtship they married, and just nine months later, in 1958, my older brother was born. I was born in 1959, and my two younger brothers were born in 1962, and 1966. When my mother was seven months pregnant with her first son, she stopped working as a sales clerk. In the Cuban tradition, my father told her that the house was her domain, and she accepted happily, ready to fulfill her role as wife and mother. My father had started a clinic in a working class neighborhood, a career move in keeping with his humanitarian ideals about the practice of medicine. Everything was going just right for my parents when, in 1959, the Revolution changed everything. My parents, never before involved in politics, but fully aware of the corruption and brutality of the Batista regime, readily supported the new leadership. My father joined with other doctors to set up free clinics in the Sierra Maestra Mountains staying there for six months just after I was born. As the revolutionary process became more radicalized, Cuban professionals were tempted by job opportunities abroad and many opted to leave the island. My parents considered various factors—their social idealism, their nationalistic sentiments, their ties to family—before deciding to stay and raise their children within the Revolution. In the next few years, while my mother wondered if they had made the right decision, nearly all their friends abandoned Cuba. The Revolution was not only a political and economic transformation of society as a whole, but a radical upheaval for the Cuban family as a social organism and for women in particular. Soon women like my mother found their roles and opportunities dramatically altered. The new social project, compounded by the influence of the sexual revolution in the western world, presented women and their families with difficult dilemmas. Suddenly, in the same homes where the preservation of virginity until marriage was seen as young women’s parents sacred duty, parents were asked to let their daughters volunteer for agricultural brigades, where they would spend months living and working alongside young men. For the first time Cuban women, long accustomed to being dependent

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wives and dutiful mothers, were exploring the ideas of women’s equality, a direct challenge to machismo.2 It was a painful and paradoxical process. Cuban women were incorporated into the intellectual, political and labor worlds as never before. Chapter VI, article 44, of the Constitution of the Republic, in its 1992 version, boldly declares: The State guarantees that women are offered the same opportunities as men, with the goal of achieving their full participation in the country’s development. The State organizes institutions as day care centers, boarding and semi-boarding schools, homes for the elderly and services to facilitate the working family in the fulfillment of its responsibilities. Taking care of women’s health and their healthy progeny, the State provides working women with maternity leave with pay, before and after birth, and some temporary labor options compatible with their maternal function . . 3. .

The 1995 Human Development Report released by the United Nations Development Program4 recognized that Cuba leads the developing world in gender equality. There has been for 36 years a gradual program to improve women’s conditions. Our goal is to discuss here the contradictions that have aroused through out this process of improvement. In order to do that, it is necessary to understand the gains achieved and their limits. The figures give eloquent testimony to the success of Cuban policies toward women:5 !

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In 1981, about 50 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 44 were employed, a dramatic increase from the pre-revolutionary period when only around 20 percent of women in this age range worked outside the home.6 According to 1995 statistics, women are 40.6% of the Cuban labor force7 compared to only 15% prior to 1959.8 In 1995, women constituted 57.7% of university graduates, 62% of middle and high-level technicians and 42% of scientific researchers.9 In the school year 1993–1994, of the 165,843 students enrolled in universities, 95,622 were women (57.6%).10 Since 1980, more than 12% of Cuban women above the age of 24 have earned college level degrees, compared with only 0.7% prior to 1959.11 As reported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1995, 48% of Cuban doctors were women,12 as were 47% of hospital directors and 61% of the 12,000 general practitioners. This United Nations report states that these figures are “the result of a deliberate emphasis on sexual equality in educational policy; . . .”13 and finds there is less discrimination against women in Cuba than in the majority of the developing nations. Among the 589 members of the Cuban Parliament elected in 1993 (the National Assembly of the Organs of People’s Power), 134 were women (23%),14 a figure that, though less than ideal, represents a significant advance in a country where politics was “men’s affair” before 1959. In comparison, in 1995 there were only seven women in the United States Senate and 47 women in the House of Representatives (7% and 10.8% respectively). In the

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1995 municipal elections for delegates to the municipal assemblies of the Organs of People’s Power, 15.4 % of the elected officials were women (that is, 2,144 women were elected).15 By 1986, 13.8% of Communist Party leaders were women.16 Between 1984 and 1986, 38% of all Cuban women were members of the National Workers’ Union (CTC), and 49.4% were members of the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, a neighborhood social organization). In selective organizations, 21.5% were members of the Communist Party, and 41% were members of U Jota Cé, the Communist Youth Union. Since 1994, the national leader of the latter is María Victoria, a young woman, for the first time in the history of this important organization. Female athletes have enjoyed opportunities that would have been unthinkable before 1959. Cuban sportswomen and men enjoy equal support from the state, and sporting events are free to the public, both factors that encourage large numbers of women to participate in athletics. Since 1960, for instance, Cuban women’s volleyball, judo and track teams all have won international recognition. Names like Ana Fidelia Quirot, Liliana Allen, the young archer Jacqueline Fernández have become models of Cuban athletes.17 Supporting these changes were the following elements:

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the availability of quality medical attention for all women and their children. The new health system drastically reduced the health problems families faced before the Revolution. Cuban women’s life expectancy is in 1995, 77.6 years,18 the highest in Latin America. In 1993, the infant mortality rate in Cuba was 9.4 per 1000 births,19 a rate on a par with the United States at 9/1000,20 and in sharp contrast to the rates of Mexico (28/1000), Brazil (54/1000), and Haiti (87/1000).21 access to free education for every woman. the establishment of quality day-care centers, with access for all children regardless of race or social origin. This benefit gave women the option to stay in the workplace after starting families. In 1989, 136,000 kids were receiving day care22 in low cost centers subsidized by the state.23 the founding of the Cuban Federation of Women to advocate and organize on behalf of women (to be discussed later). the establishment, in 1975, of the “Family Code” advocating equal job opportunities without regard to gender. For the most part this regulation has been successful, although until the Constitution was amended in 1992, there were jobs that, because of their physical demands, were not available to women (a paternalistic approach that even if changed by law, persist in people’s mind). the creation of the Permanent Commission on Infancy, Youth, and Women’s Equality of the National Assembly of the Peoples Power (NAPP). the founding, in 1977, of the National Working Group on Sex Education (GNTES) within the NAPP. With many limitations, this group has been directing a massive sex education program to support the principle of sexual equality. the unprecedented decline of fertility rates (after an initial baby-boom in the 60s), largely due to women’s freedom to pursue education and careers. In

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1971, for instance, the average number of children per woman in Cuba was 3.88, but just 10 years later, in 1981, the figure had dropped to 1.63.24 Cuban fecundity is in the 90s among the lowest in the world, with an annual population growth rate of roughly 10 per 1000 people.25 While developing nations struggle with rapid population growth, Cuba’s demographic growth resembles that of developed countries.26 Vilma Espín, the head of the Federation of Cuban Women explained in the IV World Conference on Women (September 1995) that because of this decline in fertility rate, it hasn’t been necessary to establish in Cuba an explicit demographic policy.27 The Revolution also allowed for a positive sexual liberation for Cuban women. Several factors contributed to this phenomenon, as follows: !

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The decline of the importance of the Catholic Church and its patriarchal values. Even though the Cuban population was never fanatically religious, conventional Catholic morality had weighed heavily on the socio-sexual behavior of pre-Revolutionary Cuban women. The revolution, while not outlawing the Catholic Church, declared in the Constitution that the state was “atheist” (this was changed in the amendments of 1992). Denied access to the media and the educational system, the influence of the Church declined rapidly. It became popular to criticize the Church and those who expressed religious beliefs openly often found their opportunities for employment limited, particularly in fields where they might influence the ideology of young people (for instance, my cousin couldn’t continue her medicine studies because she admitted being Catholic in the 60s). The religious have been discriminated against in part because of the Catholic Church’s counter-revolutionary acts early in the Revolution. These discriminatory practices have been changing since 1990.28 The increase in women’s educational levels. In the first two years of the Revolution, a nationwide Literacy Campaign raised the basic (first grade level) literacy rate from 75% to 96%.29 This enlightened campaign, promoted through the media, and supported by social and political organizations, was a precursor to free and mandatory education for all children through the 9th grade, and free night schools for adults. Subsidized publishing made books available to all. By 1988, the adult literacy rate had reached an astonishing 97%.30 Not only did Cuban women learn to read and write, but in ever increasing numbers they pursued higher education, aspiring not just to “women’s professions”—teaching or nursing—but to fields traditionally dominated by men. By 1985, 28% of Cuban women were enrolled in higher education, compared with only 3% in 1960. The figures are similar to those in Argentina, Costa Rica and other advanced Latin American countries, but as Francesca Miller points out, “ . . . the critical difference, .. . in Cuba may be that young women are more likely to pursue studies in the hard sciences and technology.”31 The incorporation of women into social and mass organizations.

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Agricultural mobilizations and political meetings allowed women to escape their parents, husbands, and “the mop and broom.” In their new activities, women were valued not so much for their virginity or “decency” (in the traditional sense), but for their intelligence, diligence, and attitude as workers and students. The rejection of old values. In the patriarchal Cuban society prior to 1959, women were expected to be virgins until marriage and unconditionally faithful afterward. Of course, men’s behavior was exempted from any similar restraints. Women’s principal role was to care for the house and children, while men were responsible for earning money, thereby perpetuating women’s economic dependence. It followed naturally that women’s status in society was intellectually and culturally subordinate to their husbands and to other men. The Revolution, as the word implies, meant the radical subversion of all the previous structures. This subversion provoked a progressive transformation of the traditional idea of the mujer virgen, mujer de su casa (virgin woman, home devoted), especially for the younger generation. This change was manifested not only in the attitudes of women but also in those of men, who began to consider virtues other than “purity” when looking for potential partners.32

Of course, not every woman took advantage of these changes. Many women of my mother’s generation felt it was too late to change their life style. My mother never went back to school or went out to work; she stayed at home raising four children, as did most of her friends. However, she was one of my biggest influences to pursue ambitious goals in my intellectual life. She wanted me to have every opportunity she had been denied. Women of my generation were given mixed messages; our mothers wanted us to behave according to the old Catholic mores, at the same time encouraged us to take advantage of educational and cultural opportunities—the very things threatening those mores. All of these new conditions set the stage for women to expect a better balance in their relationships with their husbands and lovers. Told they were equal, women rightfully looked to be respected and satisfied as individuals and not to subordinate their own needs to a relationship. For the first time, they had the option of breaking off an unsatisfactory relationship without stigma. In a country accustomed to the idea that mujeres son animales de pelo largo e ideas cortas (“women are animals of long hair and short ideas,” a phrase popular in pre-revolutionary Cuba), these new freedoms were momentous strides forward. But despite the positive aspects of these achievements, 36 years of Revolution have not lead to truly egalitarian society. Cuba remains, at its core, a patriarchal society. As defined by Gerda Lerner in The Creation of Patriarchy: Patriarchy . . . means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over

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women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power. It does not imply that women are either totally powerless or totally deprived of rights, influence and resources. . . 33.

Patriarchy, essentially sexist in its nature, is supported and manifested through a subset of patriarchal relations, paternalism, meaning “ . . . the relationship of a dominant group, considered superior, to a subordinate group, considered inferior in which the dominance is mitigated by mutual obligations and reciprocal rights . .. . ”34 In the case of the Cuban Revolution, this paternalism is obvious trough the political orthodoxy used as a yardstick to determine status in relation to the dominant party. The Constitution of the Republic states: El Partido Comunista de Cuba, martiano y marxista-leninista, vanguardia organizada de la nación cubana, es la fuerza dirigente superior de la sociedad y del Estado, que organiza y orienta los esfuerzos comunes hacia los altos fines de la construcción del socialismo y el avance hacia la sociedad comunista35

Hence, it is established as law that the Communist Party gathers “the best citizens”, and leads the State and all social organizations and by extension all Cuban citizens. In all organizations, subordination is demanded from members, as is adherence to party ideology. This unity can have powerful effects, making possible such rapid social changes as happened in the first decade of the Revolution. At the same time, this unity dampens—when it does not restrict outright—both individual and group creativity. So, trying to achieve women’s equality within this paternalistic system is a contradiction per se, exposing phenomena so conflicted and ironic as to qualify as paradoxical. Some of these paradoxes will be discussed here. PAR ADOX ONE: While women gained the freedom to join the social process of the Revolution, this same freedom doubled (or tripled) their workload.

Women’s new jobs outside the home, their political work or participation on committees did not automatically exempt them from traditional domestic tasks. After attending classes or doing volunteer social work, a woman would return home to find “her” chores—cooking, cleaning and child care—waiting for her. Neither families nor the State were prepared to overcome the machismo that held the accepted patriarchal structures in place. Women felt exploited in their own homes, while in their workplace and in political organizations, little consideration was given to their family duties. The same revolutionary man who expounded on the equality of women at a 3:30 p.m. meeting would expect his compañera to have dinner ready at six. Such is the chasm between rhetoric and reality. Cuban daily life has, for most of the last 36 years, been extremely difficult and complex. While Cuba’s economic woes are too complex to analyze in depth here, the principle roots are

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the lack of essential natural resources, the most crucial being hydroelectric and petroleum; the continuing United States economic embargo; funneling of resources into military and civil defense spending; inefficient systems of production and distribution; dependence on the CAME (Council of Mutual Assistance, the socialist trade bloc) for basic foodstuffs and consumer products, before 1989.

With the collapse of the socialist trade bloc and the tightening of the US embargo the economic situation became desperate. Until then, every Cuban had the guarantee of a minimum subsistence ration of food and basic goods. This minimum was augmented by products that could be found in different types of “parallel”36 markets. However, to acquire the rationed and “extra” products meant spending hours in colas (lines) and struggling with bureaucratic forms. Traditionally this task, called conseguir e inventar (to get and to invent), has fallen to Cuban women. This has worsened since 1991. The monthly ration of food and goods has steadily diminished and as of 1997, lasts only 10–15 days. “Parallel” markets had almost disappeared until 1994, when the State sanctioned new agro-mercados, farmers-markets, where more produce is available, though at much higher prices. Many goods are now sold in dollars, while the majority of Cubans receive only a salary in pesos. Cuban women have had to become “food-alchemists,” making something from nothing, and the burden is probably four times higher than it was before the “special period” (after 1991). Despite the egalitarian statements in the Cuban constitution and the principles established in the “Family Code” of 1975, women are still considered, in the Cuban social psychology, as being responsible for housework. The legislation itself reinforces this idea: women are by law granted maternity leave to care for babies, but there is no such thing as paternity leave. The same pattern is seen in public opinion. Nearly everyone in the workplace is sympathetic when women are absent because “the kids are sick,” or because they went to stand in line since “it was her turn,” but this grace does not extend as a norm to men. Within extended families it is often the grandmother, who came of age in prerevolutionary Cuba, who assumes the most responsibility for child care in the home, further facilitating men’s non-participation and perpetuating traditional behaviors and beliefs. The “Family Code”37 declared that both partners should share equally the burden of housework and child care. Obviously however, these are ideas not enforceable by law, and there are not grassroot organizations that help family clear the psychological and emotional hurdles of trying to overcome machismo. In many households, grandmothers and their daughters help to perpetuate the status quo by reinforcing sexist ideas of different appropriate behaviors for boys (aggressive, confrontational, worldly) and girls (passive, nurturing, domestic). It is even thought that teaching boys to cook or clean might foster homosexuality. In my own home, although my mother taught my brothers to cooperate with household chores, I was the only sibling who actu-

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ally had the obligation to help with cleaning and cooking. I was the only daughter. Therefore, despite their political duties and work outside the home, women are expected to do the housework and child care. Without exaggeration, this same career/family balancing act requires three times the effort in Cuba than in any developed country. Case in point: There are no disposable diapers. Cuban women have only a very short supply of fabric diapers, and they must be washed by hand (when soap is available), disinfected by boiling, hung out to dry and then ironed. Even if the public opinion accepts frequent women’s absences from work for family duties, their administrators and political organizers (usually men) are not as sympathetic, which in the practice (even if not established by law) imposes limits on certain jobs and leadership positions to women. In political and social organizations the problem is even more complicated because these activities presumably take place during women’s “free time.” To cope, it is quite common for women to feign illness as a pretext to miss a mobilization or an internationalist mission. I once got in trouble with my political organization for missing a meeting scheduled for the same time I had to nurse my daughter. The traditional idea of Sunday as a day of rest, is thought to be “ideologically weak.” It is considered individualistic to place family before revolutionary duties. Sundays, therefore, are claimed by defense exercises, voluntary work, and activities “useful for the community.” The socialist state support of women and families is of undeniable importance. However, the State, so successful in encouraging women to get out of the house, has been unable to fully create the conditions that allow them to rest when they come back home. The fact that families haven’t been able to overcome machismo underscores how, even the best intentioned educational programs and constitutional laws are not enough to change traditional human behavior, especially when they are not supported by a solid economic base and a non-patriarchal political structure. PAR ADOX TWO: While women gained sexual freedom, their relationships became more unstable.

Increased freedom and mobility for women were accompanied by a secondary effect with negative ramifications; couples, both married and unmarried, were not staying together as long as they had in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Though statistics are hard to find regarding unmarried sexual partners, the figures on marriages and divorces, demonstrating a marked increase in the divorce rate during this period, are a fair indication of this phenomenon:38 39 Roughly paralleling increases in population, both marriages and divorce increased steadily through the late 60’s. Then, in the 70’s, the number of marriages leveled off, but the divorce rate continued to rise, peaking in 1989.

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Table 1 Year

Marriages

Divorces

Divorce Rate

1956

29,094

2,818

9.70

1961

74,067

4,575

6.17

1966

48,664

9,696

19.92

1971

113,082

27,641

24.44

1985

80,193

29,182

36.38

1988

82,431

35,668

43.27

1989

85,535

37,647

44.01

1990

101,515

37,646

37.08

1991

162,020

43,646

26.93

1992

191,837

44,973

23.44

Interestingly, in the 90’s, the number of marriages rose again, while the divorce rate slightly declined, precisely in the years of great economic, political and social crisis. It is possible that we are witnessing a phenomenon contrary to what happened in the 80s, years of apparent stability and economic growth. It is, of course, premature to postulate a direct connection between the two trends, but it seems possible that the deep social crisis of the country is prompting young people to spontaneously return to the family and domestic stability as a refuge from “the street.” In response to the trend, organizations like the U Jota Cé (Young Communists League) started promoting stable domestic relationships through sex education programs that reinforce the family as a social institution (especially in the 1990s). The media40 is also stressing the importance of stable relationships and sexual health, particularly in the prevention of STDs, in particular AIDS.41 These campaigns have also been stepped up in response to the increases in prostitution since the opening to tourism.42 These are all part of larger social, economic, and political trends, beginning in 1990, as the Revolution struggles to adapt its structures to the global capitalist economy. Certainly, the trend throughout the first 30 years of the revolution has been the decline in the stability of conjugal relationships.43 It has been recognized that the average marriage lasts 5 years.44 There are other elements very difficult to calculate—the systematic change in partners (especially among youth), and infidelity (in particular male, but also female)—which reflect the changing moral and sexual values within Cuban society. There is a factor to be considered in the analysis of this instability. In LatinAmerican societies, where historically caudillismo (strongman leadership) has been especially prevalent, the way caudillos conducted their personal lives has been seen as a pattern of behavior for their followers. This is especially evident

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in Fidel Castro’s case. If we consider Fidel not only as a political leader but as a role model highly important to the formation of public opinion, it is important to note that he is a man without a family. He has embodied the archetype of the revolutionary, one who has placed society first, subjugating family and personal needs, justifying this as a necessary sacrifice for those who would attempt a social transformation on the scale of the Cuban Revolution. Consciously or not, his followers try to imitate him, many adopting his body language, his figures of speech, even his gestures. Unfortunately, Fidel’s archetype does not present a model of family unity or stability. Despite unending gossip and conjecture about the identities of his partner(s) and his children, Castro’s domestic life remains a closely guarded secret. Also, since the family’s value is not a recurrent theme in Fidel’s speeches, the reinforcement of the family is not part of the Party’s maxims. For example, there is no mention of the family in any of Fidel’s speeches between 1953 and 1959, the seminal period for the ideology of the Revolution. The emphasis has not been on family stability but rather on women’s incorporation in the social transformation, to promote the establishment of the new society. In the Second Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women (November 1974), Fidel expressed that, “ . . . the work of the Revolution is not complete; there must be real equality for women.”45 The themes related to the family have been incorporated as part of the ideological work to achieve women’s equality, but Fidel and the Party both have fallen short in envisioning a new, nonpatriarchal, but stable, family. Quite to the contrary, Fidel is a “super-patriarch”, seen as the powerful father to all Cubans, the one that gives and take away, the one all look to for the right decision. With respect to the sexual liberation of women, the change in patterns was gradual, experienced mostly by the younger generations, those that grew up during the Revolution. The process could be characterized at the beginning (60s70s) as “spontaneous subversion.” Since the study of Sociology,46 considered as bourgeois, was practically abolished from Cuba in the late 60s, and replaced with a Stalinist version of Marx’s historical materialism, the process of sexual liberation was not analyzed, discussed, or evaluated theoretically. Therefore, no consequent educational policy was formulated to lead the process in an organic way. In the decade of the 1960s, these challenges went through a critical process, dislocating the old values, mixing old and new, as men and women both tried to reconcile contradictions. Revolutionary men, supposedly “liberated,” nonetheless persisted in their persecution of homosexuals and of all of those who did not follow the “New Man” model of correctness and subordination to the revolutionary ethic. At the same time, the elimination of barriers to sexual freedom led, in many cases, to extreme libertinism. The new norms developed without any clear prescriptive or political orientation to replace the former canons taken from Catholicism and bourgeois society. This often led to extreme situations, like the common occurrence whereby male Party members were called to their political cell to be told rumors of their

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wives’ infidelity. Because it was unacceptable for a militant to have a black mark on his reputation, he often had to choose between Party membership and his marriage. This sort of machismo elevated to Party policy persisted for many years. Conversely, I know of not a single case where a woman’s Party membership was threatened because of her husband’s infidelity. But together with these negative tendencies, gradually Cuban society accepted pre-marital sexual relations and the possibility that women—as well as men—could change sexual partners. The legalization of abortion not only gave women unprecedented choice in family planning, it helped them avoid undesirable marriages.47 The use of contraceptives has increased due to educational programs and subsidized availability, though not to optimal levels.48 Little by little, chaperones have become a thing of the past. By the late 70s, some organizations were formed to create sex education programs, covering not only hygiene and family planning, but also to promote a new, more egalitarian, domestic partnership.49 Despite good intentions, the programs have had limited resources and access to the younger generations. Well organized at the national level, the programs suffer from a lack of strong grassroots support. Since 1992, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) has been working on the gradual establishment of “Casas de la Mujer” (Women’s houses), neighborhood centers to build grassroots support for sex education and the discussion of women’s issues. So far, the Casas have made little impact on the population at large. To date, a new socialist family has not been realized in Cuba. It could be argued that Cuba is responding to the same trends in domestic instability found in the rest of the developed world. However, Cuba has a social system completely different from capitalist countries and, for that matter, distinct from the socialist countries. Is it because the ideological and educational work has been inefficient? Or because radically altering women’s potentials outside the home has destabilized domestic partnerships? Or because any real challenge to patriarchy will require dominant men to relinquish power? It is safe to say that all of the above factors are true to a degree. PAR ADOX THREE: Women gained freedom to participate in the political system on one hand, but on the other, met continual barriers to creating their own organizations outside the system.

In the 60’s and 70’s, women in all parts of the western world were discovering feminism. Rich and poor, women of all races and ethnicity, were reveling in their newly-found solidarity, attacking the existing power structures, and organizing new ones. However, in Cuba even talking about some women’s issues— sexual harassment, domestic violence, homosexuality—was considered taboo. The official Cuban organization for women took the position that we had no need for feminism since the Revolution made men and women equal by law.

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The case of women’s organizations is a good example of the inherent paternalism in the Cuban system. It was as if a father (the State) was saying to his children (women in this case), “I’ll teach you, but, when you learn, I won’t let go of your hand. I’ll give you a forum where you can speak, but I’ll set the limits of what you can say.” This pattern, having some political and social advantages, also had terrible consequences. People joined organizations because they felt they should, because it was expected of them, and not necessarily because they felt a real identification. This is more true in the case of non-selective mass organizations than in selective political organizations like the UJC and the PCC. It is particularly true in the case of the FMC, Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (Cuban Women’s Federation). To quote the First Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1976: The Federation of Cuban Women, founded on August 23, 1960, through the unification of all the existing women’s revolutionary organizations, has grown rapidly from a few thousand members, to 2,127,000 women workers, peasants, students, house-wives, professionals and members of FAR and MININT, and now comprises 80 per cent of our female population over 14 years of age.50

The PCC’s First Congress also recognized that all Cuban mass and social organizations . . . ensure the Party’s closest bonds with the broad masses. They ensure its influence in education, guidance and mobilization. They make it possible for our Party’s leadership to keep in touch with the feelings, problems and opinions of every sector of the population, whose specific interests they defend and represent.51

Thus, social organizations are under the control of the Party and must serve its purposes. Unfortunately this means a Cuban woman attending an FMC meeting does not dare to address issues outside PCC guidelines. The national direction of the FMC, almost unchanged since its creation, is absolutely linked to the national direction of the PCC. For example, the FMC First Secretary Vilma Espín Guillois, an intense and intelligent woman who fought with the 26 of July movement before 1959, is a member of the Central Committee of the PCC and the wife of Raúl Castro52 (Fidel’s brother and the head of the Cuban Army). On balance, the Federation of Cuban Women has been a positive force to improve women’s lives. As a national organization, the FMC played the dominant role in organizing the Literacy Campaign of 1961, and instituted many social and rehabilitation programs to improve women’s lives. The FMC created special schools to retrain former domestic servants for new employment, and established programs to help prostitutes re-enter mainstream society.53 Between 1960 and 1986, the FMC recruited over 58,000 women to work on hygiene brigades to improve rural sanitation and 13,000 women to serve as social workers. The FMC was instrumental in encouraging women to pursue non-traditional

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work; in 1975, more than 20,000 women were working in construction brigades. In the same year Cuban women harvested 221 million arrobas54 (2.7 million tons) of sugar cane. Vilma Espín, herself with a degree in chemical engineering, spearheaded FMC’s drive to integrate women into more technical fields. Rural women were encouraged to learn technical agriculture skills including tractor driving, specialized farming techniques, and animal husbandry. By 1986, 55.4% of Cuban technical workers were women. The FMC has also worked with older Cuban housewives to achieve a junior high school equivalency. Approximately 99,392 housewives had obtained already this level by 1986, and 18,048 were studying to get it.55 In 1977, the FMC created the National Working Group on Sex Education (GNTES) to oversee the formulation and implementation of a massive sex education program with the goal of “establishing the individual’s capacity for love, marriage and the family on the principle of equality between the sexes.”56 Undeniably, the FMC has accomplished much to benefit the lives of Cuban women. The fact that the FMC is an official arm of the Communist Party, admittedly a strength in terms of national organization and establishment of policy, is, in other senses, precisely its weakness. Because the FMC is the only women’s organization allowed, and because all educational material and guidelines for discussion are published under the supervision of the Party, real discussion and relevance on the local level are severely limited. Many young women feel that this organization, founded before they were born, can not effectively give voice to their youthful concerns. Unfortunately, if the FMC does not serve a woman’s needs, she has to settle for it regardless of her necessities; there are no alternatives. That’s probably why since 1991, with the economic and social crisis, and the flexibilization of some of the ideological constraints of the PCC, the FMC has lost many members and has lost a great deal of influence among the population.57 According to Cuban Law, no organizations can be created for individuals outside the state and the party system, or at least not without the authorization of these institutions.58 There is no forum for diversity or individual dissent. Without authorization, any meeting of more than three persons with political goals can be considered illegal and its participants subject to punishment. Vilma Espín’s 1977 statement about feminism speaks volumes about the FMC’s ideological orthodoxy: . . . we have never had a feminist movement. We hate that. We hate the feminist movement in the United States . . . We see these movements in the United States which have conceived struggles for equality of women against men! . . . That is absurd! It doesn’t make any sense! For these feminists to say they are revolutionaries is ridiculous! . . . 59

Anyone has the right to disagree with feminism, especially with the liberal feminism most popular in the 60s and 70s in the US that, in the words of Bell Hooks “ . . . has helped to consolidate class society by giving camouflage to its internal contradictions. . . . ”60 by focusing on the idea that men are the en-

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emies and that feminist struggle is only a lifestyle choice rather than a political commitment.61 However, I would take exception to Espín’s uses of the first person plural. Who are the “we” in whose name she speaks? Additionally, Vilma’s assertion that “we never had a feminist movement” belies the fact that there was indeed a Cuban feminist movement in the first three decades of this century. Iconoclasts like Domitila García, Avelina Correa and Magdalena Peñaredonda, all challenged the patriarchal order, writing in the Propaganda Feminista (Feminist Propaganda) section of the newspaper La Noche62 and fighting for suffrage and the rights of poor women. In general, Cuban women know very little about feminism since feminist books are not sold in the island. Feminist theories are not well known, neither are they taught or discussed openly. Some feminists have visited Cuba to take part in seminars and congresses, but their participation has had little effect on the general public, because their papers and discussions were not published. The same thinking that made possible the rejection of feminism had negative consequences for any movement that isolated the problems of a particular social group. Since the Revolution made all Cubans equal by law, it was thought that any intent to address particular problems of minorities, be they of gender, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic differences, would reinforce discrimination or subordination. For example, it is difficult to study racism since the Revolution, because of the lack of published statistics about blacks and whites in any area of social life. Equality was just assumed or legislated, so differentiation was deemed superfluous. This lack of differentiation impeded real social analysis and made dialogue on minority issues nearly impossible. Recently, the FMC has adopted a more open minded view about these issues and hopefully that will become a political trend within the system.63 Several academic seminars and conferences have been organized to discuss women’s issues, like the Sixth Conference on Philosophy and Social Sciences at Havana University in June, 1994. Eighteen papers were discussed with themes like “The subordination of women within the Cuban family” and “Is there a sexual democracy in Cuba?” In 1994 the University of Havana established a Cátedra de la Mujer, a sort of Women Studies Department, with links not only with national and international academia but also with the FMC. Since 1995, the existence of MAGIN was allowed, an association of women authors, artists and journalists that focused on women’s representation in the media, but it was denied an NGO status in 1997 and therefore it disappeared. PARADOX FOUR: The younger generation, women who grew up with the Revolution, gained new freedom and opportunities while women in middle age—their mothers and older sisters—felt somehow left behind.

Women who had established marriages and households prior to 1959 found themselves already locked into traditional patterns of behavior. Cooking, cleaning, and child care had not magically vanished as Fidel swept into Havana.

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While my mother’s generation watched its daughters and younger sisters go off to schools, political meetings and volunteer work brigades, those women felt the Revolution had come too late in their own lives. If it were not for the Revolution, my mother probably would have been content in her role of wife and mother. For her, the social upheaval was very problematic, and in the end, she was not able to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the Revolution. As a wife and mother she behaved according to the old paradigm and experienced the new paradigm vicariously through her children. She was stuck between past and present. Nonetheless, my mother joined the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) and the FMC during the 70’s, probably because of peer pressure, but also because her involvement could help assure opportunities for her children in school and youth organizations. Gradually, she became quite active. Through these neighborhood organizations, she gained not only a political education, but also a new place of respect in her community. For many years my mother served as head of our neighborhood CDR, sort of a combination precinct captain and social worker. She helped people find jobs, organized vaccination campaigns, and mobilized the neighbors to keep our block safe and clean. In private, however, she was not happy. She knew she arrived late to this world of enlightenment, without the strength or the disposition to take advantage of the new possibilities for women. Instead of getting out to find a job or pursue her education, my mother stayed home, raising four children and maneuvering to get the house of her dreams. When she finally got that house, she became a slave to it. Immediately she was overwhelmed by the endless housework and cooking for the family. She was certainly not the vision of a Cuban revolutionary woman, and my mother’s case is not unusual. There is nothing wrong with being a housewife, if one is happy doing that work. But this was the paradox for women of my mother’s generation: they were no longer happy with this role, but many of them, even though they had the possibility of breaking the ties that held their hands together, could not or would not do it. At some point, my mother decided that my father should help with domestic chores, but he didn’t share her obsession with the house. Their conflict was a continual source of irritation, misunderstanding and poor communication. My mother never forgave him for confining her to the house without real concerns for her sexual and spiritual necessities. She never forgave him for being such a charming personality—philosopher, doctor, writer, scientist. She never forgave him for his popularity with his own children. Since my father was only there for the good moments, the role of disciplinarian (read: bad guy) fell to my mother. Theirs was a microcosm of the classic conflict between men’s privileges and women’s burdens that their generation could not overcome, and the younger generations are still struggling with these issues. In retrospect, neither of my parents was at fault. They were just not prepared for what happened on the island. No one was.

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This lack of preparation was aggravated by many psychological factors. Propaganda from the U.S. was attempting to undermine the Revolution. The CIA’s infamous Peter Pan Program64 seduced many families into sending their children to the States, most never to return. A period of severe scarcity, in the late sixties, before the country finally joined the CAME, spread fears of famine. Nationalization affected nearly all families with property (including mine, although my parents were among those who felt it was necessary). For some, the very word “communism” conjured up images of the worst aspects of repression and dictatorship. The new consciousness of class and ideological struggle began to color even the most mundane of activities; it seemed daily life would never again be simple. Parents worried that their idealistic children would marry outside their race. Heads of households faced the rationing of nearly all necessities: food, clothes, gasoline. Overnight, even cherished traditions like the celebration of semana santa (Easter) or Christmas were seen as bourgeois because of their religious ties. There was a constant fear of being politically “misinterpreted.” The rules were changing; sociolismo65 (cronyism) suddenly counted for more than good deeds. None of these factors made holding a family together any easier. In the case of women of my mother’s generation who chose to stay in the home and maintain the old values, there is also an interesting paradox. Living lives that were not always happy or satisfying, these women nonetheless made sacrifices, persevered and ultimately succeeded in holding most of their families together. If all these women had disappeared at the beginning of the Revolution, the Cuban family as an institution would be far weaker today. At the same time, they somehow reproduced within their families the same patriarchal patterns that enslaved them to the house. PAR ADOX FIVE: In spite of all the educational work and laws to achieve women’s equality, sexist language and images are still pervasive, even in Communist Party rhetoric.

In 1994 there was a billboard in Cuba that represents an eloquent example of this paradox. The billboard reads “Where there are men . . . what is worthwhile goes forward.” It shows a man’s muscular torso, with the shirt open and the Cuban flag imprinted in the chest. The billboard was celebrating Cuban sovereignty and nationalism against outside aggression and was meant to encourage Cubans’ confidence in their possibilities to overcome the crisis of the 90s.66 The billboard is not naïve or impartial. It depicts the masculinization of patriotism that offends women because it reinforces machismo. It ascribes to men the strength and the power to carry on the duties of the revolution, and it implies that men are the ones who can wear the Cuban flag on their muscular chests. In a survey conducted in 1994, 57.4% of the Cuban women interviewed rejected the message in the billboard.

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Cuban political rhetoric is full of examples such as this one. Just to offer a few, Che Guevara’s most publicized slogan even now is the necessity of the creation of a “New Man”; the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba adopted as a slogan “Los hombres mueren, el partido es inmortal” (Men can die, the Party is inmortal”). How can anyone expect women to feel included with such a rhetoric? Fatherland has been a masculine symbol expressed through figures like Felix Varela, José Martí, Camilo Cienfuegos, Fidel Castro. Where is the Motherland? There are some particular elements within the Spanish language that make it difficult to reach a linguistic awareness about issues of gender discrimination. One of these elements is the use of the masculine as the “general grammatical gender.” How can it be claimed that “hombre” (man) in some definitions includes women and in other definitions does not? It could sound childish to claim, after more than 500 years of using “los hombres del pueblo,” “los aquí presentes,” etc., that this is a sign of sexism or that this contributes to sexist behaviors and to the masculinization of symbols in Cuba. Linguists might claim that the use of the masculine as the “generic gender” is just a linguistic marker without further consequences. However, examples like the ones mentioned above turn this interpretation in simplistic or at least, naïve. Language is the most important tool humans have to form and express ideas. It helps create a person’s ideas about her/himself and the world. If a society is serious about expanding opportunities for women, language must be addressed because it is a major mechanism for changing ideas and behavior. Historically, men have been the soldiers, the political leaders, the priests, and the deep thinkers in Cuba. To change this reality it is necessary to change the language through which social issues are addressed. It is also important to change the graphic language commonly used to represent women in the media.67 It is extremely offensive to look at Cuban tourist brochures to find them full of provocative and inviting women as bait to sell the beauty of the island, converting them, once again, into sexual symbols through language and images as is evident in the following pictures taken from some brochures. PAR ADOX SIX: Some of the significant gains for women within the Revolution, particularly in the area of employment, are being jeopardized by the economic crisis of the 90s.

No example illustrates this threat than the resurgence of prostitution. Though prostitution was virtually eliminated by the Revolution, and exemplary efforts were made to retrain prostitutes for new careers, hard times have prompted many Cuban women to barter their affections for dollars. This is particularly ironic in light of revolutionary goals to give Cuban women back their dignity and eliminate the pre-1959 image of Cuba as the brothel of the Caribbean. How is it possible that a society, with such a large majority embracing revolutionary values just ten years ago, now sees the return of prostitution? How is

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it that a State that usually exerts such a firm hand in suppressing illegal activity turned a blind eye for some years until 1995? Who are these new prostitutes? It is impossible to examine this trend without considering the current economic crisis. To survive the período especial (the “special period” in the wake of the collapse of the socialist trade bloc) all Cubans, not just women, have been driven to extreme measures. To attract desperately needed hard currency, the government has gradually opened the island to tourism and to joint business ventures with foreign capital. Inevitably, this influx of hard currency has engendered a second economy, a black market where just about anything is available to those with U.S. dollars or huge amounts of Cuban pesos. Although it was initially forbidden for Cuban citizens to possess dollars, official policy was eventually changed to legalize what had already become the status quo; people were using dollars daily, often just to get necessities. Increasingly there are products only available with dollars, so much so that in 1997, the cafeteria at the University of Havana no longer accepted pesos. The newly opened industrial and artisan markets allow commerce in both Cuban pesos and dollars, but the “street” exchange rate underscores the relative strengths of the two currencies: a pair of shoes sells for 6 dollars or 260 pesos (official exchange rate 1:1). To families without dollars this price presents a real dilemma; the minimum wage in Cuba is 100 pesos monthly and shoes are not available through the ration card.68 The means of getting dollars are as varied and ingenious as Cuban recipes for soy beans. Some lucky families receive remittances from relatives in the States; others work in joint ventures and are paid in dollars. Some enterprising couples have opened paladares (recently legalized home-restaurants, its existence being threatened since the establishment of high taxes and strict regulations since 1996). For those without more socially acceptable means to earn dollars, there is always jineterismo (roughly: hustling, literally: bronco busting or horse taming). A jinetero might sell coins depicting Che Guevara or craftily disguised counterfeit cigars, or offer his services as a guide, or he might offer to find the traveler a companion for the evening. His counterpart, the jinetera, is Cuba’s new prostitute. Likely to be educated, working in a state enterprise, and living with her family,69 the jinetera is a far cry from the illiterate and homeless woman who worked Havana’s red light districts before the Revolution. In this new form of prostitution, a woman gets friendly with a foreigner and parlays her charm into restaurant meals, a night at a disco, or possibly a pair of shoes for her child. More subtle than conventional prostitution, there may or may not be a quid pro quo, sex-for-cash transaction. Certainly for the jinetera the bottom line is cash, whether she needs the money just to get by or to afford modest luxuries for her family.

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On my 1994–1995 trip to Cuba I saw an indelible image as I walked along Havana’s seawall promenade, the Malecón: foreigners slowing their rented cars to peruse the freshly caught pompano fish proffered by illegal fishermen, and the young women in provocative dresses, strolling along side them: these were two forms of “meat market” unthinkable just three years before. In December, 1994, I conferred with several Cuban officials including Elsa Agramonte, a representative of the Federation of Cuban Women.70 When asked about the resurgence of prostitution, Elsa adhered to the “party line” that most of these jineteras are ideologically confused women with inappropriate morals, conveniently ignoring the economic reality that a jinetera can make more in one evening than in a month at her legitimate job. Until 1995, the Cuban state was dealing with jineterismo through education and media campaigns, ideological work and the pressure of public opinion, without using direct repression, since “being friendly” with a foreigner was not a crime. The control in hotels was minimum and more often than not, some of the hotel workers were involved or at least in connection with jineteras/os. Since the state had been forced to eliminate many jobs, it was clear that this situation was going to provoke an steady increase in prostitution, because for the first time, the state was not able to guarantee full employment to all citizens. The FMC created a group to help jineteras to find solutions to their individual problems (many of them are divorced, single mothers, or have no other means of support). The FMC started to work with the tourist industry to limit images of sexually provocative women in their advertisements. Since August-September 1995 the policy has changed.71 The hotels received orders that prohibit jineteras to go in the rooms with foreigners. In some cases it is allowed for the tourist to register only one woman during all the time he spends in the hotel. For those jineteras that “worked the streets” there is a four years prison term in rehabilitation jails, after the first warning. In January 1995 and later in July 1997 I didn’t see any jinetera on 5th avenue in Miramar (although I did see some around Coppelia very late at night in 1997). It seems like these measures are being effective at least to eliminate the “visual” phenomenon. This does not means the real problem has been eliminated, and possible major problems will be created because after a four years term, a jinetera might become a real criminal. Scarcity, inequality, tourism, unemployment still there, and with them, an underground prostitution. For most Cubans, the new prostitution presents a double embarrassment. Cubans are confronted with the economic failure of the Revolution—these women can’t make decent livings from their legitimate jobs—and are reminded of the days before the Revolution when rich foreigners had their way with Cuban women. While in Mexico in 1990, I was mortified when an upper-class man told me Mexicans send their sons to the island to lose their virginity, since Cuban women are “easy” and the prostitutes are the cheapest, healthiest, and more educated in the world.

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There is another form of prostitution in Cuba, that which might be called a “prostitution of values”. One particularly pernicious effect of the dollar economy is that some of the best minds in Cuba are abandoning their posts as technicians, teachers, and scientists to work for dollars in tourism or joint venture businesses. This might seem pretty normal in any other developing capitalist country, but it is not in Cuba. One of the principles that made the socialist laborethic so different of the capitalist one, was the idea that people had to work according to their capacities and abilities, and that the main goal of working was not the satisfaction of the individual necessity for money, but rather, the realization of their “human essence,”72 their contribution to the solution of the problems of the society as a whole. I remember working as a professor at the university without ever thinking if I was getting paid for what I was doing, or if I was accomplishing duties I was not paid for. Now things are changing drastically. Two young women in my own family have left their jobs as professionals (one has a degree in English literature and the other is an engineer) to work as a sales clerk and do odd jobs, respectively. A woman who studied philosophy with me, quit her job at a university in Havana and is now working as a private massage therapist. One university English department has been decimated by the “brain drain,” its professors now waiting tables at Varadero Beach hotels. Almost every day women ring the doorbell at my mother’s house offering to do housework for dollars. This potential supply of domestic servants, so common in other countries, was non-existent in Cuba after the Revolution, since domestic service in private houses was considered to be degrading work. A related phenomenon is that enrollment in higher education has actually decreased over the last decade.73 For thirty years, those who reached higher levels of education enjoyed respect in Cuban society, but on my recent trip (December 1998), young people told me it was no longer worthwhile to pursue a university degree. They saw no future for professionals since most statesector jobs pay so poorly. This aspect of the “prostitution of values,” is perhaps all the more disturbing since it erodes two of the pillars of the Revolution, the importance of education and the illusions of a certain future. It affects women in particular, since these two “pillars” have allowed the empowerment of Cuban women in the last 36 years, now jeopardized by the present inversion of values. The fact that a domestic servant could earn more than a female engineer is unfortunately going to affect female gains within the Revolution. Conclusions In this era when an economic and spiritual crisis have brought Cuba to the brink, to find solutions we must begin by recognizing and discussing Cuba’s problems openly, without limitations. If Cuba is to make good on its promise of women’s equality, Cubans will need the courage to envision change and the economic, educational, and legal forti-

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tude to make this vision real. A return to the traditional family is not what is needed: rather the social and political freedom to envision a new type of family, free from the structures of patriarchy. My suggestion is for Cubans to work toward: a) the improvement of economic conditions that facilitate daily life. Unfortunately, the belief that a Super State could resolve all social ills turned out to be just that, a belief. And we are reminded of the old Marxist principle that economy is the base of society, and human beings are integral to their material circumstances. The egalitarian discourse, without an economic base to support it will never be more than talk. b) the opening of the political discourse to new ideas, new organizations, new non-sexist language. Cubans will need the freedom to rebuild their society without paternalism, authoritarianism or, for that matter, any kind of “ism.” c) the amplification of men’s participation in domestic duties. This should begin with effective legislation and be subsequently supported and endorsed through education and public relations campaigns to motivate real change. Cuba needs a new paradigm, one that values men for their nurturing qualities. d) the measured reduction of political and community commitments. Both women and men need free time to enjoy family and home. The family could then be a true stabilizing and mediating entity in Cuban society, helping to achieve a balance between “social participation and individuality.” It will not be easy to dismantle the patriarchal structures that have remained despite the socialist revolution. But men and woman, working together, could build a new society, a new family. Cubans could practice equality more efficiently and not just talk about it. I hope my mother can live to see that day. Notes 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

The author is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, Seattle, and a professor at Green River Community College. She was a professor of Philosophy at a university in Havana from 1982 until 1991. Machismo: the idea that men are superior to women and should dominate them socially, economically, physically, and sexually. In Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba, 1992, pag. 38. It is interesting that the focus in the Constitution is not on individual rights, but on the guarantees provided by the state, a characteristica that will reinforce the “paternalistic nature” of Cuban revolutionary state. See Raquel Sierra, “Cuba Leads Developing World in Gender Equality”, published in Peacenet World News Service, on Sept. 1 1995. It can be argued that many of these achievements are due, in part, to international socio-sexual trends during the decades of the 60’s and 70’s. Of course, external factors may have influenced Cuban society, but because

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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of its socialist system and the conditions imposed by the U.S. economic embargo, external inf luence was minimized. Ordinary Cubans had little access to foreign magazines, radio, or television, generally limited to media from other socialist countries until 1986. (a notable exception: U.S. propaganda via Voice of America and later on, Radio Martí) Feminist literature was not published in Cuba; feminism being rejected as a form of “bourgeois ideology.” The only systematic inf luence was through the cinema. In the further development of this research project we will establish a comparison with countries like Venezuela where changes after the 60s were not as radical as in Cuba. From: Federation of Cuban Women, Statistics on Cuban Women, Havana, FMC, 1985, p. 22. Cuba Update, Vol. XII, No. 3, Summer 1991, pag. 15, also see Raquel Sierra, “Cuba leads . . . ” and Vilma Espín Guillois, “Intervención en la IV Conferencia Mundial de la Mujer”, organized by the United Nations, September 8, 1995, published by Cuba-L, an Internet information service on September 16, 1995. See Evenson, Debra: Revolution in the Balance. Colorado: Westview Press, Inc., 1994, p.89. From Vilma Espín Guillois, “Intervención en la IV Conferencia Mundial sobre la mujer” . . . See Boletín de Inicio del Curso Escolar, ed. Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, Habana 1993. See Marifeli Pérez–Stable, The Cuban Revolution. Origins, Course and Legacy. New York/Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press, 1993. pag. 33. It is interesting to note that in the United States, only 22% of the doctors are women. See Sam Roberts’ article “Women’s Work: What’s New, What Isn’t?”, in The New York Times, April 27 1995. Quoted in Raquel Sierra, “Cuba Leads Developing World in Gender Equality” See Areíto, Vol. 4 #14, pag. 7, Miami Oct. 1993. Granma, Cuban daily newspaper, on july 14 1995.Even if this figure is low, it is still amazing due to the current economic crisis that has affected women and children the hardest See Central Report of the Third Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, Ed. Política, La Habana, 1986, pag. 78. See the magazines Bohemia, March 31 1995, No. 7, pag. B38–B47, and Correo de Cuba, agosto 1995. Vilma Espín Guillois, “Intervención en la IV Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer” . . . Compare to 46.7/1000 in Cuba in 1969. See Granma, January 5 1994, pag. 3. See article by Susan Chira “Study Confirms Some Fears on U.S. Children,” in The New York Times, April 12, 1994. See Granma, January 5, 1994, “Mortalidad infantil en período especial”, La Habana.

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22. See Granma Weekly Review, 24 January 1988, pag. 4, La Habana. 23. My daughter attended a day care center where I paid roughly 10 percent of my monthly salary of $340.00. For what amounted to a little more than a dollar a day, my daughter could receive care from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, breakfast, two snacks and lunch, not to mention an organized program of pre-school education. Although children of low income single mothers are eligible for scholarships, demand for day-care is greater than capacity, so at times children must be wait-listed before being placed in day care. A child’s eligibility also depends on the mother’s work, with preferential treatment going to those working in industries considered high priority by the state. 24. Source: Censo de Población y Viviendas 1981, Publicación del CEE. Instituto de Demografía y Censo, 1982. 25. Source: Revista Bohemia, No. 16 1993, pag. B7 and Acosta, Dalia, “La descendencia” in Weekly Newspaper Juventud Rebelde, Feb. 20 1994. 26. In 1993, Cuban population was 10,922,187, and births had decreased by more than 5000 since 1992. This declining birth rate is a source of real concern for Cuban authorities, since 10% of the population is now more than 60 years old and the current reproduction rate doesn’t replace one daughter per woman (see Weekly Newspaper Juventud Rebelde, July 10 1994, “¿No creceremos?,” by Dalia Acosta. 27. See Vilma Espín, “Intervención en la IV Conferencia Mundial sobre la Mujer”,. . . . 28. See Raúl Gómez Treto, La iglesia católica durante la construcción del socialismo en Cuba, Costa Rica: Editorial DEI, 1987. It is interesting that from 1990–1995 church attendance has increased rapidly, with the economic and social crisis and especially after the Communist Party discussed the issues of religiosity and accepted the idea that religious men and women could be elected as Party members. It is too soon for this new move to have an impact on sexual behavor and attitudes related to women’s equality, but it should be observed carefully. Cuba, for instance, has one of the highest rate of legal abortion in the world, could that record be affected now that an increasing number of people is returning to Church? 29. Max Azicri: Cuba. Politics, Economics and Society. Pinter Publishers, 1988, pag. 177. 30. Azicri, Ob. Cit,. pag. XVII. 31. Francesca Miller, Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice. Hanover: University Press of New England, c.1991, pag. 63. 32. Of course many of these old traditional values and attitudes remains, because 36 years is not enough to change centuries of macho-education. For instance, in 1985 the Center for the Study of Youth conducted a study with eleventh graders, and at the question: do boys prefer to marry a virgin?, 49.85% of the girls answered “yes” while 72.42% of the boys answered also “yes” (see Marvin Leines, Sexual Politics in Cuba. Machismo, Homosexuality and AIDs. Colorado/Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, pag. 81–4).

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33. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pag. 239. 34. Ibid. 35. In “Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba”, August 1st, 1992, Año XC: “Cuba’s Comunist Party, based on marxist-leninist principles and on Martí’s ideas, is the organized vanguard of Cuba’s nation, is the superior leading force of the Society and the State, that organize and orient the common efforts toward the high goals of the construction of socialism as well as the movement toward the communist society”, pag. 34. 36. “Parallel” here refers to state markets where products were sold at prices not subsidized by the state, to supplement those products given, at much lower prices, with the ration card or “libreta”. 37. Approved in February 1975, it defines the family “ . . . by placing it in a social context imbued with socialist values. It defines family solidarity as the expression of such values, mutually held by man and wife . . . ” (Azicri, Max, Cuba. Politics, Economics and Society. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1988, pag. 56). 38. Source: De la Riva, Juan, Las Estadísticas Demográficas Cubanas, Ed. Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1975. and Datos Demográficos y Vitales, Instituto de Inv. Estadísticas, 1993, La Habana. 39. Note: It should be observed that Cuban population grew appreciably during this years. In 1953 Cuba’s census was 5.8 million and in 1970 it was 8.5 million (plus the émigrés). By 1985 it had grown to 10.1 million. 40. During 1993 and 1994, several articles about love, family stability, prostitution, jineterismo, etc., appeared in periodicals like Juventud Rebelde and the weekly, Bohemia. 41. For a report on the incredible achievements on AIDS contention, as well as the problems of Cuba’s policy on AIDS treatment see the bimonthly Cuba Update, Vol. XV, No.2, March-May 1994, from the Center for Cuban Studies, New York. 42. See Rosa M. Elizalde y A. del Pino, “Flores de 5ta Avenida”, Juventud Rebelde, January 23, 1994, La Habana. 43. Of course, this trend has been seen globally. The influence of worldwide social trends on Cuban society has not been very obvious and this article does not aim to examine them, focusing rather on forces within Cuba that can be addressed constructively once the problems are recognized. 44. See magazine Bohemia, No. 45, November 9, 1990. 45. Quoted in Miller, ob.cit., pag. 189. 46. Just recently, in 1989–1990 was it restablished as a specialty within the carreer of Philosophy in Havana’s University. 47. By 1965, although abortions were officially illegal, they were available (to avoid the public health hazard of illegal abortions) to all who desired them. Abortions have been completely legal and free of charge since 1979. 48. See Santiago Aroca’s article “Cifra de abortos en Cuba la mayor del hemisferio”, in El Nuevo Herald, Miami, July 6 1995.

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49. See Debra Evenson, ob. cit. chapter 5, and Marvin Leiner, ob. cit., chapter 3. 50. First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, pag. 197. 51. ibid., pag. 188. 52. Although there are rumors that they have divorced. 53. See Azicri, Max: Cuba: Politics, Economics and Society, Pinter Publishers, 1988, pag 114–115. 54. One arroba equals about 25 pounds. 55. See First Congress of the Communist . . . , pag. 198–199 and Central Report of the Third Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, Ed. Política, La Habana, 1986, pag. 7–79. 56. See Halebsky, S. and Kirk, J. (eds.): Cuba in Transition: Crisis and Transformation. Westview Press, 1992. 57. See Debra Evenson, Ob. Cit., pag. 94. In my mother’s neighborhood for instance, the FMC cell hasn’t had a meeting since 1993. 58. In recent years some NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) had appeared, most with the less than whole hearted approval of the state. The first gay men’s organization sprang from the concern over AIDS and the group “Cubans in the Struggle Against AIDS” was founded with the help of a Cuban-American academic from the USA. (see Reed, Gail: “AIDS, Sexuality and the New Man” (sic), in Cuba Update, May 1994, Vol. XV, No.2, MarchMay 1994). 59. Azicri, Max: Ob. Cit., pag. 115 60. Hooks, Bell: Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center. Ed. South End Press, 1984; pag. 21. 61. Hooks, Bell: Ob. Cit, pag. 24–26. 62. See Nuñez Machín, Ana, Mujeres en el Periodismo Cubano, ed. Oriente, Santiago. de Cuba, 1989, pag. 27–43. 63. For instance, the organization Radical Women from Seattle, USA, received an invitation from the FMC to visit the country and to discuss women’s issues in 1994 64. The Peter Pan Program, launched by the CIA in the 60’s, was a propaganda campaign to create discontent inside Cuba. Essentially it claimed that the communists were going to abolish the patria potestas and take the children from their families. Working through “legitimate” churches in Miami, the program brought Cuban children to the U.S. without their parents, to save them from the “terrible faith.” Many of the children stayed with church families or in foster homes, some in orphanages. Although some were reunited with their birth parents years later, many never saw their families again. 65. Sociolismo is a play on the word socialismo, from socio (pal or buddy). In the 70s, much in the same way as was manifested in the Soviet Union, personal connections became more important to success than hard work or political correctness. Sociolismo, though practiced by “revolutionaries,” was

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66.

67. 68.

69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

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distinctly reminiscent of the traditional politics of personality common in Cuba before 1959. The picture of this billboard appeared in “Estereotipos sexistas. Póngase usted a pensar”, by Mirta Rodríguez Calderón, in Bohemia (May 1994): B4– B7. The group MAGIN (previously mentioned) was trying to work on media representation of women until the group was prohibited in 1997. Since June 1995, the peso has risen dramatically (in the black market the exchange is 1 dollar per 10–15 pesos, it was 100 pesos on june 1994) probably as the result of high prices of products during almost 2 years and also due to a fiscal reform of the government to cut peso supply. This could eventually lead to a recuperation of the buying capacities of the Cuban peso. But with the current recuperation, the dilemma is still there, since production has not increased substantially, salaries have not increased and many of the former subsidized products are not available anymore. See Flores de 5ta Avenida, by R. M.. Elizalde y A. del Pino, ob. cit. Global Exchange is a non-profit organization, based in San Francisco, California, that encourages people-to-people contacts between developed and developing nations. They have been instrumental in challenging the U.S. travel ban to Cuba as well as the U.S. economic embargo. In December of 1994, I joined a Global Exchange delegation and participated in a series of conferences with Cuban officials. At least as of this writing, november 1997. As Marx stated in his Theses on Feuerbach and in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. From 200,000 in 1983 to 165,843 in 1993. See Azicri, Max, pag. 178 and Boletín de Inicio del Curso Escolar (1993), CEE, Cuba.

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19 Health Care in Cuba Tim Golden At the big, modern hospital on one end of this provincial city, the medical staff commands the sort of technology that most poor countries can only dream about. There are CAT scans for the radiologists, ultrasound machines for the obstetricians, stacks of hightech monitors in the suites for intensive care. In recent months, though, the doctors here have had to learn techniques they never heard about in medical school. Short on drugs, they have turned to acupuncture to anesthetize some patients. Lacking sutures, they have begun sewing up some wounds with hemp. “We are a model hospital and we are having very grave problems,” said one young doctor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “But from here, it goes downhill.” Five years ago the crushing economic crisis set off by the collapse of Cuba’s preferential trading partnerships in the former East bloc, the comprehensive health care system that has been one of Communism’s most prized achievements here is beginning to seriously erode. Across the country, even the most basic medicines are often scarce. Materials for some diagnostic tests have all but disappeared. At many hospitals, patients are told to bring their own sheets, and their visitors are sometimes asked to help mop floors. With ambulances crippled by lack of fuel and spare parts, sick Cubans must often flag down passing cars or trucks in emergencies. With their air-conditioning cut back, surgeons say they are sometimes unable to operate on hot days. Some foreign public health experts say the impact of the economic turmoil might already be catastrophic were it not for the island’s large network of hospitals and clinics and its relative wealth of physicians, nearly half of whom are deployed in a national community medicine program that emphasizes preventive care. 303

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And for a country now thought to have a per-capita income comparable to that of its poorest neighbors, the broad measures of its health may be even more impressive than in years past: infant mortality, estimated to have fallen to 9.4 deaths for every 1,000 live births last year, was only a shade higher than that in the United States; life expectancy at birth, 75.5 years in 1992, nearly equaled that of Luxembourg. Yet foreign experts have begun to challenge Government assertions that the well-being of Cubans is not at risk. Citing official statistics, they note that the island’s pathology has begun to change, that more people are sick and sometimes dying from illnesses once under greater control. Diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid fever are growing more common. Shortages of chlorine and pumps for water purification have brought a rise in diarrhea and hepatitis. The dearth of medication has turned chronic conditions like asthma, hypertension and diabetes into more serious problems. “There is an accelerated loss in the entire health system’s capacity to cope because of the lack of supplies,” a confidential study for the European Community Humanitarian Office reported earlier this year. “If the same tendency continues, there is no doubt that in 1994 and later years, mortality will rise from problems that the health system could resolve.” Health care has remained a central Government priority throughout the economic decline. Even as the system’s imports of hard currency have been slashed by almost 70 percent, officials say financing for health care has actually risen over the last five years as a proportion of the overall budget. “We have fewer resources, but the resources that are indispensable to providing care have been guaranteed,” said Miguel Santín, the head of epidemiological services for the Ministry of Public Health. “No hospital has been closed down here. They have maintenance problems, they need paint, but they are still running.” Growing Signs Of Problems Despite great efforts to sustain it, however, the health care system that has long been a source of pride and political support for the Government of President Fidel Castro has increasingly become a focus of complaints, even from within. “In recent days, the leadership of the revolution has criticized the existence of serious problems in the health sector,” Trabajadores, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party Labor Union, wrote in an editorial last month. Cubans were noticing, it added, “that the quality of care was deteriorating not only from the effect of inevitable and numerous shortages, but also as a consequence of failures of human action.” There are no gaping gunshot wounds to Cuba’s health crisis, no screaming crack users tearing up the emergency rooms. Beginning in late 1991, a mysteri-

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ous disease called neuropathy swept across the island, temporarily impairing the vision or physical functioning of 50,000. Most experts suspect that the illness was caused by a lack of vitamins or other nutrients. The more mundane tragedies are like those of a couple prominent in Havana cultural circles who were away from home one day last year when their adolescent son had a severe asthma attack and was out of the inhalers used to control the condition. With no gassed-up cars in the vicinity, friends of the family said, it took the boy precious minutes to reach a local clinic. Lacking the proper equipment to treat him, doctors there sent the boy to a nearby hospital. By the time he got there, he could not be saved. The erosion that is harder to see is the sort occurring in Migdalia Aguilar, a 51-year-old woman who said she suffered from severe depression. Striking up a conversation as she walked near the center of Havana with a friend who was keeping an eye on her, Miss Aguilar said she had recently been hospitalized for the fourth time. This time she could no longer obtain antidepressant medication to take home, and what little she received in the hospital seemed to do no good. “I came out just the same,” she said. “Either they do not have the medicine, or they do not have what you need.” Shortages and Other Shocks Close to the ground, public medicine in Cuba looks much like the struggle waged in Lima, Peru, or New Delhi or the Bronx. Doctors’ compassion tends to be low key; small victories go unremarked. Maria Teresa Medel, a softspoken 26-year-old who is one of 25,000 family practitioners for a population of about 11 million, sees patients all morning at a tiny clinic south of Havana, dispensing more advice and sympathy than anything else. She says it embarrasses her to write prescriptions that the local pharmacy will be unable to fill. In the afternoon, she pays house calls. Then, the buses generally being absent or full, she hitchhikes home, a trip that can take hours. “You try to do what you can with what you have,” she says. A lot of her medical-school classmates “are just sitting down and saying, ‘there are no supplies, no medicines, what am I doing here?’” Part of the shock to the system comes from the sense of pharmaceutical entitlement that Cubans have acquired over the last three decades. Like surgeons’ former willingness to perform cosmetic procedures on demand, the phenomenon is one of many that made the medical system considerably less than efficient in the past. Cubans have often interpreted taking antibiotics whenever they have colds as a universal right. Since 1989, officials say the country’s inventory of medicines has dropped from 1,300 types to about 800, though at a handful of clinics and hospitals

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visited by a reporter, the checklists were far shorter cabinets and tended to be half-empty. Health officials say the shortages have been aggravated by the United States economic embargo, which was tightened in 1992 by legislation sponsored by Representative Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey. By barring trade with American subsidiary companies, the embargo forces Cuba to import medicines, chemical reagents, equipment and supplies from Europe and Asia at premiums said to average from 20 percent to 30 percent. Herbal Remedies and Hypnosis Like other Cubans, doctors, pharmacists and other medical workers have grown expert at what they call inventing and resolving. Cuban hospitals now have “green” pharmacies where aloe leaves are whipped to make anti-inflammatory creams, herbal teas substitute for sedatives and honey is used to make remedies of all sorts. Acupuncture and even hypnosis are being used for anesthesia. And faced with a severe shortage of X-ray film radiologists have turned back to fluoroscopy, even though it exposes patients and doctors to more radiation. The threats to Cubans’ health, however, come from beyond the health care system itself. Like the neuropathy epidemic, more and more problems appear tied to plunging levels of nutrition. According to Government figures, Cubans’ average caloric intake fell from 2,845 calories a day in 1989 to 1,780 last year. Though pregnant women are given special rations and allowed to eat free in workers’ cafeterias, for example, the incidences of babies born with low weights and of anemia among expectant mothers have begun to rise. (At the same time, a sharp drop in dietary fat and greater exercise with the use of millions of bicycles for transportation has apparently contributed to a modest decline in deaths by heart attacks.) Gastrointestinal illnesses have become more prevalent as chlorination of the water system has fallen from 100 percent by about half. Shortages of electricity and gas have forced many Cubans to cook with scrap wood or kerosene, contributing to a rise in respiratory infections. While garbage collection has become more haphazard, some city residents have added to their sanitation problems by raising pigs, chickens and other animals in their apartments. At the Brothers Almejeira Hospital in Havana, a chief surgeon, Sixto Corona, 60, has seen his patients’ soap rations cut to a small sliver, toilet paper rations eliminated entirely and the cleaning staff on his 28-bed ward shrink to one person. “They say, ‘I am going to work in a shopping center or in a hotel, where I can earn dollars,’” he moans. “No doctors have gone yet, but some nurses have.”

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Swallowing its pride, Cuba has begun to accept donations that might total $15 million this year, said a Deputy Health Minister, José B. Jardines. He called the help “largely symbolic,” but some of the donors are not so sure. Rolando Suárez, a lawyer who heads the Havana office of Caritas, tells of struggling for months to squeeze desperately needed medicines out of Cuban factories that the Catholic charity has supplied with more than a $1 million worth of raw materials. Since March, however, only about a fourth of the job has been completed. “We were supposed to be finished by July, then September, and nothing,” he said. “What did they say? ‘The electricity went out. The workers did not come. There were no containers to put the medicine in.’” He added: “We may be able to: reach a certain level of stabilization. But if they are hoping to sustain the system with humanitarian aid, they are going to find themselves out of fashion very quickly. There are still places where people are starving to death, and the world’s attention span is very short.”

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20 Cuba’s Refugees: Manifold Migrations Silvia Pedraza “El vino, de plátano; y si sale agrio, ¡es nuestro vino!” —José Martí, “Nuestra América” (1891)1

Over thirty years of political migration brought close to a million Cuban immigrants to American soil, harboring distinct waves of immigrants as well as distinct refugee “vintages,” alike only in their final rejection of Cuba. Each of the major waves of migration has been characterized by a very different social composition. To understand the changing characteristics of the exiles over time, we need to pay attention to the changing phases of the Cuban revolution. As Peter Rose (1981, p. 11) emphasized, “refugees do not live in a vacuum. They are part of an intricate sociopolitical web that must be seen as the background against which any portrait of their travails must be painted and any dissection of their innermost thoughts and feelings must be pinned.” This analysis focuses both on the nature of the decisions the refugees made to leave Cuba and the larger social structures that shaped the exodus. As C. Wright Mills (1961) said, so long ago, the sociological imagination lies at the intersection of personal troubles and historical issues. Including those who were born here, the total number of Cubans in the United States as of 1990 was approximately 1,042,433, 73 percent of whom were immigrants.2 The 1990 census data gives us, for the first time, the opportunity to look at the social and demographic characteristics of the distinct waves of the Cuban exodus.3 The various waves of Cuban migration brought very different sets of social resources with them—such as their social class, race, education, family, institutional knowledge, and values. Over the course of an exodus that has now lasted thirty-eight years, they also arrived in the U. S. at times when the social context that greeted them presented them with vastly different amounts of opportunity—such as economic growth or recession, government policy pro308

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grams, a warm welcome or cold reception. Hence, Cuban immigrants from the various waves of migration have undergone rather different processes of incorporation into American society. As a result, to portray Cubans in the United States by figures that describe them as a whole (for example, by their overall education or poverty level) masks the vastly different social realities which they represent. Those many social realities are the result of their manifold migrations. Refugees as a Social Type As E. F. Kunz explained, a refugee “is a distinct social type.” The essential difference between refugees and voluntary migrants lies in their motivations: It is the reluctance to uproot oneself, and the absence of positive original motivations to settle elsewhere, which characterizes all refugee decisions and distinguishes the refugee from the voluntary migrants. (Kunz 1973, p. 130)

Hence, the key idea necessary to understand the refugee in flight is that of the “push” (cf. Lee 1966). While ordinary immigrants are more likely to be “pulled” by the attraction of the opportunity to fashion a better life, as Barry Stein (1981, p. 322) succinctly expressed it, “the refugee is not pulled out; he is pushed out. Given the choice, he would stay.” Political exile is the last step of a process of profound political disaffection that, as Kunz (1973) stressed, is often accompanied by the refugees’ fear for their safety given their interpretation of events and self-perceived danger. To explain the enormous variance among refugees’ experiences, Kunz spoke of “vintages,” or refugee groups that are distinct in “character, background, and avowed political faith” (1973, p. 137). When dramatic changes in the society take place gradually, individuals react differently. Some oppose changes that others support, some call for compromises that to others smell of collaboration: As the political situation ripens for each, they will leave the country as distinct ‘vintages’ each usually convinced of the moral and political rightness of his actions and implicitly or openly blaming those who departed earlier or stayed on. (Kunz 1973, p. 137)

“Vintages” (defined by attitudes) may or may not be the same as waves (defined by timing). The Cuban political exodus holds both distinct waves of migration and “vintages.” The First Wave: Cuba’s Elite Nelson Amaro and Alejandro Portes (1972) portrayed the different phases of the Cuban political immigration as changing over time with the exiles’ principal motivation for their decision to leave. With the unfolding of the Cuban revolu-

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tion, over the years “those who wait” gave way to “those who escape,” and they to “those who search.” Bringing the analysis up to date, I have added “those who hope” and “those who despair.” Overall, the Cuban migration is characterized by an inverse relation between date of departure and social class of the immigrants. Typical of the first phase of the immigration were “those who wait.” The Cuban exodus began with the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 over the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista with the exit of the Batistianos. But at this time the majority of Cubans shared in the euphoria of the revolution’s hard-won success. It was only when the revolution entered a more radical phase that the exodus of political immigrants really took force. In this first wave, those who left were Cuba’s elite. These upper and uppermiddle classes were not tied to Batista’s government but were bound to a political and economic structure that, Amaro and Portes underlined, was completely interpenetrated by the demands and initiative of American capital: These executive and owners of firms, big merchants, sugar mill owners, manufacturers, cattlemen, representatives of foreign companies and established professionals, were those most acquainted with the United States’ political and economic guardianship of Cuba, under which they had created or maintained their position, and thus were the least given to believe that the American government would permit the consolidation of a socialist regime in the island. (Amaro and Portes 1972, p. 10)

Hence, amidst the economic and diplomatic war that ensued between Cuba and the U.S. (cf. Schreiber 1973), they decided to leave. The refugees of this first wave came to the United States driven by Cuba’s overturning of the old order through revolutionary measures such as the nationalization of American industry and agrarian reform laws, as well as by the United States’ severance of diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba, all of which entailed serious personal losses. Maximiliano Pons4 came to the U. S. in 1960 after Castro nationalized the American company he was working for. The son of Spanish immigrants, Catalan traders from Barcelona, like many of his social class Maximiliano was educated in the United States: I finally broke with my father when I went to college. I elected to go to Yale and not to Salamanca, where my father wanted me to go. I wanted to be an American very badly. I became an American aspirant. The United States had just emerged victorious from World War II. I was away at Yale then. Four years later I returned to Cuba, went to work for a leading American company, bought a house in the Marianao suburbs—the whole thing. Fidel turned me back into a Cuban. (Llanes 1982, pp. 53–54)

“Those who wait” characterizes those first refugees that came imagining that exile would be temporary, waiting for the inevitable American reaction and help to overthrow Cuba’s new government. In this first stage the exile’s political activity was intensely militant, supporting military counterrevolution against Cuba. Of these, the exiles’ invasion of Bay of Pigs in April 1961 was the largest

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and most tragic. This first phase of the Cuban exile ended with the fiasco of the Freedom Fighters’ attempt to liberate Cuba from Castro’s hold. In Playa Girón the 2506 Brigade fought against the Cuban rebel army, waiting for the air cover the United States had promised. They waited in vain (see Thomas 1977). “Those who escape” constituted the second phase that was set on by the growing political turmoil when the Catholic church was silenced after denouncing the communist direction the revolution was taking (cf. Alfonso 1984); the electoral system collapsed when the jubilant crowds chanted around Castro “Elecciones para qu . . . ?” (“What do we need elections for?”); and Castro announced that he had always been a Marxist-Leninist and would be so until the day he died (cf. Thomas 1977). The exodus doubled. As Amaro and Portes noted, the inverse relationship between date of emigration and social class in Cuba began to show. Still largely a middle-class exodus, now it was more middle than upper: middle merchants and middle management, landlords, middle-level professionals, and a considerable number of skilled unionized workers, who wanted to escape an intolerable new order. The immigrants of the first two phases were not so much “pulled” by the attractiveness of the new society as “pushed” by the internal political process of the old. When the private universities and schools began to close in 1961, fear that the children would be educated by the state became prevalent. Miranda Martín, the daughter of a doctor that had initially sympathized with the revolution, remembered: We became aware gradually of the shift in Fidel’s policies to the left, but papi didn’t want to leave Havana. . . . My mother, on the other hand, was panicked. What will they do to the children in school? Will they force them to go to communist schools? Finally in August we left. (Llanes 1982, pp. 23–24) Table 1 Number of Cuban Immigrants in the U.S., by Waves of Migration, 1990. Year of Immigration

Number of Cubans

% All Cubans

% that Migrated from 1960-1990

Born in U.S.

285,244

27.4

—

1982-90

73,963

7.1

3.4

1980-81

125,313

12.0

18.2

1965-79

316,275

30.3

45.8

1960-64

174,275

16.7

25.3

Before 1959

67,362

6.5

—

Total

1,042,432

100.0

(689,826) 100.0

Source: U.S. 1990 Census, Public Use Microdata Sample, 5 percent, weighted.

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Over 14,000 children came alone through Operation Peter Pan, sent by their frightened parents (Walsh 1971). “What began as a trickle,” wrote Richard Fagen et al. (1968, p. 62), “was, by the middle of 1962, a small flood.” Data from the 1990 census show that of the 757,187 Cubans in the United States who immigrated after the revolution, 25 percent arrived during the first wave, 1960– 19645 (see table 1). At this time the Cuban Refugee Program was initiated that assisted most of the refugees in Miami. The higher class origin of these Cuban refugees has been well documented. This initial exodus over represented the professional, managerial, and middle classes, 31 percent, as well as the clerical and sales workers, 33 percent. Likewise, the educational level of these refugees was remarkably high (Fagen, Brody, and O’Leary 1968, table 7.1). With breathtaking speed, in a couple of years the Cuban revolution had moved through distinct phases. Nelson Amaro (1977) captured the progressive stages as: first, democracy; then, humanism; followed by nationalism; thereafter, socialism; culminating in Marxism-Leninism. The United States’ punitive policy—cutting the sugar quota, instituting a trade embargo, and backing the exiles’ invasion of Cuba—no doubt aided the rapidity of this transition. Amidst this swift progression of stages, some refugees dissented at one point, some at others. To Castro, they were all the same: gusanos, or counterrevolutionary “worms.” Casal (1979) observed that although the “highly belligerent” counterrevolutionary movements of the first two phases never actively engaged all exiles, they did draw on the financial or moral support of most exiles who hoped for Castro’s overthrow and for their own return to Cuba. Unable to reach their goal, the Cuban communities became disenchanted with such activities and withdrew their support. As Kunz (1973, p. 133) specified, when refugees realize “that the doors are closed behind” them, they begin to take the steps that change them from temporary refugees into exiles. Kunz (1981, pp. 45–46) also distinguished various refugee types according to their ideological-national orientation while in exile. Kunz’s labels for the various ways in which one can be an exile constitute an effort to delineate the types: the Restoration Activists, the Passive Hurt, the Integration Realists, the Eager Assimilationists, the Revolutionary Activists, and the Founders of Utopias. Revolutionary Activists singlemindedly “subjugate matters of family and chances of long term resettlement” to the purposes they set out to achieve, while Eager Assimilationists may engage in a “hyperactive search for assimilation and the achievement of material success” as a way to forget their guilt and their past. Still, it is important to realize, as Kunz proposed, that while these “solutions” to the problem of exile may be found side by side, most individuals “pass through these role-phases from their day of flight, progressing and regressing” throughout their exile careers (Kunz 1981, p. 46), passages that may well be facilitated by specific events. The very life of Lourdes Casal attests to various exile role passages and to diametrically opposed ways of shouldering the felt sense of historic responsibil-

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ity which exile can entail. In her attempt to express her strong identification with Cuba and to solve her personal problem of exile, Lourdes Casal lived through many exile lives. Casal was a formidable woman: a black Cuban from the middle class, in the early seventies she was the founder of the magazine Areíto and the Antonio Maceo Brigade, for Cuban-Americans open to or in sympathy with the revolution. Yet at the beginning of the revolution, in the late fifties and early sixties, she had been an active member of groups, such as the Juventud Universitaria Católica (Catholic University Students) and the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (Students’ Revolutionary Directorate), that fought against Batista’s dictatorship but also actively opposed the communist direction in which the revolution was then headed. As a result of her travels to Africa and her return to Cuba, as well as the social movements then rippling through the United States, she underwent a profound personal change and, in the early seventies, became an active supporter of the Cuban revolution. When she learned that she had little time left to live, she chose to return and, in 1981, died in Cuba, where she is buried (see Institute of Cuban Studies 1982). As Peter Rose (1981, p. 11) highlighted, few social scientists have turned their attention to the sociology of exile, and even those few “rarely have delved into the social and psychological ramifications of those affected” by refugee migration and resettlement. After the October Missile Crisis in 1962, the flights ceased, forcing the migration rate to slow down. The U.S. provided direct transportation only for over 1,000 Cuban exiles that had been imprisoned in Cuba as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and their relatives. The Cuban government exchanged the prisoners for vital needs: medicine, medical and surgical equipment, food, and money. During this period, Cubans arrived that had either previously stayed in other countries, or had escaped Cuba illegally in boats and rafts to the shores of Key West. Francisco Mateo crossed the 90 miles between Cuba and Key West on a small rowboat: Some of the people who left from Mariel (in 1980) took twenty hours to cross the distance in a motorboat. We took twenty days in 1962, my family and me, in a boat with three oars and holes. . . . You tell me how eight people could leave on an eight-foot rowboat and expect to get anywhere. Across the Miami Causeway maybe, but not those stinking, treacherous ninety miles. God was with us. There is no other answer. (Llanes 1982, p. 19)

During this phase of the exodus, close to half of the arrivals were blue-collar workers, skilled and unskilled, and a large proportion were agricultural workers and fishermen (Casal 1979, table 1). Cuba introduced food rationing and compulsory military service at this time, further spurring the exodus. The Second Wave: Cuba’s Petite Bourgeoisie In the fall of 1965 a chaotic period ensued when hundreds of boats left from Miami for the Cuban port of Camarioca, where they picked up thousands of

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relatives to come to the United States. “Those who search” characterized this next major wave of the Cuban migration. In response to President Lyndon Johnson’s “open door” policy that welcomed refugees from communism, the Cuban exodus was organized and concerted. For eight years, the United States and Cuban governments administered an orderly air bridge as the Vuelos de la Libertad, or Freedom Flights, daily brought Cubans from Varadero to Miami that the Cuban Refugee Program swiftly processed and resettled, dispersing them throughout the United States. Kunz (1973) distinguished anticipatory refugee movements from acute ones. The joint policy of the Unites States and Cuban governments turned this initially acute exodus into a coordinated and orderly anticipatory refugee movement. Though for quite different reasons, the U.S. and Cuban governments have often “cooperated with the enemy,” as Jorge Domínguez (1991) stressed. When the refugee airlift closed, thousands of flights had brought more than a quarter of a million persons. As table 1 shows, 41 percent of Cubans who immigrated to the United States after the revolution came over during the years of the airbridge: 1965–1974. Throughout this period, the Memorandum of Understanding regulated the immigrants’ departure, giving the immediate family of exiles already living in the United States priority (Thomas 1967). Both countries compiled their “master lists”—one composed in the U. S. of those who claimed their relatives in Cuba, and one composed in Cuba of those who requested departure. Jointly, both governments decided who would emigrate and the migration proceeded through family networks. Cuba barred from exit young men of military service age, as well as professionals, technical, and skilled workers whose exit would cause a serious disturbance in production or delivering social services, such as doctors (Clark 1975). With this phase of the migration, the exodus of the upper and upper-middle classes largely came to an end. This wave of immigration was largely working class and “petite bourgeoisie”: employees, independent craftsmen, small merchants, skilled and semi-skilled workers. Amaro and Portes judged (1972, p. 13) that over time the political exile increasingly became an economic exile as “those who search” searched for greater economic opportunities than were provided in a socialist society that instituted a new ethic of sacrificing individual consumption to achieve collective goals. Without doubt, these were some of the leanest and most idealistic years of the Cuban revolution. To spread access to a basic education and health care, young, educated Cubans went to live in the countryside, working in literacy campaigns to educate the poor, illiterate peasants, and in public health campaigns to provide basic health care. At the same time, the impact of the hemispheric trade embargo imposed by the Organization of American States in 1964 resulted in a spare parts crisis and other profound economic dislocations (Schreiber 1973); the exodus drained technical and administrative skills; and Cuba failed in her attempts to cease being a sugar monoculture, industrialize, and diversify. In

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Amaro and Portes’ view, increasingly the immigration ceased to be a political act and became an economic act. Yet their distinction missed the reality that while life in Cuba grew harsh for all, it turned particularly bitter for those who had announced their dissent by declaring their intention to leave. Those who applied to leave lost their jobs, were ostracized as enemies, and were forced to do hard labor in agriculture. Antonio Chacón applied to leave Cuba in 1962, but was unable to leave until 1966, by which time he was suffering from malnutrition, diabetes, and high blood pressure: We had applied for an exit permit. This meant that I would lose my job at the newspaper. We had planned for a few months of unemployment. It was unavoidable. . . . Then, slam. . . . The door closed and I was inside. Unemployed. We finally left in 1966. Can you imagine that? Four years knocking around doing “volunteer work” on weekends in order to get the food allowance. We lost our belongings. Everything we owned was sold or traded for food. We ended up living with my friend Jacobo, who took us in at great risk. I lost eighty pounds in those four years. (Llanes 1982, pp. 93–94)

The social transformations the Cuban revolution effected—political and economic—were so pervasive that they always “pushed” Cubans. America, in facilitating the migration, always “pulled” them. Moreover, the Cuban migration is unique in the extent to which both the United States and Cuban governments organized, concerted, and facilitated the exodus (Tabori 1972). Together, I argued, they set in motion a system of political migration that for many years proved beneficial to both. The loss of the educated, professional middle classes indeed proved erosive to the Cuban revolution, but it also served the positive function of externalizing dissent. At the same time, in the United States the arrival of so many refugees who “voted with their feet” also served to provide the legitimacy necessary for foreign policy actions during the tense years of the Cold War (Pedraza-Bailey 1985). Now the Cuban community in the United States became increasingly heterogeneous, varying widely in their social class origin. The former social distinctions were perpetrated and reenacted in exile, often with little bearing to their life in America. Those who had belonged to the five most exclusive yacht and country clubs in Havana founded another in Miami, with nostalgia dubbed “The Big Five.” Cubans of working-class origin remain outsiders to these attempts to recreate a golden past that seems to ever grow only more golden. When the migration began in the early 1960s, 31 percent of the Cubans who arrived in the Unites States were professionals or managers. By 1970, only 12 percent were professionals or managers. More than half the arrivals, 57 percent, were blue collar, service, or agricultural workers (Aguirre 1976, table 2). While Cuban exiles are clearly heterogeneous, their celebrated “success story” obscures it. It particularly serves to obscure the many Cuban poor. Still, the Cuban poor have always been evident in many neighborhoods of la Southwestcera, as Miami’s Southwest is affectionately called. But not only are

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they hidden from the view of Americans, Cubans also tend to hide them from themselves (cf. Domínguez 1975). Casal (1979, p. 116) emphasized the costs of the “success story”: it prevents Cubans from getting “a clear picture” of their true situation; it desensitizes them and others to the hidden costs of “success”; and it isolates Cubans from other American minorities. Cuban immigrants that arrived after the airbridge ended consisted of refugees that had first lived in Spain. Portes, Clark, and Bach (1977) found that these émigrés represented Cuba’s “middling service sectors”: cooks, gardeners, domestics, street vendors, shoe shiners, barbers, hairdressers, taxi drivers, small retail merchants. They had left Cuba during the period when Castro launched a new “revolutionary offensive” in Cuba, confiscating over 55,000 small businesses that were still privately owned (Mesa-Lago 1978), “pushing” out the little entrepreneur and his employees. By and large, the refugees of this “vintage” believed in the promises of the revolution until the Cuban government labelled them parásitos, or “parasites,” and took over their small businesses. With the economic transition to socialism effected, in the seventies the Cuban government cast the shape of the political system: the new Cuban Communist Party held its First Congress; a new Constitution was declared; and Fidel Castro formally became President. In many ways, the old idealism and romanticism of the 1960s gave way to what Mesa-Lago (1978) called pragmatism. The failure of the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Cubans all over the island to make the national goal of cutting 10 million tons of sugar in 1970 issued this new phase. Cuba reintroduced material incentives and wage differentials to promote greater economic growth; other mass organizations, such as the Poder Popular, or Organs of Peoples Power, took form. With this institutionalization, Cuba increasingly took on the features of Eastern European communism (cf. Roca 1977). For the vast majority of Cubans in the United States, throughout these years the issue continued to be life in America. Yet that very stability, and cultural impact on the young who lived face to face with the social movements of “the sixties” in America, gave birth to an increased ideological pluralism, denser than that which had always existed though obscured by the uniform rejection of Cuba. As Casal (1979, p. 128) observed, “the Cuban community is not monolithic now (if it ever was).” Among other splits, such as social class and waves of migration, the Cuban community is certainly cleft by age, by generations. Typically, immigrants experience a pronounced generation gap when parents raised in the Old World confront their children raised in the New. But this gap reflects more than that; it is the difference between political generations that result from sharing a common location in a historical social process that subjected them to specific experiences during their youth—a stratification of experience that shapes a frame of reference for the future (Mannheim 1952). Among Cuban exiles, the gap between the political generations which came of age during certain critical

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periods of Cuban history (cf. Zeitlin 1966), and that which came of age in America under the impact of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, is often a chasm. It was fifty-five progressive young people who, in December 1977, first broke through nineteen years of hostility, abuse, and isolation. Grouped as the Antonio Maceo Brigade, their visit throughout the island left behind a profound mark. Cuba filmed it: 55 Hermanos (55 Brothers and Sisters) captured their search for cultural identity; for some, for political identity. Widely shown in Cuba, it proved heartrending: evidence of the suffering that exile had brought both those who left and who were left behind. In 1978, a dialogue took place between the Cuban government and representatives of the Cuban community in exile as a result of which the Cuban government agreed to the release of political prisoners; to promote the reunification of families rent apart by the exodus; and to allow Cubans in the United States to visit their family and their homeland. All at once, the counterrevolutionaries, gusanos of yesterday, respectfully became “members of the Cuban community abroad,” the release of political prisoners began, and the return visits of Cuban exiles commenced. The Cuban community split into the opposing camps of those who supported and opposed the dialogue; those who returned and refused to visit Cuba. Still, since that day, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have returned to Cuba every year—seeking the family they loved and the vestiges of the life they once led. The Third Wave: Cuba’s Marielitos Since the flow of Cuban refugees had halted for many years, few expected the chaotic flotilla exodus in 1980. Initiated in April by those who asked for political asylum at the Peruvian Embassy, within days it grew massive. When this acute refugee exodus ceased the following fall, it had brought over 125,000 more Cubans to America, approximately 18 percent of all Cuban immigrants (see table 1). This wave lacked order and process. From Miami, thousands of boats manned by relatives sped across the ninety miles of sea to Cuba’s Mariel Harbor. At times they succeeded in bringing their families, other times they brought whomever angry officials put on the boats. Towards the end, this included Cuba’s social undesirables: those who had been in prisons (whether they had committed real crimes or had only succeeded in challenging the state), mental patients, and homosexuals. In Cuba, these “antisocial elements,” this escoria, or “scum,” as the government called them, represented a large public slap in the face: no longer the immigrants of the transition from capitalism to communism, but the children of communism itself. In America they arrived in the throes of President Jimmy Carter’s ambivalent government policy that both welcomed them “with open hearts and open arms” and sought to delimit the flow.

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In the United States, after twenty years of celebrating the achievements of Cuban exiles, the press contributed to their damaging portrayal. It focused on the criminals, the homosexuals, the many blacks: categories of people to whom Americans accord too little respect. Who were the Marielitos? Were they “scum”? To dispel the more damaging and inaccurate portrayals, Robert Bach (1980; Bach et al. 1981/82) studied their characteristics, sampling the Marielitos soon after their arrival, while they were still in the processing centers and the refugee camps. Among the most salient was their youth (most were young men single or without their families) and the visibly higher proportion of blacks than ever (Bach et al. 1981/82, pp. 33–35). Their former occupations showed that most were from the mainstream of the Cuban economy, hardly scum. Also salient was their overwhelmingly working-class origins—close to 71 percent were blue collar workers. Mechanics, heavy equipment and factory machine operatives, carpenters, masons, and bus, taxi, and truck drivers led the list of occupations (Bach et al. 1981/82, p. 34). These characteristics, stressed Fernández (1982), suggested new generational strains may have developed from the more limited economic and political opportunities available to the young when the older generation of Cubans who made the revolution held the key posts, as well as the burden of military service in Cuba and overseas shouldered by the young (cf. Díaz-Briquets 1983). “Those who hope” might well characterize this wave. In the United Sates, the press focused inordinately on the criminal element. Indeed, there were many who had been in prison. According to the the Immigration and Naturalization Service, of the 124,789 Mariel refugees around 19 percent, or 23,970, admitted they had been in jail in Cuba. Of those who had been in prison, 5,486 were political prisoners, while 70 percent of those who had been in prison had been jailed for minor crimes or for acts, such as vagrancy or participation in the extensive black market that were crimes in Cuba but not in the United States. The Cuban Ley de la Peligrosidad (Law of Dangerous Behavior) made some forms of dissent “anti-social” behavior, controlled by prison terms, such as participating in the black market (buying or selling clothes and food); dodging military service or desertion; refusing to work for the state, particularly in the cane fields; and trying to escape Cuba illegally (Bach et al. 1981/82, p. 46). Of those who had been in jail, the immigration service considered only 7 percent to be serious criminals—less than 2 percent of all the Marielitos (Montgomery 1981). Given their youth, the Marielitos clearly constituted a different political generation, one whose coming of age was long after the early revolutionary struggle and sharp social cleavages that demanded enormous sacrifices but also affirmed the loyalty of many. Roughly half of the Mariel immigrants came of age during the late 1960s or the 1970s, when problems of freedom of expression became particularly acute for artists and intellectuals, such as the incident sparked by Heberto Padilla’s poem expressing the marginality of those who were “Fuera del Juego” (“Out of the Game”). Moreover, deviance, particularly homosexuality,

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was scorned and dealt with by prison sentence. Comparisons with the years of Batista could no longer serve to promote the consent of a generation that scarcely could remember them. The Marielitos, therefore, were a significantly different “vintage”—one whose lived experience (experiencia vivencial, as we say in Spanish) contrasts sharply with other “vintages.” In particular, at the two poles of twenty years of emigration, stand two “vintages” that at best can hardly comprehend one another and at worst may be, as Kunz noted (1973), hostile. Over time the dramatic changes the Cuban revolution effected progressed through distinct stages, and these stages interacted with the social characteristics of those affected to produce markedly different processes of political disaffection. To put it simply, let me give two stark examples. A typical 1960 émigré was an executive, older, male, and white that would likely have become disaffected by the nationalization of American industry in the early years of the revolution. But a typical 1980 émigré was a bus driver, young, male, and black that would scarcely have minded that nationalization. Instead, he might have spent many years believing in the professed goals of the revolution, until a bout of prison terms for his participation in the extensive black market of the 1970s promoted his disaffection. Mariano Medina was a black Cuban and former Army officer that fought in Angola. He spoke of the distance that separated him from the earlier exiles: I can now see that they feel no ill will toward me and may even want to help me, but they can’t help me come to grips with the twenty years I’ve spent in Cuba. They don’t understand how I feel . . . (Llanes 1982, p. 170)

Despite the willing help of many in the Cuban community, many others exhibited a defensive prejudice against the newcomers, who might tarnish their reputation. The first and latest waves of Cuban refugees in the United States live side by side but remain aloof from one another. For them, as Kunz (1973, p. 137) pointed out, the date of departure from Cuba “signifies the bona fide” of their “political credo.” Thus, they tend to blame each other for having left too soon or stayed too late. And the Cuba they long for is not quite the same Cuba. Oscar Handlin ([1951] 1973) wrote of the immigrants from Europe at the turn of the century, those who came to fashion America. He caught the sadness, despair, and nostalgia of every person that has been uprooted: Yesterday, by its distance, acquires a happy glow. The peasants look back . . . and their fancy rejoices in the better days that have passed, when they were on the land and the land was fertile, and they were young and strong, and virtues were fresh. . . . Alas, those days are gone, that they believed existed, and now there is only the bitter present. (Handlin 1973, p. 98)

All Cuban immigrants in America for many years missed Cuba so. But one night in Key West, while speaking with four refugees from Mariel, the differ-

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ence struck me. While fishing, they listened on the radio to a baseball game being played right then in their hometown in Cuba. The early refugees’ nostalgia attached them to the Cuba they knew—la Cuba de ayer, before the revolution. The Mariel refugees’ longing was for la Cuba de hoy, of the revolution. The Fourth Wave: Cuba’s Balseros The Mariel exodus proved so traumatic, both for the United States and Cuba, that immediately thereafter the doors to further migration closed. However, in the mid 1980s both governments signed a new Migration Agreement that provided for the immigration to the U. S. of up to 20,000 Cubans and up to 3,000 political prisoners a year, as well as for the deportation of excludable Marielitos back to Cuba. However, in actual practice only around 2,000 visas were being given a year. Cuba’s economic crisis reached new depths when communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, particularly in the Soviet Union, on whom Cuba had been enormously dependent for trade and economic subsidies. The impact of these losses has been devastating: a decline in the national product of one half, and in investment by two-thirds from 1989+1993 (Mesa-Lago, 1994). As a result, Cuban industry has been paralyzed, public transport hardly operates, the sugar harvest was abysmally low, and electricity has become sporadic, with Havana suffering blackouts during which people rely on candles, if candles can be found. As Mesa-Lago explained, “because of the eroding value of the peso, health care, education, pensions and other free services—which used to be the pride of the revolution—are rapidly deteriorating.” The economic crisis is so severe that in the fall of 1990 Castro himself declared it “a special period in a time of peace.” Such a período especial was to have been temporary, but coupled with the United States’ tightening of the embargo (the Torricelli Law) in 1992, the end of the crisis is not in sight. Cuba has attempted to forestall the worst of it by opening the economy to trade, investment, and tourism, and by reintroducing the use of U. S. dollars, measures which, Castro himself emphasized, were not intended to reintroduce capitalism but to “save socialism.” But these policies have not succeeded in turning the economy around. Abject need and hunger have now become the reality of Cubans’ lives during this “special period.” At the same time, the dissident movement has grown and developed into a social movement. Despite different political thrusts (e.g., democratic socialist, environmentalist, Christian democrat), all dissidents in Cuba have increasingly called for a new democratic opening, a liberalization of the political structures that Castro adamantly refuses (See Hidalgo 1994). Hence, both economic and political want now drive the new Cuban emigration, together with the ever present desire for the reunification of families still rent apart. The new Cuban exodus has taken several forms (cf. Rodríguez-Chavez 1993), with illegal emigration being the major one. Cubans have become so desperate

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that they leave on balsas—rafts, tires, or other makeshift vessels—risking death due to starvation, dehydration, drowning, or sharks. The balseros, as they are called, risk the arduous crossing now so regularly that from 1991 on Los Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue) constantly patrol the sea in helicopters searching for them. According to the U. S. Coast Guard, 5,791 balseros managed to reach safety in the United States from 1985 to 1992. As economic conditions worsened in Cuba, the numbers have risen dramatically. While in the year 1989 less than 500 balseros arrived, by 1991 the numbers had risen to over 2,000 and by 1993 to 3,656. In 1994, due to the crisis in August and September, over 37,000 Cubans were rescued at sea. Their gratitude to their rescuers knows no limits. Early one morning in August, Lizbet Martínez, a twelve-year-old girl with a long, blonde pony tail, climbed aboard a raft with her parents. She took aboard her most prized possession—her violin. When the U. S. Coast Guard rescued them, she played “The Star-Spangled Banner” on her violin for them—a plaintive melody of gratitude for those who had saved her life (Balmaseda 1994a). When the balseros arrive in Florida, they are welcomed—briefly—as heroes. But so many died tragically at sea. Claudia Pérez was 15 months old when she died in her mother’s arms—one hour before she was rescued. Raísa Santana died because she drank seawater, reserving the only drinking water left in their vessel for her son (El Nuevo Herald, 26 December 1993). “Those who despair” constitute this last wave of migration. August 1994 comprised yet another historic turn in Cuba. On August 5th, massive riots took place in the streets of the Center of Havana, in which thousands of Cubans participated all day long, whose behavior expressed the enormous material want that shapes their lives, their disdain for the privilege reserved for Party members and foreigners, and the enormous wish for civil liberties that now also permeates Cuban society (Rivas-Porta 1994). Shortly thereafter, Castro gave orders to the Cuban Coast Guard not to discourage the illegal emigration from Cuba’s shores. Immediately, thousands of balseros put out to sea, in the hopes of reaching Miami. But an abrupt policy change made the Cubans unwelcome. Under orders from President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, the U.S. Coast Guard blocked their progress and directed them to Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, where over 30,000 people lived in tents for the 9 months during which they were allowed entry to the U.S. As a result of the crisis, a new migration agreement was signed in September 1994 that promised that the U.S. will now actually give at least 20,000 visas a year for Cubans to immigrate to the United States. However, in May 1995 another abrupt policy change allowed the refugees in Guantanamo to come to the U.S. at the same time that the United States signed another migration agreement with Cuba that stipulated that all balseros found at sea will actually be returned to Cuba. “Cuba bleeds,” headlined Liz Balmaseda (1994b), “and the drops are called rafts.” But the U.S. government now denies their claim to being refugees.

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Race Though Cuba has always been a multi-racial society, despite their differences, prior to Mariel both major waves of Cuban immigrants were predominantly white. Yet, while throughout the decade of the sixties the occupational distribution of Cuban refugees became more representative of Cuban society, “paradoxically,” said Benigno Aguirre (1976, p. 105), Cuban blacks “participated less in it.” The 1953 Cuban Census put the proportion black at 27 percent. In Cuba, like much of the Caribbean, social class and race overlapped in the extreme. But while the social class level of the Cuban migration dropped, for 15 years the immigrants remained overwhelmingly white. Data from the 1990 census shows that 86.3 percent of the immigrants were white Cubans, 0.2 percent were black Cubans, 0.3 percent were Asians (no doubt Chinos Cubanos), and 13.2 percent designated themselves as belonging to “other race.”6 In Cuba, as in the rest of the Caribbean, this usually corresponds to mulattoes, or mulaticos, as affectionately called. Charles Wagley (1968) described the social definition of the races in the Americas. In the South of the United States a dual racial classification was used—black vs. white—that was based on ancestry (“one drop of black blood”). By contrast, throughout the Caribbean the social definition of race was based on phenotype buttressed by social status—“money bleaches,” the Brazilians say. Moreover, three different racial categories were recognized—black vs. white vs. those who were mixed, variously referred to as Mulatos (Cuba), Pardos (Brazil), and Trigueños (Puerto Rico). The differential migration of the Cuban races up to this time was quite explainable. Two different social processes, Aguirre concluded, were at work. At the outset, the revolution pulled out the power from under the upper classes, that had deliberately excluded blacks from their midst. The immigration proceeded through the chain of extended family and friends, further selecting whites. In addition, the migration policy of the United States and Cuba contributed to blacks being excluded as they gave priority to close relatives of Cubans already in the United States. Moreover, blacks in Cuba did benefit from the revolution. Cuba never had a “separate but equal” system of legal segregation; and Cuban culture was a “creolization” of white Spanish and black African cultural traditions. Yet prerevolutionary Cuba excluded blacks from the pinnacles of society: yacht and country clubs, the best vacation resorts and beaches, hotels, private schools reserved for the elite. One of the first acts of the revolution was to make these exclusive facilities public, available to all, regardless of color or wealth. In addition, the Cuban government promoted new opportunities for blacks in employment and education. Richard Fagen et al. (1968, p. 120) noted that the race problem in Cuba was “a boon to Castro.” The revolutionaries found it extremely useful for discrediting the old social order. With the “instant liberation” of blacks “tens of thousands of

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disadvantaged Cubans were recruited into the ranks of revolutionary enthusiasts.” Indeed, as table 2 shows, about 91 percent of the refugees who came over in the first wave, Cuba’s elite, were white. But the proportion white declined quite markedly during the second wave. From 14 to 19 percent of those who immigrated from 1965–1979 considered themselves as “other.” The Marielitos had the lowest proportion white of any wave, 77 percent, while 16 percent considered themselves “other” (most likely mulattoes) and 6 percent considered themselves black. By American standards, fully 22 percent were non-white. Given the Cuban revolution’s appeal to race, why such a large presence in recent years? As early as the seventies, Geoffrey Fox (1971, p. 21) remarked that “almost all those emigrating today are among the poorer classes in Cuba, the very people in whose name the revolution was made,” blacks included. To study “the defections of the sans-culottes,” Fox interviewed a few working-class émigrés in Chicago and concluded that both for white and black workers the salience of race in the revolution created strain—whites complained of favoritism, blacks of tokenism. Moreover, although discrimination was eliminated, racial prejudice persisted in Cuba, attitudes which Cuban blacks might have sensed as real, denying the changes effected. As Max Weber ([1922] 1946, p. 280) pointed to so long ago, whatever their origins, ideas, once established, take on a life of their own and guide action. Whatever role their race may have played in the decision to emigrate, black Cubans find their steps uncertain in America. As blacks, they are not fully accepted by whites; while among blacks, they are Cubans (cf. Dixon 1988). Political Refugees or Economic Immigrants? Differences abound, yet the questions the recent refugees posed were the same that for over thirty years have framed the debate over the meaning of Table 2 Race of Cuban Immigrants in the U.S., by Waves of Migration, 1990. % Race Year of Immigration

White

Black

1982-90

82.1

3.7

1980-81

77.3

1965-79

Other Race

Total Asian

N

%

13.8

0.4

73,963

100.0

6.0

16.3

0.4

125,313

100.0

82.2

2.0

15.3

0.5

316,275

100.0

1960-64

90.7

1.9

7.3

0.1

174,275

100.0

Total

83.5

2.9

13.3

0.3

689,826

100.0

Source: U.S. 1990 Census, Public Use Microdata Sample, 5 percent, weighted.

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the Cuban migration. Interpretations of the meaning of the exodus once again polarized into two positions: at one pole, the immigrants were said to be a manifestation of the loss of legitimacy of the Cuban revolution, discrediting it; at the other pole, the immigrants were said to be propelled by the scarcity of consumer goods, merely embarrassing it (see Fernández 1982). Hence, at one pole the immigrants were seen as political refugees; at the other, as economic immigrants. Over a million persons for a third of a century: Are they political or economic immigrants? As figure 1 makes clear, two different axes determine the definition. First, the motivation of the immigrants serves to define them as political or economic immigrants—a sociological distinction. Since all societies are simultaneously and inextricably political and economic, in our perceptions, political and economic conditions are entangled. In a society in transition, political disaffection easily results when government policies to change the basic economic allocation dislocate people: they lose their economic, social, and ideological “place.” Even in a stable society, lack of economic opportunities easily results in lack of trust for public leaders. In this sense, Cuba’s refugees are, and have always been, both political and economic. But when people grow politically disaffected, when they lose faith and trust in their government and its cause, they can no longer be disposed of as simply economic immigrants. Cuba’s refugees are, and have always been, fundamentally political. Second, the governments that regulate their exit and arrival define immigrants as political or economic immigrants—a legal distinction (see PedrazaBailey 1985). At one end, in the United States, Haitian refugees have consistently encountered a hostile reception: the refusal to grant them amnesty, their interdiction at sea, and their deportation back to Haiti despite the political violence Figure 1 Typology of Migration Legal and Political Status

Economic

Conferred

Not Conferred

Legal immigrants (e.g., Koreans, Indians)

Undocumented labor (e.g., Mexicans)

Legal refugees (e.g., Cubans, Vietnamese)

Undocumented refugees (e.g., Salvadorans, Guatemalans)

Psychology and Motivation for Migration Political

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that reigned there. Haitians who were refused asylum can be seen as undocumented refugees. Until now, Cubans had always been recognized and welcomed as refugees. But during the crisis in the summer of 1994, for the first time they were defined as aliens attempting to enter the United States by illegal means. With the end of the Cold War and under the resurgence of nativistic attitudes across the land, Cubans then became undocumented refugees. At the other end, in Cuba, over the course of time, all who left were labeled traitors and counter-revolutionaries, whether they were supporters of the ancien régime of Batista or, like Húber Matos, had fought against Batista in the hills of the Sierra Maestra, side by side with Fidel Castro for a nationalist and social-democratic revolution they felt Castro’s espousal of communism had betrayed (cf. Zolberg et al. 1989). A society where the only choice possible is to “love it or leave it” provides too few choices. A truly democratic society is defined not only by its party structure, constitution, delegation of authority, or electoral representation, but principally by its capacity to tolerate and incorporate dissent. Democracy is not only a set of institutions; it is also a set of practices. With applicable reasoning, in Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Albert Hirschman (1970) explained that two options exist for customers of a firm (or members of an organization, association or party) when the quality of what these provide deteriorates: to attempt to change an objectionable state of affairs by using the “voice” of individual or collective actions or protests; or to “exit,” withdrawing. If you cannot express your “voice,” you “exit.” But after exiting, you may have lost the opportunity to use your voice to promote recuperation. The Cuban exodus, now over a third of a century old, has been driven not only by the trauma of revolutionary change in Cuba, and by the economic hardships caused both by the inefficiencies of the new economic system as well as by the isolation of the trade embargo, but also by Cuba’s incapacity to tolerate dissent. The Cuban revolution’s only solution to dissent has been to externalize it. When Cuba ceases to externalize its dissenters and begins to provide political channels to express and incorporate their voice, it will become a truly democratic society woven not only by mass mobilizations and mass parades but also by the mass participation of both those who agree and who disagree. Ultimately, liberty is woven from the participation of multiple social and political identities. Notes 1.

2.

“The wine is from plaintain; and if it proves sour, it is our wine!”—José Martí, “Our America” (1891). Translated by Juan de Onís (1954). Data for this article is from the U. S. 1990 census of the United States, 5 percent sample, Public Use Microdata Sample, weighted. The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Lisa J. Neidert, University of

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3. 4.

5.

6.

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Michigan, Population Studies Center, and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Michigan State University, Department of Sociology, in helping her obtain the 1990 census data for this article. Close to 20 percent of Cuban immigrants arrived after the 1980 Census. Based on the collected life stories of hundreds of Cubans, José Llanes (1982) drew fifty-eight composite characters whose human dramas were representative of immigrants from the various waves of immigrants. Names are fictitious. The U. S. census precoded the variable on year of immigration by intervals: before 1950, 1950-59, 1960-64, 1965-69, 1970-74, 1975-79, 1980-81, 1982-84, 1985-86, 1987-1990, and born in the U. S. Hence, while technically the Cuban exodus that belongs to the revolution should begin with the year 1959, when the revolution triumphed, it is not possible to disaggregate the data in that way. Fortunately, this precoding does not do too much violence to the data because, as Fagen et al. (1968) pointed out, it was really the nationalization of American industries in October of 1960 that turned the emigration from a trickle into a flood. Likewise, the migration from Mariel is pretty well approximated by the years 1980-81, although technically it took place in 1980. In recent U. S. censuses, data on race, ethnicity, and ancestry are the result of self-identification by those answering the census questions.

References Aguirre, Benigno E. 1976. “The Differential Migration of Cuban Social Races.” Latin American Research Review 11: 103–24. Alfonso, Pablo M. 1984. Cuba, Castro, y los Católicos. Miami, Fl.: Ediciones Hispamerican Books. Amaro, Nelson, and Alejandro Portes. 1972. “Una Sociología del Exilio: Situación de los Grupos Cubanos en los Estados Unidos.” Aportes 23: 6–24. Amaro Victoria, Nelson. 1977. “Mass and Class in the Origins of the Cuban Revolution.” Pp. 221–51 in Cuban Communism, third edition, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. Bach, Robert L., Jennifer B. Bach, and Timothy Triplett. l981/l982. “The Flotilla ‘Entrants’: Latest and Most Controversial.” Cuban Studies 11/12: 29–48. _______. 1980. “The New Cuban Immigrants: Their Background and Prospects.” Monthly Labor Review 103: 39+46. Balmaseda, Liz. 1994a. “Balserita Violinista Toca pero También Escribe como los Angeles.” El Nuevo Herald, 19 Octubre. _______. 1994b. “Cuba Bleeds, and the Drops are Called Rafts.” The Miami Herald, 17 August. Casal, Lourdes. 1979. “Cubans in the United States: their Impact on U.S.-Cuban Relations.” Pp. 109+36 in Revolutionary Cuba in the World Arena, edited by Martin Weinstein. Philadelphia: Ishi. “Cifra Anual de Balseros Cubanos Marcó Récord.” 1993. El Nuevo Herald, 26 Diciembre.

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Pedraza-Bailey, Silvia. 1985. Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and Mexicans. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pérez, Lisandro. 1988. “Cuban Women in the U. S. Labor Force: A Comment.” Cuban Studies 18: 159–64. _______. 1986. “Immigrant Economic Adjustment and Family Organization: The Cuban Success Story Reexamined.” International Migration Review 20: 4– 20. Portes, Alejandro, Juan M. Clark, and Robert L. Bach. 1977. “The New Wave: A Statistical Profile of Recent Cuban Exiles to the United States.” Cuban Studies 7: 1–32. Prieto, Yolanda. 1987. “Cuban Women in the U. S. Labor Force: Perspectives on the Nature of the Change.” Cuban Studies 17: 73–94. Rivas-Porta, Guillermo. 1994. “El Pueblo Cubano: Protagonista, Víctima, y Espectador.” Desafíos 1 (Agosto/Septiembre): 4–5. Roca, Sergio. 1977. “Cuban Economic Policy in the 1970s: The Trodden Paths.” Pp. 83–118 in Cuban Communism, third edition, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction. Rodríguez-Chavez, Ernesto. 1993. “Tendencias Actuales del Flujo Migratorio Cubano.” Cuadernos de Nuestra América 10: 114–37. Rose, Peter I. 1981. “Some Thoughts about Refugees and the Descendants of Theseus.” International Migration Review 15: 8–15. Schreiber, Anna P. 1973. “Economic Coercion as an Instrument of Foreign Policy: U. S. Economic Measures against Cuba and the Dominican Republic.” World Politics 25: 387–413. Stein, Barry N. 1981. “The Refugee Experience: Defining the Parameters of a Field of Study.” International Migration Review 15: 320–30. Tabori, Paul. 1972. The Anatomy of Exile. London: Harrap. Thomas, Hugh. 1977. The Cuban Revolution. New York: Harper & Row. Thomas, John F. 1967. “Cuban Refugees in the United States.” International Migration Review 2: 46–57. Wagley, Charles. 1968. “The Concept of Social Race in the Americas.” Pp. 155– 174 in The Latin American Tradition, edited by Charles Wagley. New York: Columbia University Press. Walsh, Bryan O. 1971. “Cuban Refugee Children.” Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs 13: 378–415. Weber, Max. [1922] 1946. “The Social Psychology of World Religions.” Pp. 267– 301 in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. Zeitlin, Maurice. 1966. “Political Generations in the Cuban Working Class.” American Journal of Sociology 71: 493–508. Zolberg, Aristide R., Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. 1989. Escape From Violence: Conf lict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press.

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21 The Moral Basis of Cuban Society Emilio Ichikawa Morin It has almost ended up being a Cuban habit to read history and the national reality by analogy. We have seen ourselves in the Spanish transition and in the institutionalization of the Mexican Revolution; the writer Mario Vargas Llosa offers us a new opportunity in his novel, La Fiesta del Chivo (The Fête of the Goat). As much as one resists it, one cannot help but think of the similarity there might be between the death of the “goat” and the demise of the “horse,” which is one the nicknames Cubans use to avoid saying Fidel. One of the most important revelations the artist makes is that the end of the despot does not have to do with historical tendencies nor with Messianic proposals of national salvation. What is at stake are the passions, interests, vendettas, and ambitions of power groups who at bottom are nothing more than “families.” Which are the key families of Castroism? That is one of the questions to which a genealogy of politics can lead us. On the University of Havana campus, given the position it has in the urban center of Havana life and somewhat by tradition, there were lots of things to do besides study, create art, and practice sports, activities befitting of a typical university student. The University Student House, for example, is an optimum place to look for girlfriends and play dominoes; and with the arrival of foreigners under conditions of “academic exchanges” or “scientific tourism,” as it is officially called, the University offers many opportunities for business. But it is also propitious for climbing the ladder in politics, following the style and values of Castroism which, in a general sense, imply a standardization of certain perversions of traditional local politics. I recall that, generally, the schoolmates who had enough intelligence and strength to achieve success in their studies or in the athletic competitions disdained the positions available in the University Student Federation and the Union of Communist Youth, the Militias of Territorial Troops or the Ministry of 329

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the Interior—organizations directed by the most clever of opportunists or, in the best of cases, volunteers. It is necessary to note that as part of the strategic political plan to temper the scandalous disparities that the legalization of the dollar brought to Cuban society, including the University, each one of these organizations had a room or a table at discotheques and restaurants for the exclusive use of foreign tourists which could be paid for in national currency. These reservations were filled up with workers and students chosen by these political organizations, something that constitutes an effective channel for exercising power. That is, in concrete sociological terms, what appears to be an operation of fairness is a skillful maneuver in the art of domination. Those political spaces, like so many others, remained in the hands of people who, in legitimate terms of university competition, were second- or third-rate. Another example. The rosters for the guided distribution of jobs took very much into account the honor of Distinguished Graduate, of which there were several categories. All could be managed politically, but of course, some more so than others. Although there could be some unfairness in the election of a Distinguished Graduate in Sports, there was not much chance here of passing off chalk for cheese. The same was true with Distinguished Graduate in Academic Achievement, for which there were numbers. However, there were scandalous arguments about the election of the so-called Distinguished Graduate Overall, a very vague and difficult achievement to measure. Now, I only want to refer to the singular Distinguished Graduate in Military Subjects, since it is a clear example of the channels of social climbing that the University made available for those most opportunistic or, shall we say, clever. The Military Subjects were an assignment of the curriculum where a group of military floating in their own Units taught patriotism, the ways of defeating the American army, the syncopated marches for parades and another bunch of silliness. Banalities is what one thought they were, but with time we began to realize that the Distinguished Graduate in Military Subjects had, formally speaking, the same rank as the one who had shined academically and even greater credibility if it was a matter of assigning a post relevant to the political management of the country. The same thing happens in the Party Central Committee, as in the Foreign Office and in the Institute of Radio and Television. That is, that poor slob who threw himself down in the mud in Habana del Este when a captain said that the planes were firing or who jumped over a burning pole, or who made up an antiimperialist slogan for it to be repeated by the battalion of students who desperately longed to go home or for scholarships, that same nincompoop had the responsibility of choosing which film the citizens could see, which chapter of a novel was counterrevolutionary. Most surprisingly, he had contacts to handle red-tape, get a medicine or an exoneration for that classmate who bested him in class grades, on the athletic fields, or in the beauty of his girlfriends. It turns out that, in spite of the Castroist propaganda, success in this society lies elsewhere. I have had to listen over and over again to friends say of

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a Cuban diplomat, a party official, a strongman in Cuban culture: “What the hell is he doing next to Fidel? I even had to show so-and-so the names of the continents!” A whole generation was surprised when it realized that it was not only a chance used with skill but that it was by now a whole strategy for political, economic and spiritual mediocrity to impose itself. The history of Latin America shows that the ego of the strongmen, who prefer adulation to cooperation, drives them to perdition. I do not tire of recalling this late lament of Simon Bolivar’s to Manuela Saenz: “My generals know how to obey me, but not how to help me.” That possibility applies in the Cuban case, where the mediocrity of the political apparatus that surrounds Fidel Castro is such that when one hears comparisons of the Caribbean island with Communist China, one always ends up asking, “But who is our Deng?” Truly, the young people who have ended up surrounding Fidel Castro are not even the most able in the so-called Support Group. In Havana it is known that Hassan Perez, while he enjoys the Commander-in-Chief’s protection, does not count on the liking of his schoolmates and colleagues. He did not even get to be nominated to the University Student Federation on behalf of his base group. This phenomenon is merely a matter of Castroist arbitrariness. It is a traditionalist habit of regional politics; besides being a mechanism of disesteem and social abasement, decidedly economic, which totalitarianism imposes on itself to facilitate the process of domination. Hannah Arendt had already exposed it as an enigma in the work Totalitarian Terror: “No aspect of the totalitarian regime is more difficult to comprehend that its emancipation from the motive of profit and its nonutilitarian character in economic affairs.” And while it may well not explain it, at least it clarifies the orientation of the response of Margaret Thatcher, who knew practical politics and inquired much about the last protagonists of Soviet power. In her political memoirs, The Years On Downing Street, she states: “The Soviet Union was a power that deliberately imposed economic backwardness on itself for political and ideological reasons.” The same occurs with Cuba. When we learned of the recommendations that Carlos Solchaga, advisor to Felipe Gonzalez, had made to Fidel Castro for improving the Cuban economy, we were surprised: they were nothing more and nothing less than the things one talks about every day in the street. Cuban mediocrity is not, then, a question of knowledge or error, it forms part of the general plan of a type of totalitarian domination. What appeared to be a simple game, the business of allowing those who can find nothing else to do to be the ones who handles the posts in the Castro organizations, became a species of involuntary complicity; it can be said, of a type of irresponsibility. With politics as the main avenue of access to civil service, indifference had collaborated in the process of instituting mediocrity in the country. Trivial beings bring a double advantage: they are easier to subjugate and they are crueler in repressing their peers.

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The talented Cuban students in the former Soviet Union became dangerous for Castroism because they confirmed first-hand the problems of real socialism and, consequently, that “perestroika” was an experiment that was possible and desirable for the island. They were labeled as “red worms”; questioned, harassed, and I am pretty sure that at least one was beaten by a strange character at the Higher Polytechnic Institute. In Havana it went a bit further. The international relations students had an open-minded attitude toward the world, they saw beyond the limit imposed by a localized ideology. They boasted a privileged faculty of professors, even in the inevitably doctrinal ideological topics. In the final analysis, a professor of Marxism who teaches from the books of Gramsci and Lukacs is not the same as one who repeats sentences from the manual of Konstantinov. Nor, of course, is an intellectual environment that poses the correlation of forces in the Persian Gulf the same as a department that discusses the objectives of the CAME. Given their social background, many of the students at the ISRI belonged to families of a certain position in the social hierarchy of Castroism, which afforded them a demythicized view from the inside of the so-called revolutionary “utopia.” Some had forged their critical perspective on the basis of a natural generation gap. All those Oedipuses who loved their mother and confronted their polygamous father were potential reformists. That is how history goes: sublime goals at the mercy of ordinary instincts. The talent concentrated at the ISRI was emulated at the University by students with technical and scientific majors, for example, physics, mathematics, and science and nuclear technology. These majors, however, unlike those pursued at the ISRI, did not have an instrumental political profile. And here there is a curious element: on account of “perestroika,” the Cuban embassies in Eastern Europe were alerted about the need to maintain control at the Schools of Humanities and Social Sciences, centers where reformist questioning had come out into the open there. The alert was taken up by Cuba and circulated in the inner circles of the Communist Party in the form of a semi-secret video with a speech by Raul Castro. In effect, there was a redoubling of control, something I experienced personally at the School of Philosophy, when in a classroom, some electronic equipment went haywire revealing its presence. It was at a seminar on “Lenin and Bureaucracy,” where I had an ex-girlfriend as a guest, who surely remembers it, along with other students who by today are already colleagues. However, the policing gambit failed, proving once again that despite the verbal acknowledgement that Cuban socialism does not deliberate upon its policies, it all too frequently copies foreign recipes and almost always badly. It just so happens that, not counting the schools of art and journalism, the discontent with Cuban immobility was most in evidence among students of science and technical fields. They could ascertain better than anybody the cultural obsolescence of communism in the very results and compare them with the innovations of the West. There is an elemental question besides: while one can opt for

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humanities with a poor academic record, to gain entry into these types of technical majors, very high grades are necessary. In sum, life shows that totalitarianism would do very well to watch out for talent. Those who were going to be elite persons and institutions in Castroist society ended up being persecuted or marginalized in the end. Instinct turned into the logic of selection: cadres are chosen for their loyalty, not for their intelligence. In passing, it was becoming manifest like a social moral code that studying or working are not the most expeditious road to “success” within a society that rewards obedience and, what is worse, a semblance of obedience (anarchic obedience). That is to say, that if up until the 80s Castroism had been a traditional and despotic society which hid the excessive hedonism of the elites and their foreign guests behind the prattle of humility and sacrifice, by the end of that same decade the true rules of the game had been revealed. Dionysian reticence had given way to obscene vice. So-called “corruption” turned into “vacillation,” and society was grounded in a very alarming sentiment: mistrust. The news about the parties and excesses of the Castro elite are no longer scandalous, they are no more than “normal” forms of enjoying a privileged position as whoever has the good fortune, or the guts, to rise up to power would surely do. The level of moral sanctioning of so-called corruption has practically disappeared, and it will become nil as the true face of “utopia” comes in sight, along with the fraud of “equality” and of “justice.” I recall now a notebook of Armando Hart which managed to raise hopes in the naive heart of the student body. It was called Changing The Rules Of The Game and it insinuated a certain opening up of cultural policy. In the long run, the matter has proved much more simple: to stop playing tricks and confess the true rules that govern the Castroist game. “Corruption” hardly causes any scandal in Cuba now because it has become routine. If any element was lacking in the news field, I think the testimonial narrative which makes up the book by Norberto Fuentes, Dulces Guerreros Cubanos, (Sweet Cuban Warriors) is enough. I would say that it is a book that requires wholeness in order to read it and courage to accept it. I understand that for that reason many people do not even want to know what it says and that there is such resistance to believing it. We can, of course, doubt Fuentes’ assertions and label the book a species of egotistical fiction; but that would be taking the easy way out. Legitimate, it is true, but also evasive. Let us look straight on and accept the revelation: in Castroist totalitarianism, real power is held by a police-military “mafia” with rigid moral codes very far from the philanthropic rhetoric of those speeches with which Fidel Castro has enraptured part of the public. It is good for us Cubans to know those revelations and for us to know how to avoid the nihilism that it can incline one to right off. It is true that after reading it, one feels like throwing it all to ridicule, but after that moment it is necessary to recover and calmly accept that that fraud has also been possible due to our naivete and our unthinking sympathy. One alternative to

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this is reasoned sympathy, which is not simply to say “contract” and to draw attention to a bond established on the basis of a polite convenience. I have set a conventional boundary with the 80s to refer to two social “sensibilities” when it comes to “corruption.” Let us agree, first, that we call “corrupt,” per definitionem, a person who is “degraded,” who loses qualities that are set in an ideal model of a politician or in a concrete politician of whom a “model image” has been constructed. This paradigm in respect of which Castroism has proposed measuring the moral quality of a politician, to corroborate his status, tends to be known as the “New Man.” It was a Renaissance project taken up again by Lenin and Trotsky for communism. Che Guevara, to be sure, tended to have Florentine whims with quite a bit of frequency. That letter where he acknowledges himself before his parents as a “condotieri” of the 20th century, is anthological. Condotiero is the same as mercenary, a confession which once again demonstrates the specific difference of the Argentine with regard to Fidel Castro: he went straight ahead, he could kill, but not “embark” people. That model of the “New Man,” besides, generally had to be heterosexual (preferably “macho”), white, and up until a short time ago, atheist. The problem is that by now, since the 80s, nobody believes that model of the communist politician exists outside of the propaganda; and not even the propagandists believe the propaganda. The Castroist leaders themselves know that to climb the ladder in a ministry or an institute, honesty and education matter little; in any case, they are not decisive values. The “model” with respect to which to establish the “corrupt” has crumbled and this impossibility of measurement has contributed to the fact that that which could be called “corruption” has been elevated to the rank of society’s natural habit; which pathologically is assumed as a pertinent code of conduct for it in the sphere of morality. In the Cuban case, we are not dealing with a state with problems of “corruption,” but with a “corrupt state.” What is more, in the logic of the Castroist political system, honest individuals end up being purged; probity itself incapacitates them since they do not mesh well with the structure. Castroism utilizes blackmail as a political institution; complicity and conspiracy are indispensable in the art of domination and corruption is a species of initiation into communist politics. At this very moment, in some ministry, there is some honest official who is being purged for refusing to participate in the “corrupt” handouts. I would like to mention names, but the compliment of sincerity and truth, when it comes to Castroism, tends to have disastrous consequences. In the same manner, I know that at some point malleable writers run aghast from the office of the Minister of Culture to that of the Director of the Cuban Book Institute, bearing contradictory gossip with which to negotiate some handing out of the crumbs of “corruption.” However, social sanction is not enough to provoke at least self-examination of one’s conscience. Castroism calls attitudes such as this “combativeness” or “political activism,” while the rest comment: “Poor guy, he has to escape.”

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The frontline of the debate has changed, then. It is no longer a matter of “information” and “news,” but also of theory and logic of the history of Castroism itself. Where before the most important thing was the “denunciation,” that is, to search for and publish facts about the opulent and palatial life the Castro elite enjoys while they keep the people in the most horrible misery, now it is necessary to comprehend and project practical alternatives to the situation. “Guevarism” as a moral paradigm of Cuban totalitarianism, “austere and sacrificial Leninism” have been totally contradicted. Of course, it is always important to know more, collect other proof and elements, but this would not do anything more than reaffirm a conclusion: astonishment has already come first, moral virginity has been set aside. At this stage of Castroism, anyone who does not “rob” or who does not become “corrupted” is not a saint: he is a “goon.” Nobody on or off the island believes any more that Fidel Castro and his court are good and sane people who partake of the domestic infelicity with the rest of the Cuban people, that they are interested in a national reconciliation, or that they are pained by family divisions. “Corruption” has become routine and standardized as a code of conduct. It is important to understand this condition to think about Cuba in perspective; even for the integration of the “new exiles” in open societies without moral, legal, habitual traumas. At this point hardly anyone in Cuba considers it to be a criminal abnormality to “rob” public assets, this situation also suggests a semantics problem. If “robbing” is a term that is going to retain its traditional implications of criminality and immorality, then its application to the Cuban context is problematic and a more analytical approach becomes necessary. It could be debatable to understand in terms of “robbery” certain actions which though not “normal” according to the parameters of Western rationality, nor moral from a Christian point of view, qualify as routine behavior under totalitarianism. Take, for example, the case of some workers of a pasteurization plant who “take” (rob?) a few liters of milk for their family or a security guard at a poultry farm who “resolves” (robs?) eggs and hens for his food. Another option is to deprive the word “rob” of its negative meaning, but this would have the rub of taking Cuba out of the normal parameters of understanding, breaking the elemental communication codes. It would be tantamount to saying that in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, “to rob” is not “to rob.” The custom of “robbery” (with license) has segregated a (micro-) code of ethics, such as occurs with other urgent undertakings of the Cuban people such as fleeing on rafts. No rafter intercepted, for example, will say that he was apprehended a couple of miles off the coast of Baracoa, but rather when almost at Key West. That also reveals a code of behavior that is in force. Likewise, and without it being written anywhere, for the Cuban community he who “robs” a pig from a private pen deserves greater punishment than one who takes one from a state barn. In the final analysis, what belongs to the state is Fidel’s or “everyone’s,” that is, nobody’s. But as some observers assert with some logic,

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from a general standpoint, “to rob is to rob” and it deserves a two-edged sanction, both legal and moral. I have mentioned very run-of-the-mill examples. But these problems apply as well to more “elevated” matters, if you will; for example, when it comes to the theft of cultural heritage. In recent times, the publication with impunity of bibliographical assets has been observed from the National Library of Cuba. The arguments are well-known: intellectuals also have to live, it is better for them to be published rather than forgotten; the money that so-and-so earned for publishing them abroad was very little when compared to the effort of getting them out, etc. All is understandable, but as I was saying, from a general ethical standpoint, “to rob” is “to rob.” It is a matter of debate. In Cuba, just as there is a celebration when the mail brings the winning envelope of the “lottery” that opens that doors to migration to the U.S.A., in the provinces there is celebration when someone is chosen as a policeman to be assigned to Havana street corners. He will get a higher salary and, more importantly, the possibilities for “inventiveness” will increase. Let us imagine a policeman from the remote eastern town of Mabay in a district of El Cerro, running around the street Cruz del Padre or Primelles, he not only watches out for socalled counterrevolution, he also controls the movements of the neighbors, finds out about deals and, as a result, partakes of the profits. Without his silence it is not possible to get a move on. Now, is that corruption? As the policeman himself says, doesn’t he too have the right to make a living the way the hierarchs of Castroism do? It is not a simple matter. “Corruption” is defined on the basis of a set of requirements that have a two-sided nature: moral and legal. In the case of Castroism, of course, all this is subordinated to the political criteria of the moment and this, to the larger strategy of Fidel Castro’s remaining in power. This is the element which, in the final analysis, establishes the boundaries where the “corrupt” begins and ends, the point where the use and enjoyment permitted as an “owner” under a certain circumstance to an official who is not a “proprietor” begins to be questionable. The Commander-in-Chief arbitrarily sets that boundary, the secret of maintaining oneself on the Castroist scale of power depends on the official’s ability to sense where that line is heading, because morality is managed, the laws are decreed, there are rewards or punishment as a function of it. One very clear example where I know some of the deliberations: every time that the 20th of May approaches or any meaningful historical date, aspiring ideologues must guess who the Commander is feeling more kindly toward, whether the Americans or the Spanish. As a function of that, history, which in Cuba changes constantly, will be rewritten. I no longer remember all the many things that Admiral Cervera has been or whether the Maine was an enemy armored ship, a charter for journalists and tourists or a herald of Cuban independence; nor if Leonard Wood guaranteed a satisfactory transition to the modern age or vilified local politics; nor if Elpidio Valdes attacked the Spanish

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with a machete in the fields of Cuba or infiltrated Yankee politics with a Spaniard. Another question: isn’t this corruption of the spirit, isn’t it being mercenary, renting intelligence for profit? I used to discuss these topics with a dear and witty professor of Roman law at the University of Havana, a wise man full of fear who protected himself with irony and who, when he wished to express disgust, tied his shoes with adhesive tape (everyone protests in his own fashion). In the conversations he made me agree how difficult it is, given the character of being provisional that afflicts Cuban society, to think up coherently a body of rules which it is almost impossible to qualify in terms of a “justice system.” For the moment we have the following: it is not a simple rhetorical phrase to affirm that Castroist society is “sick.” There are epochal maladies. J. Huuizinga, rector of Leiden, asserts in his book, The Waning Of The Middle Ages, that hysteria was the typical illness of the Middle Ages, and although it is also visible (as paranoia) in a society composed of so many traditional and pre-modern elements, Cuba today suffers emphatically from schizophrenia, a civic and moral schism, rupture or crack that superimposes faces and masks without apparent control. Reading the novel Naturaleza Muerta con Abejas (Still Life With Bees) of the writer from Cienfuegos, Atilio Caballero, I once remember that Cuba too can be thought of with the images of Bernard Mandeville in El Panal Rumoroso (Fable of the Bees in English) and share his conclusion on moral policy: “public virtues,” “private vices.” While the Castroist hierarchs appeal publicly to austerity, while they wield justifications to legitimize the misery in which the majority of the population lives, they enjoy outings and opulent parties. As a result of the mental logic of Third World politicians who, as an old Communist professor said, have “complexes of dwarf horses,” they reach orgiastic proportions that would surprise the world’s most extravagant millionaires. The use of power in Cuba is so brutal that a flight controller told me that a Cubana de Aviacion plane had to return because Fidel Castro had forgotten to give a book to a female passenger. Here there is a point that is worth clarifying. If I have said that what Mandeville said centuries ago about a hypocritical society is true for Cuban politicians and if I have implied that other Third World politicians tend to be as “corrupt” as they, then why accuse them so emphatically of a problem that they share with other politicians in the world? After failing in the attempt to sell itself as a model society to be imitated by other countries, the Castroist project has lowered its expectations. Fidel Castro elevated to state policy the psychological yearning by selling his officials as the most honest in the world, something which life belies. In the end, he has admitted that they are “corrupt,” but they apologize with a “dodge” that is very frequent in island apologia “like anywhere in the universe.…” There are enough reasons to consider that excuse illegitimate.

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If after so much moralizing chit-chat about Guevara’s “New Man” Castroism proves to be only capable of getting politicians who are just as “corrupt” as the rest, we are in the presence of an outrageous fraud. Fidel Castro sacrificed lives, collected family fortunes, exiled Cubans and robbed people’s youth promising a “luminous future horizon” far from injustice and misery. If in the end it proves that all that social sacrifice was demanded for things to continue more or less the same, to say nothing of worse, then one must conclude that his revolution was futile and his politics too costly a national experiment. According to Albert Hirschman in his book, Rhetoric of Intransigence, all revolutions can be countered with the argument of “futility”: they are violent changes which, in the end, only achieve a dislocation of the injustices without remedying them. As far as I know, this objection to the 1959 revolution has been put forth most lucidly by Cuban anarchist thought. A clear formulation can be found set forth in the work of Alfredo Gomez titled “Cuban Anarchists or Anarchism’s Bad Conscience” (in Guangara Libertaria, Miami, year II. No. 7–1981), which was given to me by researcher Ivette Leiva and which I will quote given its great importance among the series of theoretical criticisms of Castroism: “The various bodies of institutional power under Batista, more or less vacillating, coexist with the still embryonic institutions of the new revolutionary power. The disappearance of the former is not, as in the majority of revolutions in this century, more than merely formal: older institutions reappear with new names, and in specific cases, those formerly in charge even remain at their helms. The former vertical administration of society is succeeded by a new vertical administration. The new hierarchies, having arisen in great part from the primitive power structure of the anti-Batista organizations, quickly fill the holes left by the vanquished” (p. 6). In addition, it is not true that all politicians are “corrupted” and “steal” the way Cuban politicians do; the fact that there is less to embezzle in the island’s ministries does not make anyone less guilty. Now the same propaganda plays with variations of nihilism and skepticism to justify the moral disaster in which the so-called “cadre” or revolutionary official has ended up. But there is more. Class-related inequality in the case of Cuba is furthermore unjust, illegitimate, and immoral; unjust because the avenues for social climbing belong to the sphere of human vileness; illegitimate because social wealth is amassed under the aegis of a hypocritical Franciscanism which exalts torn rags at the same time that it builds cathedrals. And now for a Marxist joke: “No, in Cuba there are no class differences, what there is, is a class of differences.…” Nothing escapes popular imagination because society, as Donoso Cortes said, “is a victim with experience.” With all the piety a fallen tree deserves, I recall that former Minister of Foreign Affairs Roberto Robaina, who tended to “go up the tribunitial parade” quoting Mario Benedetti, invented a cruel sophism according to which Castroism preferred to “hand out little among many instead of much among a few.” As is

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known today, even as far as Roberto Robaina himself, it was not so much an error as a lie. On the 24th of December, while a few ounces of ground soy meat were distributed in the town of Bauta, Fidel Castro handed out his Christmas baskets and opulent dinners were given at the Tocoror, Aljibe, and La Cecilia restaurants. Like “anywhere in the world,” the festivities in Cuba are “unequal,” but in the case of a country that describes itself as Guevarist and sacrificial, that inequality is, moreover, “immoral.” As that old professor noted in our “conspiracies” in Cadenas Square, now Ignacio Agramonte Square, the Romans knew how to distinguish between “law” and “justice.” He would tell me this and then point to the facade of the Law School where triple inscriptions are repeated: “Lex, Lex, Lex.” Then he would add: “That is what Justinian compiled in The Digest; but something is needed without which the law is useless: ‘Jus.’” Without the meaning imparted to it by justice, the law is dangerous; for this reason, in Castroism, where legislation is done arbitrarily by authoritarian decree, violence is legal and the law is violent. Castro’s courts are like chaste walls; that is why it is necessary to obligate law students, by coercion, to practice obligatorily as judges and government attorneys. As this shows, not all is lost. These analytical differences govern as well for the problem of “corruption.” For example, a worker at the Textilera Ariguanabo textile company who “robs” a three-meter piece of cloth to exchange it for food is without doubt carrying out an “illegal” action, but one that can hardly be labeled “unjust,” to say nothing of “immoral.” On the other hand, a Director of Commerce or a Party Secretary who goes into the same textile factory by the main door without submitting his identity card to receive an authorized pass and orders the necessary cloth taken to his house or who has half a dozen hogs reserved at a state farm or who can have available at his whims the rooms he has at the Baracoa Beach in the name of his political organization, is acting with license in the framework of Castroist provisions. Perhaps it cannot be said that he is “robbing,” but his privileges are “unjust” and “immoral.” I do not think that “opportunity” can be evaluated in net terms of “corruption”; the politician uses the most expeditious means possible in totalitarianism to enjoy consumer goods: the complicity of political collaboration. Like so many others he is “escaping”; at most what he can be criticized for is not to punish others for trying to obtain the same thing as he; that is, “to escape” as well. This problem of “corruption” proves scandalous in Cuba at the news level. There are people with very padded accounts, owners of collections by famous painters, families already established that loom in the class structure of a postcommunist Cuba. But this is an article of reflection and not a testimonial. The process of “corruption” happens naturally, given that in the island a code of customs has taken root that is incompatible with the democratic societies that Cuba’s future may inspire. It is a serious problem since both Hayek and Popper ended up agreeing that in spite of the historical, political and cultural solidity

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that a nation may exhibit, no institution may function adequately if the men who manage them are not honest people. In any case, one has to have confidence. The Cuban diaspora in these last forty years has shown that, after a brief period of adaptation, Cubans are capable of functioning decently in the political context of the most disparate democracies in the world.

Political-Military Relations from 1959 to the Present

Part 4 Military

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22 Political-Military Relations from 1959 to the Present Phyllis Greene Walker The establishment and maintenance of political control over the military has been one of the most meaningful factors affecting the character and longevity of the Cuban Revolution. In the thirty-three years since Fidel Castro came to power—a period equivalent to roughly one-third of Cuba’s history as an independent nation—the regime has built a record of political stability that is distinctive among Latin American nations. Given the record of military interventionism prior to the revolution, how might this stability be explained now? How has the regime exercised its political control over the armed forces? Why has it been so successful for so long? And what are the prospects for the continuation of effective political control? Certain distinctive features of the revolution have contributed to the development of this pattern of stable political-military relations.1 To a great extent, these features have been shaped by the persona of Fidel Castro, the charismatic leader of the revolution and, in many ways, the ultimate Latin American caudillo of the twentieth century. The military leadership’s personal loyalty to Fidel and its adherence to the nationalist principles of the revolution have been among the most important of these features. In addition, the Cuban Revolution is clearly distinguished by being a Marxist-Leninist revolution—especially now that it is one of the world’s last—and this characteristic also has supported the development of stable political-military relations. In adhering to Marxism-Leninism, Cuba’s leadership has relied on a variety of mechanisms for building and maintaining political control of the state apparatus and over civil society. For the armed forces, this political control has entailed far more over the years than simply maintaining obedience to political authority, an aim that often can be more expeditiously realized, at least over the short term, through domination. Even though it may be the product of effective con343

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trol, obedience alone is insufficient in helping to account for the regime’s longevity. Indeed, it does not reflect the key consideration that political control is necessarily a process as well as an end in itself. This chapter focuses on the mechanisms of control in the effort not only to explain the regime’s endurance, but also to establish a basis for speculating about Cuba’s future. With this in mind, the process of political control in the development of Cuba’s politicalmilitary relations is examined. The Conceptual Foundations of Political Control over the Military The concept of political control applied here is built around the notion of hegemony developed by the founder of the Italian Communist party, Antonio Gramsci. Described by Gramsci scholar Joseph Femia, hegemony entails “the predominance obtained by consent rather than force of one class or group” over others.2 In his writings, Gramsci carefully drew a distinction between the direct domination exercised through the state apparatus and the hegemony exercised by the dominant political group or class that has “captured” the state. Both of these elements were incorporated in his concept of the state, which he maintained, “in its integral meaning,” consisted of “dictatorship [plus] hegemony.”3 This distinction is important in appreciating the consensual foundation of the Cuban leadership’s position as the rector of the state; it is equally important in understanding the instrumental role played by hegemony as it pertains to the security apparatus. The consensual foundation suggests that the political leadership exercises hegemonic leverage with respect to civil society as a whole. At the same time, the political leadership’s hegemony over the military enables it to use that institution, if necessary, as a tool of coercion; that is, as a means of direct domination. Thus, by virtue of the leadership’s control of the state, hegemony serves a dual purpose, facilitating control over the society in general and control over the military. The effect is mutually reinforcing: The leadership’s hegemony over society helps to legitimize the regime and its political program before the military institution. In Cuba, the revolution has been a nationalist revolution; its political program and ideology, as interpreted by the Communist Party of Cuba, or Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), are carried out in support of Cuban nationalism, in the name of the Cuban people. The effect of this in terms of hegemony over the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (FAR), enables military policy to be partly determined by political interests and needs. As a pillar of the state, the military institution becomes both an object of the leadership’s hegemony and an instrument in the exercise of that hegemony over civil society. The FAR not only accedes to the leadership’s political programs, but, because of its allegiance to the nationalist revolution, allows itself to be used to support the regime.

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With respect to the military, two forms of hegemony may be recognized. The first is objective hegemony, in which the leadership seeks directly to establish its political control over the military, whether it be through the building of the party organization within the armed forces or the professional development of the institution. The second is instrumental hegemony, in which the military allows itself to be used by the leadership for political ends, often serving to reinforce the state’s authority vis-à-vis civil society. In Cuba, the alliance of the political leadership with the security apparatus facilitates the state’s ability to exercise direct domination, and the popular perception that this alliance exists helps to undergird the consensual foundation of the state. But the conception of political control in Cuba entails an additional aspect that is important to recognize because it bears the normative imprint of MarxistLeninist ideology. This notion of political control incorporates what Soviet jurists called pravo controlya, literally, the “right of control.” Its consideration is important insofar as it imputes a sense of legitimacy to the state’s efforts at control over the military as well as over the society at large. The above suggests that political control may be viewed as a means and as an end in itself; in accordance with socialist legality, its exercise is legitimate. In practical terms, the mechanism of political control is designed to ensure loyalty and obedience. The goal, as defined by the regime’s interest in continuity and survival, is stability and order. When discussed strictly in terms of the armed forces, then, this political control is understood as the effort to secure and maintain the military’s obedience to the nation’s political leadership.4 Approaches to Evaluating Cuban Political-Military Relations The assertion of political control in the development of political-military relations has been a gradual process. The revolution created the political equivalent of a tabula rasa. The old political leadership was destroyed, as was the military that had supported it. Those who moved into the new leadership, including Fidel Castro and the other comandantes of the revolution, traced their origins to the victorious rebel army. As the revolution progressed, the extensive development of a fused political-military leadership became one of its principal distinguishing features. Yet in spite of the incidence of fused roles at the apex of the power structure, in which a single individual may have overlapping responsibilities as a leader of the military, of the government, and of the party, relations between the military institution and the leadership have not always been without tensions. Indeed, the very basic question of conflict versus consent in political-military relations is central to understanding a regime’s ability to manage the military institution. Three different models, developed to explain political-military relations in the former Soviet Union, suggest various ways in which the Cuban case might be considered.

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The first model, developed by Roman Kolkowicz, was one of the earliest scholarly efforts to consider the political role of the military in the Soviet Union.5 According to Kolkowicz’s model, conflict is the dominant theme in political-military relations. The image it presents is that of a military straining at the bit of political control in the effort to achieve a measure of professional institutional autonomy. This institutional conflict model, however, does not wholly fit with what is known about the political-military relationship in Cuba. Were it applicable, the issue of political control itself could appear as the central dispute in political-military relations. Yet despite evidence of tensions, the historical record of such relations and the incidence of a fused political-military leadership suggest that thus far in Cuba the right of control has not been challenged. On the other hand, Cuba’s record does not fit well with the second model of political-military relations either. Alternately called the consensual or institutional congruence model, this model was developed by William Odom in response to the first.6 It presupposes the existence of harmonious interests among political and military leaders and argues that although differences may exist between political and military leaders (and that these may even at times be serious), they “exist against a background of broad pragmatic consensus.”7 It seems clear, by virtue of Cuba’s record of stable political-military relation since the revolution, that consensus has indeed been more common than conflict. Odom’s model, however, does not provide a satisfactory means to evaluate the significance of conflict and tensions when they do occur in the relationship. Both of these models fall short in attempting to present too much of an all-or-none characterization of political-military relations; unfortunately, few subjects that fall within the sphere of the political can be so conveniently categorized. The third explanatory model, the participatory model developed by Timothy J. Colton, suggests the need to examine the military’s role in the political process and evidence of coalition building as a means of understanding the institution’s concerns and influence. This model provides a way to account for conflict as well as cooperation in the relationship. It “stresses the interaction between military and civilian elites, in which neither side attains absolute domination but the party’s sovereign power is accepted.”8 While this model represents a significant improvement over the first two, it also is somewhat inadequate in explaining the Cuban case and requires a measure of adaptation. The problem with fitting Cuban political-military relations within any of these models becomes evident when the leadership structures of the armed force, of the government, and the of PCC are examined. What is readily apparent is the extent to which the leadership of these institutions has overlapped throughout the history of the revolution. This critical difference makes Colton’s otherwise reasonable participatory model difficult to apply in explaining the Cuban case. The same individuals who have led the armed forces—most prominently Fidel and Raúl Castro, but evident at other levels within the general officer corps— have also been the leaders of the government and have sat on the PCC’s key

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policy- and decision-making bodies, the Politburo and the Central Committee. This structure of fused political-military leadership has been far more striking in Cuba than in either the former Soviet Union or communist-dominated Eastern Europe. The phenomenon has been further reinforced by the comparatively small size of the island nation and by the historical process in which the military institution preceded the regime’s political organization.9 In evaluating the significance of this fused leadership structure, it is important to consider the question of its relationship to regime stability. Historically, as during the revolution’s turbulent “nation-building” phase in the 1960s, this overlapping political military leadership appeared to be an essential element in guaranteeing the regime’s stability. But the challenges that Cuba has faced since the demise of the Soviet bloc may present a very different situation. Even though ongoing domestic crises may create or exacerbate tensions and divisions within this leadership, it should be recognized that those at the top of the power structure have a stake in the extant system. Because of this common vested interest, the development of destabilizing divisions at the pinnacle of power seems less likely than does the potential for schisms between the political-military elite and other, lower-ranking leaders. The phenomenon of overlapping political-military leadership, then, appears to have been critical in guaranteeing stability in the past and may again prove critical should present economic conditions fail to improve. At the same time, a general perception that the leadership is unresponsive to the needs for change and adaptation in a new environment could be the greater threat to stability. Accordingly, any process that leads to the regime’s “endgame”10 may well be born of alliances formed among lower-ranking individuals in the military, government, and surprisingly enough, the party. Political Control over the Military In practice, the regime’s maintenance of political control over the military closely parallels the theoretical conception of the state described above—namely, that the state’s position vis-à-vis civil society is determined by an admixture of coercion and consent. By extension, then, political control over the military has also involved aspects of direct domination as well as hegemony. As might be expected, in view of the greater efficacy of consent versus coercion as the foundation for a regime, the state’s hegemonic role has been emphasized in the exercise of this control. Facilitated by Castro’s appeal as a nationalistic leader and the revolution’s Marxist-Leninist ideological foundations, this hegemony appears to be a critical feature in explaining not only the remarkable stability in political-military relations, but also the longevity of the revolutionary regime. This political control over the FAR was developed gradually in the course of the revolution. It has been secured by four principal elements: (1) personal

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loyalty to Fidel Castro’s leadership and to the principles of the revolution; (2) the organization of the PCC within the armed forces; (3) the professionalization and modernization of the military institution; and (4) the use of the armed forces to support political and economic ends. The mechanisms for reproducing control have become increasingly sophisticated as the revolution has progressed, with each building on the foundation set by the former. Each of these elements is considered in turn. Loyalty versus Coercion Loyalty and obedience constitute the most fundamental requisites for political control. The early efforts to secure control over the revolution’s new military, which began almost immediately upon Castro’s takeover, focused heavily on these traits. Clearly, the regime had an advantage in the ability to build upon the strong discipline that was characteristic of the rebel army during the insurrection against Batista, in which minor infractions were dealt with harshly, up to and including execution. But in retrospect, what is most noteworthy about the initial efforts at political control was that they had so much in common with the mechanisms of control employed elsewhere in Latin America as well as in many other developed and Third World nations. In essence, these can be characterized as traditional methods of political control insofar as they are built, in the final analysis, around the exercise of raw power. The objective was to ensure loyalty; in the absence of that, perceived or potential challenges were met with domination. The foundation of these traditional controls was building and rewarding loyalty—loyalty to the principles of the revolution and to the new regime, but above all, loyalty to Fidel Castro, the commander in chief of the armed forces. This loyalty entailed more than simple obedience; rather, an absolute faith in the revolutionary leadership’s infallibility was expected. Absent such loyalty, challenges to the regime’s authority, however slight, were met with coercion. The higher one stood in the revolutionary hierarchy, the more insistent was the demand for fidelity. Such unswerving loyalty was, of course, an imperative for the comandantes. Some were survivors of Castro’s failed Moncada Barracks assault in July 1953; others, who joined the revolutionary cause later, had trained with the Castro brothers in Mexico and returned on the yacht Granma in 1956 to launch the insurrection. To these men, and the comandantes were all men, went the new regime’s most prestigious and important positions. Many were rewarded with their own province to command. Others were placed in charge of key installations or government programs, such as that of the National Agrarian Reform Institute, or Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA), which was run by the military. Yet another reward for loyalty was proximity to the maximum leader. Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother by four years, and Ernesto “Ché”

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Guevara, the Argentine physician and theorist of guerrilla warfare, apparently fared best in this regard, and were held to be Fidel Castro’s “closest advisers.”11 But Fidel Castro, who moved quickly to establish himself as the leader of the entire revolutionary movement, also paid careful attention to what was going on at lower levels within the military.12 The key tactic, as with the comandantes, was to reward loyalty and penalize infidelity—employing the traditional tactic of the carrot and the stick, or pan ó palo. Many of his men judged to be less than reliable, depending on their position and the nature of the evidence against them, were either summarily dismissed or sent abroad to staff embassies. Against this backdrop of early political manipulation were the trials of the former Batista supporters—military and civilian officials alike—which continued through summer 1959. These trials, criticized in the United States for resembling the show trials carried out under Stalin in the Soviet Union, often were broadcast on Cuban television. They were used to send a message, and the message was that those who had resisted the revolution could not be easily forgiven. The properties of the former officials were confiscated.13 All of the armed forces’ commanders were replaced by Castro loyalists, and hundreds were retired.14 Only a few members of the old officer corps were reportedly permitted to join the new army.15 During the first week of the revolution, more than a thousand military men were arrested and held subject to revolutionary justice, with their courts-martial often convened in the local baseball stadiums.16 Although some were freed, many more were sentenced to long prison terms; others were immediately executed by firing squad upon their conviction.17 At least half of the executions were carried out during the first three weeks of the revolution, with the condemned having been found guilty of torture, murder, and other atrocities carried out in support of the ancien régime.18 By the end of June 1959, when the trials were transferred from military to civilian courts, as many as five hundred Batista loyalists had been put to death.19 As the regime shifted leftward in the ensuing months, the dispute over its communist sympathies intensified and became a divisive issue within the leadership. Moderates within the government were allowed to resign, and nearly all had done so by late 1959.20 But there was no room for wavering loyalty among the comandantes in the revolution, who all had to be true believers. As the government’s case against Major Huber Matos made clear, Castro was equally prepared to mete out revolutionary justice for those whose support faltered, just as he had for the Batistianos. Matos’s basic crime was that he had openly criticized the direction of the revolution, in terms of both its ideological drift and Castro’s style of leadership. In an October 1959 letter to Fidel, he resigned his post as military commander of Camagüey province, expressing his wish to not “become an obstacle to the revolution.”21 At his court-martial, Matos was convicted of “anti-patriotic and anti-revolutionary conduct” and sentenced to twenty years in prison; the prosecutor, who made his case while the Castro brothers sat as witnesses, had argued for the death penalty.22

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Thus, the two extremes of absolute loyalty or unrepentant coercion were set. After the Matos trial, opposition to Fidel’s direction of the revolution became equated with anti-nationalist and counterrevolutionary activities. The judicial system became a tool for the enforcement of control—with extrajudicial remedies equally suitable for some transgressors, despite the expansive scope of revolutionary justice. The boundaries for permissible dissent narrowed as the revolution’s ideology became defined, while the challenge to identify the resulting threats against the regime grew. As a result, the need for expanded political intelligence became increasingly urgent in order to determine the balance of loyalty versus the need for coercion. These initial efforts, evident so early in the revolution, laid the groundwork for the regime’s political control. In contrast to the situation in Eastern Europe after World War II, these control efforts were prompted by the revolutionary leadership’s aim of consolidating its own position, and not by the attempts of an outside power to achieve domination. Loyalty to Fidel and to the revolution, whether artifice or actuality, would be the requisite basis for political control. A political intelligence apparatus served to alert the leadership to threats from within; the norms for revolutionary justice provided the veneer of legality for any acts of retribution. For the next three decades, the threat of coercion was effective in heading off challenges within the military to Fidel’s authority. But as the Ochoa case made clear in 1989, perceived challenges would be dealt with harshly. The boundaries for the rules of the game had changed, and the space for deviation within the revolution narrowed further. Conflict within those boundaries, though less than desirable, was permissible so long as the political authority itself was not challenged. The key thing was toeing the line. Party Organization in the FAR With the foundation of basic loyalty secured, attention turned to the task of improving political organization within the FAR. The process of building the party in the military predated by several years the creation of the party’s organizational structure in 1963, and was based upon the continuing effort to nurture support for the revolution. The learning experience to which the leadership repeatedly made reference was that of leftist President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala, whose failure to secure control over the military contributed to his overthrow in 1954.23 The military’s unique role within the new government, in which it represented the only organized repository for national leadership and administration, heightened the importance of ensuring that the institution as a whole was made subject to reliable political control. While the traditional-style control efforts had focused on generating personal loyalty, the new focus was on building institutional loyalty. The military’s early ascendant position in the new regime was due mainly to its organizational origins in the victorious rebel army. In

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acknowledging the institution’s importance and affirming his own position as the leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro assumed the position of commander in chief, and Raúl Castro, in October 1959, that of Minister of the revolutionary Armed Forces. In Leninist terms, the army was the vanguard of the Cuban Revolution, fulfilling the role assigned, according to dogma, to the Communist party. The unorthodox nature of Cuba’s revolutionary process, however, initially presented a major stumbling block in ideological correctness. Namely, the organization of the FAR preceded that of not only the governmental structure, but also that of what later emerged as the nation’s premier political institution, the PCC. The complicating factor was that in the early 1960s Cuba already had an organized Communist party—then called the Popular Socialist Party, or Partido Socialista Popular (PSP)—which had delayed its support for the revolution, calling Castro a “bourgeois putschist,” and was initially left sitting on the sidelines.24 The challenge for Castro was to mold a political organization that would be loyal to him and, by extension, to the revolution. The military’s organizational structure and the critical importance of the institution’s support made it appear as a most suitable place for doing so. During the year preceding Castro’s public affirmation in late 1961 of Marxism-Leninism as the regime’s guiding ideology, the task of improving revolutionary consciousness within the armed forces had assumed a higher priority. Programs stressing political education for the troops had been under way since the earliest days of the revolution. Instruction in the basic tenets of Marxism had even been routinely incorporated as part of the guerrillas’ training during the war against Batista. The early official emphasis on political education was aimed at providing the soldiers with an ideological rationale for defending their revolutionary government. In early 1959, regular “indoctrination classes” were held in the army, incorporating lessons on Cuban history and Marxism and teaching about the new government’s policies.25 Two years later, the plans for a more formalized structure for political education were being implemented. In September 1961, the first class of 750 students was graduated from the Osvaldo Sánchez Cabrera School for Revolutionary Instructors. Although most lacked any formal military training, the students had been selected for admission through the ambiguous criteria of having been “proven revolutionaries . . . who needed ideological training.”26 The new graduates, under the direction of the FAR’s new Department of Revolutionary Instruction, were then assigned throughout the country to military units in which they were third in command. Their job was to teach about “the character of the revolution, the ideals of the revolution, the justice of the revolution, and the character of the class struggle . . . between exploited and exploiting classes.”27 Tensions arose as the officers and their men bristled at receiving political instruction from the civilian teachers assigned to their units. The situation was

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equally aggravated by the new instructors’ overestimation of their own importance in guiding the military along the correct revolutionary path. The conflict continued until early 1963, when the decision was announced that only military personnel would serve as FAR political instructors. In turn, the focus of the education program shifted commensurately, with the military’s professional responsibilities emphasized at the expense of building political consciousness among the troops. The military, whose position was aided by the government’s fear of a United States invasion, had won the skirmish. In December 1963, the decision to organize a party apparatus within the FAR was announced, paralleling the organizational effort in Cuban society at large. In many respects, the decision to organize the party can be seen as a natural evolution of the military’s experience with political education.28 Then known as the United Party of the Socialist Revolution, or Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista (PURS), the forerunner organization of the PCC had built its influence in the area of revolutionary education in the civilian sphere. In paying heed to the military’s concern in preserving its domain, care was taken to emphasize the military’s autonomy and to minimize party interference in professional military matters. A dual command system, as operated under the political commissar system in the Soviet Union, was not implemented; rather, the military commanders themselves, not the party’s functionaries in the FAR, would have the final word. The mission of the party in the FAR was to support the institution in the execution of its professional responsibilities. As described by Comandante José N. Causse Pérez, then the chief of the FAR’s Political Directorate, the party might lead the FAR at the national level, but at the operational level its “fundamental mission [was] to aid the chief and the political instructor to better carry out the orders, missions, and tasks of the unit.”29 Despite his role as the military’s commander in chief, Fidel Castro refrained from commenting on the party organization effort as well as from attending the organizational meetings in the FAR, apparently having chosen to delegate this task to his brother Raúl.30 The party structure within the FAR was organized hierarchically. At the lowest level were the party cells. Established at the company and battery levels, the cells were assigned two key responsibilities: first, “to make known [among their fellow soldiers] the guidelines of the National Party Directorate and of the Revolutionary Government”; and second, in fulfilling an intelligence function, “to verify how these guidelines are assimilated and followed,” to include reporting on the soldiers’ “worries, needs, suggestions, criticisms, [and] initiatives.”31 This information, then, was duly passed along to higher levels within the party for review. In each party cell, candidates for membership were selected by the party activists and their nominations were passed upward for approval. Party Bureaus, composed of activists whose credentials had also been approved from above, were organized at the battalion level. The next organizational levels were the Political Sections, organized at each base, and the party Committee, organized by unit. The respective unit commanders, if already be-

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longing to the party, and the political instructors, who were required to be activists, were automatically incorporated into the apparatus. The representatives at the higher levels within the party-military hierarchy, however, were personally appointed by Raúl Castro acting in his capacity as the Minister of the FAR. These appointed officials included the members of the Political Sections of the sundry divisions, the three army corps, and the three armed services as well as those of the armed forces’ Political Directorate.32 As might be expected, the FAR’s officer corps was prominent in the party apparatus. Party membership was recognized early on as a sign of proper political orientation and was an important factor in career advancement. By late 1966, when construction of the apparatus in the FAR was deemed officially completed, as much as go percent of the senior military officers had joined the party.33 The FAR was also heavily represented within the party organization as a whole. Once the PCC was finally established in 1965, two-thirds of the onehundred-member Central Committee were men who held military rank.34 The Professionalization of the FAR The elements of personal loyalty, political education, and party organization are clearly integral to ensuring political control. The importance of the regime’s attention to developing the military’s professional capacities, however, should not be discounted. Professional capacity, reflected in force levels, training programs, and materiel, is also an important indicator of the institution’s prestige. Domestically, Castro’s military and defense policies have ensured that the FAR, along with the PCC, has been one of the country’s two leading institutions. In international terms, the FAR became one of the most developed military institutions in the hemisphere, with a professional combat capacity that far exceeded what might be expected of a relatively small island nation. This attention to the development of the military institution may be seen as helping to reinforce military support for the regime. In this way, the professionalization of the FAR may be recognized as a key element of political control. The attention devoted to this objective increased significantly after 1970, following the failure that year of the ten-million-ton sugar harvest. Although it is difficult to ascribe a cause and effect to this policy shift, certain factors do stand out. In the first place, this change coincided with a marked decline in the FAR’s participation in economic-production activities. This entailed the reduced participation of military personnel in nominally civilian roles, which had included the assignment of regular military troops to agricultural work, and a shift away from the organization of the economy along military lines. It may well have been that the regime opted not to risk losing the military’s support over its role in what had proved to be less than successful domestic policies. The increasing level of technical and administrative competence among the civilian population also facilitated this transition.

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Secondly, this policy change also coincided with the gradual warming in relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union, which had begun shortly before. These relations had become strained during the radical phase of the revolution after 1966.35 One of the early indications of the Cuban-Soviet rapprochement was in June 1969, with the first of what became regular annual visits by the Soviet fleet, a practice that was continued over the next two decades. In early 1970, months before the verdict was in on the May harvest, Raúl Castro traveled to the Soviet Union, spending several weeks there and possibly laying the groundwork for the changes to come.36 Indeed, the possibility of receiving increased Soviet support for the FAR’s modernization may have been factored into Fidel Castro’s decision to adopt and maintain a more moderate international posture. The year 1973 stands out as a watershed in the development of the military institution. Taken as a whole, the policies that were set under way that year pointed the way for the FAR to become one of the most developed armed forces in the Third World. This continuing dedication of resources to the institution, which lasted through the next decade and a half, easily put the Cuban military, in terms of its operational capabilities, on a par with some of the developed world’s armed forces as well. The most significant change at that time was the reorganization of the FAR and the restructuring of the system of military ranks. As part of the reorganization, there was an increased emphasis on the development of technical expertise and specialization. Reflecting this, a new paramilitary body was organized. The Youth Labor Army, or Ejército Juvenil del Trabajo (EJT), was given the specific mission of helping to contribute to the country’s economic development, thus freeing regular troops for their professional duties. In addition, the 1963 law establishing compulsory military service was modified to allow for a civilian “social service” option, permitting youth with specialized experience, such as university training, to fulfill their obligation by working in civilian posts, including government ministries. The restructuring of the military’s ranks made the FAR’s system more comparable to that of traditional armed forces elsewhere in the world. As opposed to the changes already discussed, however, this decision had high symbolic import as the old revolutionary command system was abandoned. Along with this effort to project a more professional image, a number of officers who presumably failed to meet the standards for modern military managers were retired.37 Another policy change was in the area of military manpower. Additional Soviet advisers arrived in the early 1970s, and among their recommendations was a reduction in the size of the regular armed forces. By 1970, the military had grown to a force numbering 200,000 personnel; only four years later, the FAR had been cut by half. Additionally, the technical qualifications of the troops and officers were improved. Greater emphasis was put on professional military education, and many officers were sent abroad for specialized training, such as

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that provided at the F. V. Frunze Military Academy and the K. E. Voroshilov General Staff Academy in the former Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, hundreds of FAR personnel were being sent each year for advanced training in Eastern Europe as well as in the Soviet Union. The new streamlined force also proved more suitable for conducting training exercises, contributing to the improvement of the FAR’s level of combat readiness. The Instrumental Role of the Armed Forces The FAR’s professional development laid the foundation for its subsequent use by the regime to pursue political as opposed to strictly defense-related goals. Reference to this “instrumental role” is understood to refer to the government’s use of the military institution to pursue policies that are not directly related either to national defense or internal security, the two traditional missions of armed forces throughout the world. This use, too, represents an element of political control insofar as the armed forces accede to and obey the governing authority in executing its designated assignment. In Cuba’s case, this instrumental role is best reflected in the decision to deploy combat personnel to fight in Angola. This resulted in the creation of a third mission for the FAR, known as the internationalist mission, to legitimize its role there. Without the aid provided by the Soviets in professionalizing the armed forces during the early 1970s, the introduction of combat troops in Angola in 1975 would have been impossible. The first Cuban combat personnel arrived there in early November as part of Operation Carlota.38 Thereafter, an airlift and sealift operation was under way to ferry additional combat personnel to support the embattled Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or Movimento Popular de Libertaçâo de Angola (MPLA). With the initial support provided by Cuba, the MPLA had installed itself as the government of the newly independent nation, but it was under continuous siege by two rival guerrilla organizations as well as, reportedly, by South African troops. The Soviet Union helped transport Cuban troops and also provided materiel and supplies for the combat personnel, including such state-of-the-art equipment as MiG-23 jet fighters and T-62 main battle tanks. The extent of Soviet support prompted critics to label the Cubans in Angola as Soviet surrogates, fighting the battles in which the Soviet themselves did not wish to engage. Yet Fidel Castro himself had a clear interest in using his troops to support his Marxist allies in Angola, and particularly in trying to bolster his position as a leader of the Third World. As fighting reached its peak in early 1976, the Cuban troops were estimated to have risen to a level of thirty-six thousand. More than three-fourths were thought to be activated reservists who had already completed their militaryservice requirement. Conscripts, who were drafted for a two-year tour of internationalist duty, helped fill out the ranks. Members of the regular armed forces

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were most important in staffing the command posts and the positions requiring technical expertise. An additional several thousand officers were assigned as military advisers. Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s the size of the Cuban deployment in Angola hovered in the range of thirty-five thousand troops and officers. Following the Reagan administration’s late 1985 decision to increase covert assistance to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or Uniâo Nacional para la Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), the only surviving rival guerrilla group, fighting again intensified. The number of Cuban troops again began to rise. They were once more commanded by General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, who had achieved recognition as Cuban commander during the battles of the 1970s. Around the same period that fighting in Angola again intensified, criticism within Cuba of the military’s role in Angola was mounting. The concerns on the island were more personal and pragmatic than ideological, however. The principal grievance was the perception that the lives of Cuban youth were being wasted in a foreign war. As the Cuban people saw it, the war was no longer worthwhile. The bodies of those who died were not returned for interment at home, adding anguish for those who lost loved ones. Among the soldiers who did survive the war, the rumored incidence of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), pandemic in Central Africa, was becoming a problem.39 Acts of disobedience and evasion of military service became more common. Combined with the difficult living conditions in Angola, the decline in popular support was beginning to sap military morale. In light of this situation, the political utility of Cuba’s African role was rapidly diminishing while its costs escalated. Castro could not afford to allow declining public support to undermine either the military’s own support for his policy in Angola or, by extension, his authority over the institution.40 The regime, then, was under pressure to find a graceful way out of an increasingly uncomfortable situation; the dilemma was doing so without publicly appearing to abandon an ally. In December 1988, when the U.S.-mediated agreement for Namibian independence and the end of Angola’s civil war was signed, Cuban troop levels stood at a high of fifty thousand personnel. The provisions of the Tripartite Agreement, signed by representatives of the governments of Cuba, Angola, and the United States, set the terms for the withdrawal of Cuban personnel over a thirtymonth period. The final combat troops arrived home in May 1991, two months ahead of schedule. Challenges to Political Control: Consensus versus Conf lict The consideration thus far has been framed around the assumption that consent on issues in political-military relations is conducive to political control,

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while the incidence of conflict can help to undermine it. Following from this, the stability of the Cuban regime over the past three decades suggests that consensus has prevailed over conflict as the norm in political-military relations. Conflict, when it has arisen, has posed a challenge to political control insofar as it may be linked with an adaptive response by the regime. Although the problem to date has been minor, present trends indicate that more direct challenges to the control mechanisms themselves could arise. The question is whether, at that point, adaptive responses would be sufficient. The paucity of information on conflict in Cuban political-military relations makes consideration of this question difficult. Yet in spite of the government’s efforts to project a harmonious image, conflict is known to have developed in at least two areas: the role of the armed forces in Angola in the late 1980s and the decision to build a communist-party organization within the military institution in the mid-1960s. The conf lict that arose from the armed forces’ use as an instrument of foreign policy is revealing about the state of political-military relations and, perhaps more importantly, the linkage between the armed forces’ institutional interests and those of the Cuban people. The conflict over party organization, however, arose from a more fundamental issue in political-military relations as it pertained to the armed forces’ institutional autonomy. Whether opposition to the Angolan involvement arose first within the population at large or within the armed forces may well be a moot point. It is likely that the development was simultaneous. What is important to note is the existence of a nexus between the military and the population, wherein popular perceptions of the military were having an effect upon the institution. A precept in the instrumental use of the military is that its employment redound favorably upon the regime, building support for it within the armed forces and in the society as a whole. In the question of Cuba’s role in Angola, this support began to decline sometime after 1985. Identifying the proximate cause in this case is less important than understanding its effects as draft evasion rose and troop morale flagged. Perhaps most serious was Fidel Castro’s pretension in managing the battle strategy that became an issue for derision among some officers in Angola. The return of the last troops from Angola in 1991 marked the first time in fully half of the history of the revolution that Cuba did not have combat personnel stationed abroad. At a minimum, the internationalist mission has been suspended, if not eliminated—a development attributable both to the shift in the international correlation of forces and to the loss of Soviet financial and logistical support.41 With this withdrawal from foreign military involvement, the regime presumably has eliminated the tensions such involvement had generated. Indeed, draft evasion is no longer a problem and youth deployed overseas no longer a focus for opposition.42 By generously awarding medals to those who served, the government has tried to portray the troops’ involvement in a favor-

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able light. But the fragmentary data available suggest that problems generated during the late 1980s, such as low morale and doubts about Castro’s leadership, appear still to plague the institution. These continuing problems appear to be the product of new tensions as expectations continue to outpace performance. The regime’s new dictum is that “internationalism begins at home.”43 The armed forces have now assumed a new instrumental role, necessitated by the loss of Soviet support, which revolves around the attainment of domestic economic goals, most importantly establishing the military as a self-sufficient institution. As stated by Fidel Castro in a March 1991 interview, “[O]ne of the armed forces missions at this time is to help the economy.”44 In some respects, this role is reminiscent of the “civic soldier” model of the 1960s, when, because of the difficult economic situation, the emphasis was on moral rather than material incentives.45 But there is an important distinction that should be noted. The military troops deployed in agricultural and economic-production activities in the 1960s were quite different from the personnel of the early 1990s. The former had not been trained as a professional military force. Given the armed forces’ development since the 1970s as a professional military institution, it is difficult to understand how the armed forces may feel about picking grapefruit or harvesting sugarcane. Only because this new instrumental role may be critical for national survival is it possible that it will not lead to heightened conflict in politicalmilitary relations. Professionalism is indeed an important aspect to consider in evaluating challenges to political control. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban military lost its most important ally, one that had supported its institutional development over the past two decades. For the Cuban regime, the challenge to political control is that without Soviet support it will be extremely difficult to maintain the military as the professionally trained, well-equipped force that it had become by 1991. Rather, professionalization represents an element of control to the extent that the regime assured the military that it would count among the premiere institutions in the region. Without continuing attention to professional development, the risk of institutional degradation becomes a potential issue over which conflict in political-military relations could arise. A regime in a similar situation might opt to grant the military greater institutional autonomy as a palliative measure. But the fused leadership at the apex of Cuba’s political-military hierarchy hardly makes the possibility of greater autonomy a realistic bargaining point for either side. The conflict over party organization in the FAR in the 1960s arose over the issue of military autonomy. The regime’s concession to assuage concerns at that time was that the party would play a subordinate, supportive role in bolstering military effectiveness. As the conflict abated, party membership became established as a requisite for a successful military career. Control efforts were expanded during the 1970s and this time were met with less resistance within the

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institution. Intended as a check on pressures for autonomy that might result from professionalization, increased emphasis was again placed on political education as well as on criticism and self-criticism. The introduction of the rectification process in the 1980s reinforced the PCC’s inf luence within the armed forces. Concomitant with this gradual expansion in the party’s role, the relative inf luence of military officials within the PCC Central Committee has markedly declined. At the 1991 Party Congress, military representation on the Central Committee dropped to a low of 12.5 percent, as compared to 30 percent in 1975 and 57 percent in 1965. 46 The decline in military representation in the Central Committee signifies not only the relative decline in the military’s ability to exercise its corporate inf luence in party decision making, but may also augur the onset of a new phase in political-military relations.47 There are several challenges to party organization in the FAR as a continuing means of control. The most significant is that posed by the rejection of Marxism-Leninism as a guiding ideology throughout the world. In addition, even though party membership among officers remains relatively high, the decline in general FAR representation within the PCC hierarchy suggests that the military institution might not necessarily have a major stake in wishing to ensure the PCC’s survival. Lastly, the pressure to maintain party control at the same time that the military is losing its professional edge could become a source for conflict, particularly if officers perceive that their future welfare may not necessarily be linked with that of the PCC. In the final analysis, the challenge for the regime is maintaining the balance of loyalty over coercion. The demonstration of loyalty by military officers to Fidel Castro and to the revolution has been the single most essential element of political control over the years. Without it, effective control is problematic. The challenge to this aspect of control is that posed by dissimulation, at which members of the military have become adept in mimicking the gestures and rhetoric of loyalty. The regime’s dilemma is in discerning among the true believers, the sycophants, and the survivors. Without this knowledge, one cannot judge the regime’s real extent of political control over the armed forces. In the absence of loyalty, the alternative becomes coercion. The courtmartial and execution of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and three fellow officers made clear in 1989 that the regime is prepared to retaliate quickly and harshly if challenged from within. As the case against Maj. Huber Matos thirty years earlier indicated, although it might not be sensible to use coercion against an entire institution, it is certainly effective to do so against individual officers. In each case, the message to the institution was that the bounds for acceptable behavior were redefined and the rules of the game changed. The reverberations from the tribunal, in which a number of officers opposed Ochoa’s execution, are still believed to be felt within the institution.

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Conclusions While political control over the military may not fully explain Cuba’s political stability since 1959, it most definitely has been a contributing factor in ensuring Castro’s longevity as the regime’s leader. This political control has been built on four principal elements: individual loyalty, party organization in the FAR, professionalization, and the instrumental role of the military. Each of these elements has been gradually developed and refined over the course of the revolution. Each builds upon the foundation set by the preceding element, with the most fundamental being that of loyalty. Political control, however, has been challenged in two respects: first, by the incidence of conflict within the institution; and second, by the eroding utility of the control efforts themselves. Conflict in political-military relations has been addressed either by reversing policies or by implementing compromise and palliative measures. A greater challenge is that posed to the regime’s ability to continue to exercise the control mechanisms that it has relied upon in the past. Changes in the international sphere linked with the demise of communism, have acted to limit the effectiveness of these control efforts by making them variously politically or economically unfeasible. The conjuncture in the weakening utility of these elements could severely affect the regime’s ability to cope with challenges emanating from within, short of resorting to coercion. The incidence of fused leadership at the top of the political-military hierarchy has contributed in the past to political control over the institution as well as to political stability. In contrast to the situation in the Soviet Union in 1991, when the military leaders were divided between pro- and anti-reformist groups, the leadership of the Cuban armed forces, including Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro and General of the Army Raúl Castro, is still believed to staunchly support the political status quo. Whether this leadership remains a stabilizing factor in the midst of dramatic pressures for change may be questioned. In the past, analysts have suggested that the prospect of a rupture within the leadership is potentially destabilizing. 48 Previous patterns of conf lict, however, suggest the greater likelihood of schisms developing between the top leadership and lower levels in the hierarchy. Such developments would not necessarily entail military intervention against the regime, but could provide the type of opening that would lead the regime in the direction of reform. In the past, the leadership’s hegemonic leverage has been key in preventing such schisms. In concluding, a few general observations are appropriate. In the first instance, it is important to recognize that the Cuban military is now a very different institution from what it was when the regime came to power. At least three distinct generations have been through the institution since the revolution, from the veterans of the guerrilla war to the young professional technicians of the present generation. Recognizing the different formative experiences of these

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individuals is as important as considering how their varied backgrounds may relate to the effectiveness of political control. The most critical point in this regard is that the officers who are now prepared to move into positions of leadership in the institution have spent their careers as military professionals. Their perspective on the future of the Cuban military institution is likely to be quite different from that of the men who led the revolution thirty years ago. And the mechanisms necessary to ensure their continuing subordination to political authority may be quite different as well. Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

Generally, the term civil-military relations is used in reference to the relationship between a country’s political leadership, as represented by the government, and the military institution, structurally a part of that government. This definition suggests that there is a clear distinction between that which is civil and that which is military, a distinction that some scholars have found problematic. See David E. Albright, “A Comparative Conceptualization of Civil-Military Relations,” World Politics 32, no. 4 (July 1980), pp. 553–57. The term political-military relations, which addresses each actor’s primary expression of its functional responsibilities, is deemed preferable for purposes of this study. While, arguably, this terminology does not improve the conceptualization of the dichotomy—indeed, the armed forces are viewed as political actors—it facilitates reference to the Cuban regime, where the civil versus military identification of the national leadership is more ambiguous. For a discussion of the terminology problem in reference to Cuba, see Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 341–78. Joseph Femia, “Hegemony and Consciousness in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci,” Political Studies 23, no. 1 (March 1975), p. 31. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 239. In the general literature on civil-military relations, such obedience would normally be said to reflect the exercise of “civilian control” of the military, a concept that Samuel Huntington clarified in distinguishing between its “objective” and “subjective” forms. See Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 80–85. A number of scholars, however, have since recognized problems in applying Huntington’s conceptualization outside the nations of the liberal democratic West. For a discussion of problems related to the concept, see, for example, Albright, “Comparative Conceptualization,” pp. 553–76; Domínguez, Cuba, pp. 341– 78; or more recently, Deborah L. Norden, “Democratic Consolidation and

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5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

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Military Professionalism: Argentina in the 1980s,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 32, no. xx (Fall 1990), pp. 151–76. See Roman Kolkowicz’s The Soviet Military and the Communist Party (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967). Odom himself rejects use of the term institutional congruence to describe his model, implying that it is too reductionist. For want of a better catchphrase, however, it has become known as this—no doubt to Odom’s chagrin. It also is sometimes called the totalitarian model. William Odom, “The Party-Military Connection: A Critique,” in Civil-Military Relations in Communist Systems, ed. Dale R. Herspring and Ivan Volgyes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), p. 32. Timothy J. Colton, “Perspectives on Civil-Military Relations in the Soviet Union,” in Soldiers and the State: Civil-Military Relations from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, ed. Timothy J. Colton and Thane Gustafson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 14. Indeed, one of the more striking features of political development in Cuba since the Fourth Party Congress, held in October 1991, has been that the military leadership, except at the level of the Politburo, overlaps less with the government-PCC leadership than it ever has in the past. This trend, which began in the early 1970s, may ref lect the “civilianization” of the revolution by limiting the military’s relative influence in policymaking discussion and debate. Baloyra defines an “endgame” as the “relatively short, complex, and crucial episode . . . in which the balance of power changes decisively,” creating the conditions for a regime transition. See Enrique A. Baloyra, “Democratic Transition in Comparative Perspective,” in Comparing New Democracies: Transition and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the Southern Cone, ed. Enrique A. Baloyra (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), p. 12. Hugh Thomas, The Cuban Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 86), p. 444. It should be noted that there were other, opposing groups within the overarching revolutionary movement that had led to Batista’s downfall. These groups included the liberals—among them members of the urban wing of the 26 of July Movement, or Movimiento 26 de Julio (M-26), and of the university-based Revolutionary Directorate, or Directorio Revolucionario (DR)—and the communists, whose political organization was the Popular Socialist Party, or Partido Socialista Popular (PSP). Thomas, Cuban Revolution, p. 421. At the time of Batista’s demise, his military was made up of some forty thousand officers and troops. This presented something of a problem for the new government because the rebel army, upon taking over, numbered only some three thousand men. Early on, Castro declared that the size of the armed forces would be cut in half, to twenty thousand; nevertheless, staffing at the level of the officer corps continued to be a challenge, given the high illiteracy rate and the corresponding low educational levels among

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15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

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the rebel army’s integrants. See Rafael Fermoselle, The Evolution of the Cuban Military: 1492–1986 (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1987), p. 267. Rosemary H. T. O’Kane, The Revolutionary Reign of Terror: The Role of Violence in Political Change (Hants, England: Edward Elgar Publishing, 1991), p. 156. Fermoselle, Evolution of the Cuban Military, p. 265. Even before arriving in Havana on 8 January, Fidel Castro had ordered the implementation of his February 1958 decrees issued in the Sierra Maestra, restoring the death penalty and applying it retroactively to crimes committed prior to Batista’s flight. O’Kane, Revolutionary Reign of Terror, pp. 156–57. Ibid., p. 156. This figure was cited by Keesings in 1959. The New York Times reported that only 364 former officials were executed during the first six months of 1959. See Fermoselle, Evolution of the Cuban Military, pp. 265–66, n. 5. Thomas, Cuban Revolution, p. 474. Ibid., p. 466. An abridged text of Matos’ resignation letter is reproduced in Thomas’s account. Ibid., pp. 477–78. Special Warfare Area Handbook for Cuba (Washington, D.C.: Special Operations Research Office, 1961), p. 427. As is now well known, the Central Intelligence Agency helped to engineer Arbenz’s downfall. Ibid., p. 423. Thomas, Cuban Revolution, pp. 451–52. “El Instructor Revolucionario es el mejor colaborador del jefe de la unidad,” Verde Olivo 2, no. 39 (1° de octubre, 1961), p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. Andrés Suárez, Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959–1966 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), p. 195. Joel Vilariño, “Vida del Partido,” Verde Olivo 5, no. 10 (8 de marzo, 1964), p. 17. William M. LeoGrande, “A Bureaucratic Approach to Civil-Military Relations in Communist Political Systems: The Case of Cuba,” Civil-Military Relations in Communist Systems, ed. Dale R. Herspring and Ivan Volgyes (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1978), p. 197. Vilariño, “La Vida del Partido,” p. 18. Ibid. See also LeoGrande, “Bureaucratic Approach,” p. 208. Jan Sejna and Joseph D. Douglass, Jr., Decision-making in Communist Countries: An Inside View (Cambridge, Mass.: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1986), p. 75. Jorge I. Domínguez, “The Civic Soldier in Cuba,” Political-Military Systems: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Catherine McArdle Kelleher (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1974), p. 232. The exact figure is 69 percent. Jacques Lévesque dates the improvement in Cuban-Soviet relations to 1969 and cites Cuba’s economic problems and increasing political isolation as the

364

36. 37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

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prime motivating factors. By late 1970, he asserts, these relations had become “excellent.” See his The USSR and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategical Perspectives, 1959–1977 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978), pp. 147–51. Jorge I. Domínguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 49–50. Fermoselle, Evolution of the Cuban Military, p. 296. The first combat personnel to arrive was a battalion of Special Troops. The Special Troops are made up of two battalions of approximately 650 personnel each. They are nominally under the Ministry of Interior’s Directorate of Special Operations and are considered the elite of Cuba’s armed forces, with training comparable to that received by the Spetznaz of the old Soviet armed forces. The concern about the spread of AIDS among returning troops may have somewhat exaggerated. By 1988, the Cuban government had become vigilant regarding this threat. According to Cuba’s Ministry of Health, only 84 of the 300,000 military and civilian personnel that had served in Angola had tested positive for the virus. See James Brooke, “AIDS Spreading into Border Areas of Angola,” The New York Times, 19 February 1989, p. 10. There is some evidence, although much of it is anecdotal, that support for Castro’s Angola policy had already begun to decline within some sectors of the military during the late 1980s. In this same vein, Castro’s wrath against Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989 may have been partly provoked by the latter’s demonstrated loss of respect for Castro, which was well known among the general’s men, and had resulted from the Angola policy. According to some accounts, Ochoa, while commander of the Angola troops, often sought to evade direct communications with Castro or mocked the commander in chief when he attempted to run the Angolan military operations from Havana. Castro harshly criticized Ochoa’s insubordination in his lengthy statement before the Council of State during Ochoa’s court-martial. See, for example, Causa 1/89 Fin de la conexión cubana (Havana: Editorial José Martí, 1989), pp. 421–42. This loss of Soviet support was due initially to the decision of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to turn away from the long-standing commitment to proletarian internationalism, and later to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. The requirement for Active Military Service, or Servicio Military Activo (SMA), was cut from three to two years in March 1991. Pascal Fletcher, “Cuba to Halt Military Aid to Revolutions,” Washington Times, 14 January 1992, p. A7. Foreign Broadcast Information Service [FBIS], Latin America: Daily Report, 21 March 1991, p. 7. See the chapter on “The Civic Soldier” in Domínguez, Cuba, pp. 341–78. This figure was calculated based on the list of Central Committee members published in FBIS-LAM, 13 November 1991, pp. 1–4. For data on the earlier

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years, see LeoGrande, “Bureaucratic Approach,” p. 211. As a result of the 1991 Party Congress, military representation on the Politburo was expanded with the addition of one general. However, one need only look at who these military officers are to see that they are members of the old guard (with most nearing retirement) and not representative of new leadership within the institution. 47. The role of the individual military officer vis-à-vis the party may also be changing, wherein the officer is expected to serve as the party’s handmaiden within the institution. Among the criticisms made of General Ochoa at his 1989 court-martial were repeated references to his “lack of interest in party work.” That the general had managed to rise so far in the ranks given this “lack of interest” is perhaps indicative of the generational evolution within the armed forces, and suggests that those now being promoted to the general officer corps are party stalwarts. 48. See respectively Albright, “Comparative Conceptualization,”, pp. 574–75; and Amos Perlmutter and LeoGrande, “The Party in Uniform: Toward a Theory of Civil-Military Relations in Communist Political Systems,” American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (December 1982), p. 788. Both sets of authors specifically considered the case of Cuba in arriving at their conclusions.

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23 Vanguard of the State: The Cuban Armed Forces in Transition Juan Carlos Espinosa The Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) are and have always been the central pillar sustaining the communist regime of Fidel Castro. The mission, doctrine, and scope of the FAR have changed over the years to ref lect the shifting priorities of the commander-in-chief and the exigencies imposed by a changing world. The armed forces have also been the preferred laboratory for socioeconomic experimentation and policy innovation. After the collapse of the socialist bloc and the end of the Soviet subsidy, they were again called upon to defend the revolution, this time by leading the economic reforms and modernization that would guarantee social stability and ensure the survival of the revolutionary project beyond the natural lives of the regime’s founders. Never a traditional military or even a typical communist military, the FAR has been, in the words of Defense Minister Raúl Castro, “the vanguard of the state.”1 Although Cuba’s armed forces were not spared the ravages of the Special Period, they now control the commanding heights of Cuba’s economy and are at the center of political decision-making and policy implementation.2 This article describes changes in the FAR and in its place in Cuban society during the past fifteen years. After establishing historical and regime-theoretical contexts, the article focuses primarily on the transformation of the FAR’s role as an economic actor and on the impact these changes have had on the military as an institution and as a political actor. The roles played by the FAR in the Cuban economy can be summarized in a typology comprising “soldiers” of three different kinds, each of which has its own characteristics and ramifications for the future development of the FAR (and, as well, of the individuals serving in its ranks). The first is the “civicsoldier,” whose economic duties are task-centered: to do as ordered in order to build socialism. The second category is the “technocrat-soldier,” whose economic 366

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purpose is to manage and administer state enterprises effectively and efficiently. And finally, the third and newest category is the “entrepreneur-soldier,” who essentially is involved in commercial ventures to make a profit for the state and the FAR’s own enterprises (see Table 1).3 The roles and special characteristics of these three typologies, and their interactions within Cuba’s military-mobilizational regime, will be described below. An effort will be made to identify some potential problems for civil-military relations in a post-Castro (Fidel or Raúl) Cuba that stem from the prominent role of the FAR in the nation’s most important economic activities and enterprises. In particular, the discussion will focus on the fault-lines that may become evident in a less-controlled environment. There is a broad consensus that the military will play a vital role in any postCastro development, whether a transition to democracy, a communist succession, or some other, as yet uncharted path. The role the FAR takes will be determined in great measure by the resources it commands, its self-image as an institution, the quality of its leadership, and its ability to maintain cohesion under pressure. The fault-lines derive from interests and contradictions related to the Special Period or to long-standing institutional and political tensions. The interaction of the three soldiers of the typology embodies a number of potential cleavages. It leaves open questions about how the socio-political tensions inherent in the passing of the Castro era could affect regime change or continuity. Politics in a Military-Mobilizational Regime The Cuban state, and later the Communist Party, emerged from the Rebel Army and the FAR. As Enrique Baloyra notes, “There was a revolutionary army before there was a party of the revolution and the main mission of that army … is to guarantee the survival of the revolution, not the Party.”4 Alvaro Alba adds that “unlike the cases of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, in Cuba, military power created political power, sustains it, substitutes for it or eliminates it, as needed.”5 While almost every communist regime came to power by the barrel of the gun, the armed forces were usually only a tool of the Party. Political leaders quickly subordinated them to civilian Party control. The new regimes proceeded to militarize civilian society, but ultimate control was kept in the hands of the Party, which was declared to be the vanguard of the state in most communist constitutions. The fusion of military and Party elites was an essential part of the consolidation process, especially in regimes that came to power through armed conflict or civil war, such as China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.6 This civiliandominant fusion was confirmed in post-Stalinist (or second-generation) regimes, where power was “shared” by an amalgam of Party, government, and army. The Party leaders and hierarchy were in the dominant position, while the potentially Bonapartist military was kept in check by Interior Ministry penetration

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and the presence of Party commissars interwoven into the fabric of military institutions. In the Cuban case, the military has remained dominant. The blurred line between the civil and military realms distinguishes the Cuban regime from other communist regimes and has contributed to the ambiguity that characterizes any discussion of civil-military relations, or even of the nature of the regime. Indeed, Cuba is the prototype of a different regime-type, a military-mobilizational variant (MMV) of totalitarianism.7 The “normalization” process described above did not occur in Cuba or in the third world regimes that adopted the Cuban MMV model during the late 1970s. The Cuban military-dominant model held sway particularly in Africa, where many regimes were inspired by or directly sponsored by Cuba, and among the revolutionary movements in Latin America.8 Many scholars have discussed the military influence in Cuban politics. Jorge I. Domínguez, for instance, explains that Cuba is ruled in large part by military men who govern large segments of both military and civilian life, who are held up as paragons to both soldiers and civilians, who are the bearers of the revolutionary tradition and ideology, who have politicized themselves by absorbing the norms and organization of the Communist Party, and who have educated themselves to become professionals in political, economic, managerial, engineering, and educational as well as military affairs.9

Alvaro Alba emphasizes a different aspect: “The Communist Party was created by the governing elite in the mid-1960s, has been militarized, becoming to a great extent, the political instrument of the military.”10 For Domínguez, the civic-soldier has been absorbed into the politics of the Communist Party, whereas Alba bluntly holds the opposite view, maintaining that the Party has been militarized and is a tool of the military elites that founded the state. Domingo Amuchástegui also underlines the unity between the Party and the military, rejecting even the idea of distinguishing civilian from military in the Cuban case: In a revolution and a regime that was not created by a communist party and in which civilian and military relations have not been separate or conflicting magnitudes of power but very much one and the same, conventional debate between civilian and military relations, including the notion of civilian or Party control over the latter has had, thus far, little or no meaning in the Cuban context. The separation between FAR and Party in the minds of the Cuban leadership has nothing to do either with classic bourgeois philosophy or with classic communist experience—it is a matter of simple division of functions within a unicellular organism, in which the Party becomes an auxiliary component.”11

The image of a unicellular entity neatly describes the ideal type of the regime, but reality can be a bit more complex. Amuchástegui too easily dismisses past fractures and potential fissures not only within the military, but between

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the military and state security, and between civilians and the military. These tensions are discussed below. The early military-mobilizational totalitarian state never evolved into a fullblown Party-state. However, a process of delayed “civilianization” of the state began to take place following failure of Cuba’s largest mass mobilizational experiment, the campaign to harvest 10 million tons of sugar in 1970.12 The period, roughly from 1971 to 1986, has been described as “bureaucratic-socialist” with the introduction of Soviet-style reforms, mechanisms, and institutions.13 Cuba came closest to becoming a “normal” Party-state during this fifteen-year period. At home, it was characterized by the rise of non-military power elites in the Party and the state bureaucracy. The armed forces entered a period of professionalization, rigorous training, generous budgets, and a broad internationalist mission that took them from the Golan Heights to the Ogaden Desert.14 The institutionalization of the bureaucratic-socialist period never quite set. The Rectification (RP), announced by Fidel Castro in 1986, was a defensive response to Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. Rectification, in essence, meant deinstitutionalization. It re-emphasized the centrality of Fidel Castro, disparaged the Soviet model of the preceding fifteen years, and reinforced the militarymobilizational approach to a wide range of problems from agriculture to housing. The advent of a reformist leader in Moscow was not the only problem facing the Castro regime. The government faced a crisis within what Richard Millett called the perestroika generation. This included men who had entered the military in the 1970s or early 1980s, when Cuba’s power and Soviet support were at their peak, and who had a strong professional identity and loyalty to the institution.15 The professionalization of the armed forces caused internal tensions and eventually led to distrust between some of the war-proven generals and the regime leadership in Havana.16 The arrest, show trial, and execution of Division General and Hero of the Revolution Arnaldo Ochoa (and others) in 1989 signaled a critical moment in the history of revolutionary Cuba and of the regime’s relationship with its armed forces.17 The case was the culmination of a string of dismissals and defections that began after 1986 and continued into the early 1990s. It was actually part of Table 1 Typology of Soldiers in the Cuban Military Type

Orientation

Function

civic-soldier

task-centered

to build socialism

technocrat-soldier

manage and admisister state enterprises

to increase effectiveness and efficiency

entrepreneur-soldier

commercial ventures

to make profits

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a wider purge that included the elimination of the Sistema de Planificación Económica (SDPE) economic-planning system and its czar Humberto Pérez, the dismissal of Interior Minister José Abrahantes, the arrest of former transport minister Diócles Torralba, the demotion of at least five FAR generals, and a wholesale purge of the Interior Ministry, where hundreds of officers were dismissed or imprisoned. This series of events eliminated potential rivals and “Ochoistas” in the military, established hard-line FAR control over the Ministry of Interior (MININT), reduced civilian autonomy in the state administration, and consolidated Fidel and Raúl’s rule as the regime hunkered down to resist the reformist wave sweeping over the socialist bloc. The period is a watershed in understanding the nature of the military and security forces, arid of the military-mobilizational regime, and deserves more study. The Armed Forces in the Special Period The catastrophic effect of the demise of European communism and the end of the Soviet subsidy has been well documented.18 The decline was dramatic. The Cuban economy shrank by 40 percent between 1989 and 1993.19 Exports fell by more than 70 percent, while imports (mostly fuel and food) also precipitously declined by 75 percent. The economy hit bottom in 1994 and began a slow recovery that continues to this day (see Figure 1). Figure 1 Contraction of the Cuban Economy in GDP (base year = 1989)

Sources: Based on Cuban government figures as reported in CEPAL 1997 and Miranda 2000. *Estimate

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The FAR entered the Special Period as the single strongest institution in Cuba, and therefore undertook much of the burden of keeping the regime afloat and pulling the nation out of the crisis. Raúl Castro reflected the new mission by bluntly stating that “the country’s main political, military, and ideological problem today is to feed itself.”20 The mighty armed forces that had seen battle on three continents and once fielded Latin America’s largest army were downsized and restructured. Soldiers were redeployed to fields and factories, tourist resorts, and training bases. As an institution, the military faced drastic reductions in forces, budgets, spare parts, and resources, while its mission was domesticated and diminished.21 As individuals and families, soldiers suffered many of the same shortages and difficulties felt by the rest of the population. According to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, most of Cuba’s naval vessels and aircraft became inoperable because of fuel and spare-parts shortages. Reportedly 75 percent of the FAR’s major equipment had to be mothballed, including the country’s two submarines and much of its air force.22 The number of active regular forces was reduced from 297,000 in 1987 to just 55,000, a drop of more than 80 percent. 23 According to the World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers report for 1998, the number of active soldiers per 1,000 of population fell from 29 to 5, a drastic drop of 83 percent. The military budget was slashed from $1.7 billion in 1987 to $720,000 in 1997, a decline of almost 60 percent. Military expenditure as a percentage of GNP fell from 3.9 percent to 2.3 percent, while per capita spending went from $ 167 in 1987 to $65 in 1997 (see Table 2). Per capita annual military spending fell by half between 1991 and 1993, but has remained relatively steady ever since (from $123 to around $60).24 The Military as an Economic Actor The FAR has always played a role in the domestic economy.25 This fact does not make it unique among the armed forces of the world and is not totally inconsistent with the Cuban historical experience.26 The FAR’s reputation for discipline, loyalty, and efficiency made it a laboratory for all kinds of experimentation. In the first decade of the revolution it was used as an instrument of mobilization, control, and state building. It was assigned important tasks in the burgeoning communist bureaucracy, in agrarian reform, as well as in construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. Performance in the 1960s was disastrous. The failures and tensions of the first decade led to a greater differentiation between the civilian and military spheres in the early 1970s and to increased levels of professionalism and specialization for the FAR. The Ejército Juvenil de Trabajo (EJT—Youth Labor Army) was created in 1973. It became the main military contribution to economic development at home during a period when the attention of the armed forces (and of Fidel Castro) was focused abroad.27 When the economic policy pendulum swung back toward voluntarism, mass mobiliza-

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tion, and moral incentives in 1986, the armed forces were brought back in to play a more prominent role in the economy. The anti-perestroika Rectification Process helped consolidate the political power of the central leadership, but undermined the economic health of the nation. As the Special Period began, economic policy was redirected to earn hard currency and to maintain political control by almost any means possible. The bifurcated economy of the early Special Period consisted of a domestic sector organized around command-style economics, austerity, mass mobilization, ideological campaigns against illicit economic activities, and a new external sector emphasizing foreign investment, tourism, diversified markets and partners, and non-traditional exports, such as pharmaceuticals. The regime turned to active and retired military and state security personnel to staff this new sector that would be fraught with ideological dangers and temptations. The foreign and domestic sectors were kept separate. This policy was designed to bring needed financial resources while minimizing the impact of the capitalist world on Cubans. In other words, the policy would insert Cuba into the global market economy but keep the market out of Cuba’s domestic economy.28 But the dual-economy strategy failed to stop the drastic decline. The regime began to make limited reforms in the summer of 1993 and again in 1994, after the Rafter Crisis, when more than 30,000 Cubans took to small rafts to leave the country.29 The most important measures included legalizing the dollar, streamlining exile remittances, reopening farmers’ markets, and expanding the militaryrun dollar sectors of the economy, such as tourism, free-trade zones, and telecommunications. Reforms stalled in 1996, only to be restarted in selected sectors under the aegis of the military and the system of “enterprise improvement” discussed below. The architect of the reforms and the theory of economic restructuring led by the FAR was Raúl Castro. He has navigated between reform and retrenchment, making deliberate and cautious moves that have bought time and loyalty. The decision to have the FAR study capitalist management techniques is ascribed to Raúl Castro and dates to the Third Party Congress (1986), if not earlier. The resulting principles for maximizing efficiency are known as the sistema de perfeccionamiento empresarial (SPE), or “enterprise improvement.” SPE is the prototype of reform and modernization, created and rehearsed in the military, for eventual implementation in the civilian economy. SPE is the guiding force and rationale for involving the military in almost every aspect of the economy.30 Decree-Law 187 of 1998 officially declared it to be the foundation of all reforms. Cuban officials go out of their way to explain that their concept will not produce the Western or Japanese systems on which it is based: Is it, as some suggest, a path toward a capitalist economy? No, not in the least. The Enterprise Perfection System (SPE) is a management method that transforms the organization and direction of the economy, the principal nucleus of which is the state enter-

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prise, and intends to prove that socialism is capable of creating strong, productive, and organized enterprises, a true challenge in the midst of so much propaganda about the excellence of capitalism 31

According to Communist Party journalist Juan Hermida, almost half of the nation’s 3,000 state enterprises have begun to implement SPE. The program’s goals are simple: an adequate accounting system, a market for Cuban products, and the minimum requirements and raw materials for sustained operations.32 However, economics czar Carlos Lage noted that only nineteen of the 1,411 eligible enterprises have met these minimum requirements, and only 426 have established accounting systems.33 Thus far, the SPE cannot be judged a success.34 After fourteen years of experimentation with the SPE in the armed forces, and two years attempting to implement the system in the rest of the economy, Raúl Castro declared in May 2001, that “the process of enterprise improvement in the FAR had not advanced with the dynamics hoped for.”35 A closer look at the figures presented in the Cuban press during the last year and a half leads to the conclusion that only 1.8 percent of all state enterprises are eligible to begin implementing the rudiments of SPE.36 The armed forces’ economic activities help finance their operations but also contribute greatly to the economy of the entire country. Tourism and sugar are particularly profitable industries. As Cuba’s internationalist missions ended and the number of active troops declined, the number of “hyphenated” soldiers rose (see Table 1).37 The civic-soldier was best described by Jorge I. Domínguez as a soldier whose “civilian and military lives were fused.”38 He was the prototype of the FAR from 1960 to 1973. These men followed orders, doing whatever tasks they were assigned whether it was exterminating resistance fighters or harTable 2 Changes in the FAR During the Speical Period 1987

1993

1997

Active forces

297,000

175,000

55,000

Soldiers per thousand population

29

16.2

5

Budget (in millions of constant 1997 dollars)

1,710

648

720

Military spending/GNP

3.9%

2.4%

2.3%

Per capita spending

167

60

65

Source: World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (Wahington DC: U.S. Separtment of State, 1998).

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vesting sugar cane. The armed forces provided a disciplined, pliant, and youthful workforce for construction, agriculture, or disaster relief in hurricane season. These assignments made up for labor shortages and filled jobs that were difficult or dangerous. Today, the remaining civic-soldiers work mostly in the EJT in agriculture, construction, or traditional military industries of the old economy. They make a considerable contribution to the self-sufficiency of the FAR, bring in significant income through sales of their agricultural surplus at farmer’s markets, and provide labor for vast development projects, such as the Plan Turquino-Manatí.39 The technocrat-soldier is associated with the Raulista reforms and the SPE. Frank O. Mora defines the new technocrat-soldier as “a manager and administrator, in addition to being a soldier … implementing modern organizational and technical business practices and methods to enhance the efficiency and productivity of military and civilian industries during a period of crisis and change for the regime.”40 A technocrat-soldier is a civic-soldier with management training. He works in “traditional” military economic activities, such as the FAR’s vast military-industrial network, the Unión de Empresas Militares, which provides uniforms, weapons, ammunition, food, housing, and other support services to help the armed forces carry out their defense mission. The technocrat-soldier also labors in new state enterprises and strategically important areas of the old economy, such as sugar, mining, communications, fisheries, aviation, and light industry. If the technocrat-soldier is a civic-soldier with specialized managerial training, then the entrepreneur-soldier is a technocrat-soldier with greater autonomy and greater access to the international dollar economy.41 He is involved in more for-profit enterprises. The entrepreneur-soldier works in sociedades anónimas (privately run, state-owned corporations), mixed enterprises, and virgin economic ventures in the new economy. This last category includes tourism, computers, advanced telecommunications, banking and finance, and import-export business.42 Most of these enterprises do business directly with foreign investors and carry out transactions with the capitalist world. Some examples are the tourism providers Gaviota and Cubanacan, the import-export conglomerate CIMEX, the tobacco monopoly Habanos, S.A., and ETECSA, the Cuban telephone company, which is now a joint venture with the Italian corporation STET.43 Entrepreneur-soldiers also populate smaller, less-known mixed enterprises fueled by foreign capital. Before 1989, dealings with the capitalist world were the domain of the Ministry of Interior and its special departments. The FAR had traditionally been involved in economic endeavors to provide for itself and to support nationbuilding activities, while the Ministry of Interior’s involvement had been primarily to fund the operations of the state security apparatus and reportedly to bolster Fidel Castro’s personal income. While the FAR now controls both sides of the action, it is important to point out that a substantial portion of the dollarized

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enterprises are run or staffed by former Interior Ministry cadres. These bureaucrats may be loyal to Fidel Castro, but not necessarily to Raúl Castro, who dismantled and restructured their ministry in the wake of the Ochoa trial. The largest of these commercial enterprises, the conglomerate Grupo Electronico, is run by a histórico Rebel Army veteran, and former interior minister, Ramiro Valdés.44 The Military as an Economic Actor and Potential Fault-Lines All regimes are subject to deterioration, and, despite official declarations of unity, the FAR (and the other armed elements of the Cuban regime) have been prone to factionalism, divisions, and conflicts of interest like any other institution of their kind, and probably to some issues unique to the military-mobilizational model.45 Of course, knowledge of these splits only emerges in retrospect. In the immediate post-Ochoa months, conflicts between civilian and military interests were added to the long-standing tension between military and intelligence apparatuses. In addition, all of the social divisions and cleavages that can be found in Cuban society are found in the armed forces: race, region, generation, social status, educational level, and vocational experience.46 Although these cracks could be important, they are beyond the scope of this article. Instead this section focuses on fault-lines that might emerge near the top of the regime as a result of the economic roles assigned to the military. The current situation is not stable and would be subject to great political uncertainty without Fidel to hold the regime together. The remainder of this article considers Cuba’s post-Castro future and is based on four assumptions. First, the FAR will have a central role in regime change or re-equilibration. Second, the FAR is not a unitary actor and the Cuban regime is not monolithic— factions and interest groups will emerge within the regime and the military. Third, the current process of reform, including the SPE, has had its winners and losers, generating an undercurrent of jealousy and resentment fueled in part by the internalized values of egalitarianism and by the brazenness of nepotism, sociolismo, and corruption. Fourth, the military’s involvement in non-traditional economic activities is a stabilizing element in the short-term for the regime. the FAR, and the national economy, but it may become a source of instability in the medium and longer terms. There are at least three sets of problems that could arise from the current situation. These include intra-regime political conflict, declining professionalism and cohesion, and corruption. This article has already identified a number of schisms and fractures in the leadership during the forty-odd years the regime has been in power, such as Ochoa and the FAR-MININT rivalry. In the end, it is Fidel Castro who has made the ultimate decision to adopt, reject, or discontinue a policy. In his absence, there may be a high level of FAR factionalism and regime fragmentation that will surprise observers who have confused unanimity with unity.47

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Many of Cuba’s leaders owe their positions and allegiances directly to Fidel Castro, or whose line of command leads to the comandante en jefe, including army chiefs, party provincial secretaries, and those who have risen through the Support Group for the Commander-in-Chief, a sort of super staff that is the eyes and ears of Fidel Castro. Some of the more prominent younger figures include Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, Support Group Leader Carlos Balenciaga, Communist Youth Leader Otto Rivero, and University Student Union President Hassan Perez. Raúl Castro is the heir apparent and the number two figure in the polity, however, he does not have the charisma of his older brother. Raulistas (those associated with him from the insurrectionary days, his proteges, or those who are identified with his policies) appear to be among the big winners of recent years. Among the figures usually identified as Raulistas are Basic Industry Minister Marcos Portal, Interior Minister Abelardo Colomé Ibarra Division General Julio Casas Regueiro, General Luis Pérez Róspide, and SPE Czar Armando Perez Betancourt. In addition, there are groups associated with figures of the past such as Arnaldo Ochoa, José Abrahantes, Carlos Aldana, or Ramiro Valdés.48 The notion of intra-service rivalry is almost moot in the Cuban case, but the very different economic positions of the three soldier typologies can be the source of jealousies and affect institutional cohesiveness. According to one observer, active personnel lobby their commanders for positions in dollarized enterprises—apparently everybody wants a piece of the action.49 The difference in lifestyle and living standard between functionaries who work in the dollar sector and those who work in the peso world is quite apparent. Domingo Amuchástegui and others object to the use of conventional categories to describe or analyze the Cuban military, but the question of whether economic activity, especially commercial, for-profit business, is detrimental to the forces’ level of professionalism must be asked. Although the FAR’s mission is to defend the revolution as ordered by its commander-in-chief, veterans of Angola and graduates of the Soviet military academies may wonder how growing potatoes or ferrying Italian tourists to foreigners-only vacation resorts will make them more professional soldiers.50 In any case, the intrinsic values of the military, not to mention the revolutionary canon, go counter to the generally held principles of for-profit business. As Peter Lock argues, “This involvement unleashes centrifugal forces and eventually dissolves the cohesiveness of the military institution.”51 Thanks to the benefits and privileges he enjoys, an officer who works in the Ministry of Sugar, a relatively futile endeavor in recent years, has a very different set of vistas than the young technocrat at Cubacel, the Cuban cellular phone company, or even the man who works as a desk clerk at a posh resort in Cayo Coco. Charges of favoritism, sociolismo (old-boy networks), and corruption may arise as increased stratification exacerbates resentments. Corruption is endemic to centrally planned economies. The few available market openings provide better opportunities for the pervasive bargaining,

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wheeling-and-dealing, and cheating that are an integral part of socialist economies.52 Cuba’s economy of scarcity is distorted by the structural deficiencies of centrally planned economies as well as by the stratification brought about by dollarization. These distortions can be addressed by access and the ability to resolver, to get things done, a capability that is currency in the social and kinship networks that crisscross Cuban society. Where there is a need, there is always someone willing to provide—at a price. Corruption as a moral or legal issue is subordinated to political criteria. It is pervasive at all levels of Cuban society. Although attitudes toward corruption are founded on the Latinate distinction between private and public morality, they are tinctured by more than forty years of socialism, scarcity, and simulation. The FAR is a part of society and is prone to the same needs and pressures, whether it is a young draftee stealing gasoline from a truck to resell on the black market so he can help his parents back home or a retired officer sending skimmed profits to an overseas bank account through the good graces of a foreign friend. They both are trying not only to survive in the distorted context of Cuba’s bifurcated economy, but also to somehow provide for the future. Concluding Comments Each of the three types of soldiers will face the future from a different perspective, whether the path is continuity and succession, or change and democratic transition. The current arrangement is set up for a Raulista succession, with the goal of a modified version of China’s military-led economic liberalization, combined with military-reinforced dictatorship. The Chinese and Vietnamese models have had their troubles with corruption and control, to the extent that in 1998, the Chinese civilian authorities compelled the People’s Liberation Army to divest from most of its businesses, leaving it with control over enterprises related to national security or social stability.53 However, unlike the two other communist states, the Cuban regime is military-dominant. Civilian interests will likely weigh less in Cuba than in the two other marketsocialist states. Regardless of the model that emerges, the weakest position is held by the civic-soldier. He is part of the old economy and has had the least opportunity to diversify his education, contacts, and experiences. The entrepreneur-soldier holds the strongest position precisely because of his experience with the world. However, he is also in the most precarious position because he is most likely to run into ideological, political, or legal trouble. The technocrat-soldier has the managerial training, but a lesser chance of falling for the temptations more readily available in the dollarized sector. The strategy of reform led by Raúl and the military has bought valuable time and perhaps regime survival in the short and medium term, but at a high price in terms of equity and social equality. Two prominent critics of the current path,

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Emilio Ichikawa and Haroldo Dilla, warn of the troubling emergence of a new Cuban elite steeped in privilege and corruption. Ichikawa, a former University of Havana philosophy professor who became an exile in 2000, draws a “genealogical map of Castroism” and finds that a constellation of families are “the real forces that will lead or survive in the post-Castro context” following a survival strategy “where one scion gives a public show of support for Castroism, there are several consolidating themselves in the economic and juridical structures of a subsystem that could well have value in post-Castro Cuba.”54 Marxist scholar Haroldo Dilla, currently residing in the Dominican Republic, states that the economic reforms of the mid-1990s produced “a recomposition of social classes as a consequence of the emergence of a technocratic-entrepreneurial bloc.” Cuba has undergone a “process of social reconfiguration” characterized by the “strengthening of a technocratic-entrepreneurial bloc that benefits from its links to the market and has real possibilities of becoming the hegemonic social layer.” The bloc Dilla refers to consists of those who work in areas of foreign investment, directors of state enterprises most closely tied to the world market, and the peasants, intermediaries, and service providers who have accumulated money from their economic activities.55 As possession is nine-tenths the law, the majority of enterprises in both the old and new economies will retain their managers-cum-owners for the foreseeable future. The recent experiences of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union suggest that many of the individuals who have ascended to powerful positions in business and government were persons with considerable clout under the ancien régime. Many of the region’s best new capitalists are precisely those with previous experience as state enterprise managers, government ministry apparatchiks, intelligence agents, or black market entrepreneurs. While this may be a consoling prospect for some on the island, it presents problems for the future. The darker side of this phenomenon is the emergence of organized crime and the persistence of the old communist apparat. In Russia, the mafia stifles the development of free markets and democratic discourse. As Thomas Kelly explains, In the newly established Russian Republic, the historically influential actors of the Communist economic and social systems resurfaced to impose themselves on a society struggling to emerge from a totalitarian morass. Of these, the nomenklatura, the elite of the former Communist party, and the mafia, the Russian crime rings, at times in collusion with each other, would become the groups that defined the parameters of a reconstituted Russian society.56

The FAR has a central place in the eroded military-mobilizational totalitarian regime. It is also identified by a wide array of sources as the preferred and privileged actor, outranking the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), the Catholic Church, and the internal opposition.57 Today, the military holds the most impor-

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tant government ministries, participates in the full spectrum of the economic and political decision-making process, and controls the most important enterprises dedicated to obtaining hard currency. Its personnel are found in all of the areas associated with the dollar, directing mixed-enterprises, some of which increasingly have the characteristics of private enterprise. As Amuchástegui writes, “this is a political elite, with or without a uniform, highly unified, fighting for its survival, recovery, and continuity; they are not a segment of society and state, known as ‘the military,’ isolated in their drills and barracks. They are building the new systems and spaces to which they can reinsert once they return and that will meet as well the expectations of the generations that are still loyal to the existing power structure.”58 The Revolutionary Armed Forces are the vanguard of the state and will be at the forefront of any kind of regime transformation. If Amuchástegui, Ichikawa, and Dilla are correct, then the current policies associated with Raulismo are intended to make the FAR the vehicle for riding out a regime transformation, at least for a subset of the Cuban power elite. In Eastern Europe, communist regime elites were able to convert their social, economic, political, and cultural capital in the new post-communist environment. According to one study, “Continuities with the state socialist past are all too apparent. From lingering foreign indebtedness and lopsided industrial structures to the return of Communist successor parties to power, the stamp of state socialism has been hard to erase.”59 We may be underestimating the power of culture in the Cuban case. The long tradition of patriotism and defense of the nation has brought Cuba many years of “exception” and has enthroned violence as a legitimate, if not glorious path to political change. Thanks to this element of the Iberian heritage, Cuba has lived all but sixteen of its ninety-nine years under the rule of military men.60 The new economic role played by the armed forces in Cuba is a double insurance policy. They ensure loyalty to the regime (Raúl and Fidel, specifically) and an opportunity for the military to accumulate some sort of capital, a sort of “olive-green parachute” or raft that will allow the technocrat or entrepreneursoldier and his family to have more options when the change—of whatever kind—occurs. Notes 1.

Quoted in Cuba en el mes (April 1995): 44. Raúl Castro was designated minister of the FAR in October 1959 and has held the post ever since. 2. The start of a “Special Period in Time of Peace” was proclaimed by Fidel Castro in August 1990. The term described the critical social, economic, and political situation faced by the country after the collapse of the socialist bloc and the end of the Soviet subsidy. 3. The reference here is to active, inactive, and retired officers, and not to ranks below second lieutenant (or ensign).

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4.

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Enrique A. Baloyra, “Twelve Monkeys: Cuban National Defense and the Military,” Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series 1, no. 4 (1996): 2. When the Cuban Communist Party was formed in 1965, 57 percent of the Central Committee was from the military. 5. Alvaro Alba, “Militarización de la sociedad cubana” (Militarization of Cuban Society), unpublished manuscript (Miami, 2000), p. 8. 6. Amos Perlmutter and William LeoGrande, “The Party in Uniform: Toward a Theory of Civil-Military Relations in Communist Political Systems,” American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 778-89. Writing more generally about military regimes, Perlmutter observed that “modern military regimes are not purely military in composition. Instead, they are fusionist, that is, they are military-civilian regimes.” Amos Perlmutter, “The Comparative Analysis of Military Regimes: Formations, Aspirations, and Achievements,” World Politics 33, no. 1 (1980): 97. The nature of the relationship of the FAR and PCC was discussed in a special issue of Armed Forces and Society 1, no. 4 (1975). Irving Louis Horowitz was among the first to remark on the military-dominant nature of the Cuban regime in “The Stalinization of Fidel Castro,” New Politics 4 (1965). 7. These polities exhibit(ed) a remarkable heterogeneity that reflected local history, culture, and geopolitical realities. However, they shared basic characteristics common to all communist systems, and some unique to militarymobilizational regimes: (1) the creation of a party or movement by the army; (2) the adoption of Marxism-Leninism as an ideology, but in a local version, marked by the dictator’s own recipe, combining cult of personality and scientific socialism with traditional political, historical, and cultural elements; (3) one-man, one-party rule with the military dominant over civilian party structures; (4) a centrally planned economy based on state ownership of the means of production; (5) reliance on mass mobilization and the militarization of public life and institutions; (6) politicization of the military and militarization of politics; and (7) high levels of improvisation and low levels of institutionalization (outside the armed forces). 8. On communist regimes in Africa, see Edmond T. Kellar and Donald Rothchild, eds., Afro-Marxist Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1987); John Markaris and Michael Walter, eds., Military Marxist Regimes in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1986). None of the Afro-Marxist regimes survived the extinction of the Soviet Union, the ultimate economic sponsor of the Cuban mobilizational model they had adopted. The Sandinista regime in Nicaragua was the most successful example of the developing MMV. The Bolivarian Movement of Venezuela, led by Hugo Chavez Frias, appears to be an early phase of the MMV. 9. Jorge I. Dominguez, “The Civic Soldier in Cuba,” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham F. Lowenthal and Samuel Fitch, rev ed. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), p. 263. 10. Alba, “Militarización de la sociedad cubana,” p. 1.

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11. Domingo Amuchástegui, “Cuba’s Armed Forces: Power and Reforms,” in Cuba in Transition, ed. Jorge Perez-López and José F. Alonso (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 1999), p. 110. 12. The 10-million-ton sugar harvest of 1970 was an abysmal failure for the nation, for the military, and for Fidel Castro. The military was responsible for 20 percent of all sugar cane cut in the massive mobilization. Approximately 70,000 troops were involved in the harvest, representing 64 percent of the regular forces, and 28 percent of all the armed forces. See Domínguez, “Civic Soldier in Cuba,” p. 279. 13. The term “bureaucratic socialist” was used by Guillermo O’Donnell in Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966-1973, in Comparative Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and is borrowed here as used by Jorge I. Domínguez in “Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba?” (Has a Transition Toward Authoritarianism Begun in Cuba?), Revista Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, nos.6/7 (1997). 14. One measure of this process is the changing make-up of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. The FAR’s percentage of seats on the Central Committee fell from 57 percent at the Party’s founding to just under 30 percent at the time of the First Party Congress. The proportion continued to decline to a low of 12.5 percent after the Fourth Congress in 1991, but rose again with the Fifth Congress in 1997. One should be careful not to read too much into these changes in terms of conventional civilmilitary relations, however. The proportion of FAR is probably a better measure of the general militarization of society and Fidel Castro’s perception of the threats and challenges faced by his regime. Today, the FAR is everywhere demonstrating the “overwhelming centrality of the FAR in every single area of policy making.” Amuchástegui, “Cuba’s Armed Forces,” p. 111. 15. Richard L. Millett, “Cuba’s Armed Forces: From Triumph to Survival,” Georgetown University, Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 4 (September 1993): 6. 16. The first generation of Cuban military officers were históricos, men and women formed (more or less) in the guerrilla struggle against Batista, in the first internationalist missions, which began within months of the regime’s accession to power in 1959, and in the extermination of anti-communist guerrillas (1960-66). The second generation of officers emerged from the professionalization of the 1970s and 1980s with military-academic training in Cuba, the Soviet Union, and other socialist bloc countries. The third generation is a product of the Special Period. There were defections of military and state security officers, while discontent among officers and enlisted men in Africa and among returning veterans was widely reported. The discord was intensified by the restructuring of the FAR as Cuban troops withdrew from Africa and began returning in great numbers in the mid- to late ]980s.

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17. Much has been written, but little is known for certain, about the case and its circumstances, including the documentary, 8-A by exile filmmaker Orlando Jiménez-Leal, a set of dueling memoirs, Norberto Fuentes, Dulces Guerreros Cubanos (Sweet Cuban Warriors) (Barcelona: Seix-Barral, 1999), and Jorge Massetti, El furor y el delirio: Itinerario de un hijo de la Revolución cubana (Furor and Delirium: The Itinerary of a Son of the Cuban Revolution) (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, C.A., 1999), also Andrés Oppenheimer, Castro’s Final Hour (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); José Alonso, “The Ochoa Affair and Its Aftermath,” in Cuban Communism, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1989); and Enrique Baloyra, “The End of the Pajama Game? The Execution of General Ochoa,” revised manuscript, 1989 (1996). 18. See Julio Carranza Valdés, Luis Gutiérrez Urdaneta, and Pedro Monreal González, Cuba: la reestructuración de la economía. Una propuesta para el debate (Cuba: The Restructuring of the Economy, A Proposal for Debate) (Caracas: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1997); Angela Femol Muruaga, Alfredo González Gutiérrez, Didio Quintana Mendoza, and Victoria Pérez Izquierdo, Cuba: crisis, ajuste y situación social (1990-1996) (Cuba: Crisis, Adjustment, and the Social Situation [1990-1996]) (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1998); Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “The Economic Effects on Cuba of the Downfall of Socialism in the USSR and Eastern Europe,” in Cuba After the Cold War, ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993). For a more extensive report on the economy, see CEPAL 1997, 2000. The published proceedings of the annual meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), vols. 1-9 (1989-1999) are probably the best source of information and analysis on the Cuban economy. 19. Carmelo Mesa-Lago notes that “the decline in the Cuban economy is much worse than the deterioration suffered by any country in market transition in Eastern Europe, even though Cuba has not yet begun a full process of marketization.” See Are Economic Reforms Propelling Cuba to the Market? (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami/North-South Center, 1994), p. 9. Another analyst asserts that the shock was greater than that experienced by any Latin American country during the 1980s and was comparable only to the depression-era crisis of 1933. Ferriol et al., Cuba, p. 35. 20. Félix Báez, Granma (September 17, 1994): 1. 21. The decline in size and resources was drastic, but it does not tell the whole story. As the size of the active military shrank, the reserve forces were expanded and the responsibility for the defense of the revolution was spread to the civilian population to an extent not seen since the early 1960s, when an American invasion seemed imminent and anti-communist guerrillas were operating throughout the country. Cubans now took part more often in mass mobilizations and civil defense exercises, faced increased vigilance by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Single System for Vigilance and Protection, and spent more and more of their time hunting and gathering for their daily sustenance.

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22. Defense Intelligence Agency, “The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security” (November 18, 1997) (www.defenselink.mil/pubs/cubarpt.htm). 23. The DIA (p. 1) report gives the estimated figures as “about 50,000 to 65,000 regular troops.” 24. At 1987 levels, Cuba’s armed forces would have ranked twentieth, between Syria and Brazil, and was the largest army in Latin America. Today it ranks seventy-fourth in the world, eighth largest in Latin America. As of 1997, Cuba ranked seventieth in the world in the number of military personnel per thousand of population with 5.0. That was above the regional average of 2.7, but lower than the United States (number 59 at 5.7), and much lower than its former Warsaw Pact allies, who averaged 7.2 per 1,000. See World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 1998) (www.state.gov/www/global/arms/ bureau_vc/wmeat98fs.html). 25. The military has played an economic-development role in Cuba since the earliest colonial days, and has been an agent of state- and nation-building since the beginning of modern Western history. Starting in the nineteenth century, it has been an engine for industrialization and modernization from Prussia to Japan. Militarization of the economy and popular mobilization for economic development typified twentieth-century nations wanting to make leaps forward, such as Russia under Stalin, Third Reich Germany, and Peronist Argentina, not always with great success. 26. On the topic of the military in the economy, see the proceedings of the conference “Soldiers in Business: The Military as an Economic Player,” Jakarta, Indonesia, October 16-19, 2000 (w w w.bicc.de/budget/events/ milbus/ jakarta.html). 27. The EJT focused primarily on basic construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. Damian J. Fernandez, “Historical Background: Achievements, Failures, and Prospects,” in The Cuban Military Under Castro, ed. Jaime Suchlicki (Coral Gables, FL: Institute for Interamerican Studies, University of Miami, 1989), p. 10. 28. The dual strategy provided Cuba with new opportunities and pledges for foreign investment, but also created strong contradictory effects. The announcement of measures that had been previously rejected as dregs of Cuba’s neo-colonial past, such as tourism and direct foreign investment, created odd contrasts with the campaigns for ideological purity and revolutionary morality. Second, it promoted rising expectations and frustrations, resulting in an increase in crime, vandalism, and grumbling, as well as a strong contraction of demand in the first economy and a boom in the black market. 29. In 1993, the regime legalized the possession and use of dollars, limited selfemployment, and the opening of tiny twelve-chair restaurants, and promised more reforms. The reform process stalled in early 1994, stopped by Fidel Castro himself. The violence of the summer of 1994, the murder of forty-two Cubans fleeing on a stolen tugboat, the Malecón riots of August

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30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

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5, and other events compelled the regime to announce further reforms in September, including the opening of farmers’ markets. The government wanted to avoid another confrontation between the people and the regime. It did not want a Cuban Tiananmen. Interviews with Maida Donate, Pedro Pablo Cusc6, and Domingo Amuchástegui, Miami, FL, 1995-96. Phyllis Greene Walker points out that by the time the Special Period hit, virtually all military enterprises (and a few civilian ones) had adopted the new managerial techniques. Phyllis Greene Walker, “Challenges Facing the Cuban Military,” Georgetown University, Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 12 (October 1996): 4. Juan Hermida, “Perfeccionamiento Empresarial a lo cubano” (Enterprise Perfectioning Cuban-Style), Tribuna de La Habana, 1999 (www.tribuna.islagrande.cu/economia l .htm). Ibid. Quoted by Hector Maseda, “El Perfeccionamiento empresarial: otra ilusión perdida” (Enterprise Perfectioning: Another Lost Illusion), CubaNet (July 7, 2000) (www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/jul00/07a7.htm). Domingo Amuchástegui, “FAR: Mastering Reforms,” in Cuba in Transition (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 2000), p. 441, calls it a success “given the Cuban context.” Granma (May 18, 2001): 1. See Frank Diaz-Pou, “El Perfeccionamiento Empresarial: desarrollo y potencial” (Enterprise Perfectioning: Development and Potential) (unpublished manuscript, Miami, FL, 2001). The correlation between the reduction in forces and the rise of commercial enterprises run and staffed primarily by active and retired military is quite clear. Domínguez, “Civic Soldier in Cuba,” p. 263. Juan Carlos Espinosa, “Markets Redux: The Politics of Farmers’ Markets in Cuba,” in Cuba in Transition (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 1995); Domingo Amuchástegui, “FAR: Mastering Reforms,” in Cuba in Transition (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 2000). Frank O. Mora, “Raulismo and the Technocrat-Soldier: The Economic Role of the FAR and Its Implications for Transition in Cuba” (paper presented at the conference “The Politics of Military Extrication in Comparative Perspective: Lessons for Cuba,” Arrabida, Portugal, September 21 22, 2000), p. 10. On the entrepreneur-soldier see, Juan Carlos Espinosa and Robert C. Harding, “Olive-Green Parachutes and Slow-Motion Piñatas: The Cuban Armed Forces in Comparative Perspective” (paper presented at the conference on “The Politics of Military Extrication in Comparative Perspective”). These are industries that did not exist before the revolution, such as biotechnology, computers and information systems, and digital communications. These kinds of enterprises are less likely to be complicated by claims from expropriated American or Cuban exile companies.

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43. Gaviota, S.A. is one of the best-known of these companies. Operated by retired and active military of ricers, it controls ten enterprises: Hoteles Gaviota, Gaviota Tour, Arcoiris, Marinas Gaviota, Via Auto Rentals, Transgaviota (small aircraft and helicopter rentals), Tiendas Gaviota, Inversiones Gaviota, Parques Naturales Gaviota, and Comercial Gaviota. In 1998, it controlled 7 percent of the country’s hotel rooms and garnered 10 percent of the tourist trade. Armando Mastrapa III, “Soldiers and Businessmen: The FAR During the Special Period” (paper presented at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Coral Gables, FL, August 5-7, 2000). 44. The income-generating activities of the Ministry of Interior were “designed” by Colonel José Luis Padrón and took place overseas. Department MC was run by Colonel Tony de la Guardia, who in turn helped run a number of enterprises, such as CIMEX, Tecun, and Treviso. Promotora, S.A., a Panamabased operation that owned and operated a number of firms, including Banco Financiero Internacional (BFI). Most of these entities were created in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All of them came under FAR control or supervision after 1989. See Jesús M. Fernández, “Participación de los militares cubanos en la economia cubana” (The Participation of the Cuban Military in the Economy) (unpublished manuscript, Miami, FL, 2000). 45. History has provided numerous examples from the beginning of the revolution. However, because of the nature of the regime, evidence of these kinds of problems is rarely current, and relies on the testimony of defectors, rumors, informed speculation, imaginative readings of the Cuban press, and post-facto analysis of personnel changes announced by the Cuban government. Few cases are as dramatic as the Huber Matos case in October 1959 or the Ochoa case in 1989. Sometimes rumor and speculation are “confirmed” later by government media or by foreign intelligence, but often there is no official detailed explanation for a demotion or dismissal. There are always new reports of trouble in the higher ranks. 46. Despite his almost absolute control over the military, Fidel Castro has been distrustful of it from almost the start. A recent example was the government’s reaction to President Clinton’s offer of help for a peaceful transition in Cuba, included a reassuring message letting the Cuban military know that it would have a bright future in a democratic Cuba. The regime had all active and reserve personnel publicly swear an oath of allegiance to Fidel and Raúl. Bill Clinton, Support for a Democratic Transition in Cuba (Washington, DC: Office of the President of the United States, 1997). 47. The phrase was used by the internal opposition leaders known as “the Four” (Vladimiro Roca, Marta Beatriz Roque, René Gómez Manzano, and Félix Bonne Carcasses), in the seminal document “La patria es de todos” (The Homeland Belongs to All), 1997 (www.cubanet.org). 48. Arnaldo Ochoa, Hero of the Republic, African war hero, executed under charges related to drug trafficking in 1989. José Abrahantes, interior minister purged in 1989, died of a heart attack while in prison. Carlos Aldana,

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49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57.

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PCC ideological chief was removed in 1992 and sent to work as a bookkeeper at a health resort. Ramiro Valdés, a Rebel Army veteran, former interior minister, leading “captain of industry,” controls a sizable portion of emerging virgin industries like telecommunications. Fernández, “Participación de los militares cubanos en la economía cubana.” They do so not so much for direct access to dollars, but for the other fringe benefits, especially jabitas, bonuses paid in shopping bags containing scarce essentials like soap and toothpaste, and the under-the-table incentives in dollars. The legalization of hard currency in 1993 expressly forbade active military personnel from having dollars. They are also barred from even part-time self-employment. Resentment and cynicism among FAR personnel are reported by recent defectors and by exiles who have visited the island and had contact with military men in their families. Peter Lock, “Exploring the Changing Role of the Military in the Economy” (paper presented at the conference on “Soldiers in Business: The Military as an Economic Actor,” Jakarta, Indonesia, October 17-19, 2000), p. 2 (www.bicc.de/budget/events/milbus/jakarta.html). See János Komai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Socialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Mana Lo’s, ea., The Second Economy in Marxist States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Jorge F. Pérez-López, Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995). Tai Ming Cheung, “The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Military-Business Complex” (paper presented at the conference “Soldiers in Business: Military as an Economic Actor,” Jakarta, Indonesia, October 17-19, 2000), p. 3. Emilio Ichikawa, “Cuba: Corruption as a Moral Standard” (unpublished manuscript, Washington, DC, 2001). Haroldo Dilla, “Comrades and Investors: The Uncertain Transition in Cuba,” in Global Capitalism Versus Democracy: Socialist Register ed. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (New York: Monthly Review Press. 1999), pp. 229-234. He says further that “the collapse of the Soviet empire left the nomenklatura in control of most of the large state-run enterprises, farms and militaryindustrial complexes. Subsequent involvement in the smuggling of Russian oil, arms, narcotics, and nuclear materials has provided opportunities to improve their financial positions.” Thomas Kelly, “Corrupting Democracy: Lessons from Russia, Lessons for Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Affairs 4, no. 1 (1996): 24. Exiles regularly appeal to the military as “guardians of the nation” and call for a coup. Others see the armed forces as taking a protagonistic role for change while assuring stability. Those who hold this view include the American government, former secretaries of state, defense, and diplomats, as well as the Cuban American Military Council. The Castro regime obviously sees the military as the carriers of its revolutionary legacy.

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58. Domingo Amuchástegui, “Cuba’s Armed Forces: Power and Reforms,” in Cuba in Transition, ed. Jorge Pérez-López and José F. Alonso (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, 1999), p. 112. 59. Quoted in Ákos Róna-Tas and József Böröcz, “Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland: Presocialist and Socialist Legacies Among Business Elites,” in Elites After State Socialism: Theories and Analysis, ed. John Higley and György Lengyel (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). 60. Fifty-four years of direct military-dominant rule, with only four presidents who were doctores: Tómas Estrada Palma (1902-6), Alfredo Zayas (1921-25), Ramón Grau San Martín (1944 48), and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948-52). The rest had their origins as military leaders in the war for independence: José Miguel Gómez (1909-13), Mario García Menocal (1913-21), Gerardo Machado (1925-33). Republican Army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista ruled behind the scenes from 1934 to 1940, was elected president (1940-44), came back to power in a coup in 1952, and ruled until he was replaced by Fidel Castro in 1959.

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24 Military Origin and Evolution of the Cuban Revolution Irving Louis Horowitz

I The concept of military organization as a basis for communist revolution was greatly enhanced by the Cuban revolutionary experience. Indeed, one theorist of the Cuban Revolution has elevated the guerrilla band to a prominence that subordinates, even denigrates, Communist party political organization.1 How was a nonparty, guerrilla revolutionary model possible in Cuba, and how could those who made the revolution so easily become “communists”? First, the Cuban Revolution was carried out by a pragmatic and theoretically unself-conscious leadership which did not apply Leninist or Maoist precepts to a Cuban context. Consequently, military means of overthrowing the old regime could be advocated or employed without subjecting guerrilla actions to the discipline of a party. Second, the Cuban Revolution eventually brought about an alliance between two distinct leaderships—the revolutionary guerrillas’ military band and the Communist party. Unlike any previous communist revolution, military and party leaderships did not overlap. Thus, the guerrilla leader could continue to see himself as a military man, not a political actor, even while coordinating action with the Communist party. Third, the primary revolutionary role of initiation and sustained insurrection was played by the guerrilla band, not by the Communist party. Ex post facto theorizing has elevated this fact to the level of a new revolutionary principle favoring the enlarged role of a popular military force in communist revolution making. Castroism can be located historically from July 26, 1953, the date of the unsuccessful attack on the Moncada army post in Santiago de Cuba, a year and a half after Batista’s seizure of power. Fidel Castro emerged from this as an 388

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independent figure with a personal following. The July 26th movement gained some definition thereafter, although it remained broad and vague. During Castro’s imprisonment on the Isle of Pines, from October 1953 to May 1955, he published “History Will Absolve Me.”2 It became the articulation of the reforms sought by the July 26th movement. There is little clear-cut ideology in it, aside from general pleading for reform and justifying militant action toward that end. Then, in a pamphlet published clandestinely in June 1954, Castro took hold of reform a little more firmly. He promised to restore Cuba’s 1940 constitution, to hold popular elections and to carry out land reform—which would include restriction of large land holdings and an increase in the number of smaller ones. He also promised vaguely-defined agricultural cooperatives. In 1954, he sent a number of letters to Luis Conte Agüero, an Ortodoxo leader and radio commentator, to whom he confided some thoughts about his developing movement.3 On August 14, 1954, Castro thought that he ought to “organize the men of the 26th of July movement”; he wanted to unite them “into an unbreakable body” of fighters. They must constitute “a perfectly disciplined human nucleus” for the “force necessary to conquer power whether it be by peaceful or forcible means.” He pointed out that the indispensable preconditions of a genuine civic movement are: ideology discipline, and leadership. The three are essential but leadership is most fundamental. I do not know if it was Napoleon who said that one bad general in battle counts more than twenty good ones. It is not possible to organize a movement in which everyone believes he has the right to issue public statements without consulting the others; nor can anything be expected of an organization made up of anarchic men, who, at the first dispute, find the easiest way out, breaking and destroying the machine. The apparatus of propaganda, or organization, should be so powerful that it would implacably destroy anyone who tried to create tendencies, cliques, schisms, or rebels against the movement.4

Of the three conditions, Castro was least concerned with ideology and most with discipline, especially leadership. “Leadership is basic” had the force of a first principle for him. Thus, Castro could freely espouse nonparty military or guerrilia rebellion, when the time came, with little concern for party rules, traditions, and doctrine. Guerrilla warfare techniques and rationales came to him slowly. Neither he nor Guevara sought out the likely example Mao-Tse-tung could have provided. The consistent failures of Cuban communists to produce a revolution, the spontaneous uprisings and romantic conspiracies, finally convinced Castro that he should consider guerrilla warfare and prepare for a protracted struggle. However, in the early months of 1957, not even Castro believed wholly in this plan. He had gone into the mountains still believing that he would merely harass the regime until a great urban strike paralyzed Batista and caused his downfall. In the course of battle, when his abortive “strike” failed, on April 9,1958, Castro became convinced that guerrilla military operations were the path to power.

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Significantly, he began with little ideology, remained independent of the Cuban Communist party which was still thinking in 1917 terms, and learned from his experiences that total control over the insurrectionary process is a precondition for seizing power The Castro-Communist alliance was first realized in 1958. Some Castroites and some Communists may have labored for such an alliance earlier, but they were inhibited from working together so long as an important segment of the July 26th movement was anti-Communist in principle and the Communist leadership was anti insurrectionist in practice. By summer 1958, the urban branch of the movement had suffered a major blow when it procrastinated about an urban strike which ultimately failed.5 The Communist party in the meantime had partially come around to an insurrectionary policy. The dividing line between Castro and the Communists narrowed to the overall value of armed struggle. The Castroites could not give up this issue, but the Communists could assimilate it as “tactics.” They crossed the line and switched to Castro’s side in order to make an alliance Possible.6 This represented the final consolidation of the revolutionary forces in Castro’s person as commander in chief. At first Castro identified himself with a vague humanism, something distinct from capitalism or communism, a third way that would involve meaningful citizen participation. Communists tried to avoid clashing with him over his humanist “vogue.” Yet it gained some stature and especially frightened the older Communist party when the July 26th trade union action swamped the Communists in union elections on a humanist program. Aníbal Escalante criticized Castro’s humanism as “ideological confusion,” for which Castro never altogether forgave him, but Escalante prevailed for the moment. Castro dropped the term to preserve the alliance. The gradual extension of communist ideological influence on Fidel, which grew out of the exigencies of alliance, convinced him that he was carrying out a socialist revolution. In 1959, with victory, he could declare it so. Despite such influences, the July 26th movement and the Communist party remained distinct entities. By whatever degrees Castro came to accept communism, he never gave an inch on the matter of guerrilia insurrection .7 Escalante, then secretary of the Cuban Communist party, observed on June 30, 1959 in Hoy that Fidel had proclaimed that the revolution had entered its socialist phase. The first phase of national liberation and antifeudalism had been completed. The revolution had now entered into a new, higher stage of social development—the socialist stage.8 Castro’s ideological pliability enabled communists to make common cause with him. In a speech on December 20, 1961, Castro said: “We have acted in a Marxist-Leninist manner.” He then went on to indicate that he had always been a Marxist-Leninist. “Of course, if we stopped at the Pico Turquino [a height in the Sierra Maestra] when we were very weak and said ‘We are Marxist-Leninists’ we might not have been able to descend from the Pico Turquino to the plain. Thus we called it something else, we did not broach this subject, we raised other questions that the people under-

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stood perfectly.”9 In his speech of December 1, 1961, Castro claimed that he had been something of a Marxist-Leninist since his student days: We began in the university to make the first contacts with the Communist Manifesto, with the works of Marx and Engels and Lenin. That marked a process. I can say an honest confession, that many of the things that we have done in the revolution are not things that we invented, not in the least. When we left the university, in my particular case, I was really greatly influenced—not that I will say I was in the least a Marxist-Leninist.10

He climaxed this speech with the cry, “I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be one until the last days of my life.” Fidel lacked a strong ideological character. He could absorb Marxism-Leninism while viewing his earlier thinking as a process of evolution toward it, justifying his earlier belief in leadership and his “humanism” as youthful expressions of the mature communist. Yet earlier he had not appeared to display an understanding of Marxism-Leninism; as late as 1958, Castro opposed blanket nationalization and supported “the right kind of private investment—domestic and foreign.’’11 He certainly never accepted or advocated the idea of a Party-led revolution (definitely a “first law” for proper Leninists). Not even Ernesto Guevara, his revolutionary companion, whose communist sympathies were never in doubt, exhibited an ideologically defined personality, much less one accepting the strictures of Marxist-Leninism. Guevara’s entire attention appears to have been occupied by an unorthodox concept of guerrilla action. Far from unraveling the intricacies of Marxism-Leninism for the Cuban environment, Guevara was content to combine a practical “methodological” guidebook on guerrilla warfare with a simple revolutionary theory: (1) popular forces can win against a regular army; (2) one need not always wait for “objective conditions” appropriate for revolution, for the insurrectional focal point can create them; and (3) in Latin America, the countryside is the main locale of armed struggle.12 Aside from offering some technical guidance for the “popular war,” Guevara did little more than elaborate these points. Gone are the phases of class revolution we are accustomed to hearing from a Mao or a Lenin. Stages are merely conditions of closeness to or distance from victory. But importantly, though not for Guevara, the item which is the center of unorthodox rebellion against traditional Marxism—the armed guerrilla band—is loosely and indiscriminately conceived as a popular vanguard. “The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people.”13 The guerrilla himself is conceived in such a way that he could have been mistrusted by a Lenin or a Mao as a romantic individualist with a muddled intellect, incapable of analyzing his society, his goals, his historic role. We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors and that he fights to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed

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brothers in ignominy and misery. He launches himself against the conditions of the reigning institutions at a particular moment with all the vigor that circumstances permit to breaking the mold of these institutions. 14

And far from being so knowledgeable about the “stages of history” that he can master a “science of society,” the guerrilla leader need know little more than what is required of a good man and soldier. The guerrilla needs a “good knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the paths of entry and escape, the possibilities of speedy maneuver, good hiding places.” “Naturally,” in all of this, he must “count on the support of the people.” He should be willing to die for nothing more defined than “an ideal” and “social justice.” Moreover, “whoever does not feel this undoubted truth cannot be a guerrilla fighter.” It is not even a truth that men can know. The good revolutionary “feels” it as an overpowering force. There is much talk devoted to guiding the fighter through the countryside, the intricacies of his weapons, supplies, and so forth. But the mystic “feeling” is accompanied only by a practicality that verges on the misanthropic. Unlike Mao whose emphasis is on persuading, reeducating, or returning captured enemies, Ché suggests that they “should be eliminated without hesitation when they are dangerous. In this respect the guerrilla band must be drastic.”15 Mao attempted to exploit the contrast between an elitist Kuomintang army and a populist Red army. Guevara instead focused on the credibility of guerrilla power and the practical steps for enhancing it. The guerrilla need not trouble himself with “contrasts” or party directives about his behavior toward enemy or peasantry. He is stoic, saintly, a “teacherfighter” ready to make supreme sacrifices from the sheer intensity of his conviction. His rewards are violence and battle themselves: “Within the framework of the combatant life, the most interesting event. the one that carries all to a convulsion of joy and puts new vigor in everybody’s steps, is the battle.” Indeed, the battle is “the climax of the guerrilla life.”16 Guevara may be criticized for romanticism for a lack of analytic skill and vigor for a lack of commanding style, for excessive preoccupation with the details of combat, for sketchiness, and for a dangerous and unappealing simplicity of mind. But as a voice expressing shifts in the conceptualization of communism as a power-seizing formula, his is authentic. He shared with Fidel a distaste for ideological stricture and a careless appraisal of the ideological traditions with which the Cuban regime became associated through the party influences on it. Thus, Ché could also share with Fidel an abiding faith in the effectiveness of guerilla organization as a mode of acquiring power independent of party. Guerilla organization as a power-seizing instrument returned to human will a capacity for shaping environment that was not inhibited by the timing of action according to historical law. Historical law became merely a post hoc justification for an accomplished deed and did not impose itself in the actual power struggle. Guerrilla organization thus succeeded party organization, as will fully succeeded

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law. as an instrument of gaining power. The Cuban Revolution created alternatives to party centered communist revolutions that are potentially competitive with it (except where the mollifying effects of “alliance” are fully exploited and appreciated). Debray synthesized this tendency into a new ideology of communist revolution. His is a bold effort consciously to sweep away law, party, and history as obstructions to power seizure. Debray is clear from the beginning—“the socialist revolution is the result of an armed struggle against the armed power of the bourgeois state.”17 Failure to grasp this “beginning” has plagued Communist parties still living in the idealized world of the accidents of 1917. Each party, in each succeeding period, has been living parasitically off a victorious predecessor and has been saddled with its pet theories about seizing power. The leaders of the Cuban Revolution started with the focus of armed struggles as the basis for revolutionary policy formulation. They were not oppressed by costly party dogmas. Only late in the revolution did they discover the writings of Mao.18 By then their tactics were already so well defined they could not be led to fruitless imitation. To their everlasting advantage, they were able to read Mao from a specifically Cuban standpoint and to escape the abstract devotion to party he counseled. Cuba could thus stand as a model for the Latin American continent, for it displayed the wisdom and courage of following no dogma; its antidogmatic character is its model. Cuba demonstrated the value of beginning with arms and developing theory only in the course of battle. The new revolutionary model is an antimodel. The initial commitment is a matter of picking up a gun; all else will follow, depending on conditions revolutionaries find in their own context of operations. Since the world is ready for “total class warfare” and total showdown, theories about who is acting according to historical law are inhibitions on what must be done. Older Communist parties are leavings of a “political age,” when class struggle was still fully or partially a matter of political struggle for political advantages. That time is past; today is an age of “action in the streets”; compromises and coalitions are all fading into the communist past.19 The new context for struggle is set by the massive weaponry of bourgeois nations and by the exhaustion of old communist techniques.20 Even the intellectual per se fails to illuminate our understanding of what has happened, for his perspective is by nature conservative. He is always aware of precedents, a past, other strategies, and high abstractions. These are useless; what is valuable are data—tactical data, drawn from battle experience. The seasoned guerrilla knows this. The intellectual thinks he does, but knows only his own political experience. This knowledge is not transferable to a battlefield where outcomes are determined. A guerrilla not so beset by intellectual illusions, Guevara could carry on about the need for guerrilla bases after the manner of Mao. But Mao is insufficient. Ché declares that it is necessary to strike and run; to rest, to worry about the “liberating areas,” and to settle down to govern them is to risk destruction.21

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Debray denies that urban politics is the center of revolutionary action. For communists, the countryside is supplementary to and dependent on city politics, as it is for everything else. The party counsels guerrillas to make contact with the city, to coordinate action with Communist party planning there. Debray claims that Castro suffered from this illusion for a while. Contact with the city party makes location and destruction of the guerrilla organization easier. At all costs, such contact must be avoided. Better to kidnap a country doctor to help the wounded than to go to the city for medical aid.22 Dependence on the city is corrupting. Debray is careful to say that military operations must have a political object, aim at political goals. Political and military goals are inseparable. But no party should be responsible for setting the political goals of the guerrilla organization. However, Debray cannot articulate what these may be aside from “total confrontation with a bourgeoisie.” All parties, including the Communist party, are obsessed with “commissions, congresses, conferences, plenary sessions, meetings, and assemblies at all levels, national, provincial, regional and local.”23 Thus the party dwells on problems of its own internal cohesion. It socializes members into the going system by failing to direct energies toward seizing government power.24 The party is an unfit instrument for power seizure; at best, its value is assistance in governing. Power seizure is inherently a military operation and requires an organizational apparatus suited to this end. Military discipline over a group of committed and armed men is needed—not party discipline suited to party demands. Political experience and its acquisition cannot justify party dominance in revolutionary affairs. Political experience can always be acquired. Military experience is difficult to acquire and must be deliberately sought. A military body can always gain in political experience on ascension to power. Thus, a vanguard military organization is more easily a ruling party in embryo than a party can be an effective military organization.25 Debray’s work typifies the dangers of transforming a case into a model, the Cuban experience into a Latin American necessity. But even more practically, Debray’s empirics are far from secure. From the outset, the Castro forces were thoroughly dependent on and connected to events in the cities. The very success of the revolution was signified by the New Year’s march into Havana and not by any cumulative series of rural victories. Castro’s early cautionary spirit was justified on the basis of conservative elements in peasant society. The search for a united front in the capital, organized by a vanguard party, made good sense in the context of Batista’s regime. In the style of early enthusiasts, Debray romanticized the role of the peasantry. In so doing, he tended to ignore the specifically military aspects of the campaign that led to Castro’s victory. It was more a requisite of revolutionary rhetoric that social change be made in the name of a social class than a reflection of the realities that a revolution can in fact be executed by a disciplined guerrilla cadre and then, as an afterthought, presume widespread class support. The rural/urban bifurcation was real enough.

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So was the gap between the July 26th movement and the Communist party. But ultimately, the issue of state power was settled by military force and not by adherence to class factors. The military origins of the Cuban Revolution profoundly affected its military outcomes. The Cuban Revolution emerged from a set of circumstances in which a militant band of revolutionaries initiated armed action against city strongholds of government. Uncommitted to any given source outside themselves, they pursued the apparently fruitful pattern that involved independence from the Communist party—ignoring “history” and communist propriety. But alliance, being mutually useful, was effected between Castro guerrillas and Communist forces. The elements of the two organizations showed mutual influence, especially as the Castro regime is committed to detaching Cuba from its traditional client position. But his insurrection stands as a model of independence and triumph of will over law, of nationalist initiatives over the internationalist Soviet party model.26 Communists everywhere are able to consider military lines of action without surrendering their ideological convictions. In this way, outfitting an exclusively military (however “popular”) organization for the seizure of state power meshes with the aims of the party. History calls, not for a reading of its latest manifestations, but for total showdown and the exertion of initiative and armed will. To abandon the wearisome politics of radical parties can connote, not betraying Marxism-Leninism, but fitting revolutionary aims to a modern context. The party of the Communists may be freely altered, and the political form itself may be set aside for considerations of military strategy and tactics. Militarizing Aspects of the Cuban Revolution Throughout the Third World and particularly in Latin America, the military increasingly represents the pivotal element in any ruling class. At the least, the military has the capacity to prevent any one sector from maintaining power— even when, as an armed force, they are able to seize power. In most instances (e.g. Brazil, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay) power has been taken by tacit agreement between a nervous bourgeoisie and a nationalistic military caste. In Cuba the bourgeoisie was not a contender for power. During the consolidation period there was a struggle for power between the civilian bureaucratic and the military bureaucratic sectors. The civilian sector increasingly came under the domination of the Communist party apparatus, the only surviving party in the postrevolutionary era and the only one approved by the Soviet Union. The civilian sector, like its bourgeois counterparts elsewhere in the hemisphere, proved less than efficacious in the tasks of economic industrialization and modernization. During 1967–72, the civilian Communist party sector managed to maintain legitimacy and to absorb the full force of the July 26th movement and various dissident socialist sectors. This absorption was accomplished through Commit-

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tees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), whose likes had not been seen since the Committees of Public Safety and General Security during the final stage of Robespierre’s Convention.27 Led by communists like Sergio del Valle, Blas Roca, and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, these committees absorbed the revolutionary fervor of the early movement and harnessed its activities to those of the Communist Party. CDRs became a paramilitary factor in their own right. By 1963 more than 90,000 separate CDR units existed. The party’s task was to organize CDRs on every block of every city; coordinate CDR activities with police security forces; and transform a mass organization into an arm of the Ministry of the Interior.28 The development of CDRs was greatly aided by the Bay of Pigs invasion, which permitted the Cuban regime to cast a wide net for “enemies.” Now, more than a decade later, the term enemies still exists. However, the tasks of CDRs have become more broad-ranging, juridical no less than overtly military. They provide the basis of “socialist legality” by administering and carrying out the Law of the Organization of the Juridical System through Popular Tribunal. In Cuba, what in other societies is decried as vigilantism is celebrated by officials as the “basis of socialist legality.”29 These committees served to transform what was in its origins a mass democratic movement into a paramilitary elite with direct support of the party apparatus. The structure of the Cuban armed forces is directly linked to its defense strategy, and part of this strategy is the activity of paramilitary mass organizations. Real threats did exist, but the Castro regime responded with heightened security measures to assert very early in the regime that political challenges would be met in military rather than in civilian terms. The structure of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) ties into the country’s defense strategy. As early as September 20, 1961, Fidel Castro projected three types of offensive overtures against Cuba that remain equally possible today: a formal or informal U.S.-sponsored Cuban exile invasion, guerrilla warfare, or a spontaneous uprising generated by elimination of the main revolutionary leaders. The last two alternatives were largely canceled out by the effectiveness of the FAR-MININT forces controlling mass organizations such as CDR, UJC, and the National Militias. Dependent paramilitary organizations can be instrumental in breaking up any urban underground, and since an internal uprising must be planned from inside, an urban underground movement must be developed first. As for irregular war or guerrilla warfare, the existence of an underground is a concomitant of any successful armed struggle. Because of organizational difficulties, the likelihood of this is remote.30 A massive invasion, or one like the Bay of Pigs, is not at all impossible. FAR prefers to concentrate on this possibility. One of the unique aspects of the Cuban Revolution is that FAR consolidated control of the state apparatus for the revolutionaries. As a result, the party, as early as 1960–61, became dependent on military decision making. The revolutionary cadre itself absorbed the bureaucracy and with it a technocratic work style, and then reverted to a military style characteristic of guerrillas in power.

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The old bureaucracy was either absorbed into the revolutionary process or fled into exile. The old military had been crushed. Thus a political apparatus could easily adapt itself to new military modes without opposition from competing elites, as was the case in the formation of the new nations of Africa. The double edge of a successful guerrilla revolution, on one side, and the voluntary exile of an entire bureaucratic stratum, on the other, gave the regime a superficial appearance of solidarity. Inner tensions within the Cuban regime must be located within the military rather than in the customary Third World pattern of military versus bureaucracy. There are clear military conflicts among three groups of officers: (1) graduates of the Frunze Military Academy; (2) graduates of the Inter-Armas Maceo military academies in Cuba: and (3) veterans of Sierra Maestra. Within the last classification, tensions are also present among three different groups: (1) the raulistas, veterans of the II Front of Oriente (Frank País Second Front); (2) the fidelistas veterans who fought under columns whose chiefs belonged to the general staff of the Rebel Army and who were active throughout Sierra Maestra, and the Third and Fourth Guerrilla Fronts; and (3) the veterans of the underground (here further definitions are necessary, reflecting the movements to which they belonged in the 1950s). This stratification creates the ground for profound differences in power and status. Graduates of the Frunze military academy in the Soviet Union hold important posts in the administrative and military structure (Armas Coheteriles). Missile and radar bases, for example, are under the absolute control of the frunzistas. Graduates of Cuban military schools are placed in secondary and less strategic positions throughout the state’s civilian or military agencies. Sierra Maestra veterans are placed in tertiary positions, being viewed as militarily unprepared, inefficient, and closer to party policies than to military strategy and tactics. The classic competition of military versus bureaucratic reappears. The reorganization of CDRs in 1973, the complete reorganization of the economic sector to reflect a demotion for Sierra veterans and a promotion for the Soviet-trained “officers,” and the purges of the youth section of the party to reflect a more intense paramilitary orientation—all indicate the military’s central role in the bureaucratic party machinery. Even the decisive sector within the bureaucracy (MININT) functions as a direct part of FAR, as an independent army unit, reporting only to Raúl Castro. The civilian sector attempted to establish control over MININT in 1972–73, but failed. The consequence of this failure was that the frontier battalions were also placed under direct military supervision. As a result, tensions between the civilian and military sectors have increased at almost every level of the state machinery. Passive resistance to high production norms is but the most dramatic reflection of the militarization of Cuba and the intensification of contradictions between the democratic ideals of the revolution and its military outcomes. Failures in sugar production, crop diversification, cattle breeding, and so on made it apparent that the party was either incompetent or so much under the

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influence of a foreign power, in this case the Soviet Union, that both military and paramilitary units had to exercise their prerogatives, much as they had in other nations of South and Central America where civilian administrations had also failed to produce impressive economic results. The movement into militarization was less protracted in Cuba, because “bourgeois” democratic factions had long since been annihilated as a political factor. The very origins of the Cuban military, steeped in guerrilla folklore and in Communist party indifference to spontaneous mass action, made the transition from civilianism to militarism not so much a matter of national upheaval as an expected stage of national development. The accelerated movement of the Cuban Revolution into militaristic forms reflects the multiple needs of the Cuban regime. First, the regime employed the military, in classic Latin American tradition, for internal police functions, through the CDRs. Second, it used the military to mobilize the population after the less than successful phase in which moral incentives were used to spur economic development. During this phase, the youth brigades in particular were converted into a paramilitary fight force subject to military discipline and at the same time able to perform as labor shock troops in the event of any decline in sugar production. Third, and perhaps most ominous, the regime encouraged the rise of a professional attitude in the military so that it could perform on international terrain with a competence dismally absent from Guevara’s guerrilla efforts. The maintenance of internal security, the mobilization of economic production, and finally the creation of revolutionary conditions in other countries or support for revolutionary groups in future rounds of insurgency efforts, deserve some amplification, even if it does involve speculation about the future. The critical year was 1973, when crucial decisions were made to substitute material incentives for moral incentives and to satisfy minimum demands of economic growth by whatever means necessary, including coercion. It became the essential role of the armed forces to satisfy the need for growth and to avoid the disastrous civilian-oriented programs of 1968–72. Not only did 1973 represent a new stage in the militarization of Cuban communism, but it also witnessed the thorough going displacement of Guevara as the number two figure (even in death) by the orthodox military figure of Raúl Castro, brother of Fidel, and second secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Raúl’s rise to a place second only to Fidel’s, and increasingly paralleling Fidel’s role in crucial state and diplomatic functions, can hardly be exaggerated. Raúl has become the spokesman for all things military and the heir apparent to the revolution itself. His orthodoxy extends to the cut of his uniform (in contrast to that of Fidel) and his insistence on creating ranks within the Cuban military that are isomorphic with military ranks elsewhere in the world. The basic mechanism by which the military performs its internal police functions varies in Cuba from that of most countries in Latin America. Elsewhere, the standard operating procedure is to restrain the military from political par-

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ticipation. In Cuba, the situation is reversed. There is a direct linkage between the Communist party apparatus and the military apparatus. Not even the Soviet Union has so close an identification of party and military. Raúl himself has provided the one hundred percent isomorphism between Communist party activities and Cuban military activities in the officer corps: In this year that has just concluded, the individual training of our officers and commanders has been improved and greater cohesion and efficiency has been obtained in command bodies, which, together with the level reached in the handling of combat equipment, make it possible for the FAR to successfully deal with any enemy attack and defend the great achievements brought about through the efforts of our working people in these 15 years of the Revolution. We are very proud that 100 per cent of you are members of the Party or the Young Communist League. To be exact, 78 per cent are members of the Party and 22 per cent of the Young Communist League. There is more data which sheds light on the humane and revolutionary quality of this group of vanguards: the average age is 29 and the average length of service in the ranks of our Revolutionary Armed Forces is 11, demonstrating that our armed institution has become an extraordinary school of cadre strained in firm revolutionary and Marxist-Leninist principles, loyal to the homeland, the Socialist Revolution, the working class and its leader, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro.31

More directly, the military is used as the basic mechanism for economic construction and production. This involves, first, the fusion of regular military units with paramilitary units and the linkage of both with Communist party activities. Cubans have gone the Soviets one step further: the old Stakhanovites were factory shock troops in no way linked to the military, but the new Cuban economic shock troops are directly drawn from military sources. Again, Raúl explains the basis of this military mobilization with considerable frankness: The present Followers of Camilo and Ché detachments must also become units of the Army of Working Youth, continuing their work in the construction of junior high schools. From now on, the Followers movement must come from the ranks of the army of Working Youth, being made up of the best young people, the vanguard workers, so that every contingent of Followers will not mean depriving the work centers of their best young workers, members and leaders of the Young Communist League. The Army of Working Youth. as a para-military body which is a branch of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, will include all young men who, having to do their tour of duty of active military service according to existing laws. are not drafted into the regular units of the Armed Forces as well as to the post-graduates assigned to the Army of Working Youth in keeping with the Social Service Law. The Young Communist League and its National Committee have been assigned to handle political and ideological work at all levels in the Army of Working Youth, in a demonstration of the great esteem our Party has of the political work it did in the CJC. This will be done with the same organizational principles as those prevailing in the rest of the Armed Forces, that is, that of a single command structure.32

The final piece of the Cuban military puzzle is the professionalization of the armed forces. This has been accomplished largely with the assistance of resi-

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dent Soviet military personnel and hardware. Cuban references to Soviet support are far more direct than are those of any other Latin American country visà-vis U.S. military support. This does not necessarily mean that Cuba is any the more potent; it does mean that any confrontation by force of arms in the Western Hemisphere involving Cuba could well become a surrogate struggle between the latest Soviet hardware and intelligence and that of the United States. The growth of Cuban armed forces represents a far more considerable input into hemispheric affairs than does the earlier romantic phase of international revolution. Raúl Castro makes this clear in his recent speech before the leadership of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Our FAR has not only drawn on the experiences of the Soviet Armed Forces but that they are generously supplied by the Soviet people who are staunchly loyal to the principles of proletarian internationalism with the modern means of combat that are essential for defending the Revolution. We have been in close contact with that internationalist support for more than a decade, with those feelings of fraternity, solidarity and mutual respect. It has been passed on to us by the thousands of Soviet specialists who have worked in our units during these years and by the ones who have given us their knowledge in the USSR’s schools and military academies. Extraordinary relations, a friendship and a fraternal spirit that is a fitting example of the ties existing between two socialist armies struggling for the same cause and ideal have developed between the military men of Cuba and the USSR.33

Cuba seems quite different than any other country in the hemisphere. The nature of its Soviet support, as well as the character of its anti-American ideology, emphasize its uniqueness.34 By an entirely different series of measures, the Cuban experience is painfully similar to that of other Third World countries. First, Cuba is dependent on hardware supplies from a major advanced industrial nation, the Soviet Union; second, Cuba defines state sovereignty almost exclusively in terms of hardware potential; third, its people bear an enormous burden to support military regimentation. There is the same pattern of economic solvency through military rule that occurs in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and many other countries of the hemisphere. Admittedly, the linkage between the military and the bourgeoisie that characterizes many of these regimes does not exist. Cuba exhibits an even more pure form of military control, by virtue of the fact that its military is capable of functioning as a direct aim of the bureaucratic elite not mediated by class claims or interests. In recent years it has become fashionable to speak of Cuba as being governed in part by civic soldiers: armed forces dedicated to technical proficiency and developmental goals. This is partly correct since like all military of the Third World, the main tasks are economic integration and mobilization. However, it would be dangerous to speak of a gradual restoration of civilian rule in Cuba since there is no evidence of any such process taking place. The origins of the Cuban Revolution and guerrilla insurgency, the maintenance of military regi-

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mentation within political apparatuses, the growth of the military ethic, the institutionalization of rank corresponding to ranks around the world, and above all the growing penetration of Soviet armed might, all strongly suggest that any movement toward civilianization is more a wish than a possibility. Problems of the Cuban economy are too serious for an excessive reliance on the armed forces. Its political costs are also too high. But as long as the Soviet government continues to underwrite such excesses, not to mention political totalitarianism, the cost factor can be absorbed without too much self-reflection or political soul-searching. The likelihood of the Cuban armed forces becoming the advance guard of voluntary labor rewarded in moral terms only, is again a dangerous over simplification of the current state of Cuban military affairs. While it is probably true that increasing professionalization of Cuban bureaucracy will serve to pressure the Cuban Military to reduce its mobilization capacity, outcomes probably depend more heavily on a decline in Soviet participation in internal Cuban affairs than on any formal interplay of class and bureaucracy within Cuban society. The militarization of Cuba is significant not so much because it is unique but because it falls into a pattern of contemporary Latin American bureaucratic politics. The classic inability of any single economic class to govern successfully has led to a series of coups in nation after nation. Some have been overt, as in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. Others remain covert, as in Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and to a lesser extent in Mexico. Cuba, in its splendid socialist isolation, demonstrates the iron law of oligarchy, or better, the rise of the military as an independent and crucial “base” for orchestrating politics and allocating economic goods. The growing isomorphism of Cuba with the rest of the Latin American orbit has disappointed rather than attracted followers and adherents. The promise of socialism in Cuba was at the outset far nobler in intent than is the dreary replication, under special conditions of isolation from the United States and dependence on the Soviet Union, that has come to define the realities of Cuban social structure. II Little more than ten years ago my article “The Stalinization of Castro” was published1 and immediately criticized as bewildering and outrageous.2 Subsequent events led my critics, several years later, to view the process therein outlined as commonplace, and finally to consider Sovietization (if not Stalinization) as an inevitable step in the evolution of Cuba.3 Ten years later, I am again confronted with a critique of an article on Cuba. I am confident that my viewpoint will be considered commonplace, even inevitable, in an even shorter timespan than the previous decennial go-round. I take small comfort in my characterization of contemporary Cuba and its continuing militarization. l am willing to accept the deterministic argument that

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given the alignment of hemispheric and international forces, the fidelistas and raulistas have little choice. But it would take an act of ostrich-like self-deception to assume that since 1970 Cuba has been in a process of demilitarization. Such a characterization even lacks support in the Cuban Marxist literature. If anything, Cuban leadership has become more bellicose over the last several years in claiming the righteousness of the decision to resort to the military as the underpining of the state.4 Bringing to bear sociological analysis in an area charged with ideological passion is no simple chore in the best of circumstances. When it comes to Cuba, the task is made more complicated by the bitter clash of patriotism, nationalism, big-power relationships and, parenthetically, the constituency of seven million Cubans and one million exiles. The potential for hyperbole is always present in any discussion of Cuba, made infinitely more likely by the penchant of the Cuban regime and its opposite number abroad to impart exaggerated pronouncements, meaningless slogans, unfullfilled expectations, and banal exhortations. To insist that the analytic task must go forward even in this climate, and that empirical characterization remains possible, even necessary, under such conditions can itself arouse hatred. There is a clear assumption that any kind of social science research on Cuba is nothing more than bourgeois objectivism and nonpartisan degeneracy. Yet the tasks or research remain with us, and the everpresent, if flickering expectation that truth will somehow be heard above the roar of competing ideological persuasions must sustain us. With the hope that a dialogue on the nature of the Cuban social and political system will be stimulated rather than curbed by LeoGrande’s remarks, I accept the challenge of his rejoinder to my essay on the militarization of Cuba.5 In part, the difficulty in responding to his rejoinder is that LeoGrande presents four categories of criticism: first, he challenges my major premises concerning the militarization of Cuba, with a counter thesis concerning the demilitarization of Cuba; second, he criticizes the evidence on which my position rests; third, he presents a historical summary of Cuban labor and mass organization which may or may not be correct, but which certainly has nothing to do with anything I have written to which LeoGrande is responding; and finally, he gives us a set of small items of a factual sort that again are largely irrelevant to my paper but to which I will nonetheless attempt to reply. If LeoGrande wishes to comment on my work, and in so doing present his own viewpoints regarding the Cuban revolutionary experience, that is understandable and clearly not unique in the annals of Western scholarship. But I hope he realizes that I have enough troubles defending my own positions without concerning myself with his reading of mass mobilization in postrevolutionary Cuba.6 My position on the militarization of Cuba may seem professionally harsh if one accepts at face value every exaggerated claim of the Castro regime to being a socialist system. Once that system is examined in the light of overall mobilization and militarization patterns of the Third World, my analysis seems

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not simply plausible, but downright inevitable. My viewpoint hinges on three interconnected ideas: First, militarization is the fundamental attribute of politics in Third World countries, just as economics dominated the origins of Western capitalism and politics dominated the origins of Soviet communism. Third World nations came into existence with the help of a military subclass uniting bureaucratic and political networks and creating class mobilization in nations where social classes themselves were not able to mobilize directly for social action. As I have explained elsewhere, Cuba clearly fits such a tripolar model.7 A second assumption is that militarization is inevitable in Cuba because the potential for civilian and bureaucratic control is limited there, unlike the Soviet Union, by weaknesses imposed by single-crop systems on the means of production and the evolution of industrialization. With single-crop export “socialism,” militarization became inevitable during a period of consolidation following the anti colonialist struggle. Cuban agriculture is entirely militarized. Workers have been mobilized and organized into brigades. “They simply carry out orders as though they were soldiers.”8 One might speak of the “export” of military cadres to the civilian sector, but even the most optimistic analyst must “conclude that there are no significant pressures from within the Cuban Armed Forces to put the civic soldier to rest.”9 My third contention is that the militarization of Cuba is a consequence of the inner history of the Cuban Revolution. The guerrilla struggles which overthrew the Batista regime were above all military or paramilitary in character. The sources of Castroism are military; the personnel which made up the regime at the outset and continues to rule, has been military. In the 1970s the Cuban military have a larger share of the Central Committee of the Communist party than any other communist regime. The contrast with the Soviet Union is important since the Red Army came into being during the Civil War period, after the political party apparatus of the communists seized power. The causal sequence in Cuba, the reversal of civil and military ruling cadres, is critical to an understanding of how deeply the Cuban experience is linked to that of the rest of the Third World, and how sharply it differs from the military professionalism exhibited by the Soviet Union. To reply to questions as to why Cuba is a militarist regime one has to harken back to original premises and void arguments by extension, i.e., that since Cuba’s Communist party has grown four fold since 1969, military influence has dropped off. There are limits to reasoning by reference to the Soviet model. The similarity in rhetoric between Cubans and Soviets by no means insures an isomorphism in reality. The growth of the Communist party does not signify an expansion of civilianism; only that it is a paramilitary party in charge of managing a dependent state machinery. The central empirical point in contention is whether Cuba has become a militarized or a demilitarized regime, as LeoGrande claims. Curiously, he does not argue a third possibility asserted by Cuban authorities themselves—that

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Cuban militarization is justified as a counter imperialist measure. This is the burden of Fidel Castro’s own position. As he recently observed with regard to the Cuban role in Angola, pointing out the role of the United States and its foreign military involvement: The Yankee imperialists have hundreds of thousands of soldiers abroad; they have military bases on all the continents and in all the seas. In Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Turkey, Western Europe, Panama and many other places, their military installations can be counted by the dozens and the hundreds. In Cuba itself they occupy by force a piece of our territory. What moral and legal right do they have to protest that Cuba provides instructors and assistance for the technical preparation of the armies of African countries and in other parts of the underdeveloped world that request them?10

Having pored through volumes of official records, I do not see a single statement by a Cuban official willing to make any claim for Cuba’s demilitarization. References boldfacedly provided by LeoGrande to numerous students of Cuban politics “who presumably share his view” do no such thing. Quite the contrary: nearly all share a position closer to that outlined in my paper, whatever their own political persuasion. This curious habit of citing information as if it somehow negated what I wrote, when in fact it either confirms my position or is irrelevant to the argument, is done with such alarming frequency that one can only hope that serious students of Cuban politics will review the evidence and make their own assessments. LeoGrande’s argument with me is not really over dates but over substance. In my paper I neither denied nor asserted that the militarization of Cuba began in 1968; I would probably date it somewhat earlier. It is my position that the military factor is endemic to the structure of the Cuban Revolution, spurred first, in response to U.S. pressures culminating in the Bay of Pigs; second, in response to Cuba’s position as an outpost of the Soviet empire with the need to satisfy the Soviet Union; and third, by the nature of Cuban society as part of the Third World system. To speak of some magic demilitarization having begun in the 1970s is, to put it mildly, idiosyncratic. Militarization is not easily turned on and off at will. Even Cuban authorities have not asserted such an extreme voluntarist position concerning demilitarization. Let us look more closely at the characteristics of militarization to clarify certain points which perhaps improperly were taken for granted in my earlier paper. There are three central characteristics of militarization: first, intervention by military means in the affairs of foreign nations; second, growth in professional specialization so that the military approach is clearly distinguished from the civilian approach in training procedures, control of instruments of destruction, and carrying out of the national political will; third, a basic measurement of militarization in levels and increments of hardware: expenditures for military purposes that have no purpose other than military ends. Cuba scores very high on each of these scales of militarization.

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Let us omit discussion of earlier tendencies to intervention in Bolivia and Venezuela, assuming that Cuba has the right to foment change in sister Latin American nations (an argument that violates the notion of national sovereignty, but one that is at least arguable). Cuba also has a military presence outside the hemisphere in the following countries: Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, São Tomé, Congo Republic, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Yemen, North Vietnam, and above all, Angola.11 The physical presence in Africa of what are euphemistically described as instructors and technicians underscores the role of Cuba as an agent of Soviet foreign policy. It also makes absolutely clear that at least with respect to participation in the affairs of foreign nations, Cuba scores higher than any nation in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States. If this does not necessarily excuse the United States, it does not add up to a vote of confidence for the demilitarization of Cuba hypothesis. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, deputy prime minister responsible for foreign affairs, pointed out that the intervention in Angola, where there are an estimated 15,000 Cuban troops, was undertaken because “the legitimate government” had asked for Cuban military aid and it was Cuba’s “duty” to assist a Third World country where there was an internal threat to its survival.12 Whether in fact there was a legitimate Angolan government to begin with or, as is more likely the case, the Cuban intervention itself legitimized Agostino Neto’s regime is a moot question for our purposes. The argument—intervention to help a legitimate government—is exactly that used by other imperial powers such as the U.S. intervention in Korea and Vietnam to maintain “legitimate governments” there. The spurious nature of this position is reflected in the fact that Fidel Castro later announced that Cuba had begun or would soon begin withdrawing 200 military personnel a week from Angola, and that further, Cuba had no intention of sending troops to other countries in Southern Africa or Latin America. Belatedly, he informed Olaf Palme, the Swedish prime minister: “I do not wish to become the crusader of the twentieth century.”13 Cuban militarization is not simply a function of national ambitions, but of external compunction. According to a recent report, Castro has “become so dependent upon the million dollar a day Soviet subsidy that he must do the Kremlin’s bidding.” At least one secret report claims that “he at first resisted getting involved in Angola and that it took Soviet pressure to induce him to send Cuban troops to Africa.” And what the Soviets give they can take away. This same report notes that “Secret intelligence documents suggest that the Soviets actually ordered Fidel Castro to announce the gradual withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.”14 Those who have raised the cry of Latin American dependency upon the United States, might well ponder if the United States could presently extract the same levels of military commitment to fight its battles on other shores as the Soviet Union does from Cuba. Cuba exemplifies militarization as a process, and military dependence upon a foreign power as a structure.

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A very sobering aspect of Cuban overseas activities is in relation to the 500 tanquistas or armored corps troops who manned Syrian tanks during the October 1973 Middle East War.15 The struggles between Syria and Israel did not involve an internal threat to the Cuban system, but a very definite threat by one sovereign nation to another. The participation of Cubans was unquestionably under Soviet instructions, since the Syrians only had Soviet tanks. The Cuban military role in the world as a whole is extraordinarily great for a nation with a population less than that of New York City. The growth of military specialization is clearly evidenced by institutionalization of the Cuban regime. The whole concept of institutionalization has meant a brand new ruling coalition of civilian and military elites. The turn from an idiosyncratic personalistic style characteristic of Fidel in his more flamboyant earlier period reflects the intensification, and certainly the persistence, of militarization. The professional military values qualities of rationality, efficiency, and administrative order—also important for the civilian bureaucracy—which have become a hallmark of the militarization process. A recent piece by Edward Gonzalez well reflects the trends toward militarization herein described. Fidel pulled nine senior or high-level officers from the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces who are loyal to him—or at least to his brother—and placed them in the expanded party Secretariat, in the newly-created Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, and at the top of several ministries. This stratagem strengthened his power base in two ways. It prevented less reliable or hostile elements from the ranks of the old PSP from occupying these key positions in the party and government. In turn, the transfer of senior officers to civilian posts enabled the Castro brothers to promote still others to the top ranks, thereby further ensuring the personal loyalty of the FAR’s high command. Indeed, in December 1973 a new professional ranking system was introduced which provided the new senior officers with ranks equivalent to that of Major General (instead of Major). Fidel, as Commander-in-Chief, and Raúl, as Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, personally began courting members of the armed forces, not only at the senior level but also down to the troop and combat-unit level. In addition, veteran officers from the Sierra Maestra campaign reportedly assumed direction of the PCC organizational meetings within the armed forces. In brief, Fidel and Raúl made sure that they had solid support in the most institutionalized, as well as the most powerful organ in Cuba today, the FAR.16

The degree to which the military has become a crucial variable in the Cuban Communist party (PCC) is indicated by the fact, as Fidel himself reported, that 19 percent of the Congress delegates came from the military and security forces. But, as Gonzalez has pointed out, even this figure considerably understates the influence of FAR delegates; they possess a higher level of education and technical competence than the general party membership. The development of a professional specialization in the military is further vouch safed by the growth of military training academies, training of Cuban military elites at the Frunze Military Academy of Moscow, evolution of military rank to correspond exactly with military indicias elsewhere in the world,

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subspecialization of a navy and air force—again corresponding to the general professional style of military in the Third World—and the emergence of compulsory military service. So far have the 1970s moved in the direction of militarization that the Ministries of Defense or Army of nearly every country in Eastern Europe under Soviet dominion have visited Cuba. Fidel and Raúl Castro have reciprocated these visits clearly engaged in military missions. Beyond that, the 1970s have seen a new generation of hardware introduced into Cuba that has taken the country far beyond the initial equipment gained after the missile crisis when Cubans were armed with conventional arms as the price of removal of the atomic missiles themselves. Carmelo Mesa-Lago indicates how characteristic the military buildup in the seventies has been: Early in January the Cuban Navy received several Soviet missile-carrying launches that doubled its missile and anti-aircraft equipment. In April, the air force, in turn, received a flotilla of MIG-23s, the most technologically advanced Soviet aircraft, which modernized the Cuban stock of MIG-l5s, MIG-17s, MIG-19s, and MIG-21s. For several months a team consisting of hundreds of Soviet military experts led by Lt. General Dimitri Krutskikn had been training Cuban personnel in the use of this equipment. The ceremony to present the airplanes received wide publicity; it was opened by Krutskikn, who was followed by the Soviet ambassador in Cuba, Nikita Tulubeev, and it was closed by Minister of the Armed Forces Raúl Castro, who said that the military aid was proof of Soviet confidence.17

Nor should this be viewed as a one-shot injection; between the four-year period of 1960–63, Cuba received $265 million worth of major weapons, mainly from the Soviet Union. These were the most sophisticated weapons in the region, including MIG-21s, Guideline and Atoll missiles, and Konar patrol boats armed with Styx missiles.18 The Cuban missile crisis succeeded in limiting weapons of offensive potential; but it did not lessen emphasis on military approaches and solutions to political problems. On all three items, foreign intervention, professional specialization, and increased levels of sophistication of hardware, Cubans have moved toward a military posture more rapidly than any other nation in the hemisphere. The one shred of evidence introduced by LeoGrande for a reduced role of the military in Cuba is the composition of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist party. These two points need to be adduced: the number of military officers does not uniquely determine military influence. Indeed, the decline of paramilitary agencies of the earlier period is evident in the reverse direction; reorganization of the armed forces in the seventies has reduced ranks, but in concentration on purely military activities the military has become increasingly specialized. As Carmelo Mesa-Lago has pointed out: One reason for this reorganization was the need for centralization to avoid “the proliferation of minicolumns that disperse and divert efforts, developing a structure parallel

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to that of the administrative leadership.” Another was to institutionalize a selective process to strengthen the increasing professionalization of the army. The regular army will not be involved in production while the EJT will draft youngsters, who are neither fit for the army nor for study, into a three-year program of disciplinary training and work in agriculture. 19

Even more revealing is an examination of the Cuban leadership. Here one detects the military origins of nearly all important leaders except Blas Roca and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez who are from the Socialist party (PSP). Nearly all others were drawn from the original guerrilla movement itself. If one examines party positions it becomes clear that rank within the armed forces corresponds with party position within the government itself. Raúl Castro is president of the Commission on Security and the Armed Forces, while Ramiro Valdés and Sergio del Valle are leading members of the same party position. Their parallel government positions are all linked to military activites: Raúl is minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces; Valdés is deputy prime minister in charge of construction; del Valle is minister of the interior.20 Nowhere else, not even in the Soviet Union, is isomorphism between military and government functions so powerfully integrated as in Cuba. A series of smaller misinterpretations and misanthropisms made by LeoGrande require only passing comment. First, I do not have an “excessive reliance on the theories of Régis Debray. “My critique of Debray as a Bergsonian mystic who fitted the needs of the Cuban Revolution at the earlier period and became dangerous during the consolidation period has been presented elsewhere. 21 Second, I drew the distinction between the Popular Socialist party and the new Cuban Communist party which emerged after 1965, and the importance of this event, as long ago as 1966. Indeed, this earlier phase in the institutionalization of the regime was the basis of my earlier studies of the “Stalinization of Castro.” Third, my evaluation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) is drawn entirely from Cuban sources,22 After the most careful review of the evidence and literature, as well as speaking to many people who were once participants in CDRs, I remain convinced that this is a vicious and pernicious instrument of mass terror. Fourth, I continue to believe that my understanding of the Cuban Political hierarchy is sound. Since these last two points bear directly on main aspects of my paper, I shall burden the reader with further discussion and hopefully clarification. Claims that CDR members comprise “90 percent of the adult population” should alert any serious social scientist that “mobilization” at such levels is, to put it mildly, a central characteristic of the totalitarian regime. l do think that LeoGrande is fudging his numbers. His claim is made for 4,800,000 members, or probably closer to 75 percent of the adult population.23 The 90 percent figure he uses relates to the vote at Matanzas. In the words of Fidel “it reflected the fact that while voting is not obligatory, we can see all this is outstanding. It is the outcome of the enthusiasm of the people.”24

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The role of CDRs is so important that while it is peripheral to my own remarks, it is not without significance to point out that at the fifteenth anniversary of the CDRs when Fidel noted a rise in their membership from 100,000 to 4,800,000, one Granma photo caption shows “CDR members patroling the block”— against whom, nobody knows. Fidel himself points to the “vigilance duties” involved in the CDR: The CDR’s have fulfilled their vigilance duties and have helped solve various social problems. The CDR’s have cooperated with our Armed Forces in the mobilization of reserves and in carrying out important military maneuvers through their support to production and services when, in a given region of the country, thousands of our workers have been called to take part in these maneuvers.25

One can only ask rhetorically: Vigilance against whom? Against the small minority by the overwhelming majority? What are these global interests other than one’s own national interests? The interest of the international revolutionary movement? Does that mean that the CDR will become involved in foreign adventures and become Part of that military effort abroad? Needless to say, answers to such questions are not forthcoming because, as Fidel is constantly reminding us, important matters are not fit for the ears of the enemies of the regime; only for the loyalists of the regime. If there is a lack of documentation concerning the CDR, surely the fault is not mine. It is not customary for totalitarian regimes to reveal the inner workings of their private police force. One can only judge by public comments and in this case, the organizational blueprints cited in chapter 3. To speak of a trend in Cuba, of either the Young Communists or the Communist party itself, or the Ministry of the Interior, as moving away from the paramilitary style characteristic of the late sixties, is to do violence to what the regime’s leadership itself points out. Take, for example, the speech made by José Abrantes, first deputy minister of the interior, commemorating the thirteenth anniversary of the Ministry of the Interior, in which he speaks of “absolute unanimity and the most complete support of the masses for the law enforcement agencies in the struggle to abolish crimes.” It is the call for “constant on-the-job training, more perfect and complete investigatory and operative work, calling for the police to develop to the maximum their relations with the prosecutors to make the law more effective.”26 Differences between the Ministry of the Interior, the Armed Forces, and the CDRs shrink in the cohesion of organization and the consensus of ideological mission: Our Ministry is a part of the “people in uniform” of which the unforgettable Major Camilo Cienfuegos spoke; it is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of our revolutionary people, and we can say with the greatest satisfaction and pride that all the people look on it as their own, as something that exists to serve them and to defend their work and lives.27

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Beyond that, I would argue that the Reserve Forces have really not been dismantled; that the national revolutionary militia has become a vast recruiting ground for the armed forces; that this national militia has adopted military values in style and in substance, not simply in terms or uniforms, but in terms of job specification. Raúl Castro reported in 1975 that over five thousand officers had been promoted to higher rank. Further, 74 percent of the national revolutionary military are members of the Young Communist League or the Communist Party.28 Such isomorphism between the military and the polity cannot possibly be squared with a move toward demilitarization. One curious criticism by LeoGrande is that my study assumes that Raúl Castro has only recently become the second most important Cuban leader. This is clearly nonsense. On the other hand, it is equally nonsensical to claim that Raúl has been second since 1962 when he was named second secretary of the National Directorate. It is surprising how thoroughly Ernesto Ché Guevara has been purged from LeoGrande’s rejoinder. Unquestionably Ché was second in command until his death in Bolivia. His demise took place long after 1962. This historical myopia is characteristic of LeoGrande’s insinuations. His officialist vision would make it appear that because Raúl was named to a post with the designation “second secretary,” he thereby became Number Two in the Cuban political hierarchy. Of such stuff is historical falsification made. There is a greater falsification by omission than any presumed falsification by commission. Not a single statement in the entire rejoinder addresses itself to the Soviet Union, to the role of that superpower in the militarization of Cuba. As one quite moderate analyst notes: “The current Cuban leadership is tied to, and dependent upon, its Soviet patron to a greater extent than at anytime in the past.”29 If there is to be demilitarization with the present climate and context of Cuban dependency, it will have to be called for by the Soviet Union. Just as the Soviets orchestrated the Cuban role in Angola, one must presume that they will likewise determine the extent of Cuban military efforts elsewhere. We are dealing here not simply with a militarizing regime, but with a nation entirely within the orbit of a major foreign power. It is fanciful to talk about Cuba as if it was an autonomous nation making its own policy decisions.30 Cuba is a tragic example of an authentic revolution that failed to realize its autonomous development. This is not the first time small nations have felt the lash of superpower tyranny—but it may be the first time that no one is permitted to bring this uncomfortable fact into public discourse. One must speak frankly about the sociology of militarizing regimes. They have in common high levels of punitive treatment of political prisoners. In this, Cuba must unfortunately be placed second only to Chile as a regime that confuses the temporary suspension of all civil liberties of dissidents during moments of turmoil, with the permanent detention and cruel punishment of opponents to the regime. No one denies that Cuba (again, like Chile) has twenty to thirty thousand prisoners detained on a long-term basis. Now we have the report filed

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by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Cuban political prisoners “have been victims of inhuman treatment.” The 1976 report cities prisoners who have died from lack of adequate medical attention; who were denied any visitors’ rights; and who were forced to remain in extremely uncomfortable cells for long periods of time. The prisoners who suffer most are those who will not participate in Fidel’s “rehabilitation program.” Those “prisoners who refused to wear the uniforms of the rehabilitation program were only allowed to wear their underclothes.”31 Wherein does the difference lie between Pinochet’s fascism and Castro’s communism? My purpose in this response is not to claim that every point made in my article is beyond reproach or above criticism, or that every fact which could have been adduced to support my argument was used. On the other hand, I am afraid that LeoGrande has really bigger game in mind. What he would like to do is delegitimize my position by the colossal jump of assuming that because a change in administrative leadership between 1965 and 1966 did or did not take place, or because Castro became a “Marxist-Leninist” in 1961 rather than 1959, my position on the militarization of Cuba is not correct.32 This he simply cannot do. The details are not there to support his position or for that matter to contravene my own. My point of view rests on the best available evidence, and draws the most coherent and reasonable conclusions. The admittedly ambiguous organizational transformations within various ministries hardly constitute evidence against my position. More to the point, LeoGrande’s clutching at ideological straws reflects a scholarship of desperation. So intent on supporting the present regime and its evolution does my critic seem to be, that even the vaguest example of negative characterization is denied. What we would be left with is a propagandist punto de vista where Castrology reigns supreme. The attempt to offer moral justification for the present militarization of Cuba is difficult enough to live with, but any effort to provide an ideological denial of what has become apparent to friends and foes of the regime alike must be considered entirely unacceptable. Notes for Part I 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

Régis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution?(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967). Fidel Castro, “Interview Andrew St. George,” in Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes (eds.), Revolutionary Struggle, 1947–1958: Selected Works of Fidel Castro, vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), pp. 164–221. Ibid., pp. 233–38. L.C. Agüero, Cartas del presidio (Havana: Editorial Let, 1959). Ramón L. Bonachea and Marta San Martín, The Cuban Insurrection: 1952– 1959 (New Brunswick: Transaction Books/Dutton, 1974), ch. 8. Régis Debray, Strategy for Revolution: Essays on Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp. 31–46.

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7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

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Irving Louis Horowitz, “The Stalinization of Fidel Castro,” New Politics 4, no. 4, Fall 1965, pp. 62–70; and idem, “The Political Sociology of Cuban Communism,” in Carmelo Mesa-Lago (ed.), Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), pp. 12741. P. Tang and J. Maloney, “The Chinese Communist Input in Cuba,” Washington Research Institute on the Sino-Soviet Bloc, Monograph Series 12, 1962, pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 10. Castro, pp. 369–71. Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare: A Method,” in John Gerassi (ed.), Venceremos: The Speeches and Writings of Guevara (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 266–79. Guevara, Guerilla Warfare (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1961), p. 10. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., pp. 17–34 Ibid., pp. 49–50. Debray, 1967, p. 19. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid.. p. 20. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid.. p. 69. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., p. 106. Edward Gonzalez, “Partners in Deadlock: The United States and Castro. 1959–1972” (Los Angeles: California Arms Control and Foreign Policy Seminar, 1972), p. 11. Guglielmo Ferrero, The Two French Revolutions: 1789–1796 (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 203–27. Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, Memorias de 1963 (Havana: Ediciones con la Guardia en Alto, 1964), pp. 13–22. Sergio del Valle, Blas Roca, and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, excerpts from speeches at the Third National Evaluation Meeting of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, Granma Weekly Review, February 17, 1974, p. 3. Bonachea and San Martín, p. 30. Raúl Castro, speech to Vanguards of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) Granma, January 20, 1974, p. 7. Raúl Castro, closing address establishing the Army of Working Youth, Granma, August 12, 1973, p. 3. Raúl Castro, 1974, pp. 3–4. Edward Gonzalez, “The United States and Castro: Breaking the Deadlock,” Foreign Affairs 50, no. 4, July 1972, pp. 722–37.

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Notes for Part II 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Irving Louis Horowitz, “The Stalinization of Fidel Castro,” New Politics 4, no. 4, Fall 1965, pp. 61–69. C. Ian Lumsden, “On Socialists and Stalinists,” New Politics 5, no. 1, Winter 1966, pp. 20–26. Irving Louis Horowitz, “Castrologists and Apologists,” New Politics 5, no. 1, Winter 1966, pp. 27–34. Fidel Castro, Angola: African Girón (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1976); and Fidel Castro, Our Armed Forces Are Firmly Linked to the People, to the Revolution State and to Their Vanguard Party (Havana: Political Editions 1974), pp. 9–21. Irving Louis Horowitz, “Military Origins of the Cuban Revolution,” Armed Forces and Society 1, no. 4, Summer 1975, pp. 402–18. Nonetheless, I am compelled to note that LeoGrande’s remarks do not represent any noticeable improvement on the work of Nelson Amaro Victoria “Mass and Class in the Origins of the Cuban Revolution,” Studies in Comparative International Development 4, no. 10, 1968–69, pp. 221–37. Irving Louis Horowitz, “Authenticity and Autonomy in the Cuban Experience,” Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos 6, no. 1, January 1976, pp. 67–74. René Dumont, Is Cuba Socialist? (New York: The Viking Press, 1974), pp. 96–97. Jorge I. Domínguez, “Institutionalization and Civil-Military Relations in Cuba, Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos 6, January 1976, pp. 39–65. Castro, 1976, pp. 26–270. Joan Forbes, Free Trade Union News (published by the Department of International Affairs, AFL-CIO) 31, no. 2–3, February-March 1976, p. 15. Cf. David Binder, “Cuban Aide Bars Role in Rhodesia.” New York Times, May 21, 1976. Craig R. Whitney, “Castro Says He Will Begin to Cut Forces in Angola,” New York Times, May 26, 1976. Jack Anderson, “A Soviet Policy That Favors Ford?” Washington Post, June 6, 1976. Stanley Karnow, “Castro Rejects Reconciliation to Fight for the Cause,” New York Times, December 14, 1975. Edward Gonzalez, “Castro and Cuba’s New Orthodoxy,” Problems of Communism 25, no. 1, January-February 1976, pp. 1–19. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970’s Pragmatism and Institutionalization (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), p. 14. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Arms Trade with the Third World, rev. ed. (New York: Homes and Meier 1975), pp. 259–60. Mesa-Lago, 1974, p. 70. Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, “We Approve,” Granma Weekly Review 11, no. 1, January 4, 1976, p. 12.

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21. Irving Louis Horowitz, ch. 1 of this volume. See also idem, “The Morphology of Modern Revolution,” in Foundations of Political Sociology (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 253–81. 22. Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, Memorias de 1963 (Havana: Ediciones con la Guardia en Alto, 1964). This volume, published with the supervision of the CDR, stated clearly its vigilante, quasi-legal character. 23. Fidel Castro, “Speech on the 15th Anniversary of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution,” Granma 10, no. 41, October 12, 1975, pp. 2–3. 24. Fidel Castro, “Speech to Journalists,” Granma 9, no. 28, July 14, 1974, p. 2. 25. Fidel Castro, 1975, pp. 2–3. 26. José Abrantes, “Speech at Ceremony Marking the 13th Anniversary of the Ministry of the Interior,” Granma 9, no. 24, June 16, 1974, p. 4. 27. Ibid. 28. Raúl Castro, “Speech at the Ceremony in Honor of Militia Day,” Granma 10, no. 17, April 27, 1975, p. 3. 29. Edward Gonzalez, Cuba under Castro: The Limits of Charisma (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p. 236. For a further and deeper analysis of Cuban military mobilization and combat readiness, see idem and David Ronfeldt, Post-Revolutionary Cuba in a Changing World (a report prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense/International Security Affairs) (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, R-1844-15A, December 1975). 30. K.S. Karol, Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution (New York: Hill and Wang, 1971), pp. 490–550. 31. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Cuba Scored on Prisoner Treatment” (summary of report), Washington Post, June 6, 1976. 32. For example, LeoGrande assumes that because I use the word climax with respect to Castro’s self-declaration about being a Marxist-Leninist in 1961, that this perforce means he closed the speech with this statement. Since I am also accused of being “dramatic,” it is not inappropriate to note that at the end of a play is the denouement—the climax often takes place in the “middle.” In any event, his quibble does nothing to settle the question of whether Castro embraced Marxism-Leninism in 1961, 1959—or, as some claim, much earlier, in 1956.

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25 The Cuban Armed Forces: Changing Roles, Continued Loyalties Juan M. del Aguila It has become commonplace among scholars of the Cuban political system to analyze the role that the Cuban Armed Forces (FAR) play inside the system, and wonder why the armed forces remain one of the revolutionary regime’s institutional pillars. The loyalty of the armed forces is a significant variable in the calculations of those who expect the system’s survival, reasoning that without the support of its own military, the Castro regime would probably collapse. This line of analysis posits that the if the loyalty of the armed forces to the system weakens significantly and threatens to rupture the unity of the ruling coalition, that the political leadership would either have to take drastic measures in order to restore “unity in the ranks” or find itself in a confrontation with the military institution. With little doubt, insuring that the armed forces remain loyal to the revolution is one of the Cuban leadership’s top political priorities. To see to it that the military remains subordinate and obedient to political leaders has been a central feature of revolutionary rule since the early 1960s, when the FAR was created to replace the Rebel Army. Subsequently, as the FAR’s missions expanded and its capabilities were enhanced through close collaboration with the (former) Soviet Armed Forces, thousands of Cuban military officers as well as support and technical personnel received training in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. And the Soviets transferred billions of dollars worth of arms to Cuba from 1960 through 1990. As the FAR participated in wars in Angola and Ethiopia in the 1970s, it remained under the strict control of either top political leaders or their loyal appointees. Promotions to the top ranks of Brigadier General or Division General were (are) made with political criteria in mind, in addition to the merits of individual officers. Loyalty to the revolution and to Fidel Castro as Commander 415

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in Chief are essential elements in the career and professional advancement of any military officer, often requiring membership in the Communist Party. It is not a coincidence that Raúl Castro, Cuba’s second-most powerful figure, has been in charge of the armed forces since the early 1960s and is the longstanding Minister of the Armed Forces. Finally, President Castro himself has stated on numerous occasions that the FAR’s mission is to defend the nation, the revolution, and socialism, clearly indicating that the support of the armed forces is necessary for the regime’s survival. In sum, explaining why the armed forces remain loyal to the revolution is necessary if one is to understand the longevity of revolutionary rule and why Cuban communism has not met the fate of other communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. The loyalty of the armed forces stems partly from institutional self-interest and privileged membership in the ruling coalition, but it is also rooted in nationalism and in a strong sense of mission. It will be the basic argument of this chapter that Cuba’s military elites find support for the regime to be in their own personal interests, and in the viability of the institution through which they have achieved privileges and status. In other words, the personal and political stake that the military elites have in the system leads them to favor the status quo over any other option that would surely disrupt the FAR’s institutional integrity and probably lead to a confrontation with other sectors. From this standpoint, it is a rational strategy that increases the probability of survival, given the uncertain and unfathomable risks that elites would face if they mobilized the institution against the political leadership in order to force that leadership to change its ways. Changing Missions and the Effects of “Downsizing” With the collapse of the ties between the former Soviet Armed Forces and the FAR, the latter lost its principal patron and sponsor; subsequently, it found itself internationally isolated and in search of a new mission. With the loss of billions of dollars worth of weapons and the rupture of political ties came the termination of training programs for FAR officers in communist countries, as well as collaboration in military intelligence and security matters. In addition, the signing of peace accords in 1988 ending the Angolan civil war terminated the FAR’s internationalist missions in Africa and led to the return of all Cuban troops from Angola by 1991. The collapse of Ethiopia’s brutal dictatorship and the ouster of President Mengistu Haile Mariam tarnished Cuba’s extensive collaboration with a regime that formerly depended on Cuban assets to remain in power, forcing the recall of Cuban troops from this country as well. And closer to home, the defeat of the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua in the elections of 1990 ended extensive military collaboration between Cuba and Nicaragua. FAR officers and cadres returned from this internationalist mission chastened by the fact that Cuba’s military penetration of the region was subject

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to political defeats that adversely affected the institutional interest of FAR elites and the larger strategic aims of the Cuban government. Finally, the radical strategic realignment stemming from the collapse of the Soviet empire meant that aggressive clients like Cuba were forced to retreat and would no longer intervene militarily either to support revolutionary movements in the Third World or in future “wars of national liberation.” And so, by the early 1990s, the FAR concluded its extensive involvement in overseas theaters; with nostalgia for its glory days and “heroic achievments,” FAR elites were forced to prepare for new and much more conventional missions. Adapting to a new and largely unfavorable military correlation of forces abroad means that FAR’s principal mission is once again national defense, that is, to repel aggression against Cuba itself. It is a defensive mission meant to prepare the armed forces for the eventuality of any attack by a hostile power, and to see to it that FAR is up to the task. Defense of the homeland is the principal mission of all Latin American armies in the 1990s, and so FAR’s changing role brings it into line with that of other militaries in the region. Simply stated, to defend Cuba, and by extension, socialism and the revolution as well, is the crucial objective for military elites and the FAR itself. On the other hand, FAR’s military capabilities have declined in the 1990s due to cutbacks in military spending that result from Cuba’s overall economic crisis. For instance, in the mid 1990s Cuba was spending only about 4 percent of its military budget on defense, down from much higher levels in the late 1980s. Second, the loss of Soviet subsidies forces the regime to spend scarce dollars on the upkeep of its Soviet-made arsenal and to pay very close attention to which branches of the military receive funding and which do not. Decision makers are thus forced to make explicitly political calculations in the choices they select. This increases the intensity of the struggle over dwindling resources and multiplies the risk that follows from challenging the armed forces regarding expenditures that military leaders consider essential. For instance, some reports suggest that the Cuban Air Force has cut back training flights due to the lack of spare parts, and that “cannibalizing” is an increasingly common practice as inventories are drawn down. Estimates suggest that in some squadrons, only one in every six jet fighters is ready to fly at any point in time, severly reducing the Air Force’s combat readiness and raising disturbing questions regarding its overall defensive capabilities. Minister of Armed Forces Raúl Castro conceded in 1994 that “only a MiG-29 squadron” was delivered since the late 1980s, instead of the forty planes that had been contracted for. According to Castro, “we have not received any weapons [from former Communist allies] since 1990,” driving the military services into a crisis for replacements and spare parts that has only worsened with still more cutbacks and reductions. Because most of the Air Force’s fleet consists of aging MiG 15s, 17s, 19s, 21s, and 23s there are real questions regarding readiness and overall combat effectiveness.

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In addition, recent evidence indicates that the Cuban navy itself is “virtually out of action” due to sharp budget cuts that force it to reduce maintenance schedules. With two Foxtrot-class submarines out of service and with just fourteen patrol boats and two Koni-class frigates operating regularly, the navy is little more than an ineffective coastal force. To maintain, as the regime must for propaganda purposes, that these forces are adequate in case of external aggression, is not credible; experienced military men in Cuba itself are fully aware of the services’ mounting deficiencies. In short, the capabilities of two of the three services appear to be substantially affected by the loss of subsidies and by mounting pressures on manpower and equipment. It would be reasonable to assume that morale suffers when sailors and airmen, including pilots, no longer have sophisticated weaponry for training or regular missions. Still, it is extremely difficult to gauge the degree to which low morale translates into poor performance, if worsening conditions have a real effect on how the troops feel about the military institution, or how loyal they remain to the regime itself. This crunch on resources increases inter-service competition and inevitably generates unwelcome political tensions among the respective military elites, who are called upon to make enormous sacrifices and carry out their responsibilities at a time of crisis. If these pressures are not abated, the loyalty of these elites to the regime could be tested, precisely because the incentives of a military career would become much less attractive if the armed forces themselves are reduced to simple caretakers. Active force levels appear to have stabilized around 100,000, down significantly from some 180,000 in 1990. With 135,000 or so in the reserves, total military strength in manpower terms is approximately 235,000; many reservists are two-year conscripts with little experience and limited service, so that overall strength may be somewhat exaggerated. Another 120,000 or so belong to the Civil Defense Force, Youth Labor Army and the Border Guards. Since 1980, over one (1) million have been organized for the Territorial Troops Militia and other paramilitary forces charged with internal defense; their basic mission is to carry out “the War of All the People” alongside regular forces in the event of an invasion. The reduction in regular force levels reflects the fact that thousands of troops have been demobilized in order to compensate for loss of resources and also because overseas campaigns ended; from a management standpoint, these reductions may have improved efficiency and enhanced bureaucratic and administrative coordination. Finally, since many experienced officers have either retired or left the services for personal and even political reasons, there is some reason to believe that the quality of leadership is poorer—especially at the middle ranks—than was the case in the recent past. On the other hand, one of the principal reasons for the continued loyalty of military elites to the regime is that the armed forces now actively participate in

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the process of economic reorganization underway in some sectors during this decade. Members of the elite have direct access to the dollar economy, have turned in their uniforms for a business suit, and find themselves signing contracts with foreign corporations doing business in Cuba. For example, in her study of the armed forces, Phyllis Walker points out that “the military has become a major actor in Cuba’s lucrative tourism industry under the auspicies of the Gaviota Tourism Group, S.A.,” an umbrella group founded in 1988. Controlled by Division General Julio Casas, a professional Air Force officer, member of the Communist Party’s Political Bureau since 1991 (see table 1), and someone who is close to Minister Raúl Castro, Gaviota is involved in joint ventures in transportation, recreational activities and luxury hotels. In the mid 1990s, its TRD subsidiary (stands for tienda de recaudación de divisas, or store to collect hard currency) opened up a chain of department stores where purchases could only be made in dollars. With revenues in the millions of dollars, Gaviota and other military corporations serve the economic and political interests of the regime, as well as those of the military institution itself. Earnings in hard currency through these corporations alleviate what is Cuba’s most pressing financial need, namely a shortage of foreign exchange, and indicate that these corporations play a significant role in the process of opening up some sectors of the economy to foreign capital. For instance, Gaviota and other firms controlled by generals close to Minister Raúl Castro provide employment for many retired officers as well as others who regularly moonlight in order to earn hard currency. This system creates opportunities for hundreds of former officers and even former rank and file members of the armed forces, who would secure employment and gain access to the dollar economy. Those “in the system” are able to mitigate the effects of the general economic crisis on their standard of living, and would be less inclined to disloyalty. In addition, contributions in hard currency to the state are substantial, and it is almost certainly the case that top administrators and “selected managers” in the enterprises have access to dollar accounts, make high salaries and receive perks as part of the job. In short, a new class of military entrepreneurs is increasingly dependent on these ventures, individuals in whose interest it is to expand this type of commercial activity in order to secure employment and guarantee an acceptable standard of living. In sum, members of Cuba’s military elites are capitalizing on the regime’s economic strategy, which is to cautiously open up some sectors of the economy to foreign capital, but not introduce fundamental structural reforms. Trusted military officers, many close to Minister Raúl Castro, are in charge of an expanding network of corporations generating desperately needed foreign exchange for a regime that is increasingly dependent on hard currency for its solvency. For the elites, the incentives are to stay the course rather than change the strategy, and that is partly why their loyalty is so far not questioned by the political leadership.

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Table 1 Members Elected to the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) During the Fifth Congress (1997) Member(s)

Office(s) Held

Fidel Castro

President, Council of State President, Council of Ministers Commander in Chief, Armed Forces First Secretary, PCC

Raúl Castro

First Vice-President, Council of State First Vice-President, Council of Ministers Minister, Armed Forces Second Secretary, PCC

Ricardo Alarcón

President, National Assembly Member, Council of State

Juan Almeida

Vice-President, Council of State Commander of the Revolution

Concepción Campa

Director, Finlay General Institute Member, Council of State

Julio Casas

Division General First Vice-Minister, Armed Forces

José R. Machado

Vice-President, Council of State

Abelardo Colomé

General of the Army Corps Minister of Interior Vice-President, Council of State

Carlos Lage

Vice-President, Council of State Secretary, Executive Committee of Council of Ministers

Roberto Robaina

Member, Council of State Minister of Foreign Relations

Esteban Lazo

Vice-President, Council of State PCC First Secretary, City of Havana

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Table 1 (cont.) José R. Balaguer

Member, Council of State

Ulises Rosales

Division General First Vice-Minister, Armed Forces Minister of Sugar Industry Member, Council of State

Pedro Ross

Member, Council of State General Secretary, Cuban Workers’ Confederation

Abel Prieto

Member, Council of State Minister of Culture

Marcos Portal

Member, Council of State Minister of Basic Industry

Leopoldo Cintra

Division General Chief, Western Army

Ramón Espinosa

Division General Chief, Eastern Army

Alfredo Jordán

Minister of Agriculture

Yadira García

PCC First Secretary, Matanzas

Juan C. Robinson

PCC First Secretary, Santiago de Cuba

Jorge L. Sierra

PCC First Secretary, Holguín

Misael Enamorado

PCC First Secretary, Las Tunas

Pedro Sáez

PCC First Secretary, Sancti Spíritus

Sources: “Cuba: Escasos cambios políticos y de cuadros en el Congreso del Partido Comunista,” ABC (Madrid), Octubre 12, 1997. Printed from El Nuevo Herald (Miami), Netscape; Granma, Octubre 11, 1997.

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Military Continuity at the Top: Explanation and Consequences A central feature of government under the Castro brothers is that trusted, high-ranking military officers serve among the Communist Party’s most powerful members. At times playing multiple roles, these loyal officers, many of whom are veterans of internationalist missions, represent the military’s interest at the highest levels of the Party and government. Others have risen on their merits as either administrators or experts in one field or another. Several of them go back to the guerrilla period in the late 1950s, where many fought with Raúl Castro’s forces. What in the end binds military officers together across generations, promotions, rank and professional careers is their loyalty to the revolution, the Castro brothers, and the military institution itself. In no small measure, they owe their careers to the revolution and their status in part to the fact that defense of the homeland is a core value in revolutionary political culture. That message is constantly communicated, and elites as well as the rank and file are incessantly told that they must always be vigilant and on the lookout against external and internal enemies. Members of the armed forces as well as cadres working for the Ministry of Interior are portrayed in the mass media as heroes of socialism and revolution, selfless patriots willing to face enormous sacrifices in order to keep the nation communist, sovereign, and independent. Recurring campaigns emphasizing the military’s role in keeping the nation safe identify the armed forces’ interests with those of the revolution and socialism, pointing out that the armed forces stand ready to defend the homeland at any cost. In a study of the Cuban military, Edward Gonzales writes that “the Cuban military remains subordinated and loyal to civilian rule—specifically, to Fidel Castro in his role as Commander in Chief and First Secretary of the Communist Party, and to Raúl Castro as second in line to Fidel as civilian head of the Party, state and government.” But the military’s subordination to civilian elites does not imply that it loses out during policy battles, nor that it fails to extract resources when decisions regarding allocation are made. As an integral partner in the ruling coalition, the military is positioned to articulate a strong defense of its institutional needs, including demands for its fair share of resources. The armed forces recognize that the military institution must make sacrifices in order to free resources for general developmental or social goals, but the evidence shows that its acceptance of that fact has not undermined its institutional strength. In addition, the military’s subordination provides it with some negative leverage, forcing top policymakers to recognize that the regime’s cohesion and stability depend substantially on the continued and functional participation of the armed forces in the political framework. All political actors in the ruling coalition, particularly experienced conspirators like Fidel and Raúl Castro, know very well that the system’s survival depends squarely on the continued commitment

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of the armed forces to it; disaffection among elites, in short, would prove destabilizing and probably fatal. Along with the Party bureaucracy, the military remains a dominant actor in intra-regime politics, more so following the appointments and promotions announced at the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party. It is premature to conclude that the growing influence of the armed forces in high governmental and Party councils signals a definite trend towards the complete militarization of the system, but at a minimum, it does indicate the willingness of the political leadership to expand the responsibility of the military in various levels of the Party and government. Simply stated, even during times of economic crisis and downsizing, the armed forces remain loyal to their leaders and presumably united in defense of socialism, revolution, and the nation. Not known for their disloyalty, military elites in particular owe their position, and the privileges that come from rank, to the institution and the Castro brothers. Under such circumstances, elites cannot reasonably be expected to challenge either one on fundamental policy matters. For instance, 27 percent of the 225 members of the Communist Party’s Central Committee’s elected for the 1981–1986 period came from either the regular armed forces (MINFAR) or from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT). Incidentally, FAR Division General Abelardo Colomé was placed in charge of MININT in 1989 during a time of internal turmoil, scandals, and the execution of Division General Arnaldo Ochoa and three other officers. Placing the FAR’s secondhighest ranking officer in charge of internal security and domestic intelligence means that the FAR is in charge of maintaining internal order, even if formally MININT has that responsibility. At the apex of the political system one finds the fusion between high military rank, political responsibility, and in the cases of Generals Colomé and Rosales, ministerial duties. Following the recently concluded Fifth Congress of the Communist Party (1997), 17 percent of the 150 members of the Central Committee come from either the armed forces or the Ministry of the Interior, an increase of 5 percent over the 1991–1997 period. Membership in the Communist Party is essential for any military officer aspiring to either high rank or governmental responsibility; Party activities form part of an officer’s dossier and provide evidence of his loyalty to communist ideology and the revolution itself. Political commissars located throughout the armed forces are charged with monitoring the political attitudes of officers and enlisted men, carefully analyzing information that might raise questions regarding an individual’s loyalty, “incorrect” political beliefs, or waning confidence on the political leadership. One explanation for the fact that the current Committee includes a slightly higher proportion of military officers than the 1991–1997 Committee is that the armed forces are being rewarded for service under difficult conditions, particularly for an expanded role in the economy. For instance, the armed forces are involved in various aspects of agricultural production and have built special reserves of food to be used exclusively by them. From lands assigned exclusively

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to FAR, troops harvest fruits, vegetables, beef, pork and other products that are stored in warehouses controlled by the armed forces; this policy guarantees a regular supply of food for the military, not an insignificant issue in an economy of scarcity. Reportedly, the armed forces accumulated large quantities of canned goods and other supplies left over from overseas missions during a period of relative abundance. Currently, those reserves are being turned over to military personnel as compensation for their lack of access to dollars and because these reserves could spoil due to lack of proper refrigeration. Always meant for consumption by the armed forces, the reserves were never used to supply the civilian population even during times of acute food shortages. A second reason for expanded military participation in the Central Committee is that the military’s loyalty to the revolution is recognized by the leadership, as such, it is a sign of its confidence in the military. In short, the armed forces provide politically ambitious officers with career options and a degree of economic security and stability; on the whole, the institution is run professionally and remains politically reliable. The military faction is the second largest in the Central Committee, smaller only than the one including Party professionals and administrators. Among the ranks of the military faction one finds several Division and Brigadier Generals, the commander of the Youth Labor Army, the Chief of the Revolutionary Navy, and the Chief of the Armed Forces general staff. Overall representation from military ranks in the Central Committee has never been lower than 12 percent since the early 1980s, indicating that the military presence at the highest levels of the Party makes up a sizable contingent. As seen in Table 1, one finds five high-ranking military officers at the highest levels of the Communist Party, alongside members with a variety of state and Party responsibilities. Division General Ramón Espinosa joined the Political Bureau following the 1997 Party congress, increasing FAR representation at that level by one; to put it differently, 21 percent of the Political Bureau’s membership comes from the military, not including either the Commander in Chief or the Minister of the Armed Forces. General Colomé has been in the Political Bureau since 1986, and Generals Cintra, Rosales, and Casas joined it in 1991. General Colomé remains in charge of MININT, maintaining it under FAR control. He answers directly to FAR Minister Raúl Castro, making him ultimately responsible for national defense, internal security, domestic and foreign intelligence. This preserves the relationship between MINFAR and MININT established during the scandals of 1989 involving Division General Arnaldo Ochoa and (former) Minister of Interior José Abrantes. Ochoa and three other officers were convicted on corruption and drug-related charges and subsequently executed; Abrantes died in prison under mysterious circumstances in 1991. The appointment of General Rosales as Minister of the Sugar Industry indicates that the political leadership is profoundly dissatisfied with the industry’s

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performance and is attempting to impose military discipline and efficiency in a crucial sector of the economy. On the other hand, General Rosales has no experience in the sugar industry, nor (as far as I know) has he been in charge of large-scale commercial or production systems. His rise in the political and military hierarchy is due to loyalty and merit, rather than to success in nonmilitary fields. Before being named Minister of the Sugar Industry, he was the Chief of the Armed Forces general staff, presiding over a joint command and working closely with Minister Raúl Castro. In the 1990s, sugar harvests regularly fall short of stated goals, using up needed hard currency that is often wasted due to chronic inefficiencies throughout the production process. At times, export commitments go unmet. Credits used to finance sugar harvests are contracted in hard currency at extremely high interest rates, so that net profits to the state from sugar sales are entirely inadequate. New laws permit foreign investment in what is a nearly obsolete system of sugar mills and in the industry as a whole, but so far there have been no takers. In closing, it is hard to see how General Rosales is going to resolve the crisis of Cuba’s sugar industry, or provide the kind of incentives to workers and administrators that would increase production and allow the government to increase its earnings in hard currency. Conclusion Cuba’s military forces remain effectively integrated into the political system, providing it with political support and structural cohesion. Members of the military elite represent the interests of the armed forces at the highest levels of the Party and government, staking out positions from which to demand political recognition and economic resources. Continuity at the top is evidently one of the leadership’s principal political goals, but rotation among elites provides space for meritorious officers who finally reach the top. Powerful generals with military, governmental and political experience play highly significant roles in the ruling coalition. Losing Soviet support has reduced the overall military capabilities of the armed forces, now focused on national defense and to a lesser degree, internal security. Low arsenals for spare parts and aging equipment, particularly combat aircraft, create potentially disturbing choices for planners once accustomed to having advanced weaponry ready to go. On the other hand, Cuba faces no external military threat, so that force levels would be adequate for current missions. Any conceivable confrontation would be with the United States, in which case FAR, even in the best of times, would be quickly defeated. Participation in the economy provides the armed forces with some social goods and guarantees adequate levels of consumption, but protracted involvement in non-military missions could in time affect morale and change the ethos of the institution. It appears that the military is able to guarantee its own food

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supply through its own production and distribution networks, thus providing some relief from the near-collapse of the general economy. From an institutional standpoint, no evidence was found that the armed forces’ loyalty suffers due to either unresolved economic crisis, or from downsizing. Individual soldiers, airmen, or sailors may harbor reservations about the conditions of the economy or the grim future facing the nation, but are far from articulating these grievances in a manner that would threaten the unity of the forces. For the loyal elites, the high cost from a political confrontation with other actors in the ruling coalition over the revolution’s future course make that prospect less and less likely. The armed forces appear to support the limited economic reforms undertaken in the 1990s, some of which have directly benefited a good many active or retired members. To conclude, one does not find the kind of institutional cleavages that would threaten the cohesion of the armed forces, nor is there reason to believe that the armed forces deviate from the civilian leadership on fundamental issues of domestic and foreign policy. For elites and troops alike, a system of incentives and rewards, symbolic or real, limits the probability that disaffection would grow to destabilizing proportions. Through centralized command and overlapping responsibilities between Party and state institutions, top officials oversee the unity of the forces and would be able to quickly detect fissures or institutional divisions. There is no evidence to suggest that potentially divisive tensions are simmering between the security and the regular forces, a worrisome development for former communist elites. The consensus upon which the regime’s survival depends rests in part of the loyalty of the armed forces and that does not appear to be in question. References Alfonso, Pablo. 1991. Los Fieles de Castro. Miami, Fl.: Ediciones Cambio. Calzón, Frank. 1997. “¿Y el papel de los militares cubanos?” El Nuevo Herald. August 26. Netscape. Carroll, Eugene J. 1997. “Cuban Military Issues.” Presented at Conference onU.S. Policy Towards Cuba: Means and Ends.” Miami, Fl.: Center for Defense Information. “Castro designa nuevo jefe militar.” 1997. El Nuevo Herald. October 31. Netscape. “Cuba.” 1997. Caribbean and Central America Report. August 19, 3. “Cuba: Escasos cambios políticos y de cuadros en el Congreso del Partido Comunista.” 1997. ABC, October 12. Reprinted from El Nuevo Herald. Miami, Fl.: CubaNet. “Cuba’s Communists Likely to Hold Line.” 1997. The New York Times. October 8. Netscape. del Aguila, Juan M. 1993. “The Party, the Fourth Congress, and the Process of Counter-Reform.” Cuban Studies 23: 71–90.

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“Demilitarizing the Region.” 1995. Caribbean and Central America Report. November 9, 1. Gonzalez, Edward. 1996. Cuba, Clearing Perilous Waters? Santa Monica, Cal.: Rand. “Fidel’s Brother Sets Up Shop.” 1994. Time. November 14, 68–69. “Firmes desde nuestra raíz.” 1997. Granma, October 11, 9–11. “Línea dura’ maneja Partido Comunista.” 1997. El Nuevo Herald. October 15. Netscape. Mendelsohn, Jack. 1993. “Huddling with the Honchos in Havana.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. September 49, 7: 14–19. Millett, Richard L. 1996. “From Triumph to Survival: Cuba’s Armed Forces in an Era of Transition.” In Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition, edited by R. Millett and M. Gold-Bliss. “The Comandante’s Reserves.” 1997. Cuba Monthly Economic Report. August 1, 4: 1–4. Walker, Phyllis G. 1994. “The Cuban Armed Forces and Transition.” In Cuba and the Future, edited by D. Schulz. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ———. 1996. “Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces: Adapting in the New Environment.” Cuban Studies 26: 61–74.

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26 Cuban Military Influences on Political and Economic Decision-Making Jaime Suchlicki The Cuban military is the most important institution in contemporary Cuba. It is one of the three pillars on which the revolution rests. The other two, the security apparatus and the Communist Party, together with the military safeguard the current and future survivability of the revolution. The military has expanded its influence into most key sectors of the economy in an attempt to inject efficiency and increase productivity at a very difficult time as well as to provide a new mission to the members of the armed forces. The military has achieved significant professionalism, legitimacy, and respect. First, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces) are the heirs to the Ejercito Rebelde (Rebel Army) that fought a guerrilla campaign against the Batista dictatorship. They emerged in 1959 as a nationalist force and only later became an internationalist army supportive of Soviet policies throughout the world. Yet even in this latter capacity, Castro attempted to maintain a semblance of independence from Moscow as evidenced, for example, when he established conditions for the Cuban military withdrawal from Angola. Cuban officers participated with Moscow and the U.S. military in the negotiations that led to a peace accord in Africa. Second, the military which preceded the Party in its organization and development, is now not only independent from the Party but superior to it. Neither military personnel policy nor military doctrine nor internal control is handled by the Party. Increasingly, military figures have taken key positions not only in the Politburo but in other critical party positions. The militarization by the Party is consistent with a trend toward the militarization of society at large. Third, there seems to have developed among the Cuban population a degree of respect for the military. They are seen as the defenders of the nation and of

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Cuba’s national sovereignty. They have refrained from involvement in repression and abuses, thus escaping the stigma of the old Batista military. Finally, military sacrifices on foreign soil, particularly in Africa, are admired by large sectors of the population. This admiration, however, has begun to wane with the passage of time and with the questioning of the direct benefits it produced for Cuba. The military today is a professional, highly technical, disciplined and loyal force. Aside from the old “historico”-type military leaders there is a new breed of well-trained and educated generals that have been promoted after 1959. Most of these officers belong to the inner circle of Raul Castro. They have been nurtured and promoted by Raul and seem fiercely loyal to their military boss. There is a camaraderie that seems to have developed around Raul with various circles of friends, some closer, others one layer away. It is clear to these officers that closeness to Raul not only provides an avenue for upward mobility in the ranks but also protection from intrigue by other officers. The largest group is made up of generals and colonels who were not members of the Rebel Army because they were too young in the 1950s. They include Alvaro Lopez Miera, Jose Legro, Orlando Almaguel, Silvano Colas, Rolando Alfonso Borges (Col.), Leonardo Ramon Andollo, Eladio J. Fernandez Civico (Col.), Arnaldo Tamayo, Orlando Carlos, Roberto Milian, and Alejandro Ronda. Many came from the urban lower middle class or working class. Their average age is mid 50s. The bulk of these officers are from provinces other than Havana with a majority from Cuba’s eastern provinces. The majority of the post-1959 officers had no previous connections to existing political parties and movements, thus their affiliations and loyalties are associated with developments after the revolution. There is a significant growth of black and mulattos among the generals and colonels recently promoted. Examples include Harry Villegas, Silvano Colas, Jose Legro, Humberto Omar Francis, and Arnaldo Tamayo. The average general has had at least three or four combat experiences on foreign soil together with numerous graduate and postgraduate courses in the best Soviet military schools (e.g., Voroshilov and Frunze) and Cuban academies (Curso Basico, Superior de Guerra, Maximo Gomez), as well as field experience in Vietnam, Angola, and the Middle East. There is a growth of highly professional technocrats associated with technological development, business, financial, and industrial administration, engineering and logistics within the ranks of the General Staff and moving from there to key civilian positions. Examples include Leonardo Andollo, Jose Legro, Orlando Almaguel, Silvano Colas, and Eladio Fernandez Civico. In the 1990s, the military industries and scientific and research institutions have been expanding their roles in the civilian economy, especially in the external sector, through various means: a) readjusting the military industries, services, and facilities to accommodate them to the demands of key export-led industries such as tourism, biotechnology, mining, telecommunications, trans-

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port, fisheries, merchant marine, ports, and banking; b) involvement with local agriculture free markets and tourists resorts; c) helping to build monetary reserves; and d) building “semi-autonomous” enterprises such as Gaviota, Tecnotec, and others. The Ministry of Interior, currently under the direct and strict control of MINFAR (the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces) controls several smaller industries and tourist facilities. In the past, the CIMEX Corporation was the Ministry of the Interior’s flagship enterprise, under the supervision of the Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI). Now two of the most important tasks for the DGI are to obtain economic intelligence and cultivate useful relationships in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Latin America. There are numerous areas currently in the hands of highly qualified technocrats emerging from the FAR. These include the Ministry of the Sugar Industry; Ministry of Fisheries and Merchant Marine; Ministry of Transport; Ministry of Communications; Ministry of Tourism; Ministry of Higher Education; Instituto Nacional de la Reserva Estatal; Gaviota, S.A.; Metropolitan Bank; Geo-Cuba Entrepreneurial Group; Tecnotec; Industrial Military Union; Plan de Perfeccionamiento Empresarial; and many others. Most of these technocrats come from Rearguard Services/Logistics of the Army, Air Force, and Navy. The Air Force and Navy contribute especially heavily because of their expertise in the fields of complex technology, computer systems, international standards, and other specialized requirements. Another important dimension of the power of the military is their role in decision-making at the national level. While the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party and the Council of Ministers are important policy making bodies, recommendations made by Raul Castro and his team usually carry significant weight and are adopted as policy. Research conducted by the National Defense College and other military institutes are carefully evaluated and highly regarded in setting policy. This military leadership seems loyal to Fidel and his brother. They apparently share the leader’s views and follow his commands. Whether because of fear for their own safety, concern about a future without Castro, increased opportunities for corruption and illicit activities, or shared ideology and power, they have generally remained loyal. The possibility of factionalism in the military is also diminished by the constant rotation of officers, which prevents the creation of personal loyalties within the services, and by tight supervision and control, both through electronic surveillance and through the party and counterintelligence units within the military. Trusting no one, it is difficult for a disgruntled military leader to share his unhappiness with others or to plan actions against Fidel. Even if able to obtain the support of a few colleagues, it is impossible for unhappy officers to secure the support of a large number of military personnel whose loyalties and beliefs are unknown. Successful rebellion within the armed forces is therefore unlikely.

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Only in a situation of massive disturbances and popular upheaval in which the security apparatus is unable to re-establish order will the military be called in to repress the population. Under this scenario, it is likely that factionalism, desertions, and unrest would occur within the military, hastening the collapse of the Castro regime. Until now, the Castro brothers have refrained from using the military to deal with popular discontent, perhaps aware of the potential dangers involved.

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Why the Cuban Regime Has Not Fallen

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27 Why the Cuban Regime Has Not Fallen Jorge I. Domínguez Why has the Castro regime not fallen, despite the extraordinary suffering that afflicts the Cuban people? The Economic Catastrophe By the statistics of Cuba’s own economists, gross product fell approximately by half in the first four years of the 1990s. In 1993, the sugar harvest was about one-third below that of 1992, which had been the level that Cuba has sustained on average for some years. By the close of 1993, fewer than one-third of Cuba’s state enterprises earned a profit. The relative size of the budget deficit is on the order of 30 percent of the global social product—about twice what the relative budget deficits were in such countries as Mexico and Poland at their worst moment of macroeconomic disequilibrium. All products have been severely rationed. The standard of living of ordinary citizens has been most affected by energy and food shortages. The shortage of gasoline has forced most Cubans to walk or take a bicycle to work; private transportation has been hard hit, and even the number of bus rides per day in the city of Havana has fallen by about two-thirds of its level in the late 1980s. The electric power shortages have led to black-outs that last several hours each day. The reduction in the food supply, in turn, is both a physical fact and a source of extraordinary worry, especially for families. Nutritional levels have deteriorated. And, though the diagnosis remained tentative, the health emergency that broke out in early 1993 (disease of the eyes and limbs) seemed related to vitamin deficiencies. The economic decline has begun to tarnish as well what the government and the communist party still tout as the “victories” of the revolution, namely, heretofore generally excellent performance in education and health care areas. 435

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Cuba still has very fine medical doctors, nurses, and other health care personnel. They can still fill out prescriptions, but it has become much harder to find the drugs that are medically prescribed. Similarly, Cuba still has a complex and generally effective educational system, but the shortage of paper has led to severe cutbacks in reading materials, including textbooks. Cuba may have become the only society where a literate people cannot read. The economic decline has weakened the social safety net in other areas. There has been increased open unemployment; rapid inflation evident in illegal markets; severe shortages of materials to build or to repair housing; reductions in the purchasing power of pensions and of unemployment compensation; and so on. Why, then, has the regime not come tumbling down? Two Personal Stories 1. With a grin, he said, “Come, meet my grandson.” His apartment was only a few blocks from the government ministry where he worked in a senior position. He is cosmopolitan, very smart, and very well informed about Cuba, the United States, and other countries. His own behavior has had to change as has that of most Cubans. He wakes up at 5 AM to find his place in line to get milk. He “volunteers” for work in the countryside because he eats better there, and because his family can have a bigger share of his food ration; moreover, in the rural areas he can acquire food much more easily (even though the law still forbids such private transactions). He was obviously proud of his modest apartment and especially of his family. I met his wife, and one of his children. He spoke at some length about their many and varied accomplishments, with the genuine enthusiasm of a father for his children’s accomplishments, large and small. He turned to play with his grandson, and invited me to join in. And then, he paused for what seemed forever. He sighed loudly. “My children were born in this apartment. And so was my grandson. This is our home. But I know that someone in Miami has a claim on the building. Given my position in the government, we would be certain to be evicted if the regime were to change. We are in bad shape now, but that fate would be worse.” I have never asked him whether, other things being equal, he would prefer to replace the regime but, over the years, his thoughtful comments and critiques have made it clear that a quite different Cuba would better suit his values and his politics. This man, however, stands by the regime that protects the only home his children and grandson have ever known. More generally, Cuban leaders such as this one in the middle and upper ranks of the government and the communist party feel certain about two things. First, they have drawn a lesson from the fall of communism in Europe: If we do not hang together, we will surely hang separately. The cracks within the elite have been, if not repaired, at least covered up. Second, they believe that enough

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Cuban exiles are motivated by revenge and property restitution that their lives, their positions, and their possessions are at grave risk, were the regime to change. Such Cuban leaders may be wrong; they exaggerate both fears. But we should not underestimate the strength of such beliefs. 2. I asked the priest about the lives of his parishioners. His eyes softened, his smile widened, as he described the humor, the good cheer, the friendship, the acts of mutual help that mark the lives of those who, at some risk to their well being and their careers, have chosen to call themselves Roman Catholics publicly. “Times are tough,” he added with understatement. The typical parishioner is a worker with a family who has to get up at 5 AM, sometimes earlier to get in line to secure food for breakfast for the youngsters and the elderly. These folks never owned a private car but they had taken the bus to the factories. That is no longer possible. Most have acquired bicycles, but it takes them over an hour each way when it used to take about twenty minutes. At the end of the day, they have to bicycle back. They arrive home later than before and much more tired. During the rainy season, they get drenched in the late afternoon showers. And, then, they must stand in line again to get food for the kids. “You did not ask me,” he said with a grin, “but I know what you have in mind. You really want to know about politics. Well, my friend, at 10 PM the last thought that these working men and women can have is to get out on a bicycle once again to attend a political meeting. They just want to rest and sleep, because the next day will be just as tough.” The economic hardship has had a somewhat counter-intuitive short term effect. For many people, politics is a leisure time activity, and leisure is what most Cubans no longer have. They are too busy surviving to organize the politics of opposition. Though the reasons for opposition are clearer than ever, the capacity to mount and sustain opposition politics has been hurt. Political regimes are replaced typically because the elite divides and some act to implement a change, or because the opposition manages to defeat the incumbents or, less often, because there is a successful uprising. For divergent reasons, which I explore further below, these prospects seem improbable in Cuba in the near to the medium term. The Blessings of Crime Illegal markets have existed in Cuba since the early 1960s but they have blossomed in the early 1990s. These markets operate in dollars, pesos, and barter. Exchange rate operations are quite normal and fairly precise, though the illegal market peso-dollar exchange rate has been rather volatile since the summer 1993 (in response to the ebb and flow of dollar money supply shifts). So much of Cuba’s economy had been closely regulated until the summer 1993 that nearly all productive or commercial economic activities had been

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illegal. As the government channels of supply of food, clothing, and various services began to break down, people had to make do. They have done so successfully. They break the law to obtain what they need. As they break the law, however, they also cope successfully. If they can meet their needs through the illegal markets, their very survival and that of their families is no longer at stake. Paradoxically, therefore, the government benefits from the very markets that it deems illegal. Cuban capitalism has been re-born in crime, and it has permitted the survival of the very government that remains pledged to suppress it—though it no longer dares to attempt such suppression. The government benefits as well as in terms of public finance. The central bank finances the budget deficit by printing pesos. Those pesos are not absorbed in the formal economy, where prices are frozen and where there is a “monetary overhang.” But the illegal market (where peso inflation is about 100 percent per year) soaks them up. The demand for illegally devalued pesos in the illegal market enables the central bank to preside over a precarious monetary policy that continues to finance the national government. Repression Beginning in the spring 1991, in anticipation of the Pan American Games to be held in Havana, the communist party organized rapid response brigades to intimidate and beat up opposition members. The state’s security, in turn, has increased the rate of arrests of human rights and other opposition activists and given them stiff sentences for their “crimes” of opinion and association. It has always been difficult to estimate the number of political prisoners in Cuba but, by the narrowest of definitions, that number increased in the 1990s, reaching close to one thousand prisoners. At times, the government has promoted the emigration of dissidents, knowing that they can do less harm to the regime from abroad than in Cuba. Emigration has always served to consolidate this regime. In the 1990s, the government’s enforcement of its own laws that restrict freedom of travel, always capricious, has become somewhat lax. There are two innovations in the 1990s in this regard. One is more important symbolically than numerically. The government offers freedom from prison simultaneously with exit permits to opposition members in order to get them out of Cuba. The other is much more important numerically. The government allows tens of thousands of Cubans, mainly artists and intellectuals but also others, to leave the country—mostly for Mexico or Spain—in exchange for their political silence and, often, their hard currency remittances to their families. These emigrants do not break publicly with the Cuban government; they are free to travel back and forth to Cuba. Their possessions have not be expropriated. Technically, they are not exiles: they are “at home” abroad.

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Reform As European communist regimes unraveled, the Cuban government took its first and, so far, most important reform measure. Reversing one of the policies on which Cuba’s communist regime was founded, Fidel Castro welcomed private foreign direct investment back into Cuba. The accumulated stock of foreign capital in Cuba has passed $500 million—not a large sum by international standards but large for Cuba. After a hiatus of four years, the failure of the 1993 sugar harvest forced the government to adopt a series of additional reform measures. In July, it became lawful to hold and use dollars in government dollar stores. The aim was to stimulate remittances from Cubans in the diaspora and also to channel illegal market dollars into government stores. In August (subsequently amended various times), the government greatly expanded the number of service occupations open to licensed self-employment. By the end of 1993, the number of license applications for self-employment averaged about 800 per day. The energies of Cuban entrepreneurship had begun to spill over from the illegal to the legal economy. In September, the government authorized the transformation of state farms into semi-private cooperatives. The managers of the new cooperatives acquired the right to reorganize the work force and to hire and fire workers in order to increase output and efficiency. They have begun to exercise their new prerogatives. The commercial code has been adapted to turn many other state enterprises into quasi-private firms. The state remains the sole shareholder but it turns over the firm to a board of directors and managers as if it were in a trusteeship. These firms can set their prices and wages, retain profits, make investments, engage in international transactions, and so on. Their behavior is markedly more dynamic than that of the state enterprises that remain in the same sectors of the economy. The government has begun to explore the full privatization of other state enterprises, even some that had once belonged to foreign and private Cuban firms expropriated in 1959-61. The Cuban government has shed the ideological blinders that had once prevented it from permitting even modest market activities. All of these economic measures are important and have begun to have some economically useful results but, as currently designed, they remain woefully inadequate to reactivate the Cuban economy, much less to make it healthy. Cuban workers cannot lawfully be paid in dollars, limiting thereby some of the potentially stimulative impact of the decision to legalize the commercial use of dollars. Self-employed persons cannot hire others to work for them for a wage, preventing as a result the formation of small businesses. All agricultural cooperatives are required to sell all of their output to the government, at officially set prices; consequently, the incentives to private producers to increase output are weak.

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There is also active consideration of various other policies in Cuba today. The State Committee on Finance wants to raise taxes and cut subsidies to address the budget deficit and to allow prices to better allocate resources. The Banco Nacional faces a proposal to unify the exchange rate and decree the free convertibility of the peso. The economic cabinet has begun discussions on the wisdom, utility, and feasibility of applying for membership to join the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The State Committee on Labor is preparing a major revision of unemployment compensation policies. Despite the many constraints that the Cuban government has imposed on its own economic reforms and the hesitancy to adopt many more changes, there has been a modest resurgence of market activities thanks to the limited market openings that have occurred. There are also some short- to medium-term favorable international trends since the second half of 1993: the world sugar price has increased and the world price of petroleum has fallen. The domestic economic reforms that are actually in place and the more favorable international economic trends may have halted the Cuban economy’s slide at last. Leadership Skill Recall some of the conventional wisdom about Fidel Castro: 1. Castro is rigidly dogmatic in economics and is allergic to markets. 2. Castro is the sworn enemy of international capitalism, forever proud of his expropriation of foreign firms. 3. Castro will never give up an inch of power. That conventional wisdom is wrong. In the 1990s, Fidel Castro has presided over the reversal of many of his government’s past economic policies. Foreign investors, tourists, market peddlers, and the U.S. dollar are back. Castro has authorized these changes publicly. Also in public, he has railed against feeling compelled by circumstances to “retreat” toward capitalism. In so doing, Castro has already given up a yard, not an inch, of the state’s historic power to micromanage the economic lives of Cubans. Castro has instituted these changes, to be sure, because he hopes that they will save his regime. He has also orchestrated the re-imposition of repression to prevent his enemies from taking advantage so far of these openings. In keeping the governing coalition together as they jettison the beliefs that had shaped past policies, Castro has demonstrated yet again his unusual skill as a leader and his overriding commitment to political success over ideological purity. Public Virtues By the late 1980s, the communist party as an institution had become irrelevant in shaping voting choices in multi-candidate municipal elections in Cuba.

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Voters did not care whether candidates did or did not belong to the communist party, although nearly all candidates did. The main reasons voters gave to pollsters for their electoral choices were personal and practical. Voters in local elections favored good neighbors, good workers, good parents, and good citizens. The key point, however, is that those elected with these traits were communist party members. Unlike in the closing days of European communist regimes, relatively few Cuban communist party members have turned in their party cards. “Good people” had joined the party, and good people remain in it. By their personal traits, they retain public support and, in turn, remain loyal enough to the regime. A related theme is the continued concern of many Cubans for the defense of the homeland. By the beginning of the 1990s, Cubans told communist party pollsters that, contrary to the official line, they did not believe that the United States posed a military threat to Cuba. And yet, short of the fear of military attack, nationalist themes still resonate in the public and have been manipulated skillfully by the government. Consider the December 1992 municipal elections and the February 1993 legislative elections. In the first, a large proportion of Cubans chose to cast blank or null ballots. Though precise comparisons cannot be made, the same election observers who discovered government fraud in reporting the blank and null votes in the December election indicate that the number of such anti-regime ballots had plummeted by the February election. Why? Polling suggests that a significant minority of the December protesters were swayed by the effective official campaign against the U.S. Cuban Democracy Act, depicted as an act of aggression against the Cuban people. Unfair as that characterization may be, the analytical point is that even those who are ready to take some risks to oppose the regime respond to nationalist appeals in specific contexts and circumstances. The endurance of the public virtues of good citizens, loyal to their homeland and to each other, remains as well a pillar of this regime. Conclusion At one point, arguments about the Cuban regime’s effectiveness might have made reference to Fidel Castro’s charisma, to the fervor of revolution, the accomplishments in some social reforms, or to the strength of the collective legitimacy of a national project. Though residues of these factors remain, they are much less important than in the past. They no longer explain the continuation of this government. The revolution is long past, as is the success of certain social policies. These once powerful motivations no longer provide much political support. Fidel Castro retains the backing of many Cubans but his own popularity is far lower than it was as recently as the late 1980s.

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Today’s circumstances in Cuba combine fears, incentives, exhaustion, repression, reform, resourcefulness, leadership skill, tolerated illegality, budding entrepreneurship, and the bonds of respect and affection that connect citizens to each other at a time of distress. Against all odds, the Castro regime has survived the collapse of communist regimes in Europe and the end of Soviet subsidies and of the Soviet Union itself. Its promises are little more than further toil, tears, and sweat. Cubans are not the first people who have found those appeals convincing. Though the cause in whose name they are asked sacrifice is one in which most of them no longer believe, they seem to be ready to act to save themselves and their homeland, not unlike others who have responded to such appeals in other lands in other times.

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28 Cuba: Without Subsidies Jaime Suchlicki Few anticipated the rapid and dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Even fewer anticipated the end of communism in the Soviet Union. Western nations rejoiced at the spectacle of an independent and free Eastern Europe, the breakdown of the Soviet Union into sixteen republics, and the development of a market-oriented and more open society in Russia. For Cuba, it was a devastating blow. Cuba lost not only the protection of the Soviet political umbrella, but also the economic support that had been the lifeline of the Castro regime. Soviet aid and subsidies suddenly vanished. Access to Eastern European and Soviet products at subsidized prices disappeared. The nations of Eastern Europe and the new post-Soviet republics demanded cash payments for their goods. The weakness and dependence of Cuba’s economy became painfully evident. The years that followed saw a deepening economic crisis in Cuba, a theme that plays in constant repetition. Severe shortages of Russian and Eastern European petroleum, fertilizers, spare parts, raw materials, and foodstuffs crippled the economy. Sugar harvest production declined to the lowest levels since the beginning of the Revolution. Nearly three-quarters of the factories on the island stopped or reduced production for lack of spare parts or raw materials. The transportation and communications sectors suffered drastic cuts. Cuba’s imports and exports fell by 70 to 75 percent. Unemployment and underemployment increased drastically as the low standard of living of the Cuban people sank to new levels of misery and suffering. Hope for the future was replaced with pessimism and despair. A terrible sense of alienation from the state gripped Cuban society. The government’s initial economic policy response to the crisis was to expand the rationing of limited supplies of consumer goods (belttightening) and to 443

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increase efforts to attract foreign investment, especially in non-traditional export industries, mainly tourism and mining. In 1994, the regime allowed Cuban citizens to legally hold dollars and to purchase goods in special stores previously reserved for tourists, diplomats, and government functionaries. Some profound reforms were contemplated but not fully implemented by the government’s central planning agency. These included cost accounting by enterprises, establishment of investment funds by state firms, balanced budgets, price liberalization, and the private ownership of property by Cubans. This first response was virtually a non-policy. The government sought economic survival by husbanding its meager resources. Rations were reduced, labor brigades were organized, security and repression increased, and rhetoric was used to boost morale and maintain social unity. At the same time, the military was given a greater role in controlling the economy. Officers in the armed forces were entrusted with running agricultural and industrial enterprises and producing goods for themselves as well as for the population. It was the hope of the Castro brothers that the militarization of the economy would bring order and discipline and reverse the deteriorating economic situation. At the same time, involvement in the economy provided a new mission to a military, demoralized by the arrest and execution of several of its leaders, and by its lack of purpose since the involvement in Angola. In September 1994, the government announced the opening of farm markets where surplus agricultural products were sold by growers directly to the public. Similar peasant markets had flourished for about six years in the mid-1980s until Castro shut them down claiming that Cubans were becoming “little capitalists” and that the goals of the revolution were being undermined. The regime now hoped that a return to these free agricultural markets would help alleviate the critical food shortage and weaken the expanding black market. The economic reforms not related to foreign direct investment have been extremely limited and designed to alleviate the most immediate problem: Cuba’s lack of hard currency. In 1992 Cuba expanded the list of consumer goods that exiles could send to relatives on the island, including many foodstuffs (e.g., beans, rice, and coffee) that were previously prohibited. Cuban officials also announced in 1995 an increase in the number of visas that they would process for travel from the U.S. to Cuba. Cuban-Americans who travel to the island usually bring money and nonperishable goods to relatives on the island. The objective of these policies is to capture some of the dollars that now circulate in the black market and to encourage more exiles to visit the island or to send financial support to their relatives. Cuban officials realize that these reforms run the risk of creating sharp economic inequalities among the Cuban population, benefiting mainly those who work in the dollar-earning sectors, principally tourism and related services, and/or those who have generous relatives abroad. The need for foreign exchange, however, is critical, and officials are willing to accept the negative side

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effects for now. These reforms are unlikely to lead to any noticeable improvement in Cuba’s current economic situation and are readily reversible by the regime on short notice. The most significant response to the crisis has been the reforms in Cuba’s foreign investment laws and the country’s active posture in seeking joint ventures with foreign companies. One may speculate that Cuba would like to be as successful as China in attracting foreign investment, but it has yet to emulate the structural economic reforms that China has adopted. Cuban technocrats, as well as critics of the Castro government, have noted that there are significant differences between the two countries, which work to Cuba’s disadvantage. In 1982, Cuba enacted its joint venture law that permitted foreign direct investment (FDI) in Cuba. Not much FDI activity took place until 1992, when Cuban officials began liberally interpreting the 1982 law and encouraged foreign investment by offering fiscal incentives such as the exemption of joint ventures from tariff duties on imported materials and from all taxes except social security. Actual terms are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, with the fiscal incentives often limited to the initial years of the project. Foreign firms have also been allowed to conduct business in hard currency, introduce their own management techniques, dismiss workers at their own discretion, set wages, and repatriate profits freely. However, they are not permitted to directly hire Cuban workers; that is done through a government procurement agency. In July 1992, new legislation permitted the transfer of state property to foreigners, the creation of autonomous (but regulated) enterprises, and the export and import of goods without prior government approval. The exact number of joint ventures that have resulted from Cuba’s efforts is difficult to determine, as various officials and Cuban publications from time to time report different figures. In 1995, 118 joint ventures were operating in Cuba, with many more in the process of final agreements. Most of the joint ventures have been in tourism, and most of the foreign partners have been from Spain. Of the non-tourist investments, the Cuban government reported mostly Spanish, Canadian, French, and Mexican companies as joint venture partners. More recently, Mexico reached joint venture agreements representing investments of $7.5 million in tourism, $100 million in petroleum refining, $40 million in cement production, and $740 million in telecommunications. Most of the Mexican investments were part of a debt for equity swap in which the Cuban government reduced its debt to Mexico by providing various Cuban enterprises to Mexican businessmen. For all of Cuba’s efforts, the number of joint ventures is quite small for an economy of its potential size, and many of the publicized investments have not actually been consummated. Cuba’s desire to emulate the Chinese model will most likely be unfulfilled, as Cuba is unlikely to achieve the success that China has attained in its FDI efforts. China began to attract foreign investors in the late 1970s, and established a series of complementary economic reforms that supported their development

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strategy. Authorities created special economic zones in the early 1980s that combined material, fiscal, and labor incentives in strategic geographic locations. Individuals, and not just firms, were afforded greater freedom in economic decisionmaking. The Chinese focused their FDI efforts on manufacturing, with particular emphasis on activities that would introduce new technology into the country. China permitted foreign firms to pay higher wages than those found in the rest of the country, rewarding and stimulating labor productivity increases. Workers resettled in those special areas and often sent part of their earnings to family members back home, or shipped home consumer goods purchased within those zones. The economic zones served as small islands of quasi-capitalism within the larger socialist state. China was also able to attract significant amounts of investments from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which has contributed greatly to the development of China’s Guandong province. In contrast, Cuba has promoted investments in tourism as its highest priority and only recently has begun to promote investments in other sectors. Cuba has not yet attempted to link FDI with technology transfer. Nor has it permitted greater individual freedom in economic matters. While the Cuban government is allowing some workers to operate independently, these activities are highly regulated. Unlike China, Cuba has not legalized private agriculture or manufacturing. No foreign trade that is independent of the state is permitted, either. The Cuban constitution still outlaws foreign ownership of most properties and forbids any Cubans from participating in joint ventures with foreigners. Moreover, it is still illegal for foreign companies to hire Cuban workers directly. Foreign employers must pay the wages owed to their employees directly to the Cuban government in hard currency. The Cuban government then pays out to the Cuban workers in Cuban pesos, which are worth a fraction of the hard currency. Furthermore, while the new foreign investment law provides protection against government expropriation, all arbitration must take place in the corrupt and arbitrary government offices where little protection is given to the investor. Foreign investors must also confront political uncertainties that do not exist in many other countries. They must contend with the possibility of the regime’s reversing its present open-door policy, the legal problems posed by the U.S. embargo, the legal questions surrounding previously confiscated properties, and potential sanctions against foreign investors that cooperated with the Castro government in the event that an anti-Castro government eventually comes to power. Cuba’s economic future is also clouded by a relatively large convertible currency debt. Cuba’s external debt in convertible currencies amounted to $7.8 billion, and Cuba has failed to make either principal or interest payments on this debt since 1986 when it unilaterally declared a debt moratorium. The nonperforming status of this debt represents a nearly insurmountable obstacle to obtaining renewed flows of international credit.

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There is a degree of contradiction among the stated economic goals of Cuban officials. Some indications suggest that Cuba is attempting to implement a slow transition from a command economy to what some in the Cuban leadership call a mixed economy composed of state, private, and cooperative enterprises (public/private partnerships). Yet, Castro and hardline supporters are resisting the adoption of market reforms, or what they derisively refer to as “capitalism.” Such resistance creates a major dilemma for Cuba’s economic transition. Opposition to market reforms will limit the extent to which the private sector emerges and functions effectively, and thereby slows, if not prevents, attaining a measurable degree of economic recovery. While Castro and hardliners recognize the need for economic recovery, they also see the likely erosion of political power and control that accompanies the restructuring of the economy along free-market rules. Adoption of market reforms may well represent a solution to the economic crisis, but a full-blown reform process carries with it the risk of loss of control over society, as well as the economy, and threatens to alienate some of the regime’s key constituencies. In foreign relations, Castro has scrambled to create new relationships and to obtain foreign aid for his troubled economy. A number of Latin American countries have normalized diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. Calls for Cuba’s readmission into the Inter-American system are often heard, and democratic countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Chile are willing to trade with, and invest in Cuba. The English-speaking Caribbean countries have welcomed representatives from Cuba to their meetings, and an attempt is being made to integrate Cuba into the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Cuba was recently welcomed into the newly formed Association of Caribbean States (ACS), despite U.S. protests. Mexico has reaffirmed its longstanding relationship with the Castro government; and, while relations are not as close as in the past, President Ernesto Zedillo is unlikely to change the direction of Mexican policy toward Cuba. The Mexican president has also expressed his opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba. The immediate economic impact of improved foreign relations between Cuba and other Latin American nations, however, is not likely to result in a noticeable change in Cuba. Approximately one-third of Cuba’s meager foreign trade occurs with Latin America, and this trade occurs on a strictly commercial basis (i.e., payment in hard currency is required). Cuba, moreover, incurs a trade deficit with these countries, especially with respect to its trade with Mexico. The political effects may be more important than the economic effects, however. The general trend among new democratic governments throughout Latin America is to pressure the United States, albeit mildly, to change its policy toward Cuba. The belief persists among some Latin American statesmen that, through negotiations and economic inducements, Castro may change his policies and provide for a peaceful transition in the island. Optimistic appraisals of the possibility of a deal with Castro have also been encouraged to a large extent by the spectacle of Cuba’s deepening economic crisis. The view holds that, as the

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crisis deepens, Castro will have no choice but to liberalize both the economy and the political system. Thus far, however, there has been little evidence to support this view. One of the government’s responses to the deepening crisis was to tacitly permit Cubans to take rafts to flee the island. In 1994, thousands of Cubans set sail in flimsy rafts. Many perished in the Florida Straits. Others reached American shores. Most were captured by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea and sent to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo in eastern Cuba. After prolonged negotiations, most of the refugees in Guantanamo were allowed to enter the United States. The United States agreed to provide 20,000 yearly visas to Cubans seeking to emigrate to the United States, and Havana promised to prevent illegal migration. The Clinton Administration has reversed its long-standing policy of allowing refugees from Cuba to enter the United States. Rafters are now intercepted at sea and, unless they can show a clear case of political persecution in Cuba, are returned to the island. While the massive exodus has stopped almost completely, the potential for a new migration crisis still looms on the horizon. The Castro government has also showed no signs of making meaningful concessions in the political and human rights arena. Indeed, in late 1995, the Castro regime began to slow down the lukewarm pace of economic reforms and to insist that Cuba will remain a Communist state. There has been no indication that the government truly intends to open up its political system or to promote a peaceful solution to the deepening crisis. History reveals times when strong, and even autocratic, political leaders have mellowed with age and softened their positions, but there is no evidence that this is the case with Castro. On the contrary, as Castro has aged, he has become more intransigent and difficult. In a 1995 meeting of Latin American leaders in Cartagena, Colombia, he reaffirmed his opposition to the United States and his unwillingness to relinquish power even after thirty-six years at the helm of his troubled island. “There is an idea,” Castro declared, “that socialism is declining and the time is right to exact from Cuba the price of more than thirty-five years of revolution. No price will be exacted here.” Until 1995, however, the Clinton Administration seemed willing to depart from the policies of previous administrations toward Cuba in two areas. The Administration was willing to relax the travel ban to Cuba for CubanAmericans and Americans, and was ready to increase telecommunications and other media contacts with the island. Secretary of State Warren Christopher issued statements regarding “U.S.-calibrated responses” to Castro’s actions, an indication of U.S. willingness to consider moving in a direction of gradually normalizing relations with Cuba. There was the hope among U.S. policymakers that this policy of engagement would lead to economic changes on the island, the building of a civil society and, finally, the undermining of Castro’s personal power. The speed of the U.S. response would be conditioned by the internal changes in Cuba, the actions of the new U.S. Congress, the pressures from the Cuban-American community, and the other priorities of the Clinton Administration.

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The lifting of the travel ban could have provided the Castro regime with much-needed foreign exchange. While U.S. tourism will not in itself resolve Cuba’s profound economic crisis, it could provide the regime with a sufficient influx of dollars to allow its economy to muddle through for quite a number of years. The lifting of the travel ban could also lead to serious pressure from U.S. business groups to increase other types of trade with Cuba and to relax the ban on U.S. investments in the island. The longterm strength and any significant development of Cuba’s tourist industry needs significant numbers of visitors from the United States. U.S. businesses in the hotel and travel industry would dearly want to participate in the growth of that market. U.S. airlines, the gaming industry, and U.S.-based cruise companies would also want to capture a major share of that developing tourist market. A significant relaxation of the travel ban would represent one of the first steps in ending the U.S. embargo of Cuba. Castro has encouraged this U.S. policy of engagement. He mobilized significant resources to force the United States to lift the embargo and the travel ban. He invited U.S. religious, political, business, and academic leaders to the island. He has reached out to moderate Cuban-Americans to begin a dialogue and to weaken Cuban-American opposition to a Cuba-U.S. rapprochement. He even visited New York in 1995, dressed not in his uniform, but in a business suit, enticing American entrepreneurs with a vision of a major bonanza, if Cuba were opened up to them. Castro’s calculated moves were designed to gain time and to force the United States into unilateral concessions regarding the embargo and the travel ban. He hoped that U.S. and world opinion would force the Clinton Administration to soften its policies and that U.S. attempts at subverting his revolution could be handled by Cuba’s efficient security apparatus. His short-term tactics did not contemplate the dismantling of communism in Cuba or the weakening of his personal power over the Cuban people. Castro’s minor concessions failed. In early 1996, U.S.-Cuban relations took a turn for the worse. The slowing down of the pace of reforms in Cuba was an indication of Castro’s unwillingness to move Cuba toward a market-oriented economy. The government’s brutal repression unleashed against Concilio Cubano, an umbrella organization of dissident groups on the island, and the arrest of more than 100 of its members in February also emphasized Castro’s opposition to a political opening. Then on February 24, 1997, two small, unarmed civilian aircraft flown by Brothers to the Rescue, the Cuban-American humanitarian group based in Miami, were destroyed by Cuban MIGs in international waters, killing the four occupants of the planes. Although Brothers to the Rescue had dropped anti-Castro leaflets in Havana, their primary mission has been to spot Cuban rafters fleeing the island and advise the U.S. Coast Guard, so they can be rescued. The United States reacted swiftly. The Clinton Administration supported the passage of, and signed into law, the Helms-Burton Act, which punished foreign

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companies and nationals that invested in properties confiscated by the Castro government, prohibited the principals in those companies from traveling to the United States, and allowed U.S. citizens to sue foreign companies in U.S. courts to obtain compensation. The law was aimed at discouraging foreign investments in Cuba and setting a standard of morality and fairness regarding properties illegally confiscated by the Castro government. Although the law generated significant criticism, particularly in Canada, Europe, and Latin America, the Clinton administration and Congress refused to budge, claiming that it was important to punish the Castro government for its actions. The administration also restricted travel to Cuba and tightened the embargo. By its actions prior to the downing of the planes, the Castro government served notice that the internal period of limited liberalization had come to an end. Castro had once again showed that political considerations were more important than economic ones. He risked upsetting the mild thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, trade deals with the European Union, and risked condemnation by the world community in order to maintain internal control and external security. Fearful that a broader economic opening would lead to a political opening, he rejected both. Commitment to a command and communist economy, violent revolution, internationalism, anti-Americanism, and personal rule remain the cornerstones of Castro’s policies. He cannot modify, let alone abandon, these cornerstones without risking his power and obscuring his personal place in history, a consideration that is perhaps now foremost in Castro’s outlook. He and his brother Raúl, head of the Cuban military, seem to have neither the wish nor the will to modify this totalitarian course, and on the basis of stated beliefs and recent actions, change seems quite unlikely.

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29 Cuba: Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy Susan Kaufman Purcell The U.S. economic embargo against Cuba has been in place for thirty-six years. During that period, its rationale and goals have changed. For the most part, its principal purpose was either to modify the international behavior of Fidel Castro and his Communist government, which Washington regarded as a threat to U.S. strategic interests, or to eliminate the regime entirely. As long as those goals proved unattainable, Washington settled for a secondary goal of isolating and containing Cuba. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Moscow’s substantial economic aid to the island, Washington has tried to take advantage of Cuba’s new economic vulnerability by tightening the embargo in order to prevent the Castro government from replacing Soviet aid with foreign investment and other capital. The goal of Washington’s policy remains the disappearance of the Castro regime, by forcing either reform or revolt on the island. Washington’s post-Cold War policy toward Cuba has been caught up in a larger debate concerning the effectiveness of economic sanctions in general and of unilateral sanctions in particular as a way of producing change in the nature and behavior of hostile regimes. Critics of the administration’s Cuba policy argue that U.S. sanctions against Cuba have not worked for decades and that it is “time for a change,” particularly now that the Cold War is over and Havana is no longer a serious threat to U.S. interests. They believe that the Castro government would respond better to incentives rather than to punishment. Supporters of U.S. policy, in contrast, argue the opposite. They claim that the embargo could not work during the Cold War, when Havana received billions of dollars annually from Moscow. Now that this aid has disappeared, Washington’s ability to influence Castro’s behavior, and perhaps even to topple him, has

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increased. Their conclusion: the U.S. embargo should not only be continued; but tightened. Who is right? To a large extent, it is impossible to resolve this argument, not only concerning Cuba but in regard to any other country that is the object of economic sanctions. If the Castro government were to collapse tomorrow, supporters of the recently tightened U.S. embargo would proclaim the success of their policy preference. Critics of U.S. policy toward Cuba, on the other hand, would argue that the regime’s collapse had less to do with Washington’s policy than with the end of Soviet aid, the imperatives of the new global economy, the information revolution, and/or the policy of engagement pursued by Europeans and others in Cuba. Furthermore, critics of U.S. sanctions against Cuba have a debating advantage. All they need to charge is that the policy has not produced the overthrow or collapse of the Castro regime. They are under no obligation to prove that their preferred policy option—a policy of engagement—would cause the Castro to collapse or become more democratic and less hostile to U.S. interests. Because their policy of engagement has not been tried over an extended period, therefore, the critics usually are given the benefit of the doubt. Despite current differences in opinion regarding U.S. policy toward Cuba, for much of its history the policy did not generate strong opposition within the United States. Particularly during the Cold War, which shaped U.S. policy toward Cuba during the first 27 years of the embargo, it was not difficult to convince the U.S. public that the Castro regime posed a threat to U.S. interests. This was especially true in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and during the following decade, characterized by a growing Soviet influence over the island. Only since the Soviet collapse has any significant opposition to the embargo developed within the United States. It has been fueled not only by the demise of the Soviet Bloc but also by the normalization of U.S. relations with other formerly hostile communist regimes, such as that of Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, North Korea. Ultimately, the charge of inconsistency in U.S. policy will not prove effective in ending the embargo. Each country provides different opportunities and constraints for U.S. policy. As long as U.S. goals are consistent, Washington will be able to justify using different means to achieve a common end. What may prove more of an obstacle to sustaining the embargo against Cuba, however, are the growing costs of doing so. Specifically, we are alienating our friends and allies whose cooperation is needed on other issues of importance to U.S. and global security. One final aspect of the Cuba sanctions debate concerns the strong and unwavering support for sanctions on the part of the Cuban-American population, whose voting power is concentrated in two important states, Florida and New Jersey, and whose main lobby, the Cuban American National Foundation, is well organized and financed. Critics of Washington’s Cuba policy often imply or state that the sanctions are illegitimate because they “only” or “mainly” reflect the

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views of a small but powerful minority. Or the critics assume that the U.S. public does not really care about Cuba and would be willing to go along with a U.S. policy of engagement with the Castro regime. U. S. foreign policy, of course, always has been shaped to varying degrees by domestic interest groups. As the United States is a representative democracy, its foreign policy must, to some extent, reflect domestic values and institutions. During the Cold War, however, when Washington and Moscow were engaged in what many U.S. citizens saw as a life-or-death global competition, the U.S. president could defeat even well-organized domestic groups in the name of larger strategic concerns. Since the Soviet collapse, doing so is much more difficult. The power of the Cuban American lobby on the Cuba sanctions issue reflects the more general phenomenon of the increased clout of domestic actors in shaping foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Origins of the Economic Embargo The embargo, which dates from 1962, was the culmination of unilateral U.S. responses to a series of developments in Cuba during the height of the Cold War, developments that the Kennedy administration interpreted as having put Castro’s Cuba squarely in the Soviet camp.1 The Cuban leader called off promised elections in April 1959 and announced shortly thereafter that Cuba did not want U.S. economic assistance. In May, Cuba adopted an agrarian reform law that led to the expropriation of U.S.-owned properties on the island. In February of the revolution’s second year Moscow and Havana signed a trade agreement under which the Soviet Union agreed to purchase sugar from Cuba and to supply Cuba with crude oil. In March 1960 President Dwight Eisenhower secretly ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to begin training Cuban exiles for an invasion of Cuba. In June the Castro government asked foreign-owned oil refineries to process Soviet crude oil. When they refused to do so, they were nationalized. In response, the U.S. Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar Act of 1948. Two days later, on July 5, the Cuban government authorized the nationalization of all U.S. property in Cuba, valued at some $1.8 billion. The next day Eisenhower cut Cuba’s remaining sugar quota for the 1960 by 95 percent. Between August and October, the Cuban government nationalized U.S.-owned banks, industrial and agrarian enterprises, and wholesale and retail enterprises. In December Eisenhower fixed Cuba’s 1961 sugar quota at zero. On January 1, 1961, Cuba restricted personnel in the U.S. embassy in Havana to a maximum of 11 and gave the remaining embassy staff two days to leave the country. The United States then broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba, travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba was forbidden shortly thereafter. The Commerce Department had embargoed U.S. exports of goods and technical data to Cuba in October of the preceding year. On April 17, 196l, the day after Castro openly

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proclaimed his revolution to be “socialist,” the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred. It failed to topple Castro. On September 4 Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, prohibiting aid to Cuba and authorizing the President to establish and maintain “a total embargo upon all trade between the United States and Cuba.” President John Kennedy already had similar authority under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917. On February 7, 1962, he declared an embargo on all trade with Cuba. On August 1 Congress amended the Foreign Assistance Act to prohibit U.S. aid “to any country which furnishes assistance to the present government of Cuba.” Implementing authority lay mainly with the Treasury Department, first under the Cuban Import Regulations issued in 1962 and then under the Cuban Assets Control Regulations issued in 1963. The unilateral U.S. embargo targeted only Cuba and did not prohibit third parties from trading with the island. It did have extraterritorial aspects, however, in that it prohibited the reexportation from third countries to Cuba of commodities or technical data of U.S. origin. In early 1963, moreover, National Security Action Memorandum 220 prohibited shipments of cargoes paid for by the U.S. government on foreign flag vessels that had called at a Cuban port on or after January 1, 1963. And in December 1963 Congress amended the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to prohibit U.S. aid to countries that failed to take steps to prevent aircraft or ships under their registry from engaging in trade with Cuba.2 Initially foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations initially were not prohibited from trading with Cuba, although the Treasury Department “vigorously pursued an informal policy of applying pressure to United States parent companies to ensure that their foreign affiliates ‘voluntarily’ refrained from engaging in any transactions with Cuba.”3 Despite its unilateral nature, the embargo became multilateral in practice within most of the Western Hemisphere. The Organization of American States, meeting in Punta del Este in January 1962, first imposed limited sanctions on Cuba and excluded its “present government” from participating in the interAmerican system. Two years after the Punta del Este vote, the Organization of American States (OAS) voted to require its members to break diplomatic relations with Havana, to impose a collective trade embargo on Cuba (excluding foodstuffs, medicine and medical equipment for humanitarian purposes), and to suspend sea transportation with the island. The vote was partly the result of U.S. pressure. However, Latin American governments also were responding to the Castro government’s efforts to spread Communist revolution to their countries. The main rationale for the economic embargo was the threat to U.S. national security posed by a Communist Cuba that, by February 1962, had become allied economically and militarily with the Soviet Union. The embargo, however, was at best a second-choice policy that was implemented in the aftermath of the previous year’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion. The embargo therefore represented Washington’s effort to make the best of a bad situation. The Castro threat was

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real, yet the tools that Washington had at its disposal to overthrow, or even contain, Castro were at best limited and, at worst, inadequate for the task. The fact that Cuba was an island provided some hope that an embargo might at least contain the Castro government. On the other hand, the recognition that Soviet trade with and aid to the island would not be affected by the embargo made it difficult to believe that it could “work.” Of course, in 1962, when the United States unilaterally imposed its embargo against Cuba, it was still unclear how much economic aid the Soviet Union would provide to the island over the long term. It is important to stress, however, that the embargo was never considered the best possible policy that Washington could implement against the Castro regime. Instead, it was deemed better than doing nothing. At least it signaled Washington’s disapproval of Havana’s behavior. The embargo also was never intended to be the only U.S. response to the threat presented by Castro’s Cuba; rather it was to be one of several approaches. It followed by one year the creation of the Alliance for Progress, a $20 billion aid program aimed at helping Latin America achieve higher levels of economic development and thereby reduce the poverty and misery that were thought to make Communist revolutions possible or even probable. In addition, the Kennedy administration launched an ambitious counterinsurgency program in order to help Latin American militaries prevail against Cuban-trained and armed Marxist guerrillas operating in the region. Early Impact of the Embargo Until the revolution, Cuba’s economy had been closely linked with that of the United States. The United States had been Cuba’s main trading partner and its principal foreign investor. In addition, it was the principal market for sugar, Cuba’s chief export. Cuba also had earned substantial amounts of dollars from its tourist industry—and tourism from the United States far exceeded that from any other country. By suddenly depriving Cuba of its main market and source of hard currency, the U.S. embargo caused great hardship for both the Cuban government and people. It also may have accelerated the process whereby Cuba became more dependent on the Soviet Union. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Castro had no desire to maintain a capitalist economic system or Cuba’s close economic ties with the United States. In order to eliminate both, however, he needed first to dismantle the Cuban military, so as to avoid a coup against him, and then get the Soviet Union to back his regime. While the U.S. embargo may have given Castro a rationale for forging closer ties with Moscow and may have given the USSR a good excuse for strengthening its alliance with “the enemy of its enemy,” it also can be argued that the Cuban-Soviet alliance would have developed more or less as it did even without the embargo, since it served the interests of both Moscow and Havana.

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The embargo also proved costly to the United States, specifically to those companies that had been heavily involved in trade with Cuba or that already had made substantial investments on the island. More costly than the embargo, however, were other aspects of U.S. policy that were adopted to offset or counter the threat that the Castro regime posed to U.S. interests in the hemisphere. Included here is the $20 billion Alliance for Progress, the costs of the counterinsurgency program, as well as other forms of U.S. military aid to the region. On the positive side, there were no additional Marxist revolutions in the Western Hemisphere until 1979. Whether this was primarily the result of the embargo, or of the combination of policies that Washington implemented following the Cuban revolution, or of other developments having little or nothing to do with U.S. policy remains debatable. If the embargo did play a role in containing the spread of Cuban communism, it did so only in combination with the economic and military aid that the United States provided to the rest of Latin America as part of its overall policy of containment. Détente and the Loosening of the Embargo Two developments in the 1970s changed Washington’s thinking on the embargo. Most important was détente with the Soviet Union, which reduced Washington’s concerns regarding Soviet expansion in the Western Hemisphere. The fact that Latin America’s Marxist guerrilla movements had been defeated by the end of the 1960s—the result of action by the region’s U.S.-aided militaries— contributed to Washington’s diminished preoccupation. The other important factor was the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, which made the United States look less powerful to Latin American governments and encouraged them to chart a more independent course. In 1975, for example, the Organization of American States voted to lift its embargo of Cuba and instead to allow each member country to decide what kind of trade relations it wished to have with the island. The administration of President Gerald Ford then partially relaxed its prohibition against foreign subsidiary trade with Cuba, explaining the decision as an effort to improve U.S. relations with third countries and to conform to the OAS resolution regarding trade with Cuba. Washington also relaxed its prohibition against third-country exports to Cuba that contained U.S.-origin parts, allowing such countries to request licenses to export goods containing up to 20 percent of such parts. The denial of aid to third countries that permitted their ships to trade with Cuba also was revoked. These limited efforts of the Ford administration to improve relations with the Castro regime were halted abruptly when Cuba sent tens of thousands of troops to Angola to help the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in its struggle against Jonas Savimbi. President Jimmy Carter, who had criticized the United States’ inordinate fear of communism, chose to downplay the extent to which Cuba’s intervention in

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the Angolan civil war constituted a threat to U.S. interests. He therefore further liberalized the embargo and made clear his desire to work toward a normalization of relations with Cuba. In 1977 Washington allowed passport restrictions on travel to Cuba to lapse, thereby enabling U.S. citizens to go to the island as tourists. It also allowed U.S. travelers to spend dollars if such expenditures involved travel and living expenses within Cuba. The following year Treasury regulations were changed to permit U.S. residents to send money to relatives in Cuba. The Carter administration also agreed to the opening of U.S. and Cuban interest sections in Havana and Washington, respectively. These were expected to lead to the exchange of ambassadors at a future date. Carter’s plans for improved relations between Washington and Havana were undermined when Castro sent Cuban troops to fight on the side of Marxist rebels in Ethiopia in late 1977. Carter felt that the Cuban leader had betrayed him. The Cuban government asserted then—and continues to claim—that conflicts between Havana and Washington over international issues can be negotiated but are not relevant to discussions regarding the possible normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba.4 Although the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba in the mid-1970s corresponded to new international realities, they also were based on a series of assumptions regarding the determinants of Castro’s attitude and behavior toward the United States. Supporters of a more relaxed embargo had argued that Castro’s behavior was a reaction to U.S. hostility toward him and his regime. They therefore assumed that better treatment by Washington would lead to less provocative and hostile behavior on the part of Castro. Instead, Castro’s behavior seemed to validate those who had argued that he would interpret a more liberal policy toward Cuba as a sign of U.S. weakness, which he would turn to his advantage. Perhaps more important in explaining Castro’s behavior, however, was the willingness of the Soviet Union to continue bankrolling his exploits abroad, despite the existence of U.S.-Soviet détente. As a result, Washington’s loosening—or tightening—of the embargo remained largely irrelevant to the Cuban regime as long as Castro could count on receiving billions of dollars of Soviet economic and military aid annually. The End of Détente and the Tightening of the Embargo Cuba’s exploits in Africa were but a prelude to resumed revolutionary activity in the Western Hemisphere. In 1979 two Marxist groups triumphed in the Caribbean Basin—the New Jewel Movement in Grenada and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Castro played a particularly crucial role in training the Sandinistas. Within days of their triumph, he sent Cuban advisers to Nicaragua to advise and organize the new Marxist government. He also continued to aid the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador.

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In response to two successful Marxist revolutions in Washington’s “backyard,” the Carter administration began pursuing—reluctantly—a more hard-line policy in the Caribbean Basin. Carter cut off aid to the Sandinista government (after being forced by Congress to do so) and increased military aid to El Salvador during the final months of his administration. Policy toward Cuba, however, remained essentially the same until the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980. After Secretary of State Alexander Haig vowed to “go to the source” of the Central American unrest—that is, Cuba— Washington once again severely restricted travel to the island, initially by limiting the ability of U.S. citizens to spend dollars there. In 1982 the restrictions were tightened further so that only a narrowly defined group of professionals were permitted to travel to Cuba for research purposes. In 1988 Congress asked the administration to submit recommendations for tightening the embargo against Cuban-origin imports. The Treasury Department also launched an initiative to block access to U.S. ports by Cuban shipping companies operating in third countries. The embargo was tightened in order to increase the costs to Castro of fomenting revolution abroad—essentially the same rationale that Washington used for supporting counterrevolutionary movements in Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Angola. Unlike the situation in the early 1960s, serious thought no longer was given to invading Cuba. The U.S.-Soviet agreement that had ended the missile crisis had included a U.S. promise not to use force to overthrow the Cuban government. In addition, the fact that the Cuban military had become one of the largest, best trained, and most experienced militaries in the hemisphere had made the costs to the United States of any attempted military invasion prohibitive. On the other hand, although a tightened embargo would increase the costs to Castro of spreading revolutionary unrest, the fact that the Soviets were providing him with billions of dollars annually made it doubtful that his efforts would be seriously undermined. Instead, increased sanctions should be seen more as a symbolic move, indicating Washington’s disapproval of Cuba’s behavior. This does not mean that the embargo had no economic impact during the Cold War. One European study claims that it cost Cuba approximately $40 billion over this 30-year period.5 A preliminary study by the Institute for Economic Research of Juceplan, Cuba’s central planning board, reached a similar conclusion.6 The fact remains, however, that whatever the economic cost of the embargo to Cuba in dollar terms, it was largely irrelevant since the Soviet Union, not Cuba, was paying for Castro’s revolutionary crusades. The embargo therefore should be measured in terms of its costs to the Soviet Union. To the extent that it helped draw Moscow into a closer and very costly relationship with the Castro government, it contributed somewhat to the USSR’s growing economic problems in the 1980s. On the other hand, the Soviets got good value for their investment in terms of the problems that Castro caused for the United States and the effort, time, and cost involved in dealing with them.

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The Soviet Collapse and the Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 led long-time critics of the U.S. embargo to hope for a liberalization of U.S. policy toward Cuba. They assumed that since the embargo was intimately linked to the Cold War and the Soviet threat to U.S. national security, the end of the Cold War would make the embargo obsolete. They also assumed that the fact that the embargo had never “worked,” in the sense of overturning Castro or making him behave in a manner less hostile to U.S. interests, would strengthen the rationale for “trying something new.”7 Supporters of the embargo, however, came to exactly the opposite conclusion. They reasoned that the embargo had never “worked” because the Soviets had provided the Castro government with approximately $6 billion of aid each year. Without Soviet aid, they concluded, Castro would be more vulnerable to U.S. economic sanctions.8 The administration of George Bush, having worked out a diplomatic solution to end the Nicaraguan civil war, seemed to lean more toward the argument that it was time to adopt a less hard-line policy toward Cuba. On the other hand, the upcoming presidential election in which Bush was seeking to be re-elected ultimately led him instead to support some tightening of the embargo in order partially to accommodate hard-line Republicans within his party, including many Cuban Americans. Early in 1992 Bush therefore barred from U.S. ports any ships that served routes to or from Cuba. He also tightened regulations regarding the sending of money and parcels by Cuban Americans to their relatives in Cuba. Bill Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, went even further, supporting passage of the Cuba Democracy Act, which sought to penalize U.S. companies whose foreign subsidiaries traded with the island nation. Bush followed suit. Neither he nor Clinton could afford to write off Florida’s 25 electoral votes and New Jersey’s 15. The focus on foreign subsidiaries was the result of a growing realization that trade between foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational corporations and Cuba was undermining the impact that the U.S. embargo could have in the absence of Soviet aid. Between 1980 and 1990 the total number of license applications to the U.S. Treasury for purposes of exporting to Cuba had increased from 164 to 321. More significantly, the value of subsidiary trade increased from $292 million in 1980 to $705 million in 1990. Of this amount, 76% were Cuban imports, and 71% of these imports were foodstuffs. The countries that accounted for most of this subsidiary trade were Switzerland, Argentina, France, Canada, and Great Britain.9 The Cuba Democracy Act—or, informally, the Torricelli bill, named after Democratic Congressman Robert Torricelli of New Jersey—further discouraged trade with Cuba by prohibiting ships entering Cuban ports for purposes of trade from loading or unloading freight in the United States for 180 days. It also sought to reduce Cuba’s access to dollars by more tightly restricting the kinds of U.S.

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citizens who could spend money in Cuba without special permission from the U.S. Treasury, and required those seeking to send remittances to the island to get licenses from the Treasury’s Office of Asset Controls. The act also authorized, but did not require, the president to declare any country providing assistance to Cuba ineligible for aid under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, ineligible for assistance or sales under the Arms Export Control Act, and ineligible under any program providing for the forgiveness or reduction of debt owed to the U.S. government. These efforts to tighten the U.S. embargo against Cuba represented the “stick” side of the Cuba Democracy Act. There was also a “carrot” side that allowed the president to waive the prohibitions on foreign subsidiary trade or the restrictions on third-country vessels trading with Cuba if and when he determined that the Cuban government had held free, fair, and internationally supervised elections; had allowed opposition parties sufficient time to organize and campaign; and had given them full access to the media, showed respect for civil liberties and human rights, and was moving toward the establishment of a market economy. On the assumption that increased communication between the United States and Cuba would strengthen internal opposition to the Castro regime, the bill also authorized expanded telephone and mail service to the island. The passage of that act also reflected the new post-Cold War era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. embargo could no longer be justified by reference to the Soviet threat. Nor could it be justified as punishment for Cuban support for revolution abroad, since the loss of Soviet aid had made it all but impossible for Cuba to “export revolution.” (Cuba steadfastly had denied charges that it was supporting Marxist guerrillas during the Cold War; after the Soviet collapse, it claimed it had stopped doing so.) As a result of the disappearance of the Soviet threat, therefore, Washington began to explain its Cuba policy in terms of the need to bring democracy, respect for human rights, and a market economy to the island.10 The U.S. government also believed that the continued isolation of the Cuban government was a good thing. Most of Latin America’s relatively new democracies were still fragile, and the region was in the process of opening and reforming its formerly statist economies. This involved the implementation of economic stabilization programs that, at least in the short run, reduced living standards and increased unemployment. In this context, it was deemed better to deprive the Castro government of the resources that would have enabled it to cause additional problems for Latin America’s already beleaguered governments. Given that Castro’s adventures in Latin America had depended greatly on his ability to fund them, this conclusion is reasonable. At the same time, however, Washington favored establishing more contact with, and providing assistance to, the Cuban people. This contact and assistance would help offset their dependence on the Castro government for information

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and enable the regime’s opponents to communicate and organize more effectively. This, then, became the rationale for the so-called Track II of the Cuba Democracy Act, which encouraged an increase in contact and communication with non-government groups and individuals on the island via telecommunications, visits by authorized U.S. travelers, and the like. The hard-line provisions of the Cuba Democracy Act appear to have accomplished some of their goals. By July 1993 the Cuban government had admitted that the law had raised its shipping costs by 42 percent. A study published by the Institute of European-Latin-American Relations (IRELA), a European Union think-tank, found that by December 1993 the act had cost Cuba about $1 billion, resulting from the higher prices that the country had to pay for imports and because of difficulties in exporting, problems with fleets, and so on.11 The Cuba Democracy Act took effect in 1992, the same year in which all Soviet aid remaining in the pipeline to Cuba dried up. The year 1993 marked the beginning of Cuba’s efforts to attract foreign capital in order to offset the loss of Soviet aid. Between 1993 and 1996 (when the so-called Helms-Burton law further tightened the U.S. embargo), the Castro government allowed Cubans to hold and use dollars and other foreign currencies, permitted self-employment by individual Cubans in more than 100 job categories, and approved the creation of free farmers’ markets and a number of retail markets for handicrafts and surplus products made by state enterprises. The government also began welcoming foreign investment, particularly in the tourism industry, while strictly controlling the hiring and payment of workers as well as the ability of ordinary Cubans to use the new recreation facilities. Since one of the goals of the Cuba Democracy Act was to move Cuba toward a market economy, the implementation of these and related reforms can be regarded as a positive impact of the legislation. On the other hand, the need for hard currency in the absence of Soviet aid was undoubtedly a more direct cause of Cuba’s limited economic opening. Nevertheless, the act exacerbated Cuba’s hard-currency shortage by raising the costs of production and trade. As a result, Cuba was forced to make more extensive economic reforms than it had intended originally. The conclusion that the U.S. embargo did significant damage to Cuba after the implementation of the Cuba Democracy Act is also evident from the Castro regime’s energetic campaign, following its passage, to have the embargo lifted. During the Cold War, Castro and his colleagues repeatedly had minimized the embargo’s impact, claiming that they did not care whether Washington lifted it or not. After the Soviet collapse and the tightening of the embargo, Cuban officials announced that the removal of the embargo was their top international priority.12 It is important to note, because of what came later, that the Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans in particular had strongly opposed the Cuba Democracy Act and had threatened to fight it. They objected particularly to the

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legislation’s extraterritorial reach, in that it stopped U.S. subsidiaries in foreign countries from trading with a third country.13 The actions of the three governments, however, never matched their early rhetoric. Instead, they seemed to resign themselves to the third-party sanctions contained in the new legislation —possibly because they soon realized that their own companies would benefit economically from the act. Although the legislation barred U.S. subsidiaries from trading with Cuba, it did not forbid foreign-owned enterprises from engaging in such trade. The Torricelli Bill therefore ended up benefiting foreign economic enterprises at the expense of U.S. companies. A second reason why the Europeans and others did not fight strongly against the act was their belief that U.S. policy toward Cuba would change during the Clinton administration. Despite the fact that Clinton had supported the act during the campaign, a number of his key Latin American policymakers had favored normalization of relations with the Castro government when they had served in the Carter administration. As a result, the Europeans and others may have decided that it was not worth making an issue of the Cuba Democracy Act, since it would be rescinded soon. Still another possibility is that they believed that Clinton would emphasize the so-called Track II part of the legislation, which called for increased contact and communication with the Cuban people, rather than the harder-line Track I, or third-party sanctions part of the law. Whatever the explanation, the fact that the Europeans and others did not follow their verbal opposition to the act with concrete action undoubtedly left the Clinton administration unprepared for their very different behavior with regard to the Helms-Burton law. The Further Tightening of the Embargo and the Cuba Libertad Act The limited economic reforms implemented by the Castro government after the Soviet collapse achieved their goal of increasing Cuba’s access to at least a portion of the hard currency needed to keep its economy functioning, albeit at a relatively low level. The reforms made it attractive for foreign companies to invest in sectors such as tourism, mining, and telecommunications without having to worry about U.S. competitors. Furthermore, Cuba’s desperate economic straits and its inability to enter the U.S. market allowed these foreign companies to drive a hard bargain with the Castro regime. As a result, foreign investment in Cuba increased dramatically between 1993 and 1996. What was particularly disturbing to the representatives of the Cuban American community in Congress was the fact that many of these investments involved former U.S. properties that had been confiscated by the Castro government shortly after it took power. The combination of the influx of foreign capital (which helped offset the Castro government’s loss of Soviet aid) and its use of expropriated U.S. property led in February 1996 to the passage of the Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, or the so-called Helms-Burton

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Act. President Clinton originally had opposed several of its punitive provisions but felt obliged to sign the legislation following the shoot-down by Cuban MiGs in international waters of two small private planes piloted by Cuban Americans. The bill, which passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming support, was signed by Clinton on March 12, 1996. The two most controversial provisions of the new law are Title III and Title IV. Title III enables U.S. nationals to bring lawsuits in federal court against foreign governments, companies, and individuals who “traffic” in expropriated U.S. property. However, it gives the president the power to delay implementation indefinitely (six month at a time) if he determines that the delay would be in the national interest of the United States and would facilitate a democratic transition in Cuba. Title IV denies entry into the United States of foreigners who traffic in expropriated property claimed by U.S. citizens. Corporate executives, owners, controlling shareholders and their immediate families, and agents would be prohibited from entering the United States except for medical reasons or to contest legal action taken against them because of their trafficking. Another important provision of the law codifies all existing economic sanctions against Cuba, including the embargo. It will now take an act of Congress to change the embargo. Helms-Burton also authorizes cuts in U.S. assistance to countries providing aid to Cuba, such as Russia, in an amount equal to the aid supplied by these countries. The most evident impact of the new legislation has been not on Cuba but on the Europeans, Canadians and Mexicans, all of whom have objected strongly to the provisions that allow the United States to impose sanctions on countries that traffic in confiscated U.S. property. In contrast to their limited response to similar types of provisions in the earlier Cuba Democracy Act, the Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans in particular have implemented so-called antidote legislation to counter whatever sanctions are applied against them under HelmsBurton. In addition, the Europeans have brought the case before the World Trade Organization (WTO), despite the fact that Washington claims that Helms-Burton is not a trade issue but an issue of U.S. national security. Under the organization’s rules, this would place the case outside of the WTO’s jurisdiction, at least as far as Washington is concerned. The United States has also repeatedly pointed out that Helms-Burton does not prohibit or penalize third-country trade with, or investment in Cuba, as many critics of the legislation claim or imply. Instead, it targets trade or investment involving former U.S. properties that have been illegally confiscated by the Castro government. In addition, the law does not provide for U.S. sanctions resulting from such trafficking to be applied in foreign countries (i.e., extraterritorially) but rather only within the United States. Thus, foreign companies “trafficking” in confiscated U.S. property in Cuba cannot be sued under Helms-Burton in the country in which their headquarters are located. Instead, legal claims can be made only against foreign subsidiaries of such companies within the United States. These arguments have done little to as-

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suage the Europeans. For their part, the Canadians and Mexicans have announced that they are planning to contest the compatibility of Helms-Burton with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The more immediate and strident reaction from Europeans to Helms-Burton may have more to do with Middle Eastern oil than with Cuba. At the time that Helms-Burton became law, other legislation involving sanctions against third countries that trade with Libya and Iran was making its way through the U.S. Congress. It was easier to object to the third-party sanctions embodied in the Cuba law, which had been passed already, than to a law that did not yet exist. More important, the U.S. national security rationale for third-party sanctions could be challenged more easily in the case of Cuba than in the cases of states currently engaged in terrorist activities, such as Iran and Libya. Washington was apparently caught off guard by the strong negative European reaction to Helms-Burton and has tried to work out a subsequent compromise. The Europeans have agreed temporarily to suspend their litigation over Helms-Burton in the WTO and work with Washington to develop “binding disciplines” that would “inhibit and deter” new investment in illegally confiscated property in Cuba and other countries. If no agreement is reached by October 15, 1997, the Europeans say they will revive their case before the World Trade Organization. (In fact, the deadline passed without an agreement or a renewed WTO challenge.) As of this writing, the Europeans have been willing to apply such new rules only to private property confiscated in the future rather than to already confiscated property. This continues to be unacceptable to the United States. If an agreement satisfactory to the United States is reached, the Clinton administration has promised to ask Congress to suspend the visa restriction provisions of Title IV. Washington also would like the Europeans to press Castro more strongly to respect human rights and hold free and fair elections. So far they have agreed to do so in principle, although how the principle will be implemented remains to be seen. If the Europeans and others really do help develop new international rules regarding confiscated property, this would have to be regarded as an important positive impact of Helms-Burton. The same point can be made regarding a more active stance by the Europeans in support of human rights and free and fair elections in Cuba. Until now the Castro government has been able to play the Europeans and the Americans against each other. In the process, Cuba has avoided becoming the object of a concerted effort on the part of Western democracies to force Castro to end his dictatorial rule. It is unlikely that European rhetoric, unsupported by actions, would have any major impact on his behavior. It could, however, further weaken Castro’s already diminished legitimacy and perhaps encourage more action on the part of his opponents within Cuba. In the meantime, it is difficult to come to a definitive conclusion regarding the impact of Helms-Burton on the Cuban economy. The law has been in exist-

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ence for over two years. It is generally conceded, even by critics, that economic sanctions act much more slowly than military force, for example, the alternative whose unacceptability or unfeasibility has often led to the adoption of economic sanctions as a second best option. To date, there is no consensus regarding what constitutes a reasonable waiting period before evaluating whether sanctions have worked. It seems doubtful, however, that any conclusion could be reached reasonably before five years or more have elapsed. Second, it is difficult to come by accurate data that would allow a realistic assessment of the legislation’s impact, since the Cuban government has stopped publishing information regarding foreign investment on the island. Havana has justified its decision as motivated by a desire to protect foreign investors from being sanctioned under Helms-Burton. This may well be true. On the other hand, it is equally plausible that the Castro government is refusing to publish such data because they show a significant decline in new foreign investment. Based on media accounts as well as reports from foreign diplomats based in Cuba, few of the biggest foreign investors have withdrawn from the island as a result of Helms-Burton. What some companies, such as Sherritt or Melia Hotels, have done is sell or spin off their U.S. based subsidiaries so as to avoid incurring sanctions under Helms-Burton. The Mexican telecommunications company, Domos, has backed out of its deal with the Cuban government, in part because of HelmsBurton and in part because of its own economic difficulties. Anecdotal evidence shows that a number of European banks have reneged on promised loans out of fear of incurring sanctions under Helms-Burton. Those that continue to lend to Cuba are charging interest rates ranging between 16 and 20 percent, and the loans are for less than a year. What is more difficult to measure is how the size and pace of new foreign investments in Cuba since Helms-Burton compare with what occurred prior to the implementation of the law. One is hard put to cite new, big foreign investments in Cuba since mid-1996, apart from one or two exceptions in the mining and tourism sectors. At the same time, there is growing evidence that Cuba’s economic difficulties are increasing, despite the limited number of economic reforms implemented after the Soviet collapse. After announcing that the 1997 harvest would exceed the 1996 one by 20 percent, the harvest proved smaller than that of the preceding year.14 The Cuban government has also claimed that the 7.5 percent economic growth achieved in 1996 was proof that Helms-Burton was not working. Carlos Lage, Cuba’s economic “czar,” admitted in December 1997, however, that the gross domestic product increase for 1997 equaled only 2.5 percent, or less than half the growth rate of the preceding year. In addition, it is doubtful that the Cuban government will be able to repay the $330 million loan that it incurred at 16 percent interest to finance the necessary inputs for the 1997 harvest. And the $1.7 billion trade deficit that Cuba accrued in 1996 is expected to be even larger in 1997. This represents the fifth consecutive year in which Cuba’s trade balance has deteriorated.15

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Tourism has been cited as the bright spot in the Cuban economy, with the government predicting that gross income from tourism in 1997 would generate $1.6 billion. The impression that the Castro government wants to leave is that increases in revenues from tourism will more than offset any damage done to Cuba by Helms-Burton. It is important to note, however, that although gross income from tourism has been increasing, so have the costs of imports and other inputs necessary to sustain the tourism industry. Specifically, such costs have increased from 38 percent of gross revenue in 1990 to 67 percent in 1996. Adjusting for this, net revenue from tourism in 1996 was only about $429 million, an amount that does not even begin to compensate for the income that Cuba will lose as a result of the decline in the 1997 sugar harvest.16 The extent to which Cuba’s recent economic problems are specifically the result of Helms-Burton or, for that matter, any of the earlier legislation, including the embargo and the Cuba Democracy Act, will remain debatable. This reinforces a point made earlier. If Cuba’s economic performance had shown a sustained improvement, or at least had avoided a decline over a number of years, critics of U.S. economic sanctions likely would have proclaimed them a failure. Now that Cuba’s economic performance shows a noted decline over the first year of the existence of Helms-Burton, however, sanction critics will be tempted to attribute the weaker economic performance to the Cuban governments own misguided economic policies, poor weather in Cuba, low world sugar prices, high world oil prices, the continuing fallout from the end of Soviet aid, and the globalization of the world economy, among others. The fact remains, however, that the first year of Helms-Burton coincides with a dramatic fall in Cuba’s economic growth rate over the preceding year from 7.8 percent in 1996 to 2.5 percent in 1997. This fact will leave the Castro government with no alternative but to undertake a new round of economic reforms. Fidel Castro loathes capitalism but wants and needs capital. He therefore will try to have his cake and eat it too, mainly by implementing economic reforms that encourage the entry of new capital or increase his government’s hard currency earnings without seriously undermining his control over the Cuban economy or people. In a sense, Castro is seeking his own version of the Chinese reform process, but without going as far in allowing private ownership as the Chinese have gone. He is restricting the reform process because he knows that it is easier for an opposition movement with access to resources to overthrow the government of an island of 11 million people than to overthrow the government of a huge country like China with a billion inhabitants. Conclusion During the past 36 years, the strongest supporters of economic sanctions against Cuba have hoped, if not believed, that the sanctions would lead to the

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overthrow or collapse of the Castro regime. Measured against these goals, the sanctions have clearly failed. Measured against the less ambitious goal of transforming the behavior of the Castro government, however, the sanctions have produced mixed results. They were least effective during the Cold War, when Cuba received billions of dollars in Soviet aid annually. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the termination of Moscow’s aid, the sanctions have had more of an impact. They have not been definitive in explaining recent changes in Cuban economic policy. They have, however, helped exacerbate Cuba’s hard currency crisis, thereby adding to the pressures on the Cuban leader to liberalize parts of the economy. The embargo also imposed economic costs on both sides; one study, for example, concludes that trade between Cuba and the United States could reach $6.5 billion a year after the first few years following the lifting of the embargo.17 The maintenance of the U.S. embargo against Cuba has, however, become increasingly controversial since the Soviet collapse, particularly among U.S. allies. Their criticism has grown in direct proportion to the degree to which Washington’s Cuba sanctions have directly affected their interests. Had the United States not tightened the embargo several years after the Cold War ended, it is likely that the Europeans, Canadians and others would have tacitly accepted its remaining in place. The Cuban American community, however, with the support of significant numbers of Democratic and Republican legislators, viewed the end of Soviet aid to Cuba as an opportunity to force change on the island. Therefore the embargo was tightened, first in 1992 by the Torricelli bill and then in 1996 by the Helms-Burton bill. The time covered by these bills coincides almost perfectly with the period during which the Castro government has experimented with limited reform. The year 1992, however, also coincides with the end to Soviet aid. It is, therefore, difficult to sort out the degree to which the Torricelli bill contributed to Cuba’s hard currency problems. What became clear rather quickly, however, was that the bill was keeping U.S. subsidiaries from trading with and investing in Cuba while allowing foreign ones to do so. This fact explains the essentially rhetorical opposition to the bill on the part of the Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans who then took no significant actions to follow through on their threats. The fact that the Torricelli bill did not affect foreign subsidiaries enabled Cuba partially to offset the loss of Soviet aid with capital from non-Communist countries. In reaction to this situation, some U.S. businesses began to mobilize against the embargo. Efforts to close this loophole began to be made even before the shootdown of the U.S. private planes by the Cuban MiGs in February 1996, although it is not clear that the most controversial parts of the Helms-Burton bill would have survived intact were it not for the groundswell of support generated by this incident. Precisely because Helms-Burton raised the costs to foreign companies of dealing with Cuba, however, it generated significant opposition on the part of

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the Europeans, Canadians, and Mexicans. On the other hand, the greater effectiveness of Helms-Burton in tightening the embargo could force the Cuban government to implement even more liberal economic reforms in the coming years. One unanswerable question is, therefore, whether the benefits of Helms-Burton ultimately will justify its costs. Assuming for the moment that Helms-Burton succeeds in forcing Cuba to open its economy further in order to attract more foreign capital, an additional question is whether such reforms ultimately will lead to a change of government in Cuba. Such a question may never be answerable. Indeed, even if the Castro regime were to collapse suddenly, supporters of the tightened embargo would claim victory while opponents would argue its essential irrelevance and attribute Castro’s fall to other factors. One other important question concerning the effectiveness of the embargo has, to date, received little attention. This is the issue of Cuba after Fidel and whether a transition to democracy and a market economy in a post-Castro Cuba would be easier or harder to achieve if the embargo remains in place. Most embargo opponents argue that its removal would make for a peaceful and successful transition to democracy in Cuba. Usually they have refrained from asking that the embargo be lifted unconditionally. Instead, they have advocated a quid pro quo approach, that is, a partial lifting of the embargo in response to some change for the better in the Castro regime in the area of human rights, democracy, and the like.18 This approach – essentially one of conditional or constructive engagement—has failed in the past and likely will fail in the future, since Castro will never willingly allow himself to be seen as succumbing to Washington’s directives. He may play with the idea of normalization, but at the moment that he perceives his control threatened, he will act in a way so as to trigger U.S. backtracking. Therefore, those who really believe that the lifting of the embargo will further U.S. interests should be willing to press for its unconditional lifting. It should also be pointed out that there is no guarantee that Castro’s behavior would change for the better in the absence of the embargo. At least during the Cold War, whenever Castro had surplus or even barely adequate resources, he chose to embark on new adventures which invariably caused problems for the United States. There is no reason to believe that this option would no longer be available to him, given Latin America’s many social problems. Embargo supporters argue that by keeping it in place, it will be harder for any future leader or for the Cuban military to maintain “Fidelism” after the latter’s departure from the scene. Stated differently, keeping the embargo in place will help ensure that something else is tried after Fidel. Opponents, in turn, claim that by maintaining the embargo, the most likely result of Fidel’s departure would be civil war and either chaos or a military takeover. In the end, the debate over the embargo and related sanctions may be less about what works but rather the political clout of those in the United States

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who care strongly about the issue. This is particularly true in the aftermath of the Cold War, when a U.S. president has a much harder time going against domestic political interests in the name of a larger U.S. security interest. As a result, as long as the Cuban Americans remain politically powerful and united their support of the embargo, it will remain in place. And when change finally comes to Cuba, they will argue that their tenacity finally paid off. The embargo’s opponents will reach exactly the opposite conclusion. Acknowledgement This article is excerpted with permission from the publisher from the book Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy, edited by Richard N. Haass. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1998. To order a copy of the book, contact the Council on Foreign Relations. Notes 1.

For a more detailed chronology of the events leading to the U.S. embargo against Cuba see Michael Krinsky and David Gorove (eds.), U.S. Economic Measures Against Cuba, (Aletheia Press: Northampton Press, 1993) p. 107– 113; and Jorge I. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution, (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1978) p. 146–148. 2. Krinsky and Gorove, U.S. Economic Measures, p. 112–113. 3. Ibid p. 114. 4. Philip Brenner, From Confrontation to Negotiation: U.S. Relations with Cuba (Boulder, CO and London: Westview Press, 1988), p.50. 5. Gerardo Trueba González, “Los Efectos del Bloqueo de Estados Unidos en Cuba: Características y Perspectivas,” in Cuba: Apertura Económica y Relaciones con Europa (Madrid, Spain: Instituto de Relaciones EuropeoLatinoamericanas (IRELA), 1994), p.84. 6. Krinsky and Golove, p. 139. 7. For examples of these kinds of arguments see Andrew Zimbalist, “Dateline Cuba: Hanging on in Havana,” Foreign Policy, no. 92 (Fall 1993), p. 151– 167, and Donald E. Schulz, The United States and Cuba: From a Strategy of Conf lict to Constructive Engagement (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute-U.S. Army War College, May 12, 1993). 8. See Mark Falcoff, Cuba and the U.S.: Thinking About the Future (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Special Report of the Strategic Studies Institute—U.S. Army War College, December 9, 1992), p. 3–9, and Susan Kaufman Purcell, “Collapsing Cuba,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 1 (America and the World, 1991/92), p. 130–145. 9. Purcell, “Collapsing Cuba,” p. 132. 10. See the speech by Michael E. Ranneberger, the U.S. Department of State’s Coordinator for Cuban Affairs, delivered at Friedrich Hayek University in

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

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Coral Gables, Florida, November 17, 1997, available on the Internet at http://w w w.state.gov/w w w/regions/ara/97117_ranneberger.html. For a statement of the consistency between U.S. support for democracy, human rights, and a market economy in Cuba and U.S. policy toward the rest of the Western Hemisphere, see the speech by Jeffrey Davidow, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, delivered to the American Enterprise Institute and Friedrich Hayek University (Cuba Vision Series) in Washington, DC, July 28, 1997, available on the Internet at http:// www.state.gov/www/regions/ara/970728_davidow.html. Gerardo Trueba González, “ Los Efectos del Bloqueo de Estados Unidos en Cuba: Características y Perspectivas,” p. 83. Edward González, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters? (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1996) p. x. Andrew Zimbalist, “Magnitud y Costos del Embargo de Estados Unidos en Cuba y Terceros Países,” in Cuba: Apertura Económica y Relaciones con Europa (Madrid, Spain: IRELA, 1994), p. 96. Latin American Advisor (New York, NY: International Advisory Group, Inc., December 15, 1997), p. 2. “Cuba: The Last Communists,” The Economist, January 17, 1998, p. 19–21. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Short on Sweet,” Hemisfile: Perspectives on Political and Economic Trends in the Americas 8, no. 4 (July/August 1997), p. 5. Krinsky and Gorove, U.S. Economic Measures, p. 130–131. See, for example, Gillian Gunn, Cuba in Transition: Options for U.S. Policy (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1993); Wayne S. Smith, “Cuba’s Long Reform,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 2 (March/ April 1996), p. 99– 112; Jorge I. Domínguez, “The Secrets of Castro’s Staying Power,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 2 (March/ April 1993); and Inter-American Dialogue, Cuba in the Americas: Breaking the Policy Deadlock (Washington, DC: Second Report of the Inter-American Dialogue Task Force on Cuba, September 1995), p. ii.

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30 Cuba and the United States: Back to the Beginning Mark Falcoff The publication—after the usual thirty-year delay—of the U.S. diplomatic documents relating to the collapse of the Batista regime in Cuba and the emergence of Fidel Castro comes at a particularly propitious moment.1 For the first time in decades, Washington is faced with the prospect of serious political change on the island and, with it, the need to redefine a relationship heavily fraught with historical baggage. Obviously, nobody can say when that change will occur or what form it win take. But it certainly will be no less traumatic for Cubans than the upheavals of 1898, 1933, or 1959—events that in one way or another redefined the very nature of the Cuban nationality and, therefore, also the country’s relationship with its most important neighbor. At the same time, because Cuba’s problems have had a way of becoming our own, this article will attempt to help us to understand how we got where we are today. Under review are some six hundred documents, including cable traffic between the U.S. embassy in Havana and the State Department; minutes of meetings of the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and inter- agency working groups; memoranda of conversations with President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (later, Christian Herter); and special National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Cuba produced by the CIA at the request of the executive branch. It will probably surprise no one that there is little in this volume likely to revise the conventional historiography of U.S.-Cuban relations. That is, those who believe that the blame for the current state of affairs lies entirely with the United States—either for supporting Batista or for pushing an idealistic Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union or, more likely, both—will have to continue their search for the “smoking gun”; it certainly will not be found here. 471

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Nor is there much new in the way of hard information on this crucial period. The main lines of the story related in the documents—the agony and collapse of the Batista regime, the accession of Fidel Castro, the growing confrontation with the United States, and, finally, the break in diplomatic relations and the imposition of economic sanctions—is already well known. However, these documents do add a crucial sense of texture and some new and unexpected wrinkles to the story. The most important of these is the sense of widespread confusion and disagreement among the various parties involved in Cuban policy during these crucial thirty-six months—Departments of State, Treasury, Agriculture, and Defense; the U.S. business community in Cuba; the White House and Congress; and last but not least, the American press. (We are continually reminded that in those unimaginably remote pre-Vietnam days, both Congress and press were often inclined to be nationalistic and even bellicose.) These documents lay bare the fact that until quite late in the day there was no single, crisp response to the events in Cuba, nor—given the complexity of American interests there—could there easily have been. For much of the time, Washington was engaged in a complicated balancing act-between those who wanted to allow the government in Cuba greater latitude for self-correction and those who wanted to land on it full-force; between those who favored economic weapons to discipline the Castro regime and those who feared the loss of an important market; above all, between those who wanted to deal with Cuban events in isolation, and those who preferred to see them in their wider global (that is, cold war) context. Only toward the end of the period covered in these documents did the Eisenhower administration definitively shift from the former to the latter, and that only when the Soviet Union’s involvement in the island (and Cuba’s voluntary alignment with Moscow) made any other response impossible. Getting Batista Out General Fulgencio Batista had come to power in Cuba through a coup d’etat in March 1952, so that at the time the volume opens, he was about to complete his (self-designated) six-year presidential term. Though he ruled as a dictator, Batista was no ordinary Latin American martinet; he had been freely elected to the presidency in 1940, and presided over a remarkably progressive government during World War II, with the support and even for a time the participation of the Communist party. His return to power in 1952, after eight years of highly corrupt and grossly ineffective administration by civilian politicians, had been greeted with frank relief by some Cubans and by massive indifference on the part of others. By early 1958, however, Batista had exhausted his political credit with the Cuban public, including important sectors of the business community. He was

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now facing growing civic opposition consisting of not only unemployed politicians, but jurists, academics, professionals, students, and labor leaders. Though Fidel Castro’s 26th of July movement was already active in the Sierra Maestra mountains in the easternmost province of Santiago, it was the civic opposition— which most nearly represented the major forces of opinion—that dominated the political scene in 1956 and 1957. Batista’s refusal to come to terms with this relatively moderate political force was based on the cynical calculation that by simply digging in, he would force open the potential divisions within its ranks, eventually rendering it irrelevant. In this he was correct: by early 1958, the civic opposition was beginning to fall apart. What Batista failed to see was that under such circumstances Cubans would not necessarily turn back to him, but would turn to whatever alternative remained. As 1958 wore on, faute de mieux Fidel Castro became the logical and inevitable focus of opposition sentiment. Batista regarded the United States embassy as an important pawn in this game, since—like most Cubans—he held fast to the notion that Washington possessed the power to make and unmake governments on the island. This was evidently untrue, but its widespread acceptance throughout Cuba meant that all actions taken by the United States, including ones of mere symbolic value, acquired the potential of becoming major political facts. This point was driven home to Washington continually by the serving American ambassador, Earl E. T. Smith. In the years since our Cuban debacle, Smith—a Florida investment banker and major contributor to the Republican party—has not enjoyed good press. At the time of his retirement, he was regarded as the very antimodel of an American ambassador in Latin America, someone who—through his lack of academic preparation (he did not speak or understand Spanish), ignorance of the country to which he was accredited, and uncritical support of an unpopular dictator— managed to permanently damage his country’s interests. The cables in this volume suggest a rather different picture. They reveal Smith to be remarkably well-informed on Cuban events and tragically prophetic as to that nation’s future. Rather than specifically pro-Batista, he might be described as rigidly (and, as it turned out, prematurely) anti-Castro. But his purpose is clear: not so much to sustain Batista’s dictatorship as to prevent it from collapsing until it could be replaced by free and fair elections, which were promised for June 1958 (and subsequently postponed to November). This proved a far from easy task. By early 1958, Batista was playing a cat-and-mouse game with the State Department over restoration of constitutional guarantees. Washington’s view was that both these and an atmosphere conducive to free and fair elections were necessary antecedents to further shipment of arms to the Cuban government; Havana, on the other hand, regarded the latter as a necessary precondition to reestablish its credibility and “negotiate from strength” with its opponents.

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Meanwhile, some members of Congress and one or two democratic Latin American governments were beginning to complain that—in violation of existing treaties—U.S. military equipment sold to Cuba for “hemispheric defense” was being used for internal purposes, including, it was (incorrectly) alleged, napalm for the bombing of civilian populations. Washington demanded assurances from Batista that this was not the case. Smith argued that such a demand was both unrealistic and improper. (“If we feel that such use of MAP equipment is improper, [the] only way to be sure of avoiding it is to refuse to supply [it] in the first place.”2) The Department obliged him on 14 March 1958 by promptly putting a permanent hold on the shipment of both armored cars and M-1 rifles, the “psychological effect” of which, the ambassador cabled, “may bring about [the] overthrow of Batista.”3 While its effect was less devastating than that, Smith was right to note a drastic shift in the political landscape; by embargoing arms shipments, the United States had not—as it thought—taken itself out of Cuba’s civil strife, but rather placed rebels and government on a plane of equality. The change in mood was obvious not only in Havana but in Washington. Acting Secretary Christian Herter wrote Smith that “from here it appears that [the] Batista regime has utterly failed to convince [the] Cuban people and certainly [the] U.S. public of its intention to carry out free elections.” It asked for an immediate estimate of “its ability to survive [the] present crisis and for how long.” The same cable called for an analysis of alternatives, including an evaluation of Fidel Castro.4 Between March and November, the cable traffic is dominated by two issues. The first is a tug-of-war between Ambassador Smith and the State Department over the resumption of arms shipments. The embassy in Havana outlined with considerably cogency the methodological impossibility of isolating U.S. equipment and personnel trained to use it from the main fighting forces of the Cuban army, which were by now engaged in fighting Castro’s rebels. The Department, however, was beginning to worry that bombing and strafing rebel areas might lead to “reprisals against Americans.” One visiting official even suggested that the U.S. government “should consider the evacuation of our people from the area and perhaps from other areas in Cuba [as well].”5 The other issue had to do with elections. Batista knew that, all things being equal, his handpicked candidate, Andres Rivero Agüero, stood little chance of succeeding him. Therefore, he balked at restoring constitutional guarantees until the last possible minute, effectively preventing the opposition from organizing a campaign of its own. By late July, the State Department was despairing that there was little prospect of “anything resembling an acceptable election in Cuba.” This could only redound to the benefit of Castro’s 26th of July movement, which the Department regarded “so far [as having] given no indication of political or moral responsibility.” The same document admitted that the arms embargo had not convinced Batista to lift his state of siege and allow normal political life, putting the De-

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partment in the uncomfortable position of having to weigh “an expiring unpopular regime” against “an incoherent cluster of revolutionary groups whose total uncoordinated efforts add up to nothing but a vacuum.”6 For his part, Ambassador Smith responded that “instead of winning friends in Cuba, the [net] result of our neutral position is to please no one.”7 It was a situation that the United States would face many times in the future, in Latin America and elsewhere. The elections were scheduled for 3 November. By mid-August, Foreign Minister Gonzalo Güell was informing Ambassador Smith that promised plans to restore civic rights some forty-five days prior to the event were no longer feasible—this time because military progress against Castro’s rebels had not gone as well as expected. This state of affairs, the minister archly added, was “due to the failure of the GOC to receive the necessary arms from the United States.”8 Though Smith was disappointed, he cabled Washington that he still hoped that the government’s overthrow could be avoided until it had the opportunity to transfer power to its successor, and in the meanwhile begged Washington not to discourage “other nations” (Belgium, Canada, and Great Britain) from selling arms to Batista if the need arose.9 The elections went off on 3 November as anticipated—that is, with Batista’s candidate winning by default. Ambassador Smith tried to blunt the effect by arguing to Washington that the elections, though far from perfect (!), were still better than none at all. Ironically, President-elect Rivero Agüero seemed to hold a more modest view of his own prospects, since he told Smith over lunch a few days after his victory of his intention of abbreviating his presidential term to two years and calling a constituent assembly to allow Cubans to iron out their political differences.”10 Other Cubans, including members of the high command of the Cuban army, had even less confidence in the new president’s prospects; a civilian sent to Washington by the generals urged the State Department on 18 November to support a preemptive coup (with civilian support) to forestall Rivero Agüero’s inauguration on 24 February 1959. When a senior American diplomat expressed considerable skepticism, the intermediary insisted that “any indication by us of a desire for change would ‘solve Cuba’s problems in seven minutes.’”11 Between Batista and Castro: The Pawley Plan In late November, Ambassador Smith returned to Washington to argue for support for the new government, including a token shipment of arms. Secretary Dulles told Smith that neither were possible “unless and until there is evidence that [Rivero Agüero’s] program has the support of major segments of the population.”12 Meanwhile, without Smith’s knowledge, the State Department and the CIA had delegated William D. Pawley, former ambassador to Peru and Brazil, to visit Batista privately and offer him the opportunity to live with his family in Florida

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if he agreed to name a caretaker government—a civil-military junta composed of five of his political opponents. This would provide the United States with an acceptable government to which to ship arms, and would forestall the victory of Fidel Castro. Since Pawley’s mission was unofficial, however, he could not offer Batista the ironclad assurances he demanded. The dictator, therefore, showed him to the door.13 Two weeks later, on 14 December, Ambassador Smith received instructions to “pull the plug” on Batista—that is, to inform the Cuban government that the United States would not support, even in ovo, the government of Rivero Agüero. This amounted to a death warrant for the regime. Some of its highest functionaries—civilian and military—either headed for exile in the United States or sought to make their peace with Castro’s rebels. Castro himself grew to mythic proportions in a matter of days, as he rushed forward to fill the political vacuum. So much was this the case, that when Batista finally agreed to resign on 31 December 1958, the State Department was forced to concede that they could not deny Castro a place on the junta that Ambassador Smith was hastily trying to cobble together.14 As this information was being received in Washington, Batista, his family, and his closest collaborators were fleeing Cuba in private planes for the Dominican Republic. Who was Castro? From the very beginning, the Batista government tried to represent Castro and his movement as Communist to the embassy and the State Department. These charges were viewed with considerable skepticism, but, as 1958 wore on, Washington demanded increasing amounts of information about the rising revolutionary leader. The confusion was understandable. In the first place, Castro denied being a Communist, but what is even more to the point, so did his Argentine associate Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara when directly questioned by Homer Bigart of the New York Times.15 Moreover, the chief appeal of Castro and his movement was its calculated ideological ambiguity. As the U.S. consul in Santiago explained to Washington, the revolutionaries represented “anything and everything to anyone and everyone. . . . The Castro movement has an unusual appeal to all sectors of Cuban society, either legitimate or convenient.”16 In the second place, the relevant agencies of the U.S. government were unable to uncover any concrete evidence of Communist connections, possibly because there were none to be found until very late in the year, when (we now know) the Cuban party made its first démarches to the Castro movement. The result was a kind of vague discomfort that was not very helpful in making difficult policy choices. A good example is the report of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (I&R) at the Department of State in April that there is “little about [the] top leadership [of the 26th of July] to inspire

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confidence. . . . Although the evidence available to the Department does not confirm the Cuban government’s charge that Castro is a Communist, it does suggest that he is immature and irresponsible.”17 By late September, when Castro’s prospects had perceptibly improved, there was a call for fresh information. The Division for Research and Analysis for the American Republics explained that “the best information which we have at hand supports the belief that Fidel Castro is not a Communist and that Communists do not play a dominant role in the leadership of the 26th of July Movement.” But it hedged its bets by adding that “our information is not as conclusive as we would like.”18 At a meeting of the National Security Council on 23 December—that is, little more than a week before Batista’s collapse—CIA director Allen Dulles suddenly argued that “the Communists appear to have penetrated the Castro movement, despite some effort by Fidel to keep them out. If Castro takes over in Cuba, Communist elements can be expected to participate in the government.”19 This assessment caused President Eisenhower to sit up and demand to know why an issue of this importance was being brought up only now—with Batista evidently in extremis. The ensuing minute makes fascinating reading: The Vice President [Nixon] said . . . we could not support Batista in order to defeat Castro. [1 sentence (1+1/2 lines) not declassified]. Mr. Allen [USIA director] wondered why the U.S. should attempt to prevent a Castro victory. Mr. Dulles said there was a feeling Castro was backed by extremely radical elements. The Vice President [Nixon] pointed out it would be undesirable to take a chance on Communist domination of Cuba, which had one of the largest Communist parties in the hemisphere in proportion to population . . . The President believed the U.S. should take a position progressives could support. Mr. Quarles [Deputy Secretary of Defense] thought there was no “third force” . . . to support. The President saw hope of a third force” growing in strength and influence if it were organized around an able man and provided with money and arms. Secretary Herter felt a contingency paper was needed.20

Within hours of Castro’s victory, Secretary Herter was reporting that the best intelligence on the subject is that “[Communist] infiltration has taken place but [its] extent and degree of influence [are] not yet determined from the evidence available.” To which he added, “It is . . . clear that [the] 26th of July Movement has shown little sense of responsibility or ability to govern Cuba satisfactorily, and that its nationalistic line is [a] horse which Communists know well how to ride.”21 Of course, to Cubans—if not to Americans—Castro himself was far from an unknown, having been active in politics since his university days. Indeed, he was even a candidate for the Cuban Congress in the 1952 elections that were never held. In 1956, he and a group of companions attempted to seize the Moncada fortress in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest city, a foolhardy venture that led to his trial and imprisonment. Amnestied in 1955, he had

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moved to Mexico, from where he launched another revolutionary expedition the following year, establishing his base in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Eastern Cuba. When they were not trying to tar Castro with the Communist brush, Batista’s people were often quite accurate in their evaluations, or at least prescient. For example, President-elect Rivero Agüero told Ambassador Smith that there was really no point in attempting to reach a settlement with Castro, whose basic interest was in preventing a negotiated outcome rather than promoting it. He characterized the rising rebel leader as “a sick man . . . consumed by an overwhelming ambition to overthrow the Government by force.”22 Foreign Minister Güell told the U.S. envoy that “if Castro succeeds, Cuba will have a real dictatorship. With Castro’s Communistic projected program, [the] situation in Cuba will be worse than in [any] Latin American country—and that includes Guatemala.”23 While Smith seems not to have bought the Communist charges, he did feel that the United States could not do business with Fidel Castro.24 The United States Faces the Revolution Roughly two-thirds of the cables in this volume deal with the period between Castro’s assumption of power on New Year’s Day, 1959, and the decision of the United States to break with the regime in the final days of 1960. Between January-April 1959, the United States attempted to come to terms with the new government, naming a new ambassador and establishing contact with its authorities, many of whom turned out to be moderates or even conservatives well known to the embassy and the U.S. business community. The high point of this period was Fidel Castro’s visit to the United States in April. The second period, from May to October, is dominated by the promulgation of an agrarian reform law that struck frontally at an important segment of the U.S. agribusiness community. In the third, from October 1959 to January 1960, the last moderates had left the government, leading Washington to pin its hopes on the emergence of a respectable anti-Castro opposition. The fourth runs from January to April 1960, when the U.S. ambassador was recalled and the Eisenhower administration began to formulate a plan of covert action against the regime. The fifth, from April-July 1960, is characterized by a new policy intended to weaken the Cuban economy, undermine support for Castro, and lead to political change. The sixth, from July-September, deals with the response by the United States (and to some degree the Organization of American States) to increased Soviet support for the Cuban government. The seventh and last (September-December, 1960) deals with the considerations that led up to severance of diplomatic relations. Much of the controversy surrounding the current non-relationship between the United States and Cuba swirls about different interpretations or uses of chronology. Was Castro “pushed” into the arms of the Soviet Union, or did he

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“jump” of his own accord? Was he reacting against an arrogant, insensitive United States, or was he pursuing a course of action upon which he had decided in advance? What do the documents in this volume contribute to this controversy? There was really no “honeymoon” with the Castro regime, but neither was the United States rigidly and unalterably opposed to working with the new government. While the U.S. government and business community were unenthusiastic about Castro’s victory, both favored immediate recognition of the new regime. Ambassador Smith was immediately replaced by Philip Bonsal, a career diplomat with extensive Latin American experience, who was regarded as—and in fact, was—”softer” than his predecessor. Batista, languishing in the Dominican Republic, was repeatedly refused a visa to enter the United States. The embassy in Havana recognized that the new government was a coalition of several tendencies, with the Communists by no means the most powerful. Chargé Daniel Braddock, who thought Castro had an ambivalent attitude towards the United States, urged “a cautious and restrained policy.”25 Almost from the very beginning, however, the new government gratuitously engaged in fiery anti-American rhetoric, supposedly inspired by the role the United States had played in supporting Batista. Old charges of napalm were revived to stir up popular emotions, even though, as Washington now discovered, during the previous six months it was Castro, not Batista, who had been the principal recipient of U.S. arms, albeit clandestinely.26 Within two weeks of his victory, Castro was accusing the U.S. military mission in Havana of “spying,” and demanding its recall. Castro and Guevara began to support rebel expeditions in neighboring countries—the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, even Panama. At the same time, sensational show trials of former Batistiano officials and collaborators—followed by drumhead executions—were taking place at various places around the island. The speed and, above all, the lack of concern for judicial niceties with which these took place led to considerable criticism in the U.S. press, which Castro himself took as a personal affront. (After Hiroshima, he declared in one speech, the United States had no moral right to call others to account.) In another speech, on 5 February, Castro attributed his country’s perennial economic troubles to “dictation by U.S. ambassadors.”27 During this same period, moderate and conservative members of Castro’s government were trying to set up a visit for him to the United States. This, they hoped, would smooth out some of the problems in bilateral relations, and at the same time influence him in a sensible direction at home. Before the White House and State Department had an opportunity to reach a decision, Castro had gone ahead and accepted an invitation to address the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington. This put the Eisenhower administration in an extremely embarrassing position. At a meeting of the National Security Council on 26 March 1959, the president and his closest advisors actually contemplated refusing Castro a visa,

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but were finally persuaded to stand down by Allen Dulles, who said that “there was a slow-growing movement against Castro in Cuba [and] we must be careful not to do anything which would tend to discourage its growth.” The cancellation of the Castro speech, he suggested, “might be such an action.”28 The Department therefore set into motion the mechanisms for what protocol refers to as a “Working Visit.” Much criticism in retrospect has been levered at President Eisenhower for failing to receive Castro when he cane to Washington, particularly since the Cuban prime minister (as he was from 14 February) was fobbed off on Vice President Richard Nixon. In fact, however, Eisenhower’s decision to be away from the capital predated knowledge of the visit. Indeed, the president told Herter on 31 March that if for some reason his plans changed, “disagreeable as it might be, he would, if here, see [Castro] at his office.”29 Moreover, Castro accepted “with pleasure” the prospect of meeting Vice President Nixon in Eisenhower s place.30 Contrary to what Nixon has later said in his memoirs and elsewhere, his meeting with the new Cuban leader was almost cordial. According to the vice president’s own memorandum of the meeting, they argued at length about Castro’s decision to postpone elections for four years; his opposition to private capital in the development of Cuba; his treatment by the American press. Nixon seems to have liked Castro, or at least admired his evident leadership abilities, though, as minuted for the record, “he is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline—my guess is the former.”31 For his part, Castro later put it out that Nixon had spent much of his time defending the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.32 There was no “lost opportunity” to buy Castro off with offers of economic aid. It has been known for some time that Castro had instructed his financial advisors who accompanied him to Washington not to ask for U.S. aid.33 The documentation here goes even further, revealing that moderate elements “in or near the government” were urging the embassy in Havana to postpone aid even in the event that it were requested, at least until Castro (1) ceased his anti-American rhetoric, (2) curbed growing Communist infiltration of the government, and (3) modified his radical socio-economic measures, such as a highly unrealistic rent control law. “They express [the belief],” Braddock cabled, that “U.S. assistance now would postpone [the] date for [a] showdown on [the] economic situation.”34 Indeed, the embassy reported, a number of people within the government were confiding to it the “hope that [the] U.S. will be firm in handling Castro, and either force him to reverse his present trends of irresponsibility and radicalism internally and neutrality internationally or break with him.”35 In Washington with Castro, Cuban Central Bank President Felipe Pazos confided to officials at State and Treasury that he felt himself helpless in the face of other, closer and more important advisers. Having been ordered not to request eco-

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nomic assistance, Pazos confined himself to asking for an increase in the Cuban sugar quota. This evident division between Castro and his senior economic advisors apparently persuaded the Eisenhower administration that the new regime was a shaky affair that might not last. This impression was certainly underpinned by cables from Havana explaining that “Cubans opposed to Communism, both in and out of the government, are beginning to take firm and outspoken stands.”36 Castro’s economic policies, such as they were, were so unrealistic that it was difficult to imagine how—in the absence of massive Soviet aid of a type that was then considered unlikely—the government could satisfy the country’s basic needs. Land reform was a serious irritant, but it was overruled by other U.S. interests and concerns. On 17 May 1959, a new agrarian reform law was promulgated that, in effect, confiscated the properties of large American land and mill owners in Cuba. This provoked a more complicated response from Washington than Castro himself has subsequently claimed.37 In the first place, the State Department accepted immediately Cuba’s right to expropriate; its objection arose from the provisions for compensation, which did not pretend to take U.S. properties on the island at anything like their true value. However, even this was not viewed as an insuperable difficulty; the Department instructed Bonsal to urge the Cuban government to enter into negotiations leading to a satisfactory settlement.38 In the second place, although agribusiness was an important part of the $774 million in U.S. investment in Cuba, it was by no means the only economic interest there. Indeed, the sugar quota, which reserved for Cuba about 25 percent of the U.S. domestic market, flooded the island with hard currency, creating a huge market for American products, from insurance to wholesale groceries, from the sale of movie tickets to electrical appliances and automobiles. Thus, even as late as December 1959, when the American business community as a whole was beginning to see in Castro’s cavalier treatment of U.S. property a dangerous example that might spread elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Havana was still opposing punitive suspension of the sugar quota.39 Third, Cuba’s prearranged position in the U.S. domestic sugar market meant that it was not possible to abolish its quota overnight without causing serious shortages and disruptions at home. At one point, the Eisenhower administration even thought that it might be necessary to ration sugar until several growing seasons had elapsed and the import quota could be reallocated.40 Moreover, decisions about the domestic sugar market were made on a four-year basis by the Agriculture Department, the next quadrennium of which was supposed to begin in mid-1960. Given the uncertainties created by the new situation on the island, Washington was understandably reluctant to act precipitously. Fourth, there was a genuine fear in Washington that punitive use of the sugar quota—quite apart from contravening GATT rules, and also the norms of

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the Organization of American States (GAS)—would have counterproductive political effects in Cuba itself. As Secretary Rubottom noted in early December 1959, such an act would strengthen, not weaken, Castro domestically, and would disarm the growing opposition on the island. Another consideration, presumably not a small one, was the need to keep the Cuban economy sufficiently viable to eventually compensate American companies for their losses.41 Finally, the Eisenhower administration’s hand was stayed by a sense that perhaps a more friendly Cuban government might be in place twelve to fifteen months hence. This was, as it turned out, a radical misreading of the local reality. But the Cubans, including apparently their embassy in Washington, were likewise guilty of self-deception: they thought Washington’s reluctance to abolish the quota overnight meant that the United States could not live without Cuban sugar, thus encouraging Havana to become more unyielding on the subject of compensation for expropriated properties, and on other matters as well. Indeed, Castro had taken to claiming that the sugar quota, which assured a market for half of Cuba’s crop and provided the country with two-thirds of its foreign exchange, was somehow a colonial burden from which he proposed to liberate his country.42 With respect to the sugar quota, then, the Eisenhower administration can hardly be accused of a lack of restraint. As late as April 1960, when the first shipment of Russian crude oil to the regime was already en route and envoys from Havana were in Moscow discussing military commitments, Washington was still reluctant to suspend it altogether; instead, it ordered the Agriculture Department to make its import allocations on an annual rather than quadrennial basis.43 It pulled the Cuban quota only in July, when a Cuban-Soviet mutual security treaty was under active discussion in Havana and Moscow. Despite its distaste for unfolding events in Cuba, throughout 1959 the Eisenhower administration made serious efforts to crack down on exile overf lights and other exilebased counterrevolutionary activities. Almost immediately after Batista’s fall, various right-wing military and civilian elements that had managed to escape to the United States began to operate against the island from bases in Florida. Typically, these involved anything from the airborne distribution of leaflets to the dropping of incendiary bombs on Cuban cane fields or sugar mills. As early as October 1959, Rubottom warned Undersecretary Herter that unless “concerted effort is made to halt such activities . . . the impression will undoubtedly be gained in Cuba and other quarters that they have the tacit approval of the U.S. government.”44 The proper course of action, he added, was to encourage a “suitable opposition” within Cuba.45 Moreover, Rubottom explained, such activities were counterproductive from the point of view of U.S. policy. They were grist for Castro’s propaganda mill; they encouraged him in his efforts to obtain arms from the Soviet bloc; justified his posture before hemispheric opinion; tended to consolidate support for the regime at home, and endangered the lives of Americans resident in Cuba.46

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There can be no doubt that serious efforts were made by the U.S. government to end these overflights. They were outlined in detail at a cabinet meeting on 25 March 1960.47 At the same time, there was a genuine reluctance to become involved politically with the kinds of people who perpetrated them. For example, in June, Secretary Herter told President Eisenhower that Ambassador Pawley was working with a group of right-wing Cubans, including former Batista police officials. “The President asked Mr. Herter to call up Mr. Pawley and tell him to get out of this operation [less than 1 line not declassified].”48 The State Department struggled as long as possible to insert the Castro revolution into the known taxonomy of Latin American nationalist regimes. This was not always easy, because from almost the first days of the new Cuban government, Communists played a role wildly disproportionate to their domestic political following or their role in the overthrow of Batista. Moreover, as Ambassador Bonsal put it in July 1959, “of as much concern to the Embassy as avowed Communists are revolutionary leaders who, while denying they are Communists, follow a course which we believe favors Communist objectives and stimulates anti-Americanism.”49 Nonetheless, Castro’s rhetoric often simply restated the stock themes of Cuban nationalism, which after all much predated the existence of Communism on the island (and elsewhere). This encouraged efforts on the part of the State Department to compare the new Cuban government with others in recent Latin American history that, though initially brandishing the banner of anti-Americanism and nationalism, had moderated over time. As late as January 1960, Secretary Rubottom made reference to the Perón regime, which had been overthrown in Argentina five years before. 50 The following month, the Department’s policy planning staff argued that, with luck, the United States might get something like the Bolivian revolution of 1952.51 This line of analysis had concrete policy implications: if Castro was an “indigenous Latin American nationalist,” the United States could afford to wait out the natural course of events. If, on the other hand, Cuba was (or was becoming) part of the Soviet family of revolutions, immediate plans had to be made to neutralize or overthrow it. By late March 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency was beginning to get a firmer conceptual grip on Castroism. A special National Intelligence Estimate the following month reported that Fidel Castro remains the dominant element in the regime and we believe he is not disposed to accept actual direction from any foreign source. His susceptibility to Communist influence and suggestion, and his willing adoption of Communist patterns of action, spring from the parallelism of his revolutionary views with the current Communist line in Latin America, from his conviction that Communism offers no threat to his regime, and from his need for external support.52

While the Agency did not believe that Castro and his government were “demonstrably under the domination or control of the international Communist

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movement,” both were likely to continue to accept Communist advice and pursue policies advantageous thereto. This was so less because of a devotion to Marxist ideology as such than because of a felt need to confront the United States. That in turn was pushing him to look to the Bloc for support, including provision of military equipment, [and] should the Castro regime be threatened [by the United States], the USSR would probably do what it could to support it.

In other words, it was only quite late in the day that Washington stumbled on the fact that Castroism was something utterly sui generis—an authentic, indigenous Latin American revolution that for reasons of its own (size, weakness, proximity to the United States, economic vulnerability, culture, and mind-set) chose to align itself with the Soviet bloc. The same week the Agency produced this estimate, the 5412 Committee that oversaw covert operations began to plan what later became known as the Bay of Pigs operation.53 There was considerable confusion, uncertainty, and ambivalence in Washington’s assessment of the growing Soviet threat in Cuba. This was wholly understandable, since in 1959 the Soviet Union’s interests in the Latin American region were confined to a few trading companies and a score of local Communist parties, most of which were small and uninfluential (though not, as it happened, in Cuba). Soviet geostrategic doctrine had long written off much of Latin America, and certainly the circum-Caribbean, to the historic U.S. sphere of influence—a practice that Premier Khrushchev later referred to pejoratively as “geographical fatalism.” His decision to reverse this policy, leading to the Cuban-Soviet alliance, was therefore wholly unpredictable. From the beginning, the Eisenhower administration was uncertain whether the Soviet bloc might guarantee Castro’s survival by replacing the United States as the principal market for Cuban sugar. This eventuality seems to have bothered it far less than the possibility of a Cuban-Soviet mutual security treaty, which would not only place a major Latin American country firmly in Moscow’s camp, but also shift the geopolitical balance in the region. On the other hand— here a major paradox—the possibility of a overt Cuban-Soviet military relationship was almost welcomed by Washington as a way of “defining” matters and presumably making it easier to force the Organization of American States to deal with Cuba on the basis of the Caracas resolution.54 The two issues—sugar and security—converged in a highly illuminating fashion at an inter-agency meeting on the Cuban question held at the State Department on 27 June 1960. When the subject of renewal of the sugar quota came up, Treasury Secretary Anderson argued against half-measures: “The time has come to say to the President that we should cut off all economic support to Cuba.”55 Rubottom, representing the regionalist’s point of view, opposed dramatic actions (“tearing . . . up [trade treaties] as if they were scraps of paper”), which would

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not only undercut the Cuban opposition but many friends in Latin America as well.56 When Anderson taunted Rubottom about taking Cuban abuse “lying down,” the latter responded that “the Department had worked for over a year to set up Castro for a knock-out and would regret very much being stampeded at this time.”57 His voice dripping with sarcasm, Anderson went on to ask Rubottom if in his opinion Castro is, indeed, in the process of falling on his face. He added that his guess is that time is completely on Castro’s side. If the U.S. lets Castro announce USSR support, will this not give him important strength both domestically and in the hemisphere?

The Treasury Secretary added that “should Castro do this it might rather aid us in making a good case with the rest of the countries of the hemisphere.” Defense Secretary Thomas Gates asked Rubottom “what his reaction would be if Castro comes back from the USSR and announces a mutual security agreement or some form of agreement permitting Russian bases in Cuba.” Rubottom replied that the announcement of an upcoming visit to Cuba by Khrushchev and Castro’s (then current) visit to Moscow might well tear the mask from Castro’s face and show him for the commie stooge that he is. If this clear communist course which Castro has set does not unite the hemisphere and the Cuban opposition, if we are not successful in our efforts to educate and persuade hemispheric opinion, then we may very probably have to do the job ourselves but at great cost.58

There was another reason why a Cuban-Soviet mutual security treaty might well serve U.S. purposes: while isolating Cuba from its neighbors and providing Washington with a powerful ideological weapon, it would probably be militarily worthless to Havana. That is, in the event of a showdown, Moscow was unlikely to come to Cuba’s aid. This was the view of Secretary Herter,59 who added with remarkable sensitivity: it is [my] feeling that the Soviets would not like to see a complete takeover of Cuba by the Communists, but desire rather to create the most possible devilment for the United States while leaving the burden on us to provide Communist domination.60

What Secretary Herter could not foresee was that the Soviets might opt for the more costly course, or be pushed into it by Castro himself. In retrospect, it appears that the optimal scenario for Moscow (Cuba as a costfree irritant to the United States) was simply unattainable, given Cuba’s extreme geographic and economic vulnerability. The Soviets were, therefore, caught in a trap of their own making— either to abandon their new ally altogether, or take on the burden of subsidizing it indefinitely, as well as risk a military confrontation with the United States. On 10 September 1960, the first shipments of Soviet arms arrived in Cuba. Two weeks later, CIA director Dulles told the National Security Council that “Cuba was now virtually a member of the Communist Bloc.” For his part, Secretary Dillon explained that the United States “was now beginning to implement

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certain actions with respect to Cuba and was clearing the deck for . . . certain other actions”61—that is, to prepare an exile force to invade the island and overthrow the Castro government. The argument between “letting Castro hang himself with his own rope” and applying economic sanctions became irrelevant throughout the course of 1960 as both policies proved ineffective. From the very beginning, the State Department assumed a “soft” line with respect to dealing with the Cuban government, partly because of sensitivity to Latin American opinion, partly because it recognized that Castro continued to enjoy broad support within Cuba and that attacking him frontally would prove counterproductive. The most eloquent spokesman for this point of view was Ambassador Bonsal himself, who repeatedly argued that it was vitally important that “if the revolution fails it should be for exclusively Cuban reasons.”62 In practice, this policy proved extremely difficult to pursue because the Cuban government itself persisted in provocative actions whose evident purpose was to goad the United States into retaliatory action. Bonsal’s self-effacing personal style and the Eisenhower administration’s determination not to be stampeded by Congress, the press, or others into precipitous cancellation of the sugar quota only encouraged Castro and Guevara to go further. At the same time, U.S. patience and restraint discouraged and demoralized the growing domestic opposition on the island, upon which Washington was eventually counting to improve the situation on the ground. Rubottom put it this way: We have to walk a tightrope—while trying to keep up a semblance of good relations with the present regime we must, at the same time, try to keep alive any spark of opposition and to let the opposition know we are aware of its existence and not committed to Castro.63 Economic pressures on the Castro regime begun in March 1960 and culminating with the suspension of the sugar quota in July, did not seriously shake its hold on power. Indeed, from a political point of view, such actions probably worked to Castro’s favor. As Rubottom put it in a letter to Secretary Herter: We must remember that a Cuban thrown out of a job because of U.S. reprisals is likely to become anti-U.S. and pro-Castro while one out of work because of Castro’s own mistakes is likely to become anti-Castro and pro-U.S.64

In other words, the United States could not fail to react in some way to Cuban confiscation of American property for fear of encouraging similar actions elsewhere in the hemisphere (and the world). But neither could it punish the Cuban government without undermining its (Washington’s) larger political agenda on the island, which was to encourage acceptable anti-Castro elements to replace the new regime. It was the Soviet Union that stepped in to break this vicious circle, by agreeing both to replace the United States as the principal market for Cuban sugar, and to sell arms to Castro. Moscow thus singlehandedly

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imposed an entirely new logic to U.S. policy, placing Cuba within the larger framework of cold war priorities. This, in turn, finally made it possible for Washington to cleanly define its paramount interests on the island, and sacrifice other, more traditional economic, political, and regional considerations. Concluding Observations Insofar as these documents shed any light on the current U.S.-Cuban imbroglio, they depict from the very start two planets set in utterly different solar systems. One official at the Policy Planning Staff, speaking of the Castro regime, put it this way: “We have never in our national history experienced anything quite like it in the magnitudes of anti-US venom, claims for expropriation, or Soviet threats to the hemisphere. . . . I think we fail to realize that Castro does not speak our language and does not want to listen to it.”65 For his part, President Eisenhower confided to the National Security Council that “it was difficult to figure out what Castro was trying to do . . . nothing seemed to have an effect on” him.66 For the United States, the Cuban revolution was both unexpected and incomprehensible. The Castro regime bore little or no resemblance to anything it had yet seen in Latin America. If it were merely nationalist-populist rather than Communist, why did it not respond to the kinds of initiatives that had been successful with such governments elsewhere in the region? Barring a transformation to totalitarian dictatorship, how did it propose to make its bizarre economic measures work? And if it was a regime of Communist inspiration, when would it finally declare its true colors? There was, of course, no “bourgeois” logic to Castro’s revolution. Cuba’s welfare had long been linked to the United States, and could not be separated from it without paying a ruinous price. When President Eisenhower asked Ambassador Bonsal how Cuba “could make a living if it was unable to sell its sugar,” the latter replied that “the present government had not thought that problem out.”67 This was true as far as it went, but fell far short of the political imagination required. In effect, Washington failed to go beyond the calculations of double-entry bookkeeping; to grasp that what for it was sheer madness represented for many Cubans a long-awaited, orgiastic release. Or that Castro would succeed in fashioning a political system capable of repressing whatever second thoughts his fellow-countrymen might have by the time they got around to having them. Most of all, the Eisenhower administration took no note of the long- and even middleterm political implications of a massive migration of Cuban professionals and members of the middle class that began sometime in mid-1959 and greatly accelerated throughout 1960. In effect, with each day there were fewer people in the country of the type that Washington expected to lead a post-Castro government, and fewer potential members of its constituency. It was not even certain what could or would replace Castro in the happy eventuality of his

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disappearance. “There is not a clear enough realization among our own people,” the official at the Policy Planning Staff wrote, “that pre-Castro Cuba will not return, or that, if we are to reestablish influence within Cuba, it must be in a context different from that which obtained in the past.”68 In many ways, this problem persists thirty-five years later. For its part, from the very beginning, the Castro regime went off in directions that had little or nothing to do with the United States. Indeed, one is struck in these documents by the degree to which U.S. policy was basically irrelevant to the course of revolutionary events. At no point did the new regime even deign to engage the Eisenhower administration on the major issues of the bilateral relationship. Ambassador Bonsal—who urged upon Washington a policy of patience and restraint almost to his last day on the island—was shunted aside and repeatedly refused appointments with Castro, the foreign minister, or other high officials. When he managed to see these personalities, they invariably lied to him or offered disingenuous responses to his appeals.69 There were important contradictions within the U.S. business community in Cuba, and between it and the government in Washington, but the Cuban government took no note of these and made no effort whatever to exploit them to its own advantage. This was so because there was no apparent Cuban design of coexistence with the United States in any form, merely a desire to punish, to humiliate, to confront—a posture that caused all elements of the American side to eventually close ranks and advocate a full-dress economic and political embargo. With the best will in the world, then, it is difficult to see what policy would have purchased a good relationship with Castro’s Cuba, since such a relationship was never even offered as a theoretical object for sale. The regime defined itself (and, indeed, the very Cuban nationality) entirely in terms of its opposition to the United States and all its works. The decision of the Soviet Union to subsidize the Cuban economy made this posture easier to assume and sustained it over three decades, but one cannot be certain that it would not have survived even so—a point now being brought home by events since 1989. Cuba seems to have proven that a small country living in the shadow of the United States can purposely pick a fight with it and live to tell the tale; but how much beyond that still remains to be seen. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

John P. Glennon, Editor-in-Chief, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–60: Cuba (Washington, D. C.: GPO, 1991). Doc. 11, 20. Doc. 38, 62. Doc. 33, 56. Doc. 111, 166.

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

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Doc. 112, 170, 172. Doc. 117, 188. Doc. 123, 196. Doc. 133, 215. Doc. 154, 253+54. Doc. 158, 260. Doc. 263, 270. Ambassador Smith eventually learned of the mission from Cuban sources. Doc. 201, 328. Doc. 25, 47. Castro issued a similar denial to U.S. Consul Wollam in Santiago in July, Doc. 81, 128. Doc. 18, 34. Doc. 47, 77. Doc. 135, 216. The same analyst added that it “would indeed be serious if our Government assumed that the movement was not Communist and later proved to be so,” but, he added, the inverse was also true. Doc. 188, 302. Doc. 188, 303. Doc. 203, 331. Doc. 154, 253. Doc. 46, 75. Editorial note, 12. Doc. 254, 406. As I&R pointed out in mid-January, “if we had received additional information over the last six months on the amount of military equipment Castro was receiving from the US, we might have had a somewhat different appreciation of his strength.” Doc. 226, 363. Doc. 248, 395. Doc. 266, 442. Doc. 269, 446. Doc. 269, supra; Doc. 271, 449. Doc. 287 Editorial Note), 478. For the full text see Jeffrey J. Safford, “The Nixon-Castro Meeting of 19 April 1959,” Diplomatic History, 4 (1980): 425– 431. Doc. 288, 477. Rufo López Fresquet, My Fourteen Months with Castro (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1966), 100–12. López Fresquet was minister of the treasury from 8 January 1959 to 17 March 1960. Doc. 274, 454. Doc. 279, 467. Doc. 302, 504. Interview with Castro in Lee Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 159–60. See also the erroneous version of López Fresquet, 171.

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38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

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Doc. 311, 515–16. Doc. 412, 709–11. Doc. 536, 959–60. Doc. 406, 693–96. Doc. 310, 512–15, which summarizes a remarkable conversation in this regard between Cuban Ambassador Ernesto Dihigo and Assistant Secretary Roy Rubottom. After the quota was finally abolished, Foreign Minister Raul Roa’s sisterin-law confided to Ambassador Bonsal that such action was “anticipated and desired by Castro”; the fact that “it cut deep . . . meant he could charge economic aggression all the more effectively.” Doc. 548, 995. Doc. 501, 887–89. Doc. 375, 633. Doc. 376, 638. Doc. 462, 808–09. Doc. 493, 874. Doc. 529, 945. Doc. 330, 554. Doc. 419 733. Doc. 458, 796. Doc. 491, 870. Doc. 481, 850–51. This was the consensus reached (under heavy U.S. pressure) by the OAS foreign ministers at their 1954 meeting in the Venezuelan capital, by which countries that opted for alliances with extrahemispheric powers were subject to collective sanctions. It provided a sort of juridical umbrella under which the United States intervened to depose the Arbenz regime in Guatemala, which was in the process of acquiring arms from the Eastern bloc. Doc. 536, 960. Ibid., 961. Ibid., 962. Ibid., 962. Reflected also in a Special NIE prepared by the CIA (22 March 1960). See Doc. 491, 871. Ibid, 965. Doc. 583, 1074–75. Doc. 362, 604. Doc. 365, 620. Doc. 473, 832. Doc. 458, 795–96. Doc. 474, 833. Doc. 436, 764–65. Doc. 458, loc. cit. Doc. 342, 570. Foreign Minister Raùl Roa told Bonsal on 23 July 1959 that “he personally was strongly opposed to Communism and that he believed there were no Communists in important government positions.”

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31 Much Ado About Something?: Regime Change in Cuba Eusebio Mujal-León and Joshua W. Busby The contemporary Cuban regime is difficult to locate in traditional regime categories. It is a personalistic and charismatic dictatorship with an idiosyncratic mix of national-military, egalitarian, anti-American, anti-capitalist, and communist elements, Although the regime has gone through several distinct phases in the past forty years, there has been one constant: the overriding presence of its founder and leader, Fidel Castro. Other institutional actors respond to him directly. Although Castro’s government is often said to be one of the last communist regimes, it is more accurately described as one of the newest. The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) did not hold its first congress until 1975, no less than sixteen years after the triumph of the revolution. It remains institutionally weak, and none of its leading figures has a social or political base independent of Fidel Castro. Moreover, the Cuban regime has a strong military component. The Party ostensibly controls the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), but there are questions about the effectiveness of its supervision. The FAR’s leading members have been either incorporated into the highest government and Party bodies, purged, or bought off with access to the lucrative realms of mixed enterprises, joint ventures, and tourism. This article seeks to ascertain the nature of the contemporary Cuban regime. This is not merely a retrospective or academic exercise. The regime (then and now), is the starting place for whatever is to come and will condition the possibilities and direction of the country’s political evolution. The Dilemma of Classification The Castro regime is now more than forty years old. It has survived many difficulties and many predictions of its imminent collapse. The regime has sur491

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vived by adapting to events, although these dynamic changes have been masked by the continuous presence of Castro. The bigger adjustment may not be to the loss of Cuba’s patrons in Moscow, but to the loss of Fidel himself either through death or disability. Between 1971 and 1985, the Cuban regime achieved a far-reaching accommodation with its Soviet counterpart. As Havana shouldered its assigned role in the “socialist division of labor,” it began, in effect, to experience a transition toward post-totalitarianism. The new partnership involved active collaboration between Cuba and the Soviet Union in the international sphere, including the deployment of Cuban troops to various parts of the third world. The two sides negotiated guidelines for subsidizing the Cuban economy and institutionalizing socialist planning mechanisms in Cuba. In a more political vein, the Cuban leadership moved toward the institutionalization of the role and structure of the Communist Party (PCC) as well as the ratification of a new constitution that closely paralleled the Soviet one. Accompanying these initiatives were newly created farmers’ markets and other reforms that, coupled with the favorable terms of trade and other forms of support, lifted Cuba from its failed 1961-70 mobilization campaigns. Carmelo Mesa-Lago refers to the 1971-85 period as one of “moderate Soviet [pre-Gorbachev] economic reform.”2 For Pérez-Stable the 1970s and early 1980s were a period “when the leadership implemented some market reforms … [and] the political system gain[ed] the normal trappings of state socialism.”3 Jorge Domínguez sees this as a period when the regime sought allies to counterbalance the American embargo, copied the institutional framework of its Soviet mentors, and took on a distinctly “bureaucratic socialist” character. These authors generally agree as to the most important events of the years 1971-85, but not in their characterizations of the regime during this period. Domínguez argues that, as the institutions of a “bureaucratic socialist” regime were consolidated during 1971-85, this new regime succeeded its totalitarian predecessor from the 1960s and became the antecedent of the “authoritarian” one in the 1990s.4 In contrast, Mesa-Lago argues that the Cuban regime had become totalitarian after 1961 and did not change qualitatively during these years. For him, any changes that took place through the 1980s were within the same regime type.5 Marifeli Pérez-Stable presents yet a third perspective, advancing the notion of “mobilizational authoritarianism” to describe the Cuban regime. Framing her analysis in the literature on the institutional dynamics of state socialism and, more particularly, on the oscillation between the imperatives of “normalization” and the politics of mobilization, she concludes that “institutionalization never reached an irreversible momentum.… At the crucial crossroads of the mid-1980s when Cuba confronted a downturn in the economy and prospects of diminishing Soviet aid, [Fidel] Castro … called for cutting back market reforms and renewing mobilizational politics.”6 Each of these interpretations has valid points. The institutionalization of the late 1970s and early 1980s was indeed tenuous. The failure to implement politi-

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cal and economic normalization not only enhanced the mobilizational style of governance associated with Fidel Castro, but also significantly narrowed the opportunities to create structures and centers of power outside party-state institutions. However, Domínguez’s argument that the events of the 1971-85 phase laid the foundations for the subsequent emergence of an authoritarian regime in the 1990s seems questionable. While this article draws on some of the ideas expressed by these authors, it is grounded in the literature on post-totalitarian regimes. The state-society focus of this literature provides greater analytical leverage for understanding the dynamics of the 1971-85 period, its termination in the late 1980s, and the trends of more recent years. According to Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, regimes are identified by four characteristics: leadership, ideology, mobilization, and pluralism. Under posttotalitarianism, politics takes on a more institutionalized form within the organizations of the state in contrast to the unpredictable exercise of power in the totalitarian order. The ruling party still exercises leadership, but governance begins to demonstrate more bureaucratic tendencies and is less subject to the whims of the leader. Ideologically, there is a growing disjunction between the regime’s desires and capability. Ideology supers from a much lower commitment, and it becomes more of a perfunctory ritual. Rather than actively mobilizing popular support for the regime, post-totalitarian leaders begin to view the absence of open opposition as tacit approval. Social and economic pluralism is mostly tolerated, while political pluralism remains largely prohibited.7 There are three types of post-totalitarian regimes: early, frozen, and mature. In early post-totalitarian regimes, social reform is just beginning, while in frozen regimes reform is stalled. Under mature post-totalitarianism, modest changes in the social and economic spheres have occurred, but political diversity has not yet had sufficient time and space to become established. In mature post-totalitarian regimes, enough social actors may emerge to serve potentially as an opposition-in-waiting with which would-be reformers can ally. The foregoing typology may be applied to the Cuban regime as follows. A transition to post-totalitarianism began between 1971 and 1985. This process reflected a strategic convergence between the leaders of Cuba and the Soviet Union and pulled Cuba out of its relative isolation. Cuba’s integration into the Soviet bloc impelled and reinforced the domestic institutional and economic changes outlined above. By the early 1980s, as Reagan’s foreign policy became more assertive and the Brezhnev succession played out in Moscow, Fidel Castro increasingly (and with good reason) began to doubt the reliability of the Soviet commitment. Once Gorbachev came to power in 1985, the signals became unmistakable. Moscow began to shift from grant to loan mechanisms, reduced the above-market prices paid for sugar and other products, and eliminated other concessions.8 Alarmed by these measures, Castro announced the process of rectificación, a hard-line response to perestroika in which the reforms of the

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previous era were steadily undone and reformists like Planning Minister Humberto Pérez were ousted. Cuban peasant markets were shut down in May 1986, an announcement accompanied by scathing invective about the noxious growth of individualism and market forces.9 This rhetoric signaled the end of the transition to post-totalitarianism and launched an uneven return to the mobilizational radicalism of the late 1960s. Any earlier overtures to the market were replaced by appeals to national conscience, resistance, and revolutionary spirit. After setting aside the Soviet-inspired planning models of the earlier era, Castro set ambitious national goals for self-sufficiency in food production, housing construction, and other social needs through the use of voluntary work brigades.10 Three factors explain the truncated transition to post-totalitarianism in Cuba during the 1980s. The first is Fidel himself. By the time Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and announced his program of perestroika and glasnost, he may well have anticipated how those reforms would debilitate and undermine his own system of rule. Others within the Soviet orbit may have thought the same thing, but Fidel’s legitimacy was much less dependent on Moscow. Not only had the Soviet-Cuban relationship never been one simply of patron to client (Castro had, after all, won power on his own), but the autonomy of the Cuban regime was enhanced by the presence and permanence of its founder. Unlike any potential successor, he had an authority and prestige that gave him the leeway to define and redefine the regime. In these respects, even as the Cuban regime entered a transition toward post-totalitarianism in the years 1971-85, its leadership situation was very different from its East European or even Soviet counterparts. Second, the Cuban ideology, with its mix of nationalism, anti-Americanism, and anti-capitalism, remained robust and relevant. Even by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the regime had not lost its ideological moorings. Although the 1980 Mariel exodus shook the regime and demonstrated just how many people would leave the island if given the opportunity, there was still cohesion among the elite and in important sectors of society. Ideology may also have been reinforced by the activist and nationalist foreign policy that turned Cuba into a major player in the non-aligned movement and a (partial) surrogate for the Soviet Union in places like Angola and Nicaragua. Moreover, the Castro regime had lost neither its mobilizational nor its repressive capacity in these years, and the low level of economic and social pluralism in Cuba made it easier to truncate the transition to post-totalitarianism. The introduction of market-type reforms had been very limited, and there were few, if any, independent economic or social actors beyond the farmers’ markets. Finally, the institutional weakness of the Communist Party and the corresponding strength of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) also help explain the interrupted transition in this period. The conventional logic of totalitarian and post-totalitarian consolidation gives a central role to the Party. Under totalitarianism, the Party establishes its hegemony over the armed forces and secu-

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rity services. Under post-totalitarianism, it retains a central role, but increasingly takes on a caretaker, managerial function in the state apparatus. Neither of these developments occurred in Cuba. The regime was born out of military struggle, and the military organization and its relationship to the regime predated the formal establishment of the Communist Party. Both organizations were under the command and authority of Fidel Castro. Even with the institutionalization of the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was little doubt that PCC cadres served at the pleasure of the “maximum leader.” He was not constrained by its routines or bureaucracy, and he answered to no one else in the Party leadership.11 Further compounding the problem for a weakly institutionalized Communist Party was the FAR. Cuba watchers have advanced the notion of the “civic soldier”—a person who, steeped in revolutionary idealism, performs whatever tasks the regime asks of him, whether this involves defending the fatherland or doing administrative work in state-run enterprises or governmental bureaucracies.12 In this interpretation, civil-military relations are in equilibrium. However, other scholars point to the institutional weakness of the PCC as compared to the military. Domingo Amuchástegui, for example, argues that the civil-military distinction has little validity in the Cuban case.13 The issue goes far beyond the anecdotal but symbolic example of the military uniforms Fidel Castro almost invariably wears when in Cuba.14 Fidel Castro is not simply a charismatic exemplar, but a commander-in-chief whose policies, whether dispatching the FAR on internationalist missions or opting for a return to mobilization tactics, are implemented through the chain of command. While it may be true that Castro prevents institutionalization in the traditional sense, it is also evident that he employs institutions to execute his strategic shifts. In an earlier era, analysts emphasized the proto-military character of all communist parties. The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the managerial transformation of the few communist parties that remain in power rendered this scheme anachronistic. The notion needs to be resurrected with respect to Cuba, but not in the traditional Leninist sense where the Party is dominant and other organizations serve as its transmission belt. In the Cuban case, it is the Communist Party that has been infused by the hierarchical and military spirit of the revolution, and Fidel Castro is commander-in-chief first and PCC chief second. Where we do part company with Amuchástegui is with respect to his insistence on “unicellular” civil-military unity. Around the time the Cuban-Soviet partnership began to congeal in the early and mid-1970s, a division of labor was established between the FAR and the PCC. While the Party monopolized the domestic political arena and, particularly, the economic and planning agencies, the armed forces concentrated on the international sector with a proficiency that enhanced both their own and Cuba’s prestige and legitimacy. This division stood until the mid- and late 1980s, when the “experts” in the PCC were purged, and the Party increasingly became an ideological watchdog and tribune. At the

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same time, the FAR received a new set of orders. As the cold war withered, the Cuban role in Angola and other third world trouble spots came to an end. A redeployed FAR came home to new duties and a transformed role. During the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, the FAR had been a privileged but externally focused institution whose service as the praetorian guard of the international revolutionary movement brought it accolades, recognition, and influence.15 Its preeminence may have intensified concerns about its loyalty, or at least some authors so believe. One perceptive student of Cuba’s politics and military forces argues that Castro’s Guerra de todo el Pueblo (“war of all the people”) concept was more than simply a device to mobilize the population to resist a possible invasion by the United States. It was also intended to dilute the influence of the FAR by creating “several redundant layers of the ‘people’ in uniform.”16 Fears of disloyalty may have been compounded by reports of widespread desertions—an estimated 56,000 soldiers between 1983 and 1987.17 The execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa in June 198918 and the subsequent purges of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT)19 as well as the Western Army20 highlight the tensions associated with the return of Soviet-trained, combatweary veterans. Whether Ochoa had contacts with Gorbachev or other Soviet reformers or had decided to challenge Fidel Castro is unknown and perhaps unknowable. But it is doubtful that the drug and corruption charges against him were the exclusive or even the primary reason for his arrest. Whatever the precise combination of reasons for his elimination, there is little doubt that through his execution (and that of Antonio de la Guardia), Castro sent a clear signal to anyone else who might harbor thoughts of disloyalty. This coup de main allowed Castro to reassert his ultimate authority, and also enabled the faction of military officers around Raúl Castro (the so-called Raulista group) to consolidate and extend its control over both the armed forces and the security services. The new relationship between the military and security forces resulted in a substantial purge of the intelligence apparatus. It also gave rise to fresh opportunities for those who accepted the changed arrangements. A purged and more docile military was allowed to extend its domestic reach beyond institutional borders and into the realm of mixed enterprises, tourism, and exports. Hence, a dual process was under way in Cuba in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. As the political leadership reaffirmed its hierarchical and political control over the military, it also opened the doors to greater financial opportunities and rewards for some high-ranking officers. Many other officers and former bureaucrats gained access to employment opportunities in joint venture companies and in the informal sector. As will be discussed below, these economic outlets increased the possibilities for corruption and illicit activity. The late 1980s saw the end of the first Cuban transition to post-totalitarianism. The reassertion of Fidel Castro’s foundational and personalistic authority trumped the incipient institutionalization of regime structures. The continued

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vitality of regime ideology, its sustained capacity for mobilization, the institutional weakness of the PCC, and the absence of significant social or economic pluralism contributed to the return to the totalitarian schemes and mobilization politics of the past. In addition to these domestic elements, changes in the Soviet-Cuban relationship and then the collapse of the Soviet Union generated a profound crisis for Havana. The Crises of the 1990s The Cuban regime confronted an economic and political crisis of unprecedented proportions in the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the loss of $4 billion in annual subsidies—nearly 30 percent of Cuba’s GDP. Exports crashed by 70 percent, imports by 75 percent. From 1989 to 1993, Cuba’s real GDP dropped nearly 35 percent, a contraction in national income second only to that experienced during the Great Depression. By one estimate, this translated into a 37 percent average decline in personal income over 1989 levels.21 Open unemployment and underemployment accounted for only 40 percent of the economically active population in 1994, even as the official unemployment statistics showed unemployment at less than 10 percent.22 Sugar output dropped by 39 percent, equaling $700 million in lost exports. There were also sustained declines in the output of non-sugar agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, growing fuel shortages that caused blackouts, transportation problems, and factory stoppages, and a growing budget deficit that was aggravated by the black market. The peso traded illegally for up to fifty times the official exchange rate. As social problems and unemployment increased, so did the number of people who risked their lives by leaving on boats and rafts. An estimated 30,000 people tried to flee on rafts in 1993 alone. This economic free-fall could have had disastrous political consequences for the regime. Such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, the collapse of the East European regimes, and the demonstration and subsequent crackdown at Tiananmen demonstrated just how perilous were the waters surrounding Cuba.23 Riots and disturbances involving would-be rafters in the port cities of Cojímar and Regla in July and September 1993 sent a clear message to the Cuban leadership.24 In August 1993, Fidel Castro finally responded by announcing a broad package of measures that included legalizing the possession and use of dollars (including remittances), certain types of self-employment, the conversion of state farms into cooperatives, and the establishment of agricultural (now called “artisan”) markets. The government also implemented monetary and fiscal reform measures that would sharply cut the budget deficit and reduced the subsidies to state enterprises that were losing money. The emergency economic package included new laws that allowed greater foreign investment, encouraged joint ventures, and established free trade zones.25

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There is a lively debate in academic circles over just what these changes have meant for the Cuban regime. One line of interpretation affirms that the current regime is an exemplar of mobilizational authoritarianism whose weak institutionalization bodes ill for a peaceful transition. Another line of arguments insists the changes made during the 1990s have created an incipient authoritarian regime. A third approach insists that the present regime is a mixture of “sultanism” and frozen post-totalitarianism. In this view, although the regime has permitted limited market reforms, it allows no space for political alternatives and quickly marginalizes any emerging reformers. Focusing on the free hand Fidel Castro has to manipulate the body politic, Juan Lopez also ascribes sultanistic qualities to the Cuban leader. If López is correct, then there is no possibility of reform. Thus the only transition possible in Cuba is through a bottom-up rebellion aided by “latent soft-liners,” similar to what occurred in Romania under Ceausescu. To support his argument, López makes the case that the number of dissidents in Cuba today equals or exceeds the levels in Romania, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia before 1989.26 While there may, indeed, be similarities in how Fidel Castro exercises his authority and the patterns evidenced by Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania and Kim It Sung in North Korea, the sultanistic comparison ends there. Ultimately, however, we would not call the Cuban regime “sultanistic,” not least because of its reliance on ideology and mobilization. These events opened the way to the most recent phase of the Cuban regime, a charismatic, early post-totalitarian incarnation. This phase is characterized by a profound tension. The revolutionary founder still has the capacity to limit change, mobilize the population, and affirm the validity of his egalitarian ideology to elites and society alike. The state stymies human rights groups and the Catholic Church at every turn and for every bit of space in society. The opposition is weak, disorganized, and intimidated—for good reason. However, there is growing evidence that regime ideology has become hollow, and there are signs of an embryonic economic and social pluralism in an increasingly stratified society. But it is not simply a matter of eroded capability or the transformation of society that complicates a full return to the models of the past. There are other factors that the regime and Fidel Castro cannot control. External factors, such as globalization and the obvious difficulty of finding an international partner willing to subsidize the Cuban economic experiment, make a return to full totalitarianism quite problematic. There is also the looming succession crisis. Much as in Spain in the twilight of the Franco era, in Cuba the emerging question is “After Castro, what?” The answer is by no means clear, but the countdown has begun, both within and outside the regime. This process is irreversible, although paradoxically it reinforces the role played by Fidel Castro in the short term. We turn now to examine the nature of the charismatic early post-totalitarian Cuban regime in the 1 990s from the perspective of such regime components as leadership, ideology, mobilization, and pluralism.

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Leadership. The Cuban version of post-totalitarianism does not entirely fit within the ideal-type mold. First and most important, Fidel Castro retains broad power and influence. No one within the elite questions either his role or, ultimately, his decisions. Even regime reformers have been known to repeat the mantra, “With Fidel everything, against Fidel nothing.” Castro derives his authority from several sources. Not only is he the founder of the regime, but he has shaped and set its ideology. He has successfully guided Cuba through many crises over the past four decades. His charisma is prototypical, its importance to the regime increased by the scope of the crisis in the 1990s. Castro also continues to exercise a military-like authority over regime institutions, especially the PCC and FAR. He has used both to mobilize the population and to transmit ideological directives. In more traditional party-state systems, it is the Communist Party that generates and transmits ideology, but in the Cuban context, the Party and the military are themselves transmission belts for charismatic rule. If the Cuban regime is characterized by stability at the top, the lower rungs have been in flux, especially since the late 1980s. Some leaders have been purged, and many older leaders have retired, voluntarily or not. Politburo member Carlos Aldana was ousted in 1994, as was Politburo member and foreign minister Roberto Robaina in 1999. Younger Party leaders have been installed in virtually every province, as well as in key state administrative posts. As Marifeli Pérez-Stable has noted, some of the younger cadres who took up leadership positions in the economic ministries are “presumably more reform-oriented” than their predecessors.27 Even if this were so, however, we can well suppose that, while Fidel Castro is an active presence in Cuban politics, they will be careful in expressing their views and preferences. The FAR, and the security services under its supervision, again provide an exception to the pattern of flux that normally characterizes the leadership of regime institutions. The execution of General Ochoa and the resulting purge of the Ministry of the Interior consolidated the influence of the Raulista faction in the FAR. Over the past decade the military has been distinguished not only by its cohesion, but also by the way the regime relies on it to lead in the economic and administrative arenas. In their dual function of guarding security and improving administrative efficiency, the diverse elements of the FAR are virtually assured of playing an important role not only as a source of expertise in economic reform and management but in shaping the transition to the post-Castro future. Ideology. Why has reform—economic, political, and social—been so half-hearted in contemporary Cuba? Why has Cuba not followed the example of China or Vietnam in enacting more thoroughgoing market reforms that could galvanize its economy?28 The enduring vitality of ideology provides an important part of the answer to these questions. Fidel Castro is, after all, the ideologue of the Cuban regime. A keen observer of the debates among the international intelligentsia and their potential impact on Cuba, Castro has consistently developed

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rhetorical strategies for both domestic and international consumption with an eye toward defending the ideals and accomplishments of the national project. The demise of the Soviet Union and its allies deprived the Cuban regime of an important ideological plank. In response, Castro directed the regime to reenergize its ideology by appealing to other core elements of its platform, including nationalism, social justice, and regional solidarity. For example, in July 1992 the Cuban National Assembly unanimously approved amendments stripping the constitution of its Soviet-era references to “the community of socialist countries,” “proletarian internationalism,” “the leading role of the working class,” and “scientific materialism.” Replacing these and other phrases were references to Latin America and the Caribbean, Jose Martf, the Cuban nation, and patriotic education.29 Although not every reference to Marxism-Leninism was excised, the amended constitution had now been “Cubanized.” The regime has also taken great pains to defend its accomplishments in health care and education. This too makes sense, because these sectors are key sources of domestic and international legitimacy. To defend its social project, the Communist Party recently severely restricted soup kitchens, day care centers, free pharmacies, and other social projects organized by the Catholic Church. As he did in the 1970s with the non-aligned movement, Fidel Castro has tried to position himself and Cuba in the vanguard of the struggle against globalization and to employ this dimension as a vehicle for regime relegitimation. Castro’s continuing presence and his constant exhortations to revolutionary struggle and ideology place strict, if formally undefined, limits on how far government and Party functionaries can deviate from the official canon of nationalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism.30 As Edward Gonzalez has argued, the pursuit of deeper reform would have “high political and ideological costs for the regime. They [would] undermine [its] control over society … [and would] tend to demoralize the regime’s cadres.”31 This last point is worth emphasizing. While reformist sectors exist in the state administration and economic ministries, Castro is probably not alone in his preference for a distinctly Cuban ideological identity. Linz similarly argued that midlevel government functionaries tend to resist a reinterpretation of regime ideology because to do so would undermine the system in which they have invested their lives.32 Even though Castro tries to keep ideological change within narrow limits, there are visible signs of erosion in Cuban society. The daily accommodations that ordinary Cubans have had to make over the past decade to resolve day-today economic problems have undoubtedly taken a sharp toll. To survive in contemporary Cuba is constantly to break the law and its normative (or ideological) underpinnings. As ideology ceases to capture the popular imagination, a regime loses its credibility and legitimacy in terms of both the process and the outcomes.33 If a regime is able to deliver legitimate outcomes (such as health care or education), the perceived legitimacy of process becomes less important.34 Cubans might have been willing to accept restrictions on civil liberties so long as

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the outcomes were perceived as fair and desirable. If, however, the regime is unable to guarantee the basic necessities of life as well as the “[social] gains of the Revolution” over an extended period, a serious legitimacy crisis looms. Regimes that assume complete responsibility for economic and social well being are especially vulnerable on this score.35 On balance, then, the Cuban regime’s ideological vigor has declined since the fall of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Fidel Castro and a significant number of cadres remain committed to the utopian vision, far more than expected in a consolidated post-totalitarian regime. Mobilization. Under post-totalitarianism, the regime’s willingness and capacity to mobilize the population declines. The 1991-2001 period conforms, at least in part, to this characterization. Mobilization is an instrument that can be employed to affirm legitimacy and to generate enthusiasm around a national project. It is also an instrument to intimidate and control the population, and, as such, it functions in tandem with repression. Both mobilization and repression reflect the absolutist and state-centered vision of the Cuban totalitarian syndrome and its variants, but it is important (analytically and politically) to understand, as Pérez-Stable has noted, that the regime “cannot be understood exclusively in terms of its repressive component.”36 Although it is predictably very difficult and risky to ascertain just what public opinion and attitudes really are under conditions of dictatorship, important sectors of the population may indeed view an autocratic regime as legitimate or as having some right to rule. Obviously, such sentiments may vary both in breadth and over time. One cannot easily ascertain whether there is a progressive loss of interest in organizing mobilization or whether boredom and withdrawal are part of daytoday life in contemporary Cuba. Given the (still) dire economic situation, most Cubans are probably more concerned with finding food and earning a living (the so-called sociolismo) than with ideological principles or mobilization. There is ample anecdotal evidence for this, ranging from jokes to movies and folk songs. Efforts to mobilize and repress the population dropped noticeably between 1993 and 1996.37 This decline undoubtedly reflected a tactical adjustment to the economic crisis and the decision to focus on stabilizing the economy. But by 1996, the regime began to set clear limits on political liberalization. The downing of the Brothers to the Rescue plane, the arrest of the members of the Concilio Cubano who had organized to meet in Havana that very weekend, and Raúl Castro’s blistering April 1996 speech at the PCC Central Committee plenum lambasting reformist intellectuals and their foreign connections sent clear and unmistakable signals. The sharper political tone had an economic counterpart, whereby the regime tightened controls on the informal economic actors who had emerged after dollarization in 1993 and introduced modern managerial techniques (perfeccionamiento) into enterprises in an effort to improve their efficiency while reinforcing their socialist character.

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Efforts to intensify mobilization have increased sharply over the past two years. The Elian Gonzalez affair provided a major opportunity in this regard. In what was almost a rebuff to the “lost” generation that had come to political maturity in the 1980s and early 1990s, Fidel Castro now concentrated his attention on the “new” and younger generation. The exercises in mobilization were less intense than in decades past, but the capacity to assemble thousands of people, whether to demand the return of Elian or to protest the U.S. embargo, suggests an enduring capacity ascribed to Fidel himself, not any formal office. Pluralism. Pluralism in its various dimensions remains underdeveloped and very vulnerable in Cuba, another fact supporting the characterization of the regime as early post-totalitarian. Economic pluralism has certainly increased since the early 1990s, as has self-employment. Between 1989 and 1999 the share of non-state jobs (mostly in agricultural cooperatives and family businesses) increased from 5 to almost 25 percent of the work force. The agricultural sector also experienced dramatic changes.38 While in 1992 state farms controlled approximately 75 percent of the land under cultivation, three years later, only 27 percent remained in state hands.39 The economic reforms of the 1990s opened up important spaces for “enclave capitalism” in such sectors as agriculture, biotechnology, and tourism. Dollarization also helped Cubans who received remittances from relatives outside the country or who ran small businesses catering to foreign tourists. The significance of these economic changes should not be underestimated. These measures opened space for new actors in the economic arena and correspond to the expected steps during a transition to post-totalitarianism in which economic pluralism precedes political pluralism. There were, nonetheless, important limits to the reforms. The state retained control over larger enterprises and placed strict controls on the activities of private micro-enterprises.40 No discussion of economic pluralism in contemporary Cuba is complete without a discussion of the substantial economic role of the FAR. For the military, the collapse of the Soviet bloc hastened a budgetary decline already in progress. As Cuban soldiers returned from international expeditions, defense spending fell: from 9.6 percent of GDP in 1985 to a mere 2.8 percent in 1995.41 As budgets and active-duty levels dropped, the regime opened new economic opportunities for loyal members of the FAR, extending the role of the civic-soldier from traditional agricultural production to managing joint ventures with foreign investors. A prime example of this strategy involved the creation of the Gaviota group, an entity that has since diversified into numerous other sectors, including restaurants, resorts, and even information technology and department stores.42 There are three categories of entrepreneur-soldiers. The first involves former high-ranking of fleers their families) who hold jobs because of their special links to Raúl Castro and the regime. The second includes military personnel who have been assigned to state enterprises to improve the management of state resources and production. The third category is made up of lower ranking retired

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army personnel and former Ministry of the Interior officials who are self-employed or work for foreign companies and make a living further outside the formal state-controlled system. Although all of the above may be said to be developing entrepreneurial talents, it will most probably be those in the latter two categories who will create the opening wedge for an emerging capitalist class in Cuba. The military’s entry into the economic arena has obvious benefits, for by offering military men a privileged lifestyle through participation in the dollar economy, it presumably assures their loyalty to the regime.43 However, this economic role may also generate greater opportunities for corruption as well as increased resentment of the economic gap separating the privileged military officers from the rest of the armed forces as well as from the populace at large.44 What may be of more immediate political relevance, however, is the emerging cadre of technocrats and management experts in the military establishment. In post-totalitarian contexts, such experts typically are found in the Party apparatus.45 One of the peculiarities of the Cuban case may be that this pattern does not hold and, indeed, could be inverted. The primary source of “red” influence could eventually come from the PCC, and the experts from the military. The emergence of such tensions may be one key to understanding the dynamics of the post-Castro era. Economic pluralism is fragile in contemporary Cuba, but it is far more vigorous than social pluralism. Totalitarianism has had a profoundly adverse impact on Cuban society. State organizations monopolize and direct the citizenry, while civil society is still relatively weak and disorganized. The Catholic Church is undoubtedly the country’s most important civil society organization. Its international support network, well-defined ideology and belief structure, and permanent cadre organization differentiate it from other social actors. Even so, the Cuban Catholic Church is but a pale shadow of what its Polish and Hungarian (and even Chilean) counterparts were under communism. 46 Despite hopes to the contrary, the church has not experienced a dramatic expansion in its social presence in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s January 1998 visit to Cuba. There is, however, evidence that the Catholic Church has been revitalized and has begun to develop a stronger presence in Cuban society. There are reports of increased attendance at mass (particularly among young people), though levels ebbed soon after the pope’s visit. Yet the new members who continue to participate in church activities have a visibly more intense commitment. The papal visit infused the church hierarchy and clergy with a new sense of energy and self-confidence. Moreover, magazines like Vitral and Palabra Nueva press the outer edges of toleration, and as mentioned earlier, Caritas and other church-related organizations have become more active in providing food, medicine, and other social services.47 The Cuban state has reacted sharply and negatively, throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks to these efforts.48 Most recently, an

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internal PCC document took the church to task for its efforts to provide such social services and urged Party cadres to combat any erosion of the state’s presence in this arena. Since the 1980s, there has been a perceptible expansion in the space the Catholic Church and other civil society organizations occupy, even though they still operate under very difficult conditions. The roster goes far beyond traditional human rights groups, although a commitment to any of them still often entails loss of a job, harassment, and possibly jail. The alternative groups include literary and cultural circles, gay and transvestite networks, as well as Afro-Cuban cultural and religious organizations. The vast majority of these groups are not explicitly interested in politics, but their very presence and efforts to affirm a distinct identity suggest the growing fragmentation of the monolithic version of “Cuban-ness” that the state regime successfully imposed over the past forty years.49 There can be little doubt that Castro takes very seriously this threat to hegemony in the social sphere. The regime has sponsored its own set of civil society organizations (the so-called GONGOs, governmental non-governmental organizations), and its leaders and intellectuals take pains to insist that there is no contradiction between state predominance and the existence of civil-society organizations.50 If there is some scope to social pluralism in contemporary Cuba, political pluralism remains anathema. No political party other than the Communist Party is legal, and the regime alternates between outright repression and more subtle intimidation of dissidents. There is some evidence of bolder activity during the 1990s. Independent trade unions, peasant organizations, press associations, and even political parties have made an appearance on the Cuban scene, but they still operate under very strict limits.51 At best these are fledgling organizations that are kept under constant surveillance and harassment by the police and the ubiquitous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).52 Contemporary Cuban society exhibits signs of pluralism unimaginable in earlier phases of the revolution. An influential article categorized the various stages in the development of civil society as defensive, emergent, mobilizational, and institutional.53 Juan Carlos Espinosa made a persuasive argument that contemporary Cuba is in either the first or second stage and manifests either a defensive or emergent civil society.54 Non-state actors (non-governmental organizations, church groups, artist networks, farmers, the self-employed, etc.) are trying to defend their autonomy against a state whose impulse is to control every aspect of their behavior. What has changed over the past fifteen years is the state’s capacity to control non-state actors. On one level, the state acknowledged this incapacity in the early 1990s and enacted reforms that allowed such groups to widen their scope of activities. More recently, moderate economic stabilization has allowed the regime to recover much of its former capacity. Crackdowns on dissidents and greater restrictions on the self-employed attest to its willingness and capability to circumscribe civil society activities.

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The Post-Castro Era The transition to the post-Castro era has begun. Change is inevitable, and the only question is what direction it will take. As elaborated above, the current regime is in the charismatic early post-totalitarian stage. Several elements should be emphasized. First, Fidel Castro’s personal authority is crucial. The Cuban regime has always been his in a very special way, but the crisis spawned by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the impending post-Castro era have made him even more indispensable. Second, the Cuban economy displays lowered state capacity, very limited and weakly institutionalized economic reforms, a larger number of economic actors, and growing social and economic stratification. Third, the extensive military participation in the economy may have two consequences. At the societal level, serving and former officers could develop into a proto-capitalist class. At the elite level, the military could spawn a technocratic class of experts who, unlike the reds in the Communist Party, might press for a deeper economic reform agenda in the post-Castro era. Finally, the Catholic Church has gained space and self-confidence in the past few years, and there has been a marked increase in the number of formal and informal cultural, religious, and social organizations. Although the number of human rights groups and activists increased during the 1990s, the regime continues to harass and intimidate them, with the pressure intensifying over the past two years.55 What implications does this characterization have for analyzing the direction of change in Cuba? It is impossible to anticipate all or even many of the contingencies that may affect the succession and transition. However, history clearly shows that autocratic regimes are at their most vulnerable during succession crises. This window of vulnerability has now opened for Cuba. Many aspects of the succession crisis will play themselves out behind closed doors and may never be widely known. Perhaps not much will happen (or at least manifest itself) in the early phase of the post-Castro era. Raúl Castro has been his brother’s formally designated successor since 1997. Although we are uncertain about the specific trajectory of change in Cuba, we wish to be clear about some of our basic assumptions. Fidel Castro’s charismatic authority and leadership skills have enabled the regime to retain its capacity for mobilization and to forestall a complete loss of ideological vigor. After Fidel Castro dies or become incapacitated, there will be a pronounced leadership vacuum and a potentially disorderly succession process. Raúl may be more skilled than people suppose, but even so, charisma is not something that can be inherited. Moreover, while Raúl has evident political and managerial skills (not least in terms of patronage), this is not the same as possessing his brother’s dexterity in anticipating and addressing international and domestic challenges.

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The Cuban regime may take one of four paths in the wake of Fidel Castro’s departure. One would return Cuba to the totalitarian past. This would entail a reaffirmation of ideology, a return to mobilization, an end to market reforms and incentives, restrictions on social and economic pluralism, and a crackdown on dissident activity. A second path is a collapse scenario involving a transition from below and a popular revolt that would spread to sectors of the military. The third path would lead Cuba toward the stabilization of a post-totalitarian regime. Post-totalitarianism would be the staging area for the fourth path, but under this scheme the regime would then evolve toward the adoption of deeper and more significant economic and institutional reforms that, in turn, could produce a transition to democracy. Of these options, the return to totalitarianism and the collapse scenario are the least likely. With Fidel Castro gone, exercises in mobilization and ideological vigor would not be easily sustainable, either among the elite or in society at large. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine any contemporary international actor that would be willing to finance an autarkic totalitarian project. The primary political game in post-Castro Cuba will play out in the post-totalitarian arena, pitting those who favor a more institutionalized version of the status quo against those who favor liberalization and deeper reforms. The collapse scenario would probably require both a sharp rupture of the regime elite and a breakdown in the regime’s repressive capacity. Neither development seems likely. Moreover, as the Cuban experience of the early 1990s demonstrated, social and economic crisis is not a sufficient condition for mass protest to emerge and regime transformation to occur.56 That said, an exogenous shock, such as an economic crisis, a natural disaster, or an immigration crisis, that led to rapidly deteriorating living conditions or social instability could still foment mass protests, at which point the military and security apparatus would have to choose between repression and disobeying orders.57 Although this Romanian-type situation could conceivably occur, the regime has been careful to tamp down protest to avoid such tests of loyalty. In the post-Fidel Castro era, such spontaneous protests may take on a new significance if fissures in the elite should emerge. In all probability, the immediate post-Castro era will feature some variation on post-totalitarianism in which elite politics dominates. Saying this does not minimize either the importance or long-term significance of structural economic changes, but the nature of the Cuban regime (and the “anthropological lesions”58 it has inflicted on society) reinforces the need to focus on the elite. Cuban civil society is weak and disorganized, and for a variety of reasons, has not yet been able to articulate a credible alternative national project around which either mass publics or elites could mobilize. Civil society will not be easily resurrected and, at least in the short term, may not play as important a role as some transition analysts suggest.59 There are several groups within the regime and others outside it that will play crucial roles in the two most likely scenarios.

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On the regime side are the military, the Communist Party, and technocrats in the bureaucracy. On the other side are the Catholic Church, human rights groups, and the exile community. Groups from within the regime will be at the epicenter of the political dynamics of the early post-Castro period. Among these, and as befits the trajectory of the regime, the military will emerge as the linchpin. Part of its influence (the irreducible core, perhaps) will derive from its monopoly on the instruments of violence. In addition, from their position at the commanding heights of the joint-venture enterprises, current and former officers have been the primary contacts with international investors, and this will enhance both their resources and their influence. Moreover, though the final verdict is not yet in with respect to perfeccionamiento empresarial, the past decade has seen the military become manager of last resort for the state-socialist project in Cuba. Armed forces control of the repressive apparatus and the presence of military personnel in the economy could leave the Communist Party as the rump enforcer of ideology and the ostensible guide of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. As the ideological project of the regime moves toward redefinition, moreover, the PCC may find its legitimacy further debilitated. This is less likely to occur with respect to the armed forces, which can more easily lay claim to the role of defender of the fatherland. In contrast to the military and the PCC, the civilian technocratic elite possesses few resources. Without Fidel Castro’s authority and resourcefulness, cleavages between Party and military leaders could constitute one of the most destabilizing forces of the post-Castro order. Once such breaches develop, non-regime elites may have a greater role to play in Cuban politics. The Catholic Church will probably not take an overt political role, but its call for national reconciliation and justice will undoubtedly help shape the political agenda and provide a bridge between regime reformers and an emerging opposition. From sectors close to the church, Christian Democratic groups are likely to emerge whose social programs may prove attractive to moderate elements within the regime. Human rights groups will also grow bolder, more numerous, and more diverse. Some of them may be transformed into political organizations. For its part, the diaspora will become an increasingly important force, not just in economic terms but also in constructing the new Cuban polity and identity. Since the death of Castro will open new opportunities for political change in Cuba, it may allow exiles to turn their attention away from winning the forty-year civil war and toward exploiting political opportunities on the island. The end of the Castro era will signal the conclusion of one project for Cuba and the beginning of another. As its centenary of independence approaches, Cuba confronts simultaneous political, economic, social, and cultural challenges that, rhetoric notwithstanding, are far from resolution. The dilemmas of nationand state-building remain on the agenda. They will pose a major challenge for whatever regime emerges in Cuba over the next decade.

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Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

For a first cut at this issue, see Eusebio Mujal-León and Jorge Saavedra, “El post-totalitarismo carismatico y el cambio de regimen: Cuba en perspective comparada,” (Charismatic Post-Totalitarianism and Regime Change: Cuba in Comparative Perspective), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 115. See also Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 55. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 227. Marifeli Pérez-Stable, “Caught in a Contradiction: Cuban Socialism Between Mobilization and Normalization,” Comparative Politics 32, no. I (October 1999): 67. Jorge I. Domínguez, “Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba” (The Beginning of a Transition to Authoritarianism in Cuba) Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 9. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, “Cambio de regimen o cambios en el regimen? Aspectos politicos y económicos” (Change of Regime or Change in Regime? Political and Economic Aspects), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 37-40. Pérez-Stable, “Caught in a Contradiction,” p. 67. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, p. 48. Mesa-Lago documents the increasingly unfavorable change in the terms of aid from the Soviet Union as it faced economic decline in 1986-90. MesaLago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, p. 312. Pérez-Stable, “Caught in a Contradiction,” p. 70. The production of almost all other agricultural goods declined sharply over this period. Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, pp. 281-88. Julia Preston, “The Trial That Shook Cuba,” New York Review of Books (December 7, 1989): 24-31. For the classic formulation, see Jorge I. Domínguez, “The Civic Soldier in Cuba,” in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham Lowenthal and J. Samuel Fitch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), p. 263. Domingo Amuchástegui, “Cuba’s Armed Forces: Power and Reforms” (paper presented at the conference on “Cuba in Transition,” Coral Gables, FL, August 12-14, 1999), in Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 9, p. 110. The exception was during the visit of Pope John Paul II. Greene Walker estimates that 300,000 Cubans served overseas during a sixteen-year period. Phyllis Greene Walker, “Challenges Facing the Cuban Military,” Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 12 (October 1996) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/clas/Caribe/ bp 12.htm). Enrique A. Baloyra, “Twelve Monkeys: Cuban National Defense and the Military,” Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series 1, no. 4 (No-

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17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

509

vember 15, 1996): 13. Baloyra’s observations are based on interviews with Cuban military defectors. Frank O. Mora, “From Fidelismo to Raulismo: Civilian Control of the Military in Cuba,” Problems of Post-Communism. 46, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 2538. For one of the best treatments of the Ochoa affair, see Preston, “Trial That Shook Cuba,” pp. 24-31. Apparently many MININT officers were purged either because they had not thoroughly investigated General Ochoa’s activities or, more likely, because Fidel was unsure of MININT’s loyalty to the regime. Greene Walker reported, “In the reorganization … that followed, nearly all the officers of the formerly independent ministry were dismissed and replaced with career military personnel.” Millett reports that up to 70 percent of the Western Army’s officers were removed in the wake of the Ochoa trial. Richard Millett, “Cuba’s Armed Forces: From Triumph to Survival,” Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 4 (September 1993) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/ clas/Caribe/bp4.htm). Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello and Manuel Sanchez Herrero, “Background: Cuba’s Economic Reforms: An Overview,” in Perspectives on Cuban Economic Reforms, ed. Jorge Pérez-López and Matias E Travieso-Díaz (Tempe: Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press, 1998), p. 9. Ibid., p. 11. This felicitous phrase is from Edward Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996). Amuchástegui, “Cuba’s Armed Forces,” p. 113. Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, p. 293. Juan J. López, “Implications of the U.S. Economic Embargo for a Political Transition in Cuba” (paper presented at the conference on Cuba in Transition,” Miami, August 7-9, 1997), in Papers and Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 7, p. 250. Pérez-Stable, “Caught in a Contradiction,” p. 73. On balance, Cuban economic reforms have been tepid, certainly as compared to those enacted in China and Vietnam. See Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters, p. 9. Josep Colomer, “After Fidel, What? Forecasting Institutional Changes in Cuba” (paper presented at the conference on “Constitutional Law in a PostCastro Cuba,” New York University School of Law, April 21, 1997), p. 9. At the closing session of the Eighth Congress of the Federation of Latin American Journalists (FELAP), held at the University of Havana on November 12, 1999, Castro attacked the U.S. political system as a sham. “We prefer,” he said, “our socialism with all its imperfections; we prefer the totalitarianism of truth, justice, sincerity, authenticity; the totalitarianism of truly humanitarian feelings; the totalitarianism of the type of multiparty

510

31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

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system we practice.” Text available at w w w2.ceniai.inf.cu/gobierno/ discursos/1999/ing/f121199i.html. Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters, pp. 9, 25. Juan J. Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 197-98. Alan C. Lamborn, “Theory and Politics in World Politics.” International Studies Quarterly 41 (1997): 193-94. Ibid., p.193. Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 168. Pérez-Stable, “Caught in a Contradiction,” p. 64. Ibid., p. 68. Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Profile, 1999-2000 (1999): 10. Economist (April 6, 1996). For coverage of the restrictions on the self-employed, see Philip Peters, “Cuba’s Small Business Experiment: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back,” Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 17 (March 1998) (www. georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/clas/Caribe/paperl7.pdf). See also Tom Gjelten, “Entrepreneurs in Cuba,” Radio report on National Public Radio (July 24, 2000). Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba: Country Profile, 1999-2000 (1999): 8. The extent of the shill in focus is evident from the assessment by U.S. General Charles Wilhelm: “We have convincing evidence that as much as 70 percent of the effort of the existing force is being expended on agricultural and other self-sustaining activities.” Quoted in Anthony Boadle, “Cuban Military No Threat, Tums to Farming—U.S.,” Reuters (March 31, 1998). Mora and Greene Walker discuss the activities of Gaviota in more detail. See also Gaviota’s web site: www.gaviota.cubaweb.cu. “It is almost certainly the case that top administrators and ‘selected managers’ in the enterprises have access to dollar accounts, make high salaries, and receive perks as part of the job.” Juan M. del Aguila, “The Cuban Armed Forces: Changing Roles, Continuing Loyalties,” in Cuban Communism, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlicki (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), p. 670. The differences between those who could earn dollars and those with wages dependent upon the state were depicted humorously in the film Guantanamera. Somewhat more formal estimates have been produced by Philip Peters, “Where Capitalists and Socialists May Agree: Future Issues in Cuban Economic Policy” (remarks at a conference of the Georgetown University Caribbean Project Washington, DC, March 20, 2000) (www.lexingtoninstitute.org/cuba/cubaeconpol.htm). Linz, “Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes,” p. 204. There is little evidence to support Jorge Domínguez’s contention that the Cuban Catholic Church plays a role “comparable” to that exercised by its

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47.

48. 49.

50.

51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

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counterparts “under authoritarian regimes in other latitudes.” Domínguez, “Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba,” p. 16. For an unusually good treatment of the church in Cuba, see Dagoberto Valdés Hernández, ed., Reconstruir la Sociedad Civil: Un Proyecto de Educacion Civica, Pluralismo y Participacion Para Cuba (Reconstructing Civil Society: A Civic Education Project, Pluralism and Participation in Cuba3 (Caracas: Conrad Adenauer Foundation, 1997). Radio Vatican E-mail (November 24 30,2000) at www.vaticanradio. Org/ ispano/isparchi/noti 133.htm. Vela Cecilia Bobs Leon, Los laberintos de la imaginacion: repertorio simbólico indentidades y actores del cambio social en Cuba (The Labyrinths of the Imagination: Symbolic Repertoire, Identities, and Actors in Social Change in Cuba) (Mexico City: El College de Mexico, Centro de Studios Sociological, 2000), p. 222. Rafael Rojas, “Politicos Invisibles,” Encounter. 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 33. For a similar view from a perspective sympathetic to the regime, see Rafael Hernandez, “Hacia una Nuevo societal socialist? Cambios, crisis y configuraciones sociales en Cuba” (Toward a New Socialist Society? Changes, Crisis, and Social Configurations in Cuba), Nueva Sociedad 157 (SeptemberOctober 1998): 2717-18. The Freedom House rankings show a steady “unfree” 7 for political rights and 7 for civil liberties ranking from 1972 to 1976, then a decline to 6,6 from 1978 to 1988, and a spike upward to 7,7 for the last decade. See www.freedomhouse.org/survey99/country/cuba.html. Various human rights organizations (Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among them) have reported on the continued harassment and prosecution of dissidents, coupled with the constant refusal to grant amnesty to hundreds of political prisoners. The last wave of repression is covered by Pedro Betancourt, “Cuba: Repression by Harassment,” Economist (March 18, 2000). Josep Colomer, “Watching Neighbors: The Cuban Model of Social Control,” Cuban Studies 31 (March 2001). Marcia A. Weigle and Jim Butterfield, “Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes,” Comparative Politics 25, no.1 (October 1992): 1-23. Juan Carlos Espinosa, “Civil Society in Cuba: The Logic of Emergence in Comparative Perspective” (paper presented at the conference on “Cuba in Transition,” Coral Gables, FL, August 12-14, 1999), in Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 9, pp. 346 67. Betancourt, “Cuba: Repression by Harassment.” See also Pax Christi Netherlands, Report on the Humanitarian and Social Work of Catholic Church Institutions in Cuba (February 13, 2001) (www.paxchristi.nl). A methodological account of Theda Skocpol’s work discusses how “relative deprivation” is not a sufficient cause for revolution. James Mahoney, “Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrocausal Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology 104, no.4 (January 1999): 1160.

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57. For a skeptical perspective on regime collapse, see Juan M. del Aguila, “Reflections on a Non-Transition in Cuba: Comments on Elites” (paper presented at the conference on “Cuba in Transition,” Miami, August 7-9, 1997), in Papers and Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 7, p. 192. 58. Archbishop Pedro Meurice, “Present and Future of the Church in Cuba” (acceptance speech upon receipt of an honorary doctoral degree from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, May 29, 1999). 59. López, “Implications of the U.S. Economic Embargo,” p. 250.

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32 The Cuban Revolution and Its Acolytes Carlos Alberto Montaner There are few Western intellectuals who are still in Fidel Castro’s camp. And those who remain do not all stand alongside him for the same reasons. Some, like the German writer Günter Grass who is not a communist militant, apparently are persuaded by the schematic, simplistic vision of a poor island nation harassed and threatened by the power of the United States, to explain and justify the Cuban tyranny. Others, Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano among them, take a classical third world angle, interwoven with Marxist analysis, antiAmerican sentiments, and misunderstanding of the economic and social conditions that cause poverty, inequality, and suffering among the people in Latin America. Then there is a small class of Castro supporters who, at this late stage, are no apologists for the regime but whose loyalty to the “great leader” remains unwavering. The standard bearer of this group is the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, someone with in-depth knowledge of the ills besetting Cuban society and the aberrations of the communist bureaucracy, but who remains a staunch defender of Fidel Castro, because to abandon his friend in “this winter of his discontent” would not be an elegant thing to do. On the other side, the chorus of intellectual critics has been growing and their voice has gained tremendous resonance. In Spain, with the exception of Rafael Alberti, there are practically no prestigious writers who support the Havana government. In the United States, indignant voices of writers like Susan Sontag, Irving Louis Horowitz, or Allen Ginsberg have virtually silenced the ever-less spirited applause from the Chomsky school. The only supporter left in France was Régis Debray, but since Colonel Tony de la Guardia was shot in the summer of 1989, despite other arguments, he has changed sides and joined the ranks of the anti-Castro forces, energetically led by Fernando Arrabal, BernardHenri Lévy, Jorge Semprún, Jean-François Revel, Eugène Ionesco, and a cast of characters that included at one time the popular actor Yves Montand. 513

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If repudiation of Castroism is unanimous in France and Spain—to the extent that the writer Xavier Domingo would not think twice about personally going to Cuba to help the dissidents—in Latin America it is almost unanimous. Mexicans of varying ideological persuasion, from Enrique Krauze to Hector Aguilar Camin, and Argentinians as different as Juan José Sebreli and Jacobo Timmerman, all are agreed in their condemnation of Castro. Joining the chorus are intellectuals as unlike as Jorge Amado, German Arciniegas, and Jorge Edwards. Gone are the days of when men like Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Carlos Rangel, Juan Goytisolo, Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza had to bear the brunt of the rage of the “divine left” for denouncing the arrest, mistreatment, and humiliation of the poet Heberto Padilla. And no angry response comes from Bogota or Lima when a devastating anti-Castro article is published in Madrid by Jimenez Losantos, or in Rome by Valerio Riva, who is, with Laura Gonzalez, the untiring human rights campaigner, one of the leading Italian experts on the Cuba. Castro has been in power for thirty-five years and his political message has almost exhausted itself. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of communist governments in Europe it is impossible to go on shouting with impunity “Marxist-Leninism or Death” around the Caribbean. Especially when the call comes from a country that is ravaged by hunger and poverty and bureaucratic inefficiency. Surprising is not so much that Castroism is totally discredited in intellectual circles but that some sectarians are still alive and prepared to carry on chanting Havana’s slogans. Peripheral to the pro-Castro/anti-Castro debate are the questions: Why has this debate come about? Why has the Cuban revolution been the center of polemics among intellectuals for more than three decades? Why do we have to be for Castro or against him? The Cuban case is no longer an isolated political phenomenon on an island in the Caribbean that turned into a universal moral dilemma. A similar situation existed in Spain in the years 1936 to 1939, when civil war split the world’s intellectuals into two camps: partisans of the Republic (the vast majority) and supporters of the rebel insurgents. Since the start of the revolution, Castro has invited famous personalities— Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are one example—to Cuba on a “political pilgrimage,” however, not for a serious discussion of his system, but for the purpose of enlisting international support for his regime. Intellectuals who support dictatorships tend to delude themselves that they are merely lending support to a certain way of thinking and that such a show of partisanship is of no real consequence. But communism, fascism, and all tyrannies that have systematically sought the support of respected artists and intellectuals have not done so for the love of art or devotion to the artist. Their actions are purely motivated by the propaganda effect that will allow them to whitewash themselves of their victims’ complaints, to obscure criticism, and to hide the dictatorial tinge of their governments.

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When the Argentinean Oswaldo Soriano, the Italian Gianni Mina—an entertainer, not a literary personality—or the Brazilian Fray Betto publicly support the Cuban revolution, that support lends an aura of political legitimacy to Castro’s hold on power. This support, along with the staged demonstrations of crowds in public squares and parks, is a substitute for democracy, multi-party politics, the rule of law, and free elections. Support from famous foreign intellectuals and massive domestic mobilization are symbols which are used to silence any internal dissent, to disqualify the opposition, and to justify the revolution. This not only includes hospitals and schools (which need no defense since they are obviously beneficial) but the imprisonment of political opponents, the machine gunning of ferrymen, the censorship, arbitrary sentencing, persecution of dissidents, and the general police state climate with accusations, fear, and torture, in which the people must live. Obviously, if these governments had democratic legitimacy, if they did their job properly and could reasonably lay claim to true popular support, they would not need to resort to the backing of foreign intellectuals and costly public relations operations. Neither would they need to make a display of public fervor at open air meetings and repeat slogans a thousand times over in the mass media. When Castro’s defenders talk about the Cuban revolution, what are they referring to? What is Fray Betto thinking about when he considers the revolution? Does he think of a rural school where children learn the alphabet hand in hand, or does he think of a desperate family tied to a few planks hurling itself into the sea in the hope of escaping the horror. Does Mario Benedetti, when he thinks of Cuba, think of another Mario, Mario Chanes, who was at Fidel Castro’s side during the assault on Moncada and during the disembarkation of Granma? This did not spare Chanes from a thirty-year jail term for a political crime that could never be proven because he never committed it. Can Saverio Tutino, one of Castro’s last standard bearers in Italy, shed his fascination for Fidel Castro and enter the miserable home of a hungry Cuban family, existing without electricity sixteen hours a day, without running water for half the week, without any hope at all, and after his shocking visit will he be able to re-examine his idol in the light of the pathetic scenes of daily life in Cuba? What is dangerous about the intellectuals who applaud Castro is their moral schematics, the “Simple-Simon” approach, their disregard for the shocking reality with which Cubans have to live. Cuba is not a poor small island in the Caribbean at the mercy of the United States. It is a country the size of Austria or Switzerland and should not have to endure hunger time and again. Eighty percent of its land is extraordinarily fertile, the annual rainfall tends to be generous, and the population does not reach eleven million inhabitants. Castro’s government is not calm and workmanlike. It does not attempt to peacefully build a political model that merely differs from that of neighboring countries. The reality is that Castro’s state is a dictatorship, a deliberate emula-

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tion of the old Soviet model. Cuba has the ninth largest army in the world and its soldiers have been deployed as mercenaries in the longest wars of conquest (fifteen years in Angola and Ethiopia). The Cuba, for whose redemption Fray Betto prays, has a standing army of 325,000 men, an implacable secret police force 75,000 strong, and various types of militia of more than a million conscripts. Meanwhile, the communist party makes up part of the assault force, that fearsome rabble called the Rapid Response Brigade, who beat, humiliate, and constantly harass dissidents or anyone who dares express disagreement with the system. True Castro’s government has been the target of attacks from political opponents as well as from the CIA, but it would be cynical not to point out that for thirty-two years, while it enjoyed support from the Soviet Union, Cuba has been a nest for terrorists and kidnappers, a safe haven for warmongers from all over the world, and a training ground for revolutionary subversives. Supporters of the regime accuse the United States of aggression against Cuba without a word about Cuban aggression against Romulo Betancourt’s Venezuela, which had to fight a painful battle to consolidate democracy in the aftermath of the fall of Perez Jimenez’s dictatorship. They forget Cuba’s greatest subversive efforts against Latin American democracy: Prado’s Peru, Pacheco Areco’s Uruguay, Barco’s Colombia, Illia’s Argentina. Cuba even carried out the absurd and despicable act of training Costa Rican and Jamaican Castroists to overthrow their respective “dictatorships” which did not even have armies! Can any informed person ignore the connections between the Cuban General Intelligence Department (GID) and terrorist and guerilla movements such as the Uruguayan Tupamaros, the Argentinean Montoneros, the FLN in Colombia, the Puerto Rican Macheteros, the Honduran Cinchoneros, the Spanish ETA, and even the Italian Red Brigade? Do the defenders of “poor little Cuba” have any doubts about the relations between the Cuban revolution and the drug trafficker Robert Vesco and other cardsharks who have gone to Cuba with proposals for dirty, lucrative business deals to “fight imperialism.” When Gianni Mina wrote his ill-conceived book about/with/for Castro he ignored that it was Castro who inspired Feltrinelli and that it was in Havana that this confused Marxist editor decided to alter Italian democracy with terrorist tactics and set up a glorious polity along the lines of Cuba, Bulgaria or Albania? Feltrinelli’s body is a final and definitive metaphor for what the Cuban revolution really means: absurd, meaningless death, irrationality, a bloody utopia. What could carry more weight in judging the Cuban revolution? The achievements—schools and hospitals—or the destruction—the imprisonments, executions, persecutions, misery, and oppression? There are various starting points, but the most common are those touted as the “achievements of the revolution.” These can be summed up as follows: It is true that there are problems in Cuba, but the revolution has made a colossal effort of educating Cubans, ending illiteracy, providing thousands with a univer-

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sity education and creating one of the most cultured and best prepared societies in Latin America. The argument for the achievement in health care goes somewhat like this: The indices on health and life expectancy for Cubans are among the highest in the world. Statistics about live births, number of doctors per thousand of population, and the official data from the World Health Organization are then cited as irrefutable proof that the revolution is fundamentally a good thing. A third “achievement” used to justify support of the system: triumphs in sports. The medals won at the Olympic and Pan-American Games. The list of triumphant boxers and runners. Is it not a feat, so they day, that poor Cuba, the target of Yankee threats, is a sporting power, in much the same way as it is a medical and academic power? As a corollary to these revolutionary axioms—which, like all axioms, require no demonstration—the “shining” paradigm of Cuba is contrasted with the gloomy reality in other Latin American and Caribbean countries. Cuba’s healthy, educated, and athletic young people are contrasted with Brazil’s hungry children who are gunned down by the police for the simple crime of sleeping in the streets. Or Haiti where the life expectancy of new-born babies is twenty times less than in Cuba. On and on indefinitely so the last pro-Castro intellectuals can allay their ethical conscience. The first axiom proposes that governments should be judged by their achievements in education, health, and sport and that everything else is secondary. One might as well start a campaign for the canonization of the Chilean military dictator Pinochet and perhaps include an annual pilgrimage to Taiwan since the qualitative leaps achieved in Chile and the former Formosa have been precisely in the fields of health and education. They have been even more noteworthy than those achieved in Cuba, among other reasons because their starting point was lower. Maybe they should plan a campaign for copying the Kenyan or Ethiopian government model since East Africa seems to produce the world’s leading long-distance runners. By the same logic, pro-Castro intellectuals may dedicate poetry to the South African government, since the life expectancy of black children born there is twice that of neighboring Angola and Mozambique. Neither Benedetti nor Mina nor Galeano may be aware of it, but by citing certain “achievements” of the revolution to justify all aspects of it, they are repeating an old totalitarian discourse used by every twentieth-century dictator. Franco and Salazar demanded universal respect because of the schools, hospitals, and dams they inaugurated. Mussolini used the punctuality of the trains and the end to strikes as a perfect excuse for Italian fascism. Hitler could exhibit as proof of the wholesomeness of Nazism a network of super highways, an end to inflation, and a drastic reduction in unemployment. This is equivalent to saying that a system of government should be judged by selectively isolated aspects is an act of intellectual negligence or moral weakness for which nobody who aspires to live by the authority of truth should fall.

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But if the first axiom of pro-Castro intellectuals is ridiculous, the second is outright embarrassing. Why should the atrocities committed against children in Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo be used to justify Cuba’s political model? Does this mean that Stalinism is the only way of stopping policemen from committing heinous crimes? In neither Montevideo, nor Buenos Aires, nor Santiago de Chile, nor Quito, nor in fifty other capitals is it necessary to install an inefficient, repressive tyranny to prevent the killing of children in the streets. By the same reasoning one might ask that Germany adopt to the communist model of the defunct East Germany to stop the aggression of skinheads against Turkish immigrants. Pro-Castro intellectuals seem to reduce the debate to its extremes as if the only alternative to the misery and brutality in other societies was the misery and brutality of socialism? Costa Rica, for example, is a democratic society regulated by the rule of law, with neither jailed dissidents nor exiles, with indices of health and education very similar to those of Cuba, yet without either death squads or extreme misery. These nostalgic communists, clutching at straws amidst the ideological cataclysm sweeping over them, seem unable to realize that the thirty most prosperous, most developed countries with best educated citizenry are thirty liberal democracies. After so many years of reading and observing reality, have they not discovered that freedom is a basic component of creating national wealth and perfecting all aspects of society, not an obstacle to achieving these objectives. Improving the quality of health, education and sport in Cuba was not even all that difficult since the starting point was so high when Castro took control. Another recurring argument in support of Castroism points to conditions in prerevolutionary Cuba, portrayed as an abject combination of the poverty of Haiti, the barbaric gangsterism of the Chicago of the 1930s, and the corruption and prostitution of Shanghai. These distortions are contradicted by studies of the period, reported in the academic literature. According to a 1953 study by H. T. Oshima of Stanford University, the per capita income of the Cuban people was of the same order of magnitude as the per capita income in Italy and the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, while Cuba’s per capita income was 520 dollars, Yugoslavia’s and Bulgaria’s did not reach 300, while China’s hardly exceeded 50. In this period, Cuba had one car per forty people, this was only slightly below Venezuela and Puerto Rico. It had one telephone per thirty-eight people, comparative figures are, for Mexico seventy-two and sixty-eight for Brazil. No other Latin American country at the time matched Cuba in television ownership, one per twenty-five people, and only Cuba had color transmission. In 1959, when Castro took control, 24 percent of the labor force worked in industry while the Latin American average was a bare 17 percent. Cuba also had an extraordinary concentration of trade with one shop per thousand people, which may explain why Cubans were then the leading per-capita consumers of electric energy in Latin America and twenty-fourth in the world.

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How was this wealth distributed? The (Marxist) Mexican economist Noyola observed, “The contrast between rich and poor is far less noticeable than here. In fact, I would say that Cuba is one of the countries, with the exception of Costa Rica and Uruguay where income is least badly distributed in Latin America.” Other studies calculated that the Cuban middle class represented 33 percent of the population and enjoyed the highest level of income in Latin America. As far as education and health are concerned, the pre-Castro Republic could exhibit achievements as remarkable as those claimed by the revolution. The Ginsburg Atlas, published at the time, lists the level of literacy in Cuba as 80 percent, similar to Chile and Costa Rica, and higher than Spain. For a population of six million, the public sector had 30,000 primary school classrooms and 34,000 university graduate teachers who taught 1,300,000 children, while more than 1,000 private schools educated another 200,000 students. In addition, according to the United Nations’ Statistical Annual (1959) Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico were in the leading positions as far as university education was concerned. Ginsburg ranked Cuba twenty-second in public health among 122 countries. It had 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, ahead of Holland, France, United Kingdom, and Finland. The infant mortality rate in Cuba was the lowest in the world (5.8 annually per 1,000 inhabitants; United States 9.5). These data are in line with one of the lowest indices of venereal disease, which objectively refutes the view that the island was a “whorehouse” for Americans, nor for anybody else for that matter. In the 1950s, Cuba was a nation with medium economic development. It had a ambitious entrepreneurial class and ranked economically near the top among Latin American countries, alongside Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Venezuela. The most eloquent demonstration of this assertion is to be found in the patterns of inward and outward migration. In the decade of the 1950s, thousands of immigrants came to Cuba while very few of its own citizens left the country for economic reasons. Fernado Bernal, a diplomat at the time of the revolution, states that when he arrived to take charge of the consulate in Rome in 1959, he found 12,000 applications from Italians who wanted to emigrate to Cuba in search of a better future. Hundreds of thousands of emigrants came from the Spanish provinces of Asturias and Galicia in the course of the twentieth century in search of a better life. The direction of migratory movement, a factor hardly ever taken into account by social scientists in judging the quality of life in a society, is usually extremely revealing. It reflects the complex rational evaluations large numbers of people make of what they are leaving behind and what they hoped to find before they decide to move to a place where they can improve their lives. Obviously, few people will move voluntarily to areas that are poorer and less promising. If at the beginning of the century Italians sailed for Argentina, they did so because that South American country was more prosperous, hospitable,

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and auspicious than their homeland. But if at the end of this century we find Argentineans flocking to Italy, it is because present-day Italy enjoys a higher level of development and better living conditions than Argentina. From the creation of the Republic in 1902 until Castro’s coming to power, workers from all over the world were received by Cuba, especially from Spain. But since the mythical revolution, this phenomenon has been reversed: more than a million Cubans have fled by whatever means available, while hardly anyone, not even the most fervent communists from Eastern Europe and Russia, has shown any desire to settle in Cuba. This is a most valuable factor in judging the Cuba Castro has created. Nevertheless, apart from the proof of migration, one of the most notorious consequences of the massive exodus of Cubans to the United States has been the creation of a powerful minority in their adopted country which has reached two million people of Cuban origin. The original million has doubled with the passage of time and they now represent a force within the American power structure. This phenomenon shows what the American embargo—a constant theme of Castro defenders—really is and why it is maintained in spite of ceaseless international pressure to lift it. Cuban emigrants coming to the United States were poor and helpless like nearly all refugees. In the course of a single generation, they reached the same level of economic development as the American middle class. They now make up the country’s most powerful Hispanic ethnic group although they are fewer in number than Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans. Cuban Americans have three representatives in the U.S. Congress and considerable political influence in the State of Florida, especially in Dade County, a conurbation that includes the city of Miami. It is essential to bear this in mind in order to understand the following statement: there is no “American” blockade against Cuba. What exists is an embargo of Castro’s government. It started in the 1960s when North American holdings in Cuba were nationalized without compensation. Moreover, that embargo is only sustained today because of the pressure on the Washington government by Cubans who reside in the United States. The supposedly “evil” American blockade, brandished by Castroist intellectuals to justify the failed dictatorship, basically consists of a prohibition to trade with Cuba, which only affects American firms. There is no naval blockade, and any country or firm that wants to buy from or sell to Cuba, wants to provide the country with credit facilities or invest in Cuban industry and business is free to do so. The only limitation placed on potential trading partners is dictated by commercial soundness or by common sense. This explains why Cuba owes the West more than $8.5 billion and why it owes the countries of what used to be the Eastern block more than $25 billion. This figure makes Cuba the most heavily indebted country per capita in Latin America. How can anyone say this American blockade closes the door to progress

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in Cuba and starves the country of international financial support? Might it not be because nobody has been willing since 1986 to make any loans to Cuba— three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and five years before Cuba was deprived of its Soviet subsidy—when Castro unilaterally cancelled all foreign debts. A trip around Cuban hotels, diplomatic shops, and the homes of the political elite illustrates that there are no American products that are not obtainable for the Havana government. Anything from Coca Cola to IBM products, imported via Canada, Panama, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia, is available at “dollar area” which are reserved for foreign tourists and privileged Cubans. Just as one cannot speak of a “blockade,” it would be wrong to believe the United States was punishing Castro for the illegal confiscation of American property in the 1960s. At any rate, this could only have been true until the 1970s, before the Cuban exiles gained any political weight. Since then Cubans have acquired political influence and if there is any punishment of Castro’s Cuba, it emanates from Cubans living in the United States. Cuban voters tipped the scale in the last three presidential elections in Florida. President Clinton improved his standing with the Cuban community in the last elections when he endorsed the “Torricelli Bill” for tightening the embargo. Both political parties are likely to maintain a tough political stance on Cuba in 1996 to satisfy Cuban voters. That the majority of the Cuban exiles back a strong line against Castro is understandable. Among the exiles are thousands of people who suffered imprisonment or who had to escape on rafts. Many lost all their possessions and all were penniless refugees. Many families have close relatives who were killed in political executions, drowned at sea, or lost their lives in some absurd African war. The Cuban exiles’s stance with respect to the embargo must be understood from the standpoint of the victim’s logic. Castro’s political position might have been weakened if the embargo had been lifted because it would have deprived him of his favorite excuse for repression. The weight such an argument carries with those whose lives have been marred by the brutal excesses of dictatorship is generally rather slight. The embargo will, therefore, not be lifted until democracy is established in Cuba. This brings out a curious paradox: the only person who can lift the embargo is Fidel Castro himself. President Clinton cannot do it because he would be defeated in Congress, neither does he want to because there would be no political sense in alienating the Cuban-American electorate over a matter that no longer is of great importance to American foreign policy. Washington already views Cuba—and will do so for some time to come—as a domestic issue, not a question of foreign affairs. But, what will happen to Cuba if the transition to democracy and to a different type of organization of the state does not soon commence? The country will be seized by a spiral of poverty and will progres-

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sively become more paralyzed until a good part of the population is wiped out by malnutrition and disease. When the Soviet subsidy disappeared, the “Cuban model” became totally unworkable. The much boasted about “achievements” were an illusion, a mirage created by generous Soviet donations and not by the meager production of the Cubans themselves. The thoroughly inefficient regime had been kept afloat thanks to inflated, unrealistic prices the Soviets were willing to pay for sugar, nickel, and citrus fruits. The Soviets sold Cuba gasoline at reduced prices and gave them up to three million tons per year free of charge. Castro has so far refused to change his policies even though Cuba must increase exports from the current level of $1.7 billion—this includes income from tourism—to the 1991 level of $8.2 billion in order to survive. But since this brusque fall in foreign currency reserves makes it impossible to import sufficient quantities of raw materials and petroleum, the country produces less and less and the exports are plummeting from day to day. This limits the purchase of the 700 basic products which include more than 50 percent of the essential foodstuffs that are no longer being produced domestically. The catastrophic consequences are already apparent. In 1990 widespread vitamin A deficiency caused by malnutrition led to an epidemic of ophthalmic diseases. In 1992 and 1993, the supply of eggs fell drastically. Sugar water became the main source of energy. Vitamin B deficiency brought Beriberi and optical neuritis affects more than 60,000 Cubans; many are left partially blind or invalid. Meanwhile Castro continues shrieking his slogan “Socialism or Death” in the Plaza de la Revolución. In a way he is right: thousands of Cubans will die if he does not abandon socialism or the Cubans do not rid themselves of the dictator. The Cuba of today is a hellish mixture of discomfort, hunger, ill-health, social tension, and hopelessness. The dream of young people is to escape aboard anything that floats or flies. The dream of the old is to die to be saved from further suffering or from having to witness the likely bloody end of this tragedy. “How painful,” confessed a leading communist to his exiled daughter, “having spent my life fighting for a better Cuba, for a socialist paradise, and finding in old age that I have contributed to the creation of the worst of hells.” Cuba has become a hell. That is what the last standard bearers of Castroism are defending.

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33 After Fidel, What?: Forecasting Institutional Changes in Cuba Josep M. Colomer Predictive capability is not always the strength of the social sciences—the proof: what happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1989–91, which almost no one had expected a few years before. Trying to forecast political and constitutional developments in Cuba is thus a very daunting but at the same time very exciting challenge. I will try to approach it in the light of some previous experiences, especially the “Spanish model” of transition to democracy “from above” in the 1970s and some reform processes from Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and the 1990s, and on the basis of some reasonable and cautious prospects for Cuba. My basic point is that constitutional changes and the choice of democratic political institutions usually depend more on the actors’ strategic decisions during the process of change rather than on past domestic experiences, the international constitutional environment, the country’s degree of social or ethnic homogeneity, or any other “structural” or previously given factor. Instead, the relative strength of key political actors in the transition, their future expectations, and their corresponding strategic decisions usually provide the best explanation for the choice of different institutional frameworks in a democratization process. Applying this reasoning to Cuba, I will adopt the hypothesis that a process of political reform may develop after Fidel Castro’s death. Assuming that the incumbent rulers can play an initiative role in the process, minimum requirements to allow a multi-party election will be identified and placed in the context of existing constitutional provisions. Institutional formulas corresponding to a parliamentary regime and a “majoritarian” electoral system based on single-member districts are forecasted as likely choices in this hypothetical situation. A limited constitutional reform could allow such a process by legal means. How523

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ever, it might also foster a rather high level of bipolarization and conflict between the incumbent rulers and the opposition, resulting in two adversarial blocs. Two phases in a transition process of choosing political institutions must be distinguished. Pre-electoral arrangements are usually dominated by actors’ bargains and uncertain expectations. In contrast, more stable constitutional arrangements, which are typically adopted after the first competitive election, can be based upon a firmer knowledge of actors’ relative strength, as measured by their support in votes, although these constitutional choices are also conditioned by some degree of uncertainty regarding the future. I will focus here on pre-electoral arrangements with the aim of trying to identify some legal requirements for a process of political democratization in Cuba to start. Only a few implications for possible further constitutional changes leading to a new, stable democratic regime will be considered below. Three models of institutional strategies and choices in recent transitions from Communism in Eastern Europe can be summarized as follows. First, in preelectoral arrangements dominated by transactions “from above” among fractions of the former authoritarian rulers, without a relevant role of the opposition, self-confident incumbents tend to impose institutions favoring the unity of powers, which give them more opportunities to retain control. The corresponding institutions include a majority-plurality electoral system (allowing only two main parties to get office and survive), parliamentarism with one chamber, and centralization. These were in fact the pre-existing institutions at the beginning of the processes of change in Eastern Europe, and they are basically the same as those existing now in Cuba, as will be discussed below. With single-party domination and non-competitive elections, such mechanisms were scraps of paper, but they could be maintained to allow multi-party elections without dramatic constitutional changes. Thus greater elements of institutional continuity with the typical Soviet model were initially preserved in those cases where the communist rulers were able to impose the rules of the game at the beginning of the process of change, as was the case in most of the republics of the former Soviet Union (excluding the Baltics), where the opposition was relatively weak. Second, where a more balanced relationship of forces exist between the incumbent rulers and the opposition, as typically reflected in negotiations at a “round table” and in a “national reconciliation” policy, actors tend to agree upon compromise formulas and some division of powers, in order to have more opportunities of retaining some representation and avoid being expelled from institutional positions. In fact, semi-competitive elections with reserved seats for the communists, mixed electoral systems of majority principle and proportional representation, and the introduction of certain autonomous offices, such as a president elected separately from the parliament and a second chamber, were agreed upon at the round tables in Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria.

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Finally, a third strategic situation is defined by the initiative role of the opposition, as typically happens in a “sudden collapse” of the authoritarian regime usually induced by some unexpected foreign event, such as a borders conflict or a defeat in a war. When such an unexpected breakdown of the authoritarian rule occurs, as was the case in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the incumbent rulers have not evolved into soft-liner positions and have not yet promoted a moderate liberalization process. Since changes are dramatic and quick, institutional innovation and formulas allowing pluralism and division of powers (including proportional representation) are more likely to be adopted and, more clearly than in the other two situations, the process can lead to the election of a constituent assembly without previous restrictions on deciding institutional arrangements. In a similar vein, it seems that constitutional amendments and significant elements of constitutional continuity with past authoritarian regulations can be expected from processes dominated by the incumbent rulers. Short constitutions and/or vague or compromise constitutional formulas, which transfer many decisions to the future political process, tend to be the result of more uncertain or a more evenly balanced relationship of forces between the incumbent rulers and the opposition. In contrast, new and extensive constitutions, with detailed regulations on a large number of issues, are likely to be the result of the advantage of some innovative actor in order to impose a preferred model early in the transition process. Note that the preference of self-confident incumbent rulers for maintaining formulas involving concentration of powers can be clearly explained as motivated by self-interest. The asymmetrical preference of opposition movements for more pluralistic formulas, even when they forecast a clear victory over the former authoritarians, reflects the opposition’s usual status as a multi-party coalition which tends to split into several parties competing among themselves when democratization gets underway (as was, for example, the case of Solidarity in Poland, the Popular Fronts in the Baltics, Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia, etc.). While former authoritarian rulers tend to unite on a common platform in elections, opposition movements are more interested in allowing the chance for multiple rival parties to emerge from their provisionally united ranks. (More detailed discussion of institutional strategies in transition processes can be found in Colomer, 1991, 1995b, and the sources mentioned there). Out of the three possible models of transition to democracy previously presented, the roundtable model seems the least appropriate one for analyzing current Cuban developments. This model implies formal, rather balanced negotiations between soft-line rulers and the opposition, but these two key actors have been relatively weak in Cuba until now. The possibility of a soft-line fraction among Cuban rulers has emerged only recently, along with economic liberalization. Anti-Castro opposition on the island is particularly weak, mainly as a consequence of a massive, continuous flow of exiles and emigres to the United

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States since the revolution. To be said in Hirschman’s words, in Cuba “exit”has grown for many years at the expense of “voice.” The alternative “sudden collapse” model corresponds most closely to the aims of the Cuban exiles’ most influential groups in Miami. Certainly, potential unrest on the island should not be under-valuated, despite the ability of Castro’s regime to survive the worst moments of the economic crises in 1994–95. Among other factors, recent U.S. measures restricting immigration, which parallel the adoption of increasingly harsh embargo measures, might induce dissatisfied Cubans to consider new protest actions. It is also relevant that the system of strict surveillance of every citizen, which was formerly organized not only by the police but specially by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, has been visibly weakened in the 1990s. However, a problem of the model of “sudden collapse” lies in the uncertain critical event or “fuse” which could transform dissatisfaction into revolt. Contagion between neighbor countries was very important in diffusing protest movements in Central Europe, both through border conflicts and through its extension by ethnic minorities into other states. Yet this development is ruled out in Cuba due to its insular position and the absence of similar regimes in the region. Nor is Cuba involved now in any external war. And the hypothesis of U.S. direct intervention has not been contemplated since 1962, and it is not on the present American Government’s agenda. Thus the more likely developments in Cuba would seem to fit better the first model of transition “from above,” which is based on transactions among fractions of the former authoritarian rulers without a relevant initial role of the opposition, and moves at a rather slow pace. This is the hypothesis that I will develop below in its implications regarding constitutional and other institutional reforms. (A previous discussion of the likely ways of change in Cuba can be found in Colomer, 1995c). Before going on, however, I want to post a warning about two crucial aspects of this “model” of transition in which the incumbent rulers play the main initiative role. First, economic reforms alone, such as a market-oriented liberalization and openness to foreign investments, do not necessarily bring about political democratization, as the case of China, among many others, clearly shows. Political reforms may be eased by economic opening and social flexibility, but no deterministic relationship exists between them. Second, it is highly unlikely that Fidel Castro is going to lead or allow others to lead a process of political reform implying a substantial reduction of his personal power. Many psychological traits in his character suggest this reasonable observation, along with Castro’s tendency to resist any threat with a maximalist reaction typically represented by slogans such as “Fatherland or death,” “Victory or death,” or “Socialism or death.” Some crucial experiences can also explain Castro’s unwillingness to undertake an uncertain process of reform that could lead to an alternation in power. It was the unexpected out-

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come of the first attempts to introduce moderate reforms in Eastern Europe (starting with Poland in early 1989), and especially the Soviet “perestroika” itself, with the unanticipated and for most of its promoters undesired dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, that prevents a replication elsewhere. A similar lesson could be learned from the democratization process induced by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, which led to their unforecasted electoral defeat in 1990. Precisely because these processes of reform from above ended in such unfavorable outcomes for their promoters, Fidel Castro is not likely to undertake a similar risky venture. Miscalculations regarding the extent of popular support for authoritarian regimes and their rulers’ chances in a competitive election are not infrequent in processes of political change. Such was the case in particular of the Polish communist rulers in the winter 1989, as well as of the Sandinistas the following year. Yet it was because the Polish process of change from Communism was temporarily ahead of the others in Eastern Europe, as the Nicaraguan process was a unique experience in Central America, that false expectations were more easily entertained. Because Cuba presents the (almost) last case of possible transition from Communism in the world, it is very unlikely that Castro will make the same mistakes. Any project of perestroika for Cuba was rejected by the Castro brothers from the beginning. In 1986 Fidel Castro launched a program of “rectification” exactly against the stream in the Soviet Union of the time, innovatively lead by Mikhail Gorbachev. Early in 1989, the process and execution of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, Col. Antonio de la Guardia and others prevented the formation of a “macro-faction” in the Army (FAR). Further episodes include the prison sentence imposed on José Abrantes, the Minister of the Interior at the time of Ochoa’s trial; the removal of the National Assembly President, Juan Escalona, because his plan to transfer the presidency of the Council of Ministers, the least powerful of Fidel’s offices, to someone else; and the expulsion from the Party of Politburo member, Carlos Aldana, who apparently had a similar plan. Although the Cuban regime has had a strong military component from the beginning, due to its guerrilla origin and the large size and influence of the Armed Forces, a graduated military coup seems to have occurred over the crisis years 1986–92. From 1993 on, control seems to be in the firm hands of Fidel and the top military leadership, especially Vice-President Raúl Castro and Generals Abelardo Colomé and Ulises Rosales, including the initiative for and supervision of economic and political reforms. With all the previously presented caveats, the following pages should be read as an exercise in logically reasoning from the hypothetical assumption that a process of transition “from above” may develop in Cuba after Fidel Castro’s death. A parallel with the Spanish transition of 1976–1978 is openly suggested. (For a formal, strategic analysis of the key episodes of the transition to democracy in Spain, including the initial political reform by legal means and the further elaboration of a new constitution by consensus, with participation of the opposition, see Colomer 1995a).

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Basically, the hypothetical scenario being considered looks like this: First, after Fidel Castro’s death, his successor realizes that he is not able to rule as did Fidel, who enjoyed an extremely high concentration of personal power, maintained a direct relationship with the people over political institutions, the other rulers and the administrative apparatus, and relied upon popular support and fear derived from his original revolutionary rise to power and his peculiar personal character. Second, a person or a team, either civil or military, but in any case in sound control of the FAR, introduces constitutional reforms by legal means. According to the current provisions, this requires the approval of 2/3 majority in the National Assembly of People’s Power and, as will be discussed below, a popular majority in referendum. Third, an intense legislative activity regulates political rights, especially legalizing political parties and freedom of speech, and establishes a new electoral law (a point also to be discussed below). Fourth, under these new regulations a competitive parliamentary election is called by the incumbent rulers. Fifth, uncertain electoral results determine whether a new stable political equilibrium can be created by introducing a few amendments to the present constitution, or by fashioning a new document from whole cloth. The Spanish inspiration for this framework is obvious. Excluded from this hypothesis are alternative features, such as an early replacement of the rulers with exiled leaders, a pre-electoral government of national concentration with participation of the opposition, and Nuremberg-style reprisals against authoritarians, etc. In this particular comparative perspective two points deserve attention. First, the incumbent government that successfully led Spain by legal means to the first competitive election in 1977, one year and a half after Gen. Francisco Franco’s death, did not ask the Francoist Assembly to approve a “political reform,” which is to say a new constitutional model, but a “law for political reform.” In this way, the reformers of the authoritarian regime could promote a partial, moderate reform of the authoritarian institutional framework, and give themselves and the hard-liners some guarantees and reasonable expectations that certain elements of continuity could be preserved (including the monarchical form of the regime that had been established by Franco). In particular, they tried to assure that revenges against former authoritarians would be avoided— in contrast to what happened in Germany, France, and Italy after the Second World War and much more recently, in Portugal and Greece in 1974–75. Yet by approving a law “for” political reform only they also transferred many important decisions regarding political institutions and the constitution to the further, uncertain post-electoral process. Second, just as a ground for some speculations regarding Cuba, it is to be noted that most Spanish politicians who had stood out as “soft-liners” (at that time rather called “evolutionists”) during Gen. Franco’s rule failed in their at-

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tempts to promote political reforms afterwards; instead, the successful enterprise of the Spanish transition was mostly led by younger people who had occupied only second-rank official positions when Franco was alive. Likewise, most of the opposition leaders during the transition (with a few relevant exceptions) were members of a new generation who had grown up under the authoritarian regime and were not directly linked to the regime previous to Franco’s. (With these remarks I am commenting on other parallels between the Spanish transition and some prospects for Cuba, in particular those by Wayne Smith, 1996).* The present Cuban constitution was enforced in February 1976, shortly after the holding of the first Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, in the period of maximum Soviet influence on the island. The Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Soviet model of political institutions pervaded the whole constitutional text. After the dissolution of the USSR and the subsequent fall of the Cuban economy, the National Assembly of Cuba proceeded to approve unanimously a constitutional reform encumbering the preamble and seventy-nine articles (out of the 141 articles of the previous constitutional text). This created a precedent for further reforms, as will be discussed below. Basically, the constitutional reform approved by the National Assembly on July 10–12, 1992 included the following aspects. First, an ideological redefinition of the State and the Party eliminated previous references to the Soviet Union and the community of socialist countries, proletarian internationalism, the right of the peoples to revolutionary violence, the leading role of the working class, socialist production relations, the socialist legality, scientific materialism, education in the spirit of communism, and democratic centralism. Added were references to Latin America and the Caribbean, José Martí, the Cuban nation, and patriotic education. A number of references to Marxism-Leninism were left undisturbed. Second, religious freedom and the separation of church and state were explicitly recognized and guaranteed (following a previous acceptance of religious people into the Communist Party); the family was recognized as “the fundamental cell of the society” in charge of “essential responsibility and functions” in the education and formation of the new generations; and the possibility of nonstate educational institutions was established. * Note. In this hypothetical perspective of post-Castro reforms, not only Fidel Castro’s personal character, but his longevity appears to be a relevant variable. Francisco Franco, for instance, was eighty-three years old when he died, an age to be reached by Castro in 2009; Kim Il-Sung, the other long lasting Communist ruler, was able to rule North Korea for forty-six years, an achievement that Castro could attain in 2005, at age seventy-nine. The longevity of Castro’s parents and his own vitality may suggest that matching these records is within his reach.

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Third, public companies were given financial and commercial autonomy; the economic system was open to creating private companies and to foreign investments, as well as to the possibility of privatizing farms and other state-owned companies. Fourth, several civil and political amendments included the autonomy of the Communist Youth from the Party; the elimination of the constitutional status of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women and other official social organizations (thus opening the door to some social pluralism); the end of depriving citizenship to “those who on foreign territory act against socialist and revolutionary institutions of Cuba”; the introduction of direct elections for the provincial and the national Assemblies, in contrast to their previous indirect election from the local assemblies; and the creation of People’s Councils as territorial administrative entities. Fifth, as a new reserve measure to confront the risks of this limited “opening,” it was established that in case of danger the President of the Council of the State could declare a state of emergency. With that perspective, a new Council of National Defense, as well as provincial, local and district councils of defence, were created. The President of the Council of the State reinforced his powers over the Armed Forces. Analyzing the amended 1992 text of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba from the perspective of allowing a process of political reform suggests the following. Regarding the foundations of the state, and in spite of the previously mentioned changes, the present constitution defines the Cuban state as having socialist aims and anti-imperialist and internationalist principles. This obviously restrains the scope of possible policies to be implemented by constitutional organs. Yet it may not prevent a competitive election between candidacies with different aims and principles, including those contrary to the constitution, especially if the participants submit the possibility of further constitutional decisions to the new Assembly created as a result of that election. Regarding political institutions, there are two relevant provisions that may strongly condition further institutional arrangements, but that could remain untouched for a first competitive election: the parliamentary form of the regime and the majority principle of the electoral system. The Republic of Cuba is a parliamentary regime, in which the Assembly elects the President of the Council of the State, who is at the same time Chief of the State and Chief of the Government. Although the President of the Council of the State is a highly powerful figure (enhanced of course by Fidel Castro’s character), he is elected by simple majority of the Assembly and is responsible to it. The first Vice-President (Raúl Castro right now) is mandated to perform the President’s functions in case of death, but a new President has to be elected by the Assembly (Arts. 74, 75, 76, 94). In order to forecast possible Cuban developments, it is interesting to note that in many cases of transitions in Eastern Europe, the communists starting

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from a similar parliamentary-regime formula attempted to introduce a separate presidential election. The basic explanation for this move is that they were more confident about the electoral chances of some of their well-known top leaders than they were confident about the chances of many discredited party candidates who would run in parliamentary elections. Specifically, in 1990 Gorbachev had already succeeded in introducing a constitutional amendment for a direct election of the Soviet President, but due to the early dissolution of the USSR the corresponding election never took place. However, the twelve republics (apart from the Baltics) of the USSR introduced a direct election of their Presidents from 1991 on. In other cases in Eastern Europe, it seems that the more powerful the role of the communists in the transition process, the more they approached that aim: at round table negotiations in Poland the presidential office was reserved for the communists; the Hungarian communists also insisted on introducing a direct election of the president into their negotiations with the opposition, but their proposal was defeated in two successive referendums; in Bulgaria a somewhat weak presidential office was initially reserved for the communists and submitted to direct election later on. In the Baltic Republics, the somewhat popular nationalist fractions of the communists also attempted to introduce a direct election of the president from the beginning, but they only succeeded in Estonia on the occasion of the first election and in Lithuania from the second election on (under a new constitution). Presidential elections, in contrast, were not even considered in the cases of transition by sudden collapse of the authoritarian regime, where the opposition played a strong initiative role, as in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. This analysis suggests that in a hypothetical process of reforms in Cuba dominated by the incumbent rulers, some uncertainty regarding the electoral chances of the communists might induce them to abandon the parliamentary formula and introduce a direct election of the president. Relying on the experience of the highly personalistic figure of Fidel Castro, they might be tempted to replace him with a similarly powerful figure. Yet this could prove a highly risky move if they have no comparably appealing candidate and could favor, in contrast, the emergence of some strong character from the opposition’s ranks. According to the constitutional provisions for the electoral system, the deputies to the National Assembly and the delegates to the local and provincial assemblies in Cuba are elected by majority rule (Art. 136). This constitutional principle does not prevent the replacement of the present electoral law, as will be discussed below. But as a general principle majority rule may be reasonably appropriate for likely expectations of the incumbent rulers in a hypothetical process dominated by reforms “from above.” This can also be illustrated by what happened in the first semi-competitive election for the Congress of People of the Soviet Union in 1989, and in most of its republics afterwards. Where the communists had the power to impose the

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rules of the game for the first election, they tried to preserve single-member districts and majority rule as basic elements of the electoral system. Again the explanation for this strategy is that the incumbent communists were more confident about the electoral chances of some of their better-known individual members than they were confident about those of the discredited party (which appears as the significant candidate in elections in multi-member districts with proportional representation). As we see, the same risk-averse calculation by dominant rulers can have implications in favor of institutional innovation regarding the presidential election and in favor of institutional continuity regarding the electoral system. If this strategic calculation fit the situation in Cuba in the hypothetical reform process previously assumed, a highly significant implication would be that it would force the opposition to run in elections as a united block, since any fragmentation of its ranks would only be to the advantage of the presumably united communists. The likely result would be a high level of political bipolarization between the two adversarial blocks of the incumbent rulers and the opposition. At least two constitutional reforms seem indispensable to calling for a competitive election with participation of the opposition. These two reforms regard the role of the Communist Party and the guarantees for civil and political liberties. Article 5 of the Constitution, which establishes the Communist Party of Cuba as “the highest leading force of the society and of the State,” is the major obstacle to political pluralism. It should be eliminated at the beginning of any reform that would seek to include opposition groups, just as very similar articles were eliminated from East European constitutions rather at the beginning of their reform processes. Restrictions on civil and political liberties are enforced in many constitutional provisions of Cuba. At least two articles include barriers that should be removed to allow a minimal degree of political pluralism. These are articles 53, which excludes press, radio, television and cinema from private ownership, and 62, which restricts liberties to those who exercise them in accordance with the aims of the socialist state, socialism and communism. A free press, including the opposition’s access to public radio and TV, and freedom of speech are, of course, among the basic requirements for an election to be considered fair. These and any other constitutional reforms must be implemented by the National Assembly of People’s Power, “the only organ in the Republic invested with constituent and legislative authority” (Arts. 70, 75). According to the Constitution’s provisions for constitutional reforms, the Constitution itself can be modified by the National Assembly with a qualified majority of two-thirds. If the modification has to do with regulation of “the rights and duties,” as would be the case where freedom of speech and the press are concerned, it must also be approved by a majority of citizens in a referendum called by the Assembly (Art. 137).

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As suggested, previous constitution-making decisions in Cuba could help to make these further reforms viable and to maintain observance of legal procedures throughout the process: First, the above suggested minimal reform to enable a competitive election is much less extensive than the broad constitutional reform approved by the Assembly in 1992, and therefore should not appear to be out of reach. Second, the initial approval of the Constitution by referendum in 1976 should make any future modification by referendum appear as legitimate to the eyes of the regime’s supporters as the Constitution itself appeared from the beginning. These precedents would make possible to start a process that, in the words of an ex-Francoist promoter of political reform in Spain in 1976–77, would go “from the law to the law,” which is to say from the legal Constitution of Cuba, which was custom-made for the Communist regime, to a partly or totally new legal Constitution establishing representative government and protecting political pluralism, without any break in legality. As mentioned, one of the legislative decisions in the first phase of the reform process should be the establishment of a new electoral law. Before discussing some possible alternatives, let us examine the present electoral provisions and how they work. (All the available official information on the 1992 and 1993 elections, mostly from the newspaper Granma and other official publications, was compiled by Castañeda, 1993, and Muñiz, 1993. The electoral law was published in the Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba, November 2, 1992). The constitutional reform of 1992 introduced direct election of the provincial and the national assemblies, in contrast to their previous indirect election from the local assemblies. Although this change was presented with some fanfare as an innovation, it simply paralleled the direct election of the regional and the supreme soviets that, in contrast to their previous indirect election from the local soviets, was introduced in the USSR after the constitution of 1936. All the other East European communist regimes established in the late 1940s hold direct elections of the national parliament from the beginning. In Cuba the election of the National Assembly are to be held every five years, while those of the provincial and local assemblies are scheduled for every two and a half years (these periods coincide exactly with those for the supreme soviet and for the regional and local soviets, respectively, in the former USSR). All elections are submitted to strong legal restrictions, such as that every voter should choose candidates only on the basis of their personal character and capacity, without considering any issue position, policy or ideological proposal, and the exclusion of proper electoral campaigns. Electoral rules for the local assemblies differ from those for the provincial and national assemblies. Since 1976, local (or municipal) assemblies are elected in single-member districts by majority rule, including a run-off by plurality if no candidate gets a majority at the first round. The crucial element is the nomination of candidates, which is organized through pre-election meetings of voters. According to some official sources, about a half of the citizens entitled to vote

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attend the previous nominating meetings, mostly the elderly and women (Dilla et al., 1993, pp. 18–19). The participants vote by rising their hands. Every precandidate is voted separately, yet every voter has the right to vote for one precandidate only. This combination suggests a strong control of every individual choice by the organizers of the meeting, since everybody needs to be checked when voting in favor of his or her preferred pre-candidate in order to avoid the casting of multiple votes by an individual. Yet the most peculiar feature is that, according to the law, there must be two candidates nominated for every office, thus allowing some choice to the voters. This provision is in contrast to the traditional Soviet practice of nominating only one candidate per office and has apparently created opportunities to elect a number of non-servile, quite popular local delegates. The provincial and national assemblies are elected in multi-member, municipal districts. For the National Assembly, every district elects between two and five deputies, up to a total of 589 in 1993. In contrast to local elections, the nomination of candidates is rather intricate, in fact tightly controlled from above. All delegates to the local assemblies can be proposed to be nominated as candidates for the National Assembly. However, the nomination is in the hands of the National Electoral Commission, which is appointed by the national leadership of the Central of Workers, of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, of the Federations of Women, of Peasants, and of Students, all of them the only official organizations in their sectors, and all highly dominated by the communists. In contrast to the practice in the Soviet Union, the Communist Party does not appoint candidates directly, but this does not prevent strict official control of the selection of the candidates. According to the law, the National Electoral Commission can nominate only less than a half of the candidates from the delegates to the local assemblies. In the election of 1993, it nominated only 274 candidates (46 percent) from the very large pool of 13,865 local delegates, having thus the obvious opportunity to select only supporters of the regime. The other 315 candidates were directly selected by the electoral commission. Those nominated are confirmed as candidates by the local assemblies by voting with raised hands. The critical point is that, according to the explicit provision in the law (Art. 92), there is only one candidate per office, giving no choice to the voters. This regulation did not exist in the Soviet Union. According to some scholars, when the Soviet constitution of 1936 was adopted, there were expectations that electoral contests would be permitted, but in the subsequent elections rival candidacies were eliminated by police action (Carson, 1955, pp. 52, 63). In communist-dominated Poland, East Germany and Yugoslavia, more than one candidate per office were appointed in some districts, although usually distinguishing between the “seat” candidate and the “surplus” candidate (also tightly selected from above), who would become a “substitute” deputy if he or she got a majority of votes. In Poland and East Germany the official list of candidates was formed by the several parties faithful to the communist “leading role”; in

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the German case the communists where in minority in the Parliament (more details of these forms of “limited pluralism” in Pravda, 1978). Obviously, these practices did not make the elections competitive and fair; but from 1989 on, the existing legal system allowed multi-party contests in several cases, as mentioned, without drastic legal reforms. The only choice given to the Cuban voter for the provincial and national assemblies is to vote either for one or for several of the candidates in the district (a rather perverse version of “approval balloting,” given the absence of alternative candidates). In 1993 there was a strong campaign to vote in block under the slogan “All are worthy,” an option facilitated by simply crossing through a bigger circle at the top of the ballot instead of individually marking the names of the several candidates. According to the official results, turnout was 99.6 percent, and 95 percent of voters did vote in block. Of course, all the candidates were elected. If a candidate would not get a majority of votes, given that there is the same number of candidates as offices to be filled, obviously there is no possibility to implement a “run-off.” The legal provision for such an unprecedented occurrence is that nothing less than the Council of the State can choose among transferring the election to the local assembly (creating thus the possibility to appoint a candidate that had been rejected by the voters), leaving the seat vacant, or calling a new election with the same procedure. The basic conclusion of this analysis is that, despite some openness in the local elections, the 1992 electoral law of Cuba cannot be a valid tool for organizing a competitive election for the National Assembly. A new electoral law should be approved. It seems likely that in a hypothetical process of reforms dominated by the initiative of the incumbent rulers, the communists would be interested in maintaining the constitutional mandate for majority rule. In this case, new single-member districts should be drawn. A less likely scenario could include some adaption of previously existing mechanisms, such as approval balloting with plurality rule (which might result in the election of more consensual candidates). Only if the influence of the opposition in previous negotiations were sufficiently strong or the fear of the communists regarding their electoral chances sufficiently great, other forms of non-blocked lists with proportional representation might be likely adopted. 1. I have adopted the hypothesis that a process of political reform “from above,” with relevant influence of the incumbent rulers, may develop in Cuba after Fidel Castro’s death. This “model” takes inspiration from the Spanish transition in the late 1970s and from some processes of transition from Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. The basic feature of this model is that reforms from the authoritarian regime may be implemented by legal means. Reprisals against former authoritarians and a quick complete turn in political life are excluded from it. 2. The legal reforms required in Cuba to allow a first competitive parliamentary election include a constitutional reform approved by the incumbent

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National Assembly, which could be less extensive than the previous constitutional reform approved in 1992, as well as its confirmation by popular referendum, as was the case for the approval of the existing constitution in 1976. 3. The basic framework of a parliamentary regime and the principle of electoral majority rule are likely to be maintained. These features would be in continuity with the existing constitutional provisions and, at the same time, would correspond to self-interested motives of relatively advantaged incumbent rulers in establishing the rules of the game for the first election. However, these institutional features might also foster a rather high level of political bipolarization between the incumbent communists and the opposition, resulting in two adversarial blocs. 4. Only if the electoral expectations of the rulers would be relatively pessimistic might they be interested in introducing a separate election of the President in order to have more opportunities to retain or gain power. A direct presidential contest would also enhance bipolarization between the communists and the opposition. Only if the opposition would have relatively strong negotiation power, would it be able to introduce an electoral system of proportional representation (PR). The usually conflictive, typical Latin-American combination of presidentialism and PR thus seems rather unlikely to be adopted at the beginning of a Cuban reform process “from above.” 5. Further stages in constitutional decisions would depend on the uncertain results of the first election, which are especially difficult to forecast after a long authoritarian rule. Other experiences of democratization show that elements of institutional pluralism tend to increase rather than decrease when the process advances farther, improving the opportunities for consensual politics and a broad distribution of political satisfaction among the different groups of the society. However, the above presented initial prospects for Cuba can make this evolution relatively difficult, at least in mid-term. References Carson, George Barr. 1955. Electoral Practices in the USSR. New York: Praeger. Castañeda, Susana, ed. 1993. Proceso Electoral Cubano. Havana: Centro de Estudios sobre América. Colomer, Josep M. 1991. “Transitions by Agreement. Modeling the Spanish Way,” The American Political Science Review, 85, 4, pp. 1283–1302. Colomer, Josep M. 1995a. Game Theory and the Transition to Democracy. The Spanish Model. Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Colomer, Josep M. 1995b. “Strategies and Outcomes in Eastern Europe,” Journal of Democracy, 6, 2, 74–85. Colomer, Josep M. 1995c. “La vía cubana a la democracia,” Claves, Madrid, 51, pp. 20–30. Constitución de la República de Cuba. 1992. Havana: Editora Política. Dilla, Haroldo, Gerardo González and Ana-Teresa Vicentelli. 1993. “Participación y desarrollo en los municipios cubanos.” Havana: Centro de Estudios sobre América, ms. (in Casta—eda, 1993).

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Muñiz, Mirta, ed. 1993. Elecciones en Cuba: ¿farsa o democracia? Melbourne: Ocean Press. Pravda, Alex. 1978. “Elections in Communist Party States,” in Guy Hermet, Richard Rose and Alain Rouquié, eds. Elections Without Choice. New York: John Wiley. República de Cuba. Ley Electoral. 1992. Havana: Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular-Ediciones Entorno. Smith, Wayne. 1996. “Cuba’s Long Reform,” Foreign Affairs, 75, 2, pp. 99–112.

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The United States and Cuba: Future Security Issues

Part 6 Transition to Civil Society

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34 The United States and Cuba: Future Security Issues Brian Latell In assessing Cuba’s importance as a potential security threat to the United States, Michael Kozak, the former senior U.S. diplomat in Havana, stated in late 1998 that the primary concern of the United States is one that did not exist twenty years ago: it is the issue of stability. “If there is instability in Cuba, United States interests are directly implicated,” he said.1 He is correct that any serious instability in Cuba in the foreseeable future in all likelihood would require an array of U.S. policy responses. Since the 1960s, popular disaffection and deprivation in Cuba have been the immediate causes of three massive seaborne migrations of Cubans to the United States, in each case confronting U.S. administrations with costly, urgent, and confounding security and humanitarian crises. The essentially uncontrolled exodus of over 125,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel during the spring and summer of 1980 confronted the Carter administration, as well as state and local authorities, with extraordinary problems, some of which persist today. That crisis had its origins in relatively sudden social and economic tensions that occurred in Cuba in the late 1970s, and was then inadvertently ignited by Fidel Castro whose angry miscalculations sparked unprecedented instability on the island. The April 1980 Peruvian embassy crisis and the ensuing boatlift were similar in their underlying economic and social causes, moreover, to conditions that led to mass seaborne migrations to the United States in 1965 and 1994. A fourth massive Cuban boatlift is certainly not inevitable. Unlike in the period preceding previous mass migrations, large numbers of Cubans are able legally and directly to migrate. About 20,000 do so under the terms of a bilateral accord, and thousands of others also manage to reach the United States by other means and routes. Other factors will also cause Fidel Castro to exercise 541

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caution in considering another mass seaborne migration across the Florida Straits. He will, for example, be concerned that the costs of another sealift could exceed the benefits, especially if widespread and high levels of instability could be unleashed. But it is the principal argument of this article that in 1999 social and economic tensions in Cuba were again equal to or greater than the levels that in the past prompted Castro to launch (as in 1965 and 1980) or to condone (1994) mass migrations of Cubans who were disaffected or considered by the regime to be undesirable. Like the past sealifts, another one while Fidel Castro remains in power would probably require the interaction of two key variables. !

!

First, levels of popular dissatisfaction and deprivation on the island would have to reach levels considered by the Cuban leadership to be potentially destabilizing or regime-threatening. As in 1965, for example, Castro might conclude that massive emigration of disaffected Cubans should be impelled before widespread manifestations of social instability are allowed to adversely affect the regime. Secondly, Fidel Castro personally would have to authorize another large exodus. He could again announce with little or no warning the opening of a Cuban port to all who wished to depart as he did in 1965 and 1980. Or, as in 1994 when more than 40,000 Cubans were permitted to flee on rafts and other small crafts over a period of several months, he could permit a relaxation of refugee interdiction and prosecution, both of which help to deter migration.

The prospects for another massive sealift will probably be different under various leadership succession scenarios in Cuba. Most optimistically, if Castro is succeeded by a regime that is able to maintain stability, the prospects for massive migration would be reduced. A stable successor government would in all likelihood be buttressed, if not in fact dominated by top military officers and might seek to ameliorate the animosities and tensions that have characterized relations with the United States for the past 40 years. In such a climate of improving relations, economic, humanitarian, and other forms of assistance from U.S. public and private sources would help to alleviate tensions on the island that have sparked past migrations. At the opposite extreme, however, any successor regime lacking in legitimacy and coherence might almost immediately begin to confront levels of domestic instability and seaborne migration that would challenge U.S. interests. High Levels of Instability It is further postulated in this article that a migration crisis could result from much higher levels of social instability than in the case of Cuban-modulated migration treated earlier. Challenges to U.S. security or humanitarian interests could be so severe as to make U.S. or multilateral military intervention appear to many Americans as unavoidable. The most extreme possibilities—a bloody or

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protracted post-Fidel Castro succession crisis, widespread violence in Cuba, civil war, belligerent partition of the island—appear unlikely today. But, circumstances that would make them more likely could begin to occur at any time. Any of the following developments, for example, could act as accelerators of sudden, destabilizing change in Cuba: Fidel Castro’s assassination; his extended incapacitation; a bloody military coup or attempted coup; defections of conscience by one or more prominent revolutionary figures; and serious splits in the armed forces. There are many variations on the worst case possibility of U.S. military involvement in Cuba following substantial or widespread instability. They include a range of possible military missions from strictly humanitarian ones under non-combat conditions to major armed conflict over extensive areas of the island against fanatically loyal pro-Castro forces. Some specific possibilities are examined in the subsequent discussion. Formidable Strengths of the Regime The Castro regime retains formidable strengths and there are no current signs that Castro’s hold on power is threatened. He continues to enjoy the support of Cuba’s military (controlled since 1959 by his brother Raul), the security services, and other privileged elite groups. His dictatorship is also buoyed by his (probably declining) ability to appeal to and embody Cuban nationalism and to energize the fears of party and government elites about how they could be prosecuted, deprived of property, and otherwise harshly treated by a democratic successor regime. Cuba’s dissident, human rights, and other groups critical of the regime have been successfully persecuted, imprisoned, intimidated, and thus marginalized. As long as the security forces are willing to take whatever measures are necessary to suppress all opposition, Castro’s regime will survive. Furthermore, Castro himself has masterfully managed all threats and challenges to his personal hegemony since 1959, and there are no indications that he is either any less intent or adroit at preserving his virtually absolute personal hegemony. The regime’s formidable strengths tend, however, to camouflage tensions, insecurities, economic hardships, and new social and class divisions that may exceed the problems that preceded previous mass sealifts. The new centrifugal forces in turn may be raising the odds that Castro will eventually decide he has no alternative but to purge Cuba of that large new materialistic segment of the population that has virtually no ties with or allegiance to the revolutionary principles and values he has preached for over 40 years. The Regime’s Deteriorating Legitimacy For much of this decade Fidel Castro has been implementing survival strategies that, while preserving his personal hegemony, have also unleashed corro-

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sive and potentially destabilizing forces in Cuban society that gradually are undermining the sources of his regime’s domestic legitimacy. These new forces have been generated primarily by divisive developments in revolutionary Cuba’s previously strict egalitarian society, notably since Castro decided grudgingly in 1993 to legalize for most Cubans the acquisition of U.S. dollars. Following the demise of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s loss of more than $5 billion of annual economic and military subsidy Castro concluded that he had no choice but to strike Faustian bargains with the demons of capitalism. As the economy contracted by between 40 and 50 percent, food and energy imports alone consumed about two thirds of hard currency earnings. Severe hardships, including a food and nutritional crisis,2 spawned popular unrest that by the summer of 1994 reached unprecedented, though controllable levels. With virtually no other options for restarting the economy and generating sufficient hard currency to finance even minimum import requirements, Castro gambled that limited, tightly controlled economic reforms could attract sufficient inflows to keep his highly centralized regime afloat. He lifted the decades-old proscriptions against Cubans receiving and holding U.S. currency, set out to attract large flows of foreign tourism and investment, and authorized limited small family businesses and farmers markets. The results have been an at least temporary stabilization of the economy, barely above subsistence levels for most Cubans, and a critically needed measure of political relief for the regime. But the social costs of Castro’s compromises with dollarization have been enormous. Cuban civil society increasingly is dividing between those with ready and legal access to dollars (primarily from remittances received from relatives abroad, gratuities from foreign visitors, and income from small businesses that cater to tourists) on the one hand, and Cubans wholly dependent on the depressed peso economy on the other. As class and social distinctions bred by the dual economy intensify, many of the long sacred unifying principles and values of Castro’s revolution have been undermined. Crime, corruption, and narcotics trafficking within and via Cuba have proliferated. Drug abuse by Cubans, previously a minor problem has become a serious concern and Castro himself has publicly complained of “child abusers . . . who send kids out to sell drugs.”3 Growing social inequities, regional disparities in wealth and income, and class distinctions like none that Castro’s revolution had ever before tolerated have developed. New racial inequities highly detrimental to Afro-Cubans have emerged,4 and prostitution and related vices are rampant. One leading scholar of Castro’s revolution has observed that the regime’s long vaunted social compact is shredding.5 In a similar vein, the former Principal Officer of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana observed in 1998 that “the law no longer has much value” in Cuba, “because if you live by the law you cannot feed your family.”6 Family life and values, and bedrock revolutionary principles, probably are being strained on a larger scale than at any time since Castro’s rise to power.

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In fact, he has tacitly admitted that new class disparities are now pervasive. In a tough law and order speech in Havana on January 5, 1999 he said that Cuba’s current crime wave requires the imposition of harsher penalties (including the more frequent imposition of the death penalty), a substantial expansion of police cadre, and creation of new “specialized” forces to patrol particularly crime-infested neighborhoods of Havana.7 The speech, although not specifically directed against Cuba’s beleaguered dissident and human rights activists, has also been used by the regime to punish and further repress large numbers of its critics. Thus, under the cover of reducing common criminality, the government is simultaneously endeavoring to silence or eliminate all manifestations of dissatisfaction. But it is unique in the history of Castro’s aggressively egalitarian regime that the high rate of common crime has occurred in tandem with increased social and economic polarization. Although specific data is unavailable, anecdotal evidence suggests that the poorest and most marginalized Cubans with no legal access to hard currency are committing greater numbers of crimes against Cubans (and occasionally foreigners) in order to acquire hard currency or other valuables. It seems likely, therefore, that as long as Cuban society remains divided between dollar and peso classes, inordinate numbers of the country’s peso “have-nots” will be prosecuted, incarcerated, and even executed. In his January speech Castro seemed to acknowledge this anti-egalitarian tension that is undermining revolutionary morality. He said that Cuba’s disadvantaged class must be protected and supported by the state. We know very well how to defend the interests and rights of those who do not have the right of family remittances, those who do not have the privilege of earning tips, and those who do not have the right to earn hard currency. But in fact, Castro’s revolution for the first time is bereft of tangible (or even credible rhetorical) means with which to assuage what historically has been its most dependable popular constituencies. The government in effect has almost no viable alternatives as members of its political base—rural peasants, marginalized urban poor, pensioners, the long-term unemployed—continue to be marginalized and pauperized amid the dollarization of the economy and as penalties against those who commit crimes to acquire dollars are made more draconian. It is unlikely that Castro has any illusions about the gravity of the social problems dollarization has created. Yet, he has offered no palliatives or explanations about how he might try to narrow gaps in income, consumption, and privilege between Cuba’s dollar and peso classes. Potential Instability Instability as doubly-defined in this article could occur in Cuba over the next five to seven years in any one or more of the following ways:

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1. Crises intentionally or inadvertently caused by Castro. ! New Cuban government policies, for example, to contain or reverse negative social and political trends and economic reforms or to rekindle revolutionary fervor and purity. ! Gross errors or lapses of judgment by Castro, like some in the past that have had enormous adverse consequences for the United States. 2. Direct challenges to the regime. ! Large scale popular unrest and anti-regime rioting, especially disturbances that could not readily be quelled by goon squads or civilian police. ! Elite-orchestrated plots against Castro, including assassination attempts. ! Sudden internally or externally induced shocks affecting the regime’s legitimacy that could act as accelerators of rapid political change. ! Defections of conscience by prominent revolutionary leaders. 3. Castro’s incapacitation and death. ! Any prolonged absence by Castro from public view could give the impression of a leadership vacuum and ignite destabilizing developments. ! Castro’s death could result in a period of instability as potential successors maneuver to hold together a coalition that will enjoy some degree of popular support. Crises Provoked by Castro Castro’s four decades in power have often been characterized by audacious, surprising decisions that entailed considerable risk while also holding out the allure of dramatic gains. He scarcely hesitated before consenting to Nikita Khrushchev’s proposal to install medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba in 1962, believing they would help deter U.S. aggression. Thirteen years later his decision to dispatch tens of thousands of Cuban troops to fight in Angola was similarly bold, and successful too because it reaped myriad benefits for Cuba. In the mid-1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing his liberalizing economic and political programs in the Soviet Union, Castro launched instead a tough “rectification” campaign intended to extirpate from Cuba any hopes whatever that he would emulate Gorbachev. “Socialism or Death” became the ubiquitous revolutionary slogan. Reform-minded General Arnaldo Ochoa was executed. Rectification, like other similar and even more disruptive campaigns conducted in the 1960s, was also concocted by Castro to renew revolutionary purity and fervor, purge many who had become corrupt or materialistic, and reassert his primacy as the arbiter of revolutionary faith and values. A key component of the rectification campaign was Castro’s ferocious assault on what he repeatedly denounced as “neo-capitalism.” In a number of speeches he excoriated specific individuals who he said had grotesquely enriched themselves, for example, by earning pesos selling chocolate bars in a Havana park or by marketing cloves of garlic on street corners. Castro denounced and suppressed these and others as

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“neo-capitalist” criminals. His anticapitalist zealotry and refusal to allow any market reforms or political decentralization persisted until the demise of the Soviet Union. New Neo-Capitalist Challenges The contrast between the strict tenets of the rectification campaign (a variation on other purifying upheavals unleashed by Castro since the late 1960s) and the economic and social dissolution that he grudgingly has permitted over the last few years is truly remarkable. By all past measures of his performance and proclivities, it would seem that Castro is even more profoundly disturbed by the results of dollarization and the free-wheeling street corner capitalism rampant today than he was by the much smaller numbers of “neo-capitalists” in the 1980s. He probably would have launched a new rectification-type campaign by now had he calculated that he could do so without either sparking regime-threatening instability or throwing the economy into another steep depression. He may, for essentially the same reasons, have concluded that at present, another large sealift to the United States would unleash instability far in excess of present levels of social tension. But as the delegitimizing effects of what for him is reprehensible social change intensify, he will be tempted to lash out against the dollarized corruption and “neo-capitalism” that are now rampant. He has launched such campaigns in the past to purify the Revolution, rekindle revolutionary ardor, and endow younger generations of Cubans with a sense of revolutionary responsibility. Such a campaign over the next couple of years would be immediately destabilizing, especially in Havana, and would probably also be opposed by influential members of both the civilian and military elites who have benefited either legally or illicitly as the dollar economy has flourished. The dilemmas of dollarization will likely only become more intractable. To continue on the present course inevitably will compromise nearly every cherished article of the revolutionary faith Castro has upheld for over four decades. The dual economies he tolerates are more difficult to monitor and tax. The proliferation of standards and rules invites transgressions and lawlessness. Crime and corruption, including narcotics trafficking and use, will persist and larger numbers of Cubans will engage in criminal activities. Racial and urban-rural tensions will increase as those with access to dollars improve their standards of living while others continue barely to subsist. Violence and theft by one group against the other could become the dominant types of crime. These trends will erode the Revolution’s legitimacy as the hypocrisy of Castro’s promises becomes more and more blatant. And finally, they generate frustrated expectations for more fundamental economic and even political reforms. But Castro surely knows that if he were to suppress the dollar economy and rescind the limited economic reforms, key supporters, possibly even senior mili-

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tary officers, would be antagonized. And furthermore, the economy would probably contract severely again, raising the specter of food riots and other popular disturbances. Any half-way measures between continued tolerance of current conditions and a sweeping crackdown would solve none of the ideological and social dilemmas while sowing confusion and unrest. A Kinder, Gentler Castro? In the aftermath of Pope John Paul’s visit to Cuba in January 1998, some observers have imagined that Castro has become more tolerant and flexible, a benevolent grandfatherly figure increasingly concerned with securing his place in history. As a result, many—perhaps already inclined to underestimate his proclivities for violent and totalitarian drama—have surmised that he is less likely now in his seventies to resort to outrageous or confrontational behavior, as he has so often in the past. This proposition, current even before the Pope visited, is encouraged by Castro, whose hopes for a unilateral lifting of the U.S. embargo are well served by such impressions. The conviction and re-incarceration of four prominent dissidents in 1999 demonstrates, however, that he is no more inclined to allow any scent of democratic tolerance than he was in 1959, regardless of how his image may be tarnished. A more likely proposition, therefore, is that Castro’s militancy and hegemonic fervor, have not been ameliorated by his aging. To the contrary in fact, his age (Castro was 74 in August 2000) could actually boost the chances that he will decide to launch some destabilizing new campaign to replenish revolutionary morality. John Lewis Gaddis, a prominent historian of the Cold War has coined the term “geriatric over-exertion” to describe the bold, supposedly rejuvenating initiatives launched by aged Communist dictators in other countries during their waning days in power: . . . the efforts of old revolutionaries, for reasons more sentimental that rational, to rediscover their roots, to convince themselves that the purposes for which they had sacrificed so much in seizing power had not been totally overwhelmed by the compromises they had to make in actually wielding power.8

Mao launched his Cultural Revolution at the age of seventy-three. Stalin had grown so paranoid during his last days in power that he concluded his own doctors were trying to murder him, and just two months before his death at the age of seventy-four announced the “Doctor’s Plot.” Only a few years earlier, when he was about seventy, he had encouraged North Korean dictator Kim-il-Sung to launch the invasion of South Korea. Nikita Khrushchev was sixty-eight when he decided to put Operation Anadyr into effect in 1962 which resulted that October in the Kennedy administration’s discovery of medium range ballistic missiles then being installed in Cuba. With regard to Leonid Brezhnev, Gaddis asks: “Why would (he) in his waning years, go adventuring in places like Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan?”9

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The behavior of these, mostly septuagenarian, communist dictators is certainly not reassuring in any analysis of how Fidel Castro might behave over the next few years. But unlike, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev whose “geriatric over-exertions” were internationalist, Castro is probably more likely to follow Mao’s example and launch in Cuba a sweeping revindication of revolutionary morality and purpose. Harsh crackdowns on dissidents in early 1996 and again in 1999 suggest, moreover, that he remains acutely concerned that opposition forces could coalesce in dangerous ways. At least twice in the past Castro has mounted destabilizing national campaigns intended to invigorate revolutionary cadre (especially wayward youths) while simultaneously purging real and imagined counterrevolutionaries. Those campaigns were protracted, required large mobilizations of the populace, caused acute disruptions and discontent, and required Castro hyperactively to explain and justify them. And he would probably condone or encourage a large scale exodus of the disaffected as a key element of any such campaign. Past revolutionary purification campaigns and sealifts required the full support of the Cuban armed forces, which might be more difficult for Castro to muster today. Former Cuban Air Force General Rafael Del Pino, who defected to the United States in 1987, has said for example, that most honorable Cuban military officers considered Mariel “a circus.” Any new “revolutionary offensive” or Mariel-style boatlift would therefore be likely to threaten greater instability than those in the past. It is conceivable too, that Castro might seek renewal through foreign adventure. None of the aged Soviet leaders who sought internationalist victories were as passionately committed to revolutionary internationalism as Fidel Castro has been since his first weeks in power in Cuba. Certainly there are vastly fewer opportunities today in Latin America or Africa where Cuba might engage in large scale covert or military campaigns as it did in the 1960s and 1970s. The resources available for any substantial Cuban programs of subversion or intervention are limited. The reduced size, capabilities, and missions of the armed forces also make foreign adventures of any kind much less likely than in the days of $1 billion annual military subsidies from the Soviet Union. In the unlikely event that Castro were to take risks in new efforts to extend or preserve Cuban influence in Latin American or African countries, activities would probably be highly covert and deniable as well as small scale and relatively inexpensive. Castro’s close relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who commanded an unsuccessful military coup there in 1992, suggests that both leaders are anxious to find ways to collaborate. Cuban support for Chavez could take the form of military, intelligence, and security assistance, none of which could be presumed to advance the country’s beleaguered democratic traditions and institutions. Similarly, although Castro has met with Colombia’s new president, Andres Pastrana, to discuss possible means under which that country’s two large insurgent groups would lay down their arms, it

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is difficult to imagine Cuba entirely withdrawing from its decades-long association with the Colombian guerrillas. In Africa, Cuba can probably be expected to continue providing support for the regime in Angola where so much Cuban blood was shed in the 1970s and 1980s. Destabilization through Inadvertence Assuming, however, that Castro eschews both domestic and international offensives to renew revolutionary morale and his own self-esteem over the next five to seven years, the stresses of Cuba’s current dilemmas could increase the chances that he will make rash, unwise, or irrational decisions that could impact adversely on U.S. interests. He has only rarely fallen victim to such behavior in the past, but, as indicated, the Mariel boatlift and associated instability was ignited when Castro made key decisions in haste and anger. Today, any angry or irrational decision could have similarly destabilizing and international repercussions, but might also be more likely to alarm other senior Cuban leaders. It is impossible to anticipate any such behavior or to predict the concerns and responses that could be provoked among others in the leadership. But given the nature of Castro’s virtually unchallenged authority since 1959, and his record of having lapsed into irrational or erratic behavior on occasion in the past, the possibility should not be ignored. Direct Challenges to the Regime The array of possible domestic challenges to the Castro government have been examined in detail elsewhere, and need not be elaborated here.10 The Cuban people have demonstrated remarkable forbearance since the economic calamities of the 1990s and in those relatively few instances when rioting or unrest occurred, the regime effectively used minimal force to restore order. If substantial force were required, however, to repress future disturbances, the viability of the regime would be more in doubt. Castro’s armed forces have rarely if ever been called on to use lethal force against civilians, and it is likely that many senior military officers would be loath to do so. The Castro brothers could under most circumstances count on elite units and commanders they have cultivated to carry out orders violently to suppress civilian protests. But, such an unprecedented cataclysm could also cause a paralyzing, even violent split in the military. In either event, substantial instability would likely soon ensue. Plotting against the Castro brothers in the military or security forces could occur at any time and might include assassination efforts. Little is known outside Cuba about the uniformed services because officers are rarely permitted to travel abroad or to maintain contact with foreigners, and few have defected. But fault lines in the armed forces may run along generational and other lines, and reflect grievances based on the reductions in the institution’s size, mis-

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sions, international commitments, and budget. Lingering resentments over the 1989 execution of General Ochoa and associated purges may also be divisive. The navy has all but ceased to exist and the air force has withered. Morale among enlisted personnel has probably been undermined by economic deprivation, the agricultural and other non-military work that many must perform, and by the prohibition against their acquiring dollars. Castro’s Incapacitation or Death Perhaps the most reliable indicator of imminent regime change in Cuba would be discernible after some period of time has passed without Castro making any public appearance. Even though the frequency of his speeches and peregrinations today is but a small fraction of what it was in earlier years, his presence at certain functions and in behalf of important causes is deemed all but essential. If he missed one or more such command performances, rumors of his incapacitation would begin to circulate. If not promptly quelled by his reemergence in seeming good health, a period of uncertainty could ensue as rumors of his demise persisted. Any vacuum of power in the space he has occupied for 40 years would have to be filled rapidly by a credible coalition of would-be successors. But stability might be threatened in any obvious incapacitation scenario, because Castro’s presence and indefatigable performance have been essential to the regime’s legitimacy and survival. His sudden death from natural causes might be less immediately threatening to stability. Defense Minister Raul Castro was anointed as his brother’s successor during the first month of the regime, and this has been repeatedly reaffirmed. The younger (by five years) Castro has certainly distinguished himself as a military commander, administrator, and regime chieftain, and his capabilities if anything have generally been underestimated by foreign observers. But Raul Castro has scarcely any of his brother’s charismatic qualities, seems to enjoy little popularity in his own right, and has publicly brooded about retiring. In all likelihood too, he has many determined enemies just waiting for the chance to get at him. Nonetheless, for the short term at least his inclusion in the collective leadership of a successor regime with at least one prominent civilian official would be likely. Whether by his own inclination, or through the machinations of rivals, it seems likely however that he would be a transitional figure. The military will likely be the essential glue in any transition scenario after Fidel Castro’s departure. Any successor regime would have to struggle to establish a semblance of legitimacy and would be faced with competing demands from groups and interests whose hopes for liberating change would abound. Anti-Castro dissidents and activists on the island would emerge, and no doubt in much larger numbers than previously known. They would seek new political room to maneuver and in which to begin organizing openly. Most would have the support of Cuban-Ameri-

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cans and many others as well, who would also seek to influence the transition and to press for democratizing change. Obviously, any concessions to political freedoms would propel a process of authoritarian unraveling in which the likelihood of instability would be high. Some Worst Case Possibilities and Implications for U.S. Government Agencies U.S. government officials and agencies have substantial experience in planning for and dealing with large scale seaborne migration from Cuba. But state, local, and emergency preparedness entities may not be as equipped or prepared to deal with any sudden and large exodus, especially if refugees were departing amid panic and bloodshed. Close coordination and planning would be essential among those with responsibilities for search and rescue, health and welfare, reception and screening, housing, processing, placement of refugees, etc. Without such coordination and planning another exodus, possibly one on a scale exceeding the 1980 Mariel boatlift, could cause chaos even if weather conditions in the Florida Straits were ideal. Violence and instability on the island could reach such levels during or after a succession, that a U.S. military intervention might widely be seen as imperative for humanitarian and political reasons. U.S. military planners would face truly daunting challenges if U.S. or OAS forces were sent to restore order or, in the worst case possibility, to fight elements of the Cuban military engaged, say, in massive human rights violations. Since such fighting or peacekeeping could take place virtually anywhere on the island, including the streets and alleys of Havana and other cities, the availability of comprehensive and current basic intelligence information would be essential. The Department of Defense concluded in a formal report to Congress in 1998 that “Cuba’s weak military poses a negligible conventional threat to the U.S. or surrounding countries.”11 But even in their much depreciated condition, Cuban armed forces, or fragments of them, could inflict significant damage on invading U.S. forces. Nothing else in fact would be as likely to instill fighting morale among elite units that would also enjoy many tactical advantages in a conflict. Beginning in the early 1980s, large underground and other arsenals were created by the Castro regime for the Territorial Troop Militias and these caches would be difficult for U.S. forces to locate and secure. Furthermore, in such an extreme situation, guerrilla units no doubt would be formed from remnants of Cuban military and security forces as well as individual Castro loyalists rallying to the anti-American cause. The proliferation of weapons, mainly small arms, would be likely throughout Cuba following any breakdown in government authority. Military and Territorial Troop Militia arsenals would be vulnerable to ransacking and arms would probably be stolen or sold for hard currency. The sudden abundance of arms and

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ammunition in a society where they have been banned for virtually all civilian use for decades in itself would tend to exacerbate instability. Furthermore, arms proliferation would be likely to promote the development in a post-Castro Cuba of criminal cartels in which former members of the military, intelligence, and security services would be likely to gravitate. Narcotics trafficking, which as noted, has already become a serious problem for the Castro regime, would no doubt proliferate, at least initially, once Fidel and Raul Castro are gone. It would therefore be imperative for U.S. counternarcotics, intelligence, and other agencies to be able rapidly to establish mechanisms for collaboration with post-Castro Cuban authorities and counterparts. Finally, concerns expressed by Defense Secretary William Cohen in his letter to Congress transmitting the Pentagon assessment of the Cuban military threat must also be taken seriously. He said that: the intelligence community also looked into the potential for Cuban development of chemical and biological weapons and reviewed possible internal strife in Cuba that could involve citizens or residents of the United States or the armed forces of the United States.

He added that he: remains concerned about Cuba’s potential to develop and produce biological agents, given its biotechnology infrastructure, as well as environmental health risks posed to the United States by potential accidents at the Juragua nuclear power facility.12

The Secretary’s reassuring words seem to indicate that defense and intelligence specialists place a high priority on collecting and analyzing information about biological and nuclear programs in Cuba. Certainly it will be essential for U.S. military and intelligence officials to continue necessary efforts to assess any weapons or proliferation issues that could be associated with Cuba’s ambitious biological and biotechnology programs that in the past have enjoyed the enthusiastic blessing and support of Fidel Castro. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Michael Kozak, Speech at the Dallas Morning News Conference, Dallas, September, 1998. Manuel Sanchez Herrero and Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, The Cuban Food Crisis, Special Report, Center for a Free Cuba, 1998. Fidel Castro, Speech at National Police Ceremony, Havana, January 5, 1999. FBIS, LAT. Alejandro de la Fuente, Recreating Racism: Race and Discrimination in Cuba’s “Special Period,” Cuba Briefing Paper Series, Number 18, July 1998 Georgetown University

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Edward Gonzalez and Thomas S. Szayna, Cuba and Lessons Learned from Other Communist Transitions; the RAND Corporation, 1998. 6. Michael Kozak, Speech at the Dallas Morning News Conference, Dallas, TX, September, 1998. 7. Castro, op.cit. 8. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, 1998, p. 187. 9. Ibid. 10. For example, see Edward Gonzalez, Cuba Clearing Perilous Waters, RAND, 1996 and Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, Storm Warnings for Cuba, RAND, 1994. 11. The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security, 1999. 12. ibid.

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35 Role of the United States and International Lending Institutions in Cuba’s Transition Sergio Díaz-Briquets As Cuba approaches an inexorable transition from a totalitarian political and economic system toward a more politically open, market oriented type of government, the country faces the enormous hurdle of dismantling the institutional legacy of more than forty years of communist rule. Fidel Castro’s regime, while seeking to impose a Marxist-Leninist world-view, systematically sought to undermine Western traditions and institutions. This is a major source of concern since a political transition and economic prosperity, whenever they arrive, may well depend on the emergence of a shared culture of political tolerance, equal opportunity, economic efficiency, and competition. This means that a support strategy for Cuba’s transition must pay as much attention to the material as well as to the ideological. The former cannot succeed without the latter, or the latter without the former. In fact, they are complementary elements of a successful strategy. Fortunately, Cuba can draw on the experiences of other countries that have managed or are traversing the transition from Communist rule. The great ingenuity exhibited by ordinary Cubans on a daily basis as they seek economic survival in a social system intent on stifling innate human initiative suggests that the national economic reconstruction effort may not be as daunting as some fear. Once the people of Cuba are provided with essential economic tools, appropriate institutional mechanisms, and the opportunity to act freely on their aspirations, the country’s economy should begin to experience sustained growth. While it would be naive to assume that the transition will proceed in a seamless fashion—temporary setbacks should be anticipated—under the right domestic circumstances, generous support from the international community, and the passage of time, Cuba would manage to turn the economic corner.

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Cuba enjoys advantages that should help the country get on its financial and economic feet once the transition gets underway. By virtue of having renounced its membership in or never joining the network of international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank), Cuba has no outstanding debts with these institutions. Thus, the international multilateral financial institutions will be able to respond to Cuba’s requests for infusions of significant financial resources, as well as provide technical assistance to facilitate national reconstruction. In addition, the U.S. government is fully committed to supporting the transition, as is the European Community and other major international donors (e.g., Japan). Further, the Cuban-American community stands ready to lend a helping hand, financially (increased remittances flows are anticipated once the transition gets underway, as well as through direct investments) as well as by providing technical expertise and international marketing know-how. Finally, the backward and obsolete state of the Cuban economy and the potential for growth offer fertile ground to foreign investors seeking profitable niches in a country that is just a stone throw away from the largest and richest country in an ever more economically integrated hemisphere. The United States Role in the Transition The United States will play a paramount role in the Cuban transition. To be most effective, and given the two countries’ troubled history of relations, the United States should go out of its way to act as a supportive facilitator, in the spirit of President Clinton’s 1997 “Support for a Democratic Transition in Cuba” proclamation, jealously guarding Cuba’s sovereignty and self-determination. Once the transition gets underway, a nod from the United States will be sufficient to initiate the process of Cuba’s admission into the multilateral financial institutions. I will only touch briefly on emergency assistance issues, focusing instead on medium and long-term measures the United States and the international development community could implement to assist Cuba in the transition. Emergency Assistance A first and most urgent role will be for the United States to assist with emergency needs. This would entail the direct provision of necessary emergency food, medical supplies, and other assistance, but also facilitating the import and distribution of assistance provided by other governments, international organizations, and private sector entities. Few organizations in the world have the experience and resources that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) can muster through its emergency relief contractors and network of voluntary private organizations (PVOs). Emergency relief efforts can be supported through USAID’s “Food for Peace Program” (Public Law 480. Title II),

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or the International Disaster Assistance program, partly designed to support transition efforts. Food for Peace agricultural commodities, aside from providing direct U.S. government food assistance, are also donated through other private and official relief organizations, such as the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP), for distribution, or to be sold in domestic markets to generate local financial resources to support short-term employment and development objectives. Food for Peace funds are used as well to cover operating costs of PVOs and cooperating national non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Through the International Disaster Assistance fund, USAID can support medium-term recovery efforts not covered by emergency food relief or more long-term projects, such as the distribution of medical supplies, clothing, and basic shelter. Domestic agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), must be prepared to respond effectively to what could well be a major refugee crisis if the initial stages of the transition are accompanied by eruptions of violence. Once the immediate upheaval period is over, and assuming effective cooperation from a stable transition government, refugee outflows are likely to become more manageable. Medium to Long-Term Reconstruction Agenda As the most immediate emergency needs are addressed, the United States should encourage the World Bank to convene a Donors’ Consultative Group to begin to negotiate with the transitional government regarding a reconstruction agenda. This should include planning for a needs assessment and seeking donors’ commitments to support reforms in specific sectors, including preliminary estimates of funding levels to be made available. The purpose of this exercise will be, aside from avoiding duplication of efforts, to establish a coherent and practical reconstruction agenda with realistic medium- and long-term timetables. This crucial planning phase should include preparations for establishing a basic domestic management infrastructure to coordinate foreign technical and economic assistance flows, and ensure their appropriate use. For discussion purposes, and largely following USAID’s current programmatic structure, I visualize the reconstruction agenda falling within six major categories: (1) Economic Institutions and Growth; (2) Democracy and Governance; (3) Education; (4) Agriculture/Environment; and (5) Health Services/Family Planning. The last, (6) Émigré Resources and Municipal Development, is a special, residual category. These categories (or variants thereof), while often overlapping, are common (except for the last one) to all transition countries. My objective in highlighting them is simply to shed light on specific features of the Cuban experience with the purpose of generating practical policy recommendations to help guide planning initiatives of specific U.S. agencies that in one way or another are likely to be involved with the transition. A secondary objective of the exercise is to identify the role other international agencies could play in support of the transition,

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whether in association with, or acting independently from, the U.S. Government efforts. Economic Institutions and Growth A sine qua non of the transition in Cuba is a complete transformation of the economic and property framework that has prevailed in Cuba for nearly half-acentury. The economic national debacle has its roots in Soviet-inspired economic institutions that, absent enormous foreign subsidies, were unable to promote sustained growth and utterly failed to diversify the country’s economic base. The Cuban economy must be largely privatized, beginning with state owned industrial and agricultural enterprises. Market oriented institutions (e.g., banks) must be allowed to emerge and regulatory mechanisms developed. Fiscal systems must be designed and implemented, both at the national and municipal levels to encourage better governance and decentralization. The reform of the Cuban economy will bring the transitional government face to face with the thorny issue of claims for expropriated properties, and whether to offer restitution or compensation to former property owners and their descendants. While painful and politically loaded, this issue must be addressed if property rights are to be protected and guaranteed, an important pre-requisite if Cuba is to become an attractive location for foreign investment. As the economy is transformed, a transitional Cuba will confront daunting short-term employment policy prospects. Hidden unemployment, in the form of underemployment in vastly inflated and inefficient state owned enterprises, will come into the open as the economy is privatized. The employment issue will be a top priority that will only begin to be resolved by reactivating the economy. For this to occur, it will be essential to implement and phase in the proper mix of economic reform policies and foreign investment initiatives. The role of the United States government in assisting Cuba’s economic reform policies, while important, should not be as dominant as that of the international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank). These institutions are capable of providing a wealth of technical resources and advice, and have the wherewithal to provide very substantial long-term loans to facilitate the implementation of the most fundamental economic policy reforms. Furthermore, the fiscal and economic policy conditionality burden, for political and historical reasons, must be the purview of international financial institutions, rather than Washington. Cuba will also be facing difficult social problems that cannot be resolved over the short term. Their solution lies in the successful implementation of new sets of rules to satisfy society’s most pressing demands and financial resources generated by sustained economic growth. If these politically delicate issues are not resolved, they will act as a politically destabilizing force and a long-term drag on Cuba’s ability to overcome economic backwardness and become interna-

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tionally competitive. At the forefront of these social issues is the vast, although now nearly defunct, social safety net developed by the Socialist government when flush with Soviet subsidies. While it is important to preserve its most desirable features (e.g., universal coverage in health care and education), Cuba’s social institutions need to be modernized and placed on sound financial footing. Issues to be tackled include policies that have allowed Cuban workers to retire at younger ages than workers in most other countries, a very costly and inefficient health care system, and a national pension system that is wholly financed from general state revenues and is totally devoid of financial reserves. This problem will only get worse due to demographic trends (a pronounced and sustained fertility decline and low mortality rates) that in years to come will significantly increase the percent of the elderly in the population. Other social programs, such as the extensive unemployment compensation schemes introduced during the “Special Period in Time of Peace” (as the government refers to the economic crisis induced by the end of Soviet subsidies), while only providing minimal individual transfers, are unsustainable. Since other presenters at this conference have been asked to discuss in detail economic transition issues, I will close my remarks on this topic by quoting from an influential World Bank summary overview provided regarding what the international donor community must do to assist transitional economies:1 What should be the timing and composition of foreign assistance to transition economies? A first observation is that although only the poorer transition economies require long-term financial assistance, all but a very few could benefit from extended technical assistance to support the building of institutions. This process can take decades, as some aspects of institutional reform involve rebuilding entire professions and require massive training programs. Many countries will also require long-term support, from official sources, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector, to help build the institutions of civil society.

The World Bank also notes that assistance must be carefully calibrated to facilitate reforms while avoiding creating implementation disincentives, limiting external financial support for carefully circumscribed transition issues, and placing heavy reliance on the private sector to reactivate the economy. A final and very important conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion above is that while the United States and the international community can take many steps to assist with Cuba’s recovery, none of these steps is as important as what the Cubans themselves must do. The economic recovery will be predicated largely on the country’s political and social stability, its domestic economic environment, and how successfully it is in drawing foreign investment. Democracy and Governance A Cuba in transition must immediately set out to build the institutional basis of democratic governance, even if this goal proves elusive, including setting the

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proper conditions for civil society organizations to flourish. During the transition, Cubans need to carefully ponder the kind of institutions the country must have to attain political stability, social peace, and economic prosperity. Legal instruments designed to regulate political, social and economic life will define the nature of these institutions. Cuba must create these legal instruments or modernize those that could be rescued from its former republican past, but this will take time and an ample national dialogue. Most importantly, to achieve these goals the country must first attain social peace and political stability, a situation that while desirable will not be by any means assured. USAID has been at the forefront of international efforts to assist transitional countries with the development of democratic institutions and processes. These efforts, on balance, may have met with as many failures as successes. USAID’s large network of PVOs (e.g., National Democratic Institute and National Republican Institute) and contractors have worked for nearly a decade around the world assisting transition countries to develop democratic institutions while drawing on the United States’ own governance traditions. The four objectives defined under the Agency’s 1997 Strategic Plan to assist countries to attain democratic governance largely encompass the requirements that a transitional Cuba must achieve. These objectives are encouragement of the rule of law and respect for human rights; development of credible and competitive political processes; growth of a politically involved civil society; and establishment of transparent and accountable government institutions. Aside from USAID support, Cuba will be able to count on the backing offered by most bilateral (most Western European countries include support for these activities in their bilateral assistance programs) and multilateral organizations. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have in recent years, for example, developed comprehensive technical assistance programs to assist countries in transition seek democratization objectives. International support will be crucial to foment the growth of civil society organizations among Cubans skeptical about the role of mass organizations in a totalitarian state. Civil society organizations will be fundamental if the rule of law is to be upheld and if there is to be a counterbalance to government power. Cuba will require technical assistance and financial support with the organization of political parties and conducting fair elections. In the legal area, technical and financial support will be required across the board, from the development and/or modernization of a national constitution, to the adoption of modern civil, criminal and commercial codes. Cubans are poorly informed about even their most basic human rights, having been subjected for four decades to a barrage of disinformation based on a Marxist ideological discourse that equated political rights with conformity to government dictates, and that only called attention to certain social and economic rights while woefully ignoring or suppressing others. It will be essential, therefore, to educate Cubans about even the most fundamental human rights if

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a solid base is to be established for democratic governance to take hold. Breaking the totalitarian state’s monopolistic control of the mass media alone will constitute a major step forward since it will permit a vigorous public airing of different views and perspectives. Discrete educational programs will also have to be promoted through the mass media by NGOs and political organizations and in the schools by the educational authorities. Beyond mere education, it is also a priority to begin to establish an impartial and fair judicial system that Cubans may some day come to trust. The task is immense since it will entail a complete revamping of the country’s legal system, the retraining and recruitment of officials of the law, reforming the country’s police forces, and establishing a fair and humane penal system. The judicial and law enforcement reform process must also be proactive. It must be provided with the capacity to deal effectively with problems that are certain to arise or worsen during the early years of the transition—likely to be chaotic—with the dismantling of the repressive structures of a totalitarian state. Drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes already on the rise will only worsen, as has happened in other former Communist countries in transition. Cuba will also have to contend with the general state of lawlessness associated with widespread corruption. Those familiar with Cuba’s history are unlikely to minimize the importance of corruption as a leading source of national political instability. Real or alleged acts of corruption were arguably among the most insidious and destructive forces undermining the consolidation of democratic rule in pre-1959 republican Cuba. The specter of corruption continues to haunt Cubans in exile with the City of Miami being justly or unjustly portrayed as America’s most corrupt city. Cubans and Cuban-Americans must be sensitive to the corrosive effects of corruption and the need to bring it under control. Corruption permeates Cuba’s economic life. Diverting resources from the state sector is regarded by many, as a matter of fact, as a survival strategy in a society with limited economic opportunities and most wealth controlled by a political elite. The privatization of the economy will remove many of the institutional incentives for corruption, while other mechanisms could be utilized to reduce the prevalence of corruption in a smaller public sector. One is public education to instill values of probity, honesty and transparency among public sector employees and the population at large. Another is to develop public sector management tools (e.g., integrated financial management systems) that, while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of government operations, at the same time limit the ability of corrupt officials to illegally benefit from their positions. But we should not be naïve. The challenge is great and the opportunities for corruption considerable as the state economy is privatized. A “piñata” a la Nicaragua is to be expected and is likely to be already under way. Once the transition starts, a major priority will be to reform and modernize the country’s public institutions. The goal of these reforms ought to be the creation of a state that is efficient, effective and transparent, that is trusted by

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the citizenry, and that facilitates rather than hinders the market economy. USAID as well as the international financial institutions have been supporting modernization of the state programs for many years, and have much to contribute in these areas in a post-transition Cuba. In Nicaragua since the mid-1990s, for example, USAID together with the World Bank and the IDB have been providing technical and financial support for a major, multiyear reform of the state program. While these programs often run into political difficulties, in Cuba’s case even modest achievements will be beneficial given the sorry state of the country’s public administration after more than four decades of socialist rule. Cuba will most likely confront a post-transition migration crisis. Emigration will not be a concern, however, but rather a potential large influx of desperate and destitute Haitians seeking better fortune in Cuba, or using the country as a transit route to reach the United States. Under the Castro police state, the attractiveness of Cuba as a migration destination was mitigated, although, whenever it became necessary, the Communist government acted forcefully to prevent or divert inflows of undocumented Haitian migrants. A democratic and more prosperous Cuba will not have, nor should it have, the police enforcement instruments that have prevented the settlement of large numbers of Haitians fleeing poverty. Means must be found to deal humanely with the anticipated surge of undocumented migration that is sure to follow from Haiti once political and economic conditions begin to change. Cuba could benefit from the technical assistance of the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (OIM) and from international cooperation programs managed with the support of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). What to do with the Cuban military will be a major challenge. Since 1959 the military has served as the backbone of the socialist government, military adventures abroad having been encouraged and glorified. Before the revolution, military meddling in the country’s political life had disastrous consequences. While the case can be made that Cuba would be better off without a military, the odds for abolishing the armed forces in the short-term are not high. The Cuban military is currently an important economic actor. Most observers of the Cuban scene see a continuation of this role, as the Cuban officer class is professional and progressively sophisticated in economic matters. By not engaging in repression, the military may manage to cling to some of its privileges and act as a major driver of a successful transition. Thus, the U.S. government must approach the Cuban military gingerly and be ready, when requested, to assist with its demobilization. Other countries, including Nicaragua and El Salvador in this hemisphere, have dealt with comparable problems and with international assistance have managed to demilitarize. It might be necessary, however, to assist Cuba to maintain a high state of readiness of its naval forces to assist with the control of narcotrafficking and illegal migration, as well as to monitor the safety of surrounding waters as the tourist industry continues to expand. The U.S.

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Coast Guard, much respected for its professionalism and humanitarian exploits, could provide technical expertise. Education Despite decades of propaganda regarding the achievements of the Cuban educational system since the socialist government came to power, in many respects the system is deficient and out of tune with the needs of the modern world. This will be a severe bottleneck for a transitional Cuba seeking to become integrated into a market-driven and competitive world economy. Over the last four decades the quantitative achievements of the system have been substantial, as evidenced by official statistics on primary and secondary school enrollment, as well as by considerable increases in the number of teachers and schools. The number of universities in the country has also expanded appreciably, as did the number of students up until the early 1990s when, as a result of the economic crisis and other factors, the authorities decided to reverse the trend of increasing university enrollments by curtailing admissions. These achievements must be placed in perspective by comparing Cuba’s accomplishments with those of other Latin American countries. In general, countries with comparable educational standards as Cuba in the late 1950s like Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay have done as well or better than Cuba. Some countries with decidedly lower standards than Cuba at the time, such as Brazil and Mexico, have in fact made relatively greater gains since they started from a much lower base. While the quantitative indicators suggest significant progress, the evidence regarding educational quality is far more questionable. Educational curricula, dominated by Marxist-Leninist ideology, were used to indoctrinate two generations of Cuban students on discredited philosophical, ethical and political principles, as well as on disastrous economic theories, while imparting a distorted version of Cuban and world history whose only purpose was to serve the prevailing political dogma. Furthermore, education was and continues to be used as propaganda and as an ideological tool. Ideological and politically dictated fads and directives, for instance, often tied to initiatives associated with Cuba’s economic relations with the former Soviet Union and the Council for Mutual Economic Cooperation (CMEC), gave emphasis at times to the training of certain specialists to the detriment of others, or vice versa. Examples abound. During the 1960s, economists were devalued, although during the late 1970s their training became a priority. Grandiose development plans during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in a major expansion of the national capacity to train agronomists and engineers. For political and symbolic reasons, physician training has been a personal priority of President Castro, Cuba having produced far more graduates than the country can efficiently and economically absorb. The accounting profession was never a priority, but with Cuba now desperately seeking to enter the international market place, the crash training of these specialists

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is emphasized. At other times, and often for no logical reason, the educational authorities have downplayed professional training in other important academic fields. During the transition, the educational sector in Cuba must come to terms with several priority issues. There will be a need to evaluate, completely revamp, and modernize national educational curricula to remove their MarxistLeninist ideological content and make them consistent with the needs of the country in the 21st Century. Such an ambitious goal will entail re-training and upgrading the skills of the country’s teachers. Other urgent matters will be deciding how to finance the national educational system and the role private schools should play within it. Educational reform must also tackle the fundamental question of whether a powerful central government ultimately has control over educational policy or whether this power should be vested in local communities. Through its involvement with other transition countries, USAID has gained considerable experience supporting similar education reform programs. European community bilateral assistance programs, specialized United Nations agencies such as UNICEF and UNESCO, and private foundations are also apt to provide financial support and technical assistance for educational reforms. Finally, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank could provide loans under their social development programs to finance many of the reforms. Cuba must enter the computer age. Totalitarian governments have always regarded the free exchange of ideas as a serious threat. Thus, the access of the people of Cuba to the Internet is severely restricted, only the privileged few having limited and supervised connections. A priority of the transition government will be to begin to connect the Cuban people to the World Wide Web and thus to introduce as extensively and as soon as possible in Cuban schools personal computers and the teaching of computer skills. Some countries in Latin America, namely Costa Rica, have made great strides in universalizing PC access. Practically every high school in Costa Rica is equipped with computers. As a first step, the Cuban American community working with USAID and the U.S. business community could mount a drive to collect and donate to Cuban schools and universities used computers in good working order. Cuban students could greatly benefit from widespread access to the Internet since they will have at their fingertips ready access to information and the many cyberspace educational tools. Agriculture/Environment To this day, agriculture continues to dominate the Cuban economy and will be an important engine of the country’s economic recovery during and after the transition. The sector will most likely manage to stage a fast recovery under a proper institutional economic framework, including a private property regime, and with ready access to the U.S. market. Still, many lingering problems will have to be addressed. Among the most immediate will be those of land owner-

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ship and training. Expert views suggest that under socialism the Cuban peasantry—except among a limited number of land holders allowed to continue working small farms—ceased utilizing environmentally beneficial farming practices appropriate for the country’s conditions that had been developed over centuries. Accumulating evidence indicates that over the last forty years, Cuban soils have deteriorated dramatically, largely as a result of the adoption of centrally dictated agricultural practices oblivious to local environments often implemented by managers selected on the basis of ideological criteria rather than technical competence. Hydrological development policies pursued during the last forty years are also implicated in the deterioration of the country’s soils and degradation of water resources. This damage may be a factor behind the poor performance of the agricultural sector. United States policies could have a dramatic impact on Cuba’s agricultural recovery. Trade will possibly be the most beneficial policy measure. By opening its domestic market to Cuban tropical products, the United States could give a powerful boost to the country’s agricultural sector, as suggested by a series of studies conducted by the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida. This may even be the case with sugar, if the United States Congress, willing to help Cuba, ever decides to do away with the domestic price support policies currently limiting imports from Caribbean producers. USAID, working in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture as well as its land grant university partners, could promote the reactivation of Cuban agriculture by providing technical assistance with land titling issues (Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin); strengthening the country’s agricultural extension services; and assisting with the implementation of environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. The overall experience of USAID in these regards, and particularly in Central America and the Caribbean, is considerable. As domestic demand for food is significant and likely to rise appreciably (due to agricultural linkages with the growing tourist industry) and as export opportunities materialize, private actors will most likely take the lead in bringing dynamism to the sector. USAID could support targeted programs to promote joint ventures between Cuban producers and agricultural conglomerates like ADM and Cargill. These private initiatives are prone to prosper when supported by adequate institutional and regulatory mechanisms, as well as by technical assistance. The latter could be partially supplied by specialized United Nations bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and related regional agricultural research organizations, bilateral donors, and PVOs that promote better and sustainable agricultural practices throughout the world. Health Services/Family Planning Although socialist Cuba has gained much praise for its accomplishments in the health sector, the health care situation has deteriorated dramatically since

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1989. A post-socialist Cuba will have to deal with the institutional and personnel legacy of a health system that in many respects was developed according to the personal whims of an all-powerful dictator that disregarded all elementary rules of efficiency in his desire to use health indicators as political weapons. The Soviet Union facilitated Castro’s quest by providing tens of billions of rubles in aid, most of which were wasted in development programs of dubious value and that, in the absence of external subsidies, are essentially unsustainable. The health sector is a prime example. When most countries in the world are seeking fiscal alternatives to deal with runaway health care costs, Cuban health care policies, despite the exigencies of the Special Period, continue to ignore elemental financing and cost-control notions, other than those imposed by the economic crisis. All health expenditures are financed by the national government. At every level, the Cuban health care system is over staffed. The number of physicians exceeds the number needed for a population of Cuba’s size, as does the number of health care facilities. The family doctor notion, while great for propaganda value, is financially extravagant and not necessary. From the very outset a transition government will be forced to impose some rationality to the health care system. This will mean looking very closely at financing options and the proper allocation of human resources as the economy begins to be privatized. The World Bank has been providing technical assistance to countries, many in Latin America, designing and implementing radical programs to reengineer national health care systems to make them financially viable and increase their efficiency. These reengineering efforts usually entail introducing competition among health care providers to control costs and improve service delivery, eliminating debts in financially strapped systems, and reducing bloated staffs. These prescriptions will be in order for Cuba. There is one especially appealing policy prescription in the health sector that the United States may want to assess to assist with Cuba’s recovery. If implemented, it could lead to a major improvement in the Cuban economic picture through direct and indirect employment effects, at the same time as it becomes an important revenue source for the national health system. This policy initiative, furthermore, would be of benefit to Cuba as well as to the United States. It rests on the availability of underutilized and quality health care personnel and facilities in Cuba, on the one hand, and on the financial pressures currently being faced by the American health care system, on the other. In brief, economic conditions in Cuba and the finances of the post-transition Cuban health care system would improve if the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) were to authorize Medicare beneficiaries to seek medical assistance from Cuban physicians and in the country’s medical facilities. This single U.S. government action would make Cuba an attractive tourist and retirement destination for many senior Americans (in particular Cuban Americans) who otherwise would not venture far from American shores. Overall U.S. Medicare costs would be curtailed somewhat since medical care costs in

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Cuba would only be a fraction of what they are in the United States. If the Cuban health care option were to be offered to Medicare beneficiaries several things would have to occur. It would require authorization from Congress as well as HCFA certification to validate that its health care standards are being met. It would also depend on an effective lobbying campaign to convince domestic health care providers that their financial interests would not be unduly damaged. A major Cuban health care issue is the prevalence of induced abortion, largely because abortion has been used as a means to minimize the incidence of infant mortality caused by endogenous causes of death and as the country’s favorite birth control method. The experience of USAID and many of its grantees and contractors in implementing effective family planning programs is unequaled in the world. Such assistance could result in a major shift away from reliance on induced abortion toward the use of modern contraception methods. Likewise, USAID’s know-how with HIV/AIDS control programs will also be welcome. With the growth of international tourism and widespread prostitution, this disease already appears to be spreading rapidly, a situation similar to that reported in official health care statistics with several venereal diseases. Cuba will also need considerable international assistance to rebuild its dilapidated sanitary infrastructure. Water distribution and sewerage collection systems, even in La Habana, are poorly maintained and inadequate to serve the needs of the population. Sewage flows freely into the coastlines and untreated discharges pollute interior water bodies. USAID could work together with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop long-term environmental sanitation development plans to be eventually financed with national revenues and World Bank and IAD financing. Émigré Resources and Municipal Development The significance of the Cuban-American community in expediting the economic transition should not be underestimated. The expatriate community will serve as an important commercial and technological bridge with the United States, Cuba’s natural market. While it can be anticipated that the linkages between the émigré community and the homeland will develop spontaneously, there are a number of steps that U.S. agencies and international agencies supported by the U.S. taxpayer could implement to expedite the process, at least during the earliest days of the transition. One such initiative could entail promoting the return to Cuba of individuals with technical backgrounds who could assist with the national reconstruction effort by, for example, providing training in the country’s universities and technical institutes. Return of talent programs have been managed with some success in many Latin American countries by the OIM, an organization supported by the U.S. government since it was created following the Second World War to assist with the resettlement of refugees.

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But much more is to be expected from an émigré community eager to assist with the transition. The more than one million Cuban-Americans, most of them residents of the Miami Metropolitan region, could be quickly transformed into a significant source of jobs and income. USAID could provide technical support to Cuban municipalities willing to develop services likely to attract emigrant tourists (and other tourists). Community and religious festivals, carnivals and other such events could be organized and promoted in the United States to generate cultural tourism among émigrés. These activities will generate jobs and provide the rudiments for a local tax base for decentralized and more accountable government. Miami-based exile municipal organizations could act as U.S.-based counterparts for these cultural festivities and act as vehicles to collect and channel financial and in-kind assistance to Cuba. The Miami-based municipal organizations could also act as one-stop shops for foreign investors and be instrumental in the establishment of sister-city type relationships between Cuba’s municipalities and American cities by providing direct and permanent links. On an interim basis and until the economy recovers, these activities could be financed by and modeled after the regional Business Development Centers sponsored by the Small Business Administration (SBA) in many U.S. cities. USAID could complement these municipal development efforts by providing support and encouraging the development of a vibrant small business sector. USAID’s small business development programs have been providing technical assistance and small loans to budding entrepreneurs in countries around the world for more than two decades and could do likewise in Cuba. The strong entrepreneurial predisposition of many Cubans is suggested by the extent of black market activities despite harsh policies designed to repress individual initiative. Further evidence is the growth in self-employment and family-operated business once these activities began to be allowed by the socialist government after 1993. The émigré community could easily be tapped as a source of finance for small businesses. Well developed programs for small business development are also managed and financed by the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and many bilateral programs and private foundations. Note 1.

The World Bank. 1996. From Plan to Market. World Development Report 1996. Oxford University Press. New York, pp. 145–146.

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36 Three Variations on Communist Successor Regimes Edward Gonzalez Given these internal policy cleavages, the initial unity of a successor regime could easily be fractured once factional in-fighting breaks out, with the centrists becoming the pivotal grouping. Moreover, elite divisions would be compounded by the positions taken by institutional actors—especially the Communist Party, the National Assembly of People’s Power, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and the Ministry of Interior—as they align themselves in the power struggle. While necessarily speculative, the following discussion looks at how these institutional players might align themselves in a factional struggle over policy and power, while also assessing the viability of the alignments. A Communist Regime Led by Hard-Liners Initially, the hard-liners are likely to draw their main support from the Party’s nomenklatura, the mass organizations, the MININT, and the FAR if it is under the leadership of hard-line, senior officers. These institutional actors have a strong stake in perpetuating the existing order and preserving the accomplishments of the Revolution, especially Cuba’s independence from the United States. They also place a premium on the imperative of maintaining internal order. In terms of their mass and elite appeal, they would represent continuity with the past. Precisely because they represent the past, however, a regime led by hardliners would not be viable for very long. Because of their visceral antipathy toward “capitalism,” the hard-liners would be unable to adopt the kinds of market reforms necessary to revitalize Cuba’s economy. In turn, they would find themselves increasingly alone inside the regime at a time when they are sure to

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be confronted with mounting popular opposition as a result of continued repression and a worsening economic situation. Without Fidel Castro to champion Cuba’s cause, the hard-liners would also find themselves isolated on the international front as governments and public opinion in Canada, Europe, and Latin America would turn against the regime’s intransigent, repressive stance. In the meantime, the United States could be expected to exert mounting pressure to bring about long awaited regime change. Hence, if they are to remain a viable force, the hard-liners would have to join in a coalition with the centrists. A Communist Regime Led by Centrists By virtue of occupying the middle ground in terms of policy, and because Raúl Castro is Second-Secretary of the PCC and Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the centrists would probably attract younger Party leaders, most of the FAR’s junior and middle-rank officers, and others officials serving in the government. As President of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Ricardo Alarcón can also be expected to draw support from that body, especially if he calls for expanding its powers—something he might well do in order to strengthen his position vis-à-vis Raúl and others within the centrist camp. Yet, while seemingly in the driver’s seat, the centrists are certain to be beset by serious problems in consolidating their power. To begin with, Raúl’s presence will be as much a liability as an asset for the successor regime, particularly if he occupies a highly visible leadership position. For example, if he takes over as First-Secretary of the PCC or becomes chief-ofstate as President of the Council of State, the United States could find it impossible under the Helms-Burton Act to begin the process of normalizing relations with Cuba. Additionally, while the inclusion of the hard-liners in the new regime would help neutralize the MININT, the PCC hierarchy, and other hard-line elements, their presence could further damage the regime’s international image. Also, with or without the hard-liners, the centrists have shown themselves unwilling either to undertake deep economic reforms or to open-up the polity, as called for by the United States and the rest of the international community. All this suggests that it would be tactically advantageous for the centrists to join with the reformers because the latter could provide needed international cover, as well as the policy prescriptions required to revitalize the economy and popular support. But here the centrists would encounter strong opposition not only from the hard-liners but also from those within their own camp who would be against the liberalizing measures advocated by the reformers. In short, a centrist-led regime could well find itself at an impasse, unable to chart coherent, effective policies for the economy and polity. If so, then the regime could find itself facing increasing international isolation and pressures, mounting internal resistance, and institutional defections from its ranks.

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A Communist Regime Led by Reformers At present, a succession regime headed by reformers appears to be a long shot. Because their economic policies are radical in the Cuban context, the reformers are not likely to find much support among the major institutional players within the regime, at least not until the economic and/or political situation turns critical. Were the succession struggle to occur within the near term, the reformers would also probably find themselves without much organized support outside the regime, given the current embryonic state of civil society in Cuba, or what one observer calls a “proto-civil society.”1 In time, if civil society reaches a stage comparable to that of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, then the reformers could probably count on receiving internal support from increasingly independent, assertive institutions and groups. These would include the Catholic and Protestant Churches, Afro-Cuban sects, dissident and human rights groups, and the more autonomous state-sponsored NGOs. Until then, however, the reformers’ major sources of support are likely to be found outside Cuba—in foreign governments, NGOs, and foreign investors who would view a reformist-led government as the only alternative to stasis or chaos on the island. Indeed, the prospect of continued stasis due to government paralysis and impending chaos due to a worsening economic and political situation could redound to the advantage of the reformers. Still, they would require more than the support of societal actors inside Cuba and the international community if they were to take power. They would need the FAR—Cuba’s most important institution—to defect and throw its weight behind the reformist movement, actively countering any hostile moves by the MININT, the Party, and the hardliners. However, such a scenario seems plausible only if the FAR concludes that it has no other alternative than to side with the reformers if Cuba is to be saved from chaos and the FAR is to protect its institutional interests. However, the reality is that the FAR does have another alternative—to assume power directly in order to stem the collapse of the communist state in the face of rising popular disturbances that probably would be spearheaded by Cuba’s restive youth.2 Here the FAR would be following the path of the Polish army when it imposed emergency rule under the leadership of General Jaruzelski in 1981. A Successor Regime Led by the Military The FAR already is well positioned to take power if a civilian-led successor regime falters and/or Castro’s sudden, unexpected departure precipitates instability and turmoil. As the FAR now manages many government ministries and sectors of the economy, depending on circumstances, it may not need to share power with civilian elites, whether they be hard-liners, centrists, or reformers.

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The Preeminence of the FAR The Revolutionary Armed Forces have been the regime’s preeminent institution and most important pillar of support, while enjoying a popular legitimacy independent of Castro. Following the toppling of the Batista Regime by its predecessor, the Rebel Army, the FAR’s creation in 1959 predated the founding of the Communist Party by six years. The FAR not only went on to defend the Revolution in its early years against both its internal and external enemies, it also played a direct role in the economy, particularly by militarizing part of the sugar industry in the late 1960s in an effort to achieve a 10 million ton sugar harvest in 1970. After that, the FAR made its contribution to the economy by running the Youth Labor Army that was created in 1973. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, the FAR emerged triumphant from three military campaigns in Africa, having twice defeated the South Africans in Angola and Namibia and having routed the Somalis in Eritrea. By 1987, Cuba had Latin America’s largest army, ranking twentieth in size worldwide. Then, in the wake of the arrests, convictions and executions of Division General Arnaldo Ochoa, MININT Colonel Tony de la Guardia, and their two subordinates in 1989, the FAR assumed control of MININT, purged its ranks, and put its own officers in charge of the Interior Ministry. The 1990s crisis caused a massive scaling down of the FAR from 297,000 active duty personnel in 1987 to 55,000 in 1997. In the meantime, naval vessels, MiG fighters and other aircraft, along with tanks and other weapons systems, either became inoperable, were cannibalized, or had to be mothballed owing to fuel and spare parts shortages.3 But even as the FAR’s order of battle suffered severe degradation, it assumed a new mission in the 1990s by greatly expanding its direct role in running the government and economy. As Espinosa points out, the FAR is now in possession of much of the government.4 Excluding Castro, 12 out of 37 key ministries in 2001 were under the control of senior officers from the FAR and to a lesser MININT, which has become an adjunct to the FAR. Besides MINFAR under Army General Raúl Castro, and MININT under General Abelardo Colmé Ibarra, these included Sugar, under the direction of Division General Ulises Rosales del Toro; Chief of Staff (Gobernación), under Colonel Ricardo Cabrizas; Civil Aviation, under Division General Rogelio Acevedo González; Transport and Profits, under Colonel Alvaro Pérez Morales; Higher Education, under Brigadier Fernando Vecino Alegret; and Information Technology and Communications, under Colonel Roberto Ignacio González Planas. Still others control the Attorney General’s office, Customs, and Enterprise Improvement. Additionally, in the economy, Espinosa notes the presence of nine retired and active-duty senior officers who have become “entrepreneur-soldiers.” They have been given a direct role in managing the external sector of the Cuban economy, encompassing foreign investments, tourism, pharmaceuticals, and other non-

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traditional exports and services. Espinosa also identifies no less than 20 enterprises or major project companies that are under the control of the FAR or MININT, ranging from the sprawling Gaviota and Cubanacán tourist enterprises and the CIMEX import-export conglomerate, to the Habaneros, S.A. tobacco monopoly. Additionally, there are hosts of smaller, lesser known companies run by less prominent entrepreneur-soldiers.5 A Military-Led Successor Regime With the military already in commanding positions in the current government and public/private sectors of the economy, it would be relatively easy for the FAR as an institution to assume control of a post-Castro regime. It could choose to govern with only military officers at the top or with a select number of civilian leaders drawn from the hard-line, centrist, or even reformist factions. In the first instance, Raúl Castro could remain as minister of the FAR, while turning over the office of president of the Council of State to retired General Ulises Rosales del Toro or another trusted raulista general. Another raulista officer could be given control of the Party, or the PCC could be left in the hands of a civilian. Under the second variation, centrist leaders such as Ricardo Alarcón and José Luis Rodríguez could remain as president of the National Assembly and Economics minister, respectively, to give the new military-led regime a semblance of civilian participation. Even an apparent reformer like Carlos Lage could conceivably be retained in his present post, given that he has been able to work within the parameters set by Fidel and Raúl over the past decade. With the MININT at its side and the Party supporting it for lack of a better alternative, the FAR could well impose its rule over society without much resistance, at least initially. But it is likely to face strong condemnation from the United States, Latin America, Europe, and other members of the international community committed to democracy and human rights. Hence, to some degree, a military-led regime could gain some cover if it were to include civilians among its leadership. However, it would probably become an international pariah, with even foreign investors shunning Cuba because of the uncertainties and arbitrariness of military rule. A military regime in power also risks its own institutional interests. To begin with, if Cuba becomes a pariah state in the eyes of the international community, the FAR’s chances of establishing normal, professional relations with the United States and other modern military establishments would be severely compromised. This would mean that the FAR would be unable to secure the military credits and sales needed to replace its aging fleet of run-down planes, tanks, and other weapons systems. This, in turn, could intensify cleavages within the FAR between the traditional professional soldier, whose mission is to defend the revolution and fatherland, and the new breed of politician-soldier and entrepreneur-soldier, who are enriching themselves through their positions in the gov-

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ernment and economy. There already are reports from Cuba that there is growing corruption among the ranks of entrepreneur-soldiers, with the result that a new privileged caste of military officers, families, and associates is emerging.6 Still another risk awaits the Cuban military if it assumes direct responsibility for the state of the Cuban economy. The economic and managerial skills of FAR officers do not inspire much confidence, given their poor performance in achieving enterprise improvement in the state sector of the economy and in managing the sugar industry. At least under Raúl’s command, they also do not appear to appreciate fully the extent to which deeper reforms are needed for the island’s limping economy to recover. If the military were to take over and if the economic situation deteriorated further under a military government, the FAR would lose much of its luster in the eyes of the populace. Worse yet, if the FAR had to use force against civilians to quell disturbances, the population would turn against it and the military itself could become deeply divided. In sum, a military-led government is fraught with danger for Cuba with respect to blocking needed system changes for the economy and the polity, thereby further delaying prospects for the island’s democratic transition. The FAR would also damage itself as an institution if it were unable to govern effectively. And this once proud, highly competent, professional military organization would further tarnish it reputation if troops had to fire on rebellious civilians. A Democratic Transition Regime As will be argued momentarily, the emergence of a democratic transition regime seems quite remote at this time, at least in terms of the immediate future. But even if a democratic government were to take office, it would be saddled with politically explosive problems left unresolved by the Castro regime—the dislocations inherent in a transition to a market economy, the future of the ailing sugar industry, the reforming of the pension system, and the looming racial question. If it tried to address these questions, the new government would find that the democratic process itself would constrain its policy options far more than would be the case with a successor communist or military regime. Moreover, the present correlation of forces on the island is stacked heavily against Cuba’s democrats: The current communist leadership controls the state and its instruments of coercion, most of the economy, and virtually all channels of communication, including the Internet. And the leadership has at its disposal the Party and its affiliated mass organizations with which to mobilize mass support. In contrast, the dissidents, human rights activists, and small opposition groups are fragmented, repressed, and penetrated by State Security. Their brave leaders—Elizardo Sánchez, Hector Palacios, Osvaldo Paya, “the Four” (Vladimiro Roca

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Atúòez, Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello, René Gómez Manzano, and Félix Bonne Carcassës), and other, lesser figures—are better known by foreign governments and international human rights groups than by most Cubans on the island. They are further handicapped in challenging the current elites by the weakness of civil society. Cuba’s nascent democratic opposition must further contend with a history that has left Cubans ill-prepared for a democratic future. During Cuba’s 100 years of existence as a republic, only 16 years have been under four civilian presidents, whom proved to be poor stewards of the young nation. For the other 84 years, the country was controlled by military men or, as in Castro’s case, a revolutionary who imposed a totalitarian dictatorship. How far Cuba must travel to begin its democratic transition can be measured by examining the concept of democratic government and what is required to sustain it. Democracy and Its Requisites In liberal democracies, it is the individual who serves as the underlying element for the organization of the polity, rather than a class, vanguard party, and supreme state as in Castro’s Cuba. Individuals are empowered with certain rights, including the right to choose who will govern them, and to influence thereafter the making of public policy.7 In modern states, the primary—indeed, the indispensable—mechanism for ensuring this basic right are free, competitive, and regularly scheduled elections between two or more political parties and their candidates. Such elections provide for the accountability of the rulers and constrain their power because the rulers can be removed from office by voters at the next election. All this has been absent from Cuba since Batista’s coup of 1952. Free, competitive elections further become the sine qua non for democracy in that the party in power cannot ensure electoral outcomes beforehand, again contrary to the elections under Cuba’s one-party state. Indeed, a major democratic threshold is crossed when free elections are held that result in the opposition finally taking power, thereby breaking the political monopoly of a long entrenched ruling political elite.8 Paradoxically, however, free elections can also lead to the dimming of democratic prospects by allowing anti democratic forces to gain power. The most notorious example occurred under the Weimar Republic, when the 1932 and 1933 elections enabled Hitler and the Nazi Party to gain power, after which they suspended the Weimar Constitution and imposed totalitarianism on Germany. More recently, the Romanian elections of 2000 resulted in the ruling centrist coalition of Liberals and Christian Democrats being crushed at the polls by the leftist Party of Social Democracy, led by former communists, and by the extreme nationalist party of Greater Romania.9 Something similar could happen in a post-Castro Cuba if the Communist Party and its allies were to garner a majority of the popular votes in a national election.

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Clearly, the mechanism of free, competitive elections is insufficient in itself to guarantee a democratic system. What, then, are the requisite conditions necessary to sustain democracy in the post-Castro era? Some, such as a civil society, a private sector, and a free and independent media, have already been mentioned. But there are other requisites as well that have special salience for a democratic transition in Cuba. A democratic political class. As indicated by what transpired in the Weimar Republic, democracy cannot thrive without the democratic commitment of the majority of a country’s political class. Contending political elites must abide by the rules of the game by holding free elections, accepting the outcome of the popular vote, and not imposing closure after they gain power, as Hitler did in 1933. At present, Cuba’s ruling political class adheres to anti democratic values, thus posing a future threat to democracy once it is attempted on the island. In Poland and other former bloc countries, however, some of the communist parties have reconstituted themselves along democratic-socialist lines. The same conversion would have to occur to Cuba, or at least the recalcitrant old guard communists would need to be marginalized to assure the island’s democratic future. A political class untainted by venality. The public’s perception of a corrupt political class undermines its legitimacy, thereby weakening a democratic government’s ability to withstand attacks from anti-democratic forces on both the left and right. This occurred in Cuba almost immediately with the triumph of the Revolution when the young, charismatic Castro repeatedly accused the batistianos and Auténticos of plundering the national treasury, betraying the public trust, and selling out the fatherland.10 It remains to be seen whether contending political elites in a democratic Cuba will behave with more probity than their predecessors in the pre-1959 period. So far, corruption has not tainted the ranks of dissidents, human rights activists, and other opponents of the regime, which should redound to their political advantage in any future electoral contest with the current communist elites. The military’s subordination to civilian rule. The military and security forces are uniquely positioned to defend the democratic order—or to nullify it through a coup. In Latin America, coups tend to occur when a high degree of institutional independence and a low degree of professionalism exist simultaneously, according to Samuel P. Huntington’s thesis that military professionalism leads to political control by civilian authorities.11 Huntington’s thesis has been largely borne out by the experience of the former bloc countries of Eastern Europe, where the military was subordinated to the authority of the ruling Communist Party. Since 1989, most of these countries have continued to accept civilian authority under a democratic system, though the internal security services have proved more difficult to bring under control.12

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The European experiences suggest that the same pattern could be followed by the FAR in a democratic Cuba, particularly if junior and middle-ranking officers replace hard-line senior officers. However, if Raúl and/or the raulistas remain in charge of the military, then Cuba would resemble Nicaragua when Humberto Ortega controlled the Sandinista armed forces. Such an arrangement could give the Cuban military veto power over the civilian government. An even more serious threat would come from the MININT until it could be dismantled and replaced by a new internal police force. The diffusion of democratic values in society. A democratically oriented political class would find it difficult to govern democratically if the bulk of society adhered to an authoritarian or anti-democratic political culture.13 A viable democracy requires that society as a whole be imbued with the values of political participation and mutual trust, as the former is made difficult by the absence of the latter. A sense of civility and the sanctity of the individual, a tolerance for unpopular ideas, and an acceptance of the government’s inability to meet all of society’s expectations,14 are also attributes of a democratic political culture. So, too, is the acceptance of citizenship for all members of society. The Castro regime’s long rule has been corrosive to a democratic political culture on all these counts. Political participation in Cuba has been directed from above by the regime in the form of mass mobilization, rather than autonomous participation from below. Trust has been replaced by mistrust of fellow citizens, thus inhibiting collective action except when it is orchestrated by the regime. Civility has been replaced by incivility toward so-called gusanos (literally “worms” who abandon or otherwise undermine the Revolution) and counter-revolutionaries, who cease being members of the national community. Envy and class hatred have been exploited and turned against those accused of “ill-gotten gains.” And until the crisis of the 1990s, Cubans were conditioned to rely on the state for their livelihood, basic necessities, and welfare.15 In the post-Castro era, it may take considerable time—perhaps more than a generation—before Cubans can be inculcated with a democratic political culture. A law-based state. The observance of the rule of law is a major divide that separates “law-based states” from lawless ones, whether under authoritarian, totalitarian, or post-totalitarian rule. The rule of law reins in the power and authority of the state, while endowing individuals with certain essential rights— among them, the rights to free speech, protection from the abuse of state power, free association, and private property. It requires that rulers as well as the ruled be subject to the law, specifies the manner in which the former must gain power to be legitimate, and makes them accountable to the citizenry. The rule of law is also essential to the development of a market economy because it creates predictable, equally applied, and binding laws and regulations necessary for commerce, trade, and investments to flourish. Cuba is a lawless state despite having finally promulgated a new, formal Constitution in 1976, some 17 years after the Revolution triumphed––in itself

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evidence of the regime’s lawless character. Whether in the Constitution or through laws and decrees, the “law” is rigged to favor the state, not the individual. The regime applies the law arbitrarily, sometimes retroactively, and seldom holds its own members accountable except when it suits Castro’s motives, as in the arrest, trial, and execution of Division General Arnaldo Ochoa in 1989—a further sign of the politicization of the law. Whether toward the selfemployed or foreign investors, the law has also been changeable and fickle in its application, thus not conducive to private enterprise. Finally, both the application and observance of the law have declined with the crisis of the 1990s, as ordinary Cubans were obliged to trade on the black market, steal from state firms, and engage in other illicit activities simply to survive. A democratic Cuba, in short, will have to create the rule of law from scratch. Factors Favoring a Democratic Cuba In overcoming the above challenges, Cuba’s democratic forces can take heart from the example of those Central European states that have successfully overcome the legacy of communist rule. Moreover, Cuba’s democratic prospects are brightened by the certainty that the U.S., Canadian, and European governments, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral organizations, will provide support for a new democratic government. A democratic Cuba should be able to draw further international support not only from the Roman Catholic Church and its lay organizations, but also a network of non-governmental organizations in the human rights area, such Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Pax Christi, and others. In addition, the Cuban-American community can play a critical role in the reconstruction of a new Cuba by supplying investment capital, trade ties, and technical expertise and assistance. Cuba’s budding democrats may have another ally as well—time. The longer the current Cuban situation festers, the weaker Cuba’s post-totalitarian state is likely to be, and the more time there may be for a democratic opposition and a civil society to take root on the island. The Soviet and Eastern bloc experiences are instructive in this respect: With the weakening of the communist state during the 1980s, people lost their fear, dissidents grew bolder, the underground press spread, independent labor unions sprang up, and students and the intelligentsia formed independent associations, all of which undermined communist rule. A democratic Cuba would also have another advantage over either a successor communist or military regime. As Charles Fried argues, societies are better able to prosper over time if they have free markets that are tempered by law and democracy.16 Thus, difficult as it may be, by adopting democratic institutions and practices and the rule of law, the new government could begin to construct the political and legal infrastructure needed for a successful market-driven economy.

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U.S. Policy Options for Accelerating a Democratic Transition While a democratic Cuba is the preferred outcome for U.S. policymakers, they may first have to deal with either a communist- or military-led successor regime following Fidel Castro’s departure from the scene. Both alternatives would conflict with the U.S. commitment to democracy and human rights. A communistand probably a military-led successor regime would also be unacceptable to the Cuban-American community, thus perpetuating the civil war between those in exile and the regime on the island. Yet, if Cuba’s domestic political situation begins to deteriorate, the United States could be faced with a policy dilemma—it would have to choose between stability under a communist- or military-led successor regime, or instability on the island and the prospect of a failed state. The latter outcome could open the doors to uncontrolled out-migration by 1.5 million (or more) Cubans and transform the island into a wide-open haven for drug-trafficking and a source of instability for the rest of the Caribbean. Still another dilemma could arise if the policy that the United States adopts risks producing the very instability that Washington wants to avoid. These are false policy dilemmas, however. As was earlier pointed out, neither a communist-led successor regime, with the possible exception of a reformist one, nor a military-led regime would produce a stable, prosperous Cuba over the long term. On the contrary, stability under both types of regimes would come at a high price through continued repression by the state, while the failure to improve the economy markedly would sooner or later lead to growing unrest on the island. Moreover, both types of regimes would leave Cuba as a festering source of anti-Americanism and antidemocratic values in the hemisphere. Indeed, a successor communist regime under the hard-liners and/or moderates would have every incentive to continue with Castro’s intransigent, defiant posture toward Washington because they have little else to offer the Cuban people. Their interest would lie in continuing to exploit what Irving Louis Horowitz calls the historical “ambiguity” in Cuba’s tortured relationship with the United States, during which Havana was either subservient to Washington under the conditional or quasi-independence of the pre-1959 period or assumed the offensive under the expansionist, hyper-nationalism of the Castro era.17 By perpetuating Cuba’s struggle with “imperialism,” these groups would thus lay claim to the comandante’s nationalist legacy. In doing so, they would seek not only to win popular support, but also to put on the defensive those military officers and the reformers who wish to normalize relations with the United States. As was noted earlier, even some anti-democratic military officers might accept improved relations with the United States for the purpose of modernizing the FAR’s aging, cannibalized weapons inventory. But it is the reformers who most of all would seek to ameliorate the Cuba-U.S. relationship, because their strongest card in winning over popular support and in gaining the upper hand

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in the succession struggle, lies in promising to speed the island’s economic recovery. They can only deliver on their pledge, however, if a post-Castro Cuba is able to normalize relations with Washington. Accordingly, though there may be limits on how far they can go initially, the reformers will be far more inclined to push for rapprochement with the United States much in the same way that Deng Xiao Ping reversed Mao’s policy toward the West. Hence, the United States has little choice but to adopt a proactive policy to speed Cuba’s democratic transition by pursuing different objectives and strategies that correspond with the type of regime that emerges after Castro: !

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Toward either a communist successor regime led by hard-liners and/or centrists or a military regime, the objective should be regime replacement through coercive diplomacy. Toward a successor communist regime led by reformers, the objective should shift to regime change through conditional engagement. Toward a democratic transition regime, the objective should be one of regime support through close political, economic, and people-to-people ties.

It should be noted that in actuality the United States may confront a regime that is out of sequence with the above line-up—for example, a reformist communist regime could precede a hard-line communist or military regime. The important point is that the United States should be prepared to shift quickly to the policy objective and strategy that corresponds with whatever regime is in power. Regime Replacement Through Coercive Diplomacy The United States’ objective should be replacement of a communist successor regime led by hard-liners and/or the centrists or a military-led regime if either follows in Castro’s wake. Within the United States, this goal should receive widespread support among not only Cuban-Americans, but also the broader policy-making community, though there is likely to be debate regarding the strategy and instruments to be used. Support of this objective could also be expected from Canada, the European Union, and the democratic governments of Latin America, with their differences again confined more to the means to be employed rather than the goal of U.S. policy. Strategy and Instruments. There are various economic, political, diplomatic, and military levers the United States can employ to accelerate regime replacement. Many have been employed in the past by the Clinton and Bush administrations, but not always in a sustained, coordinated manner. In the post-Castro era, they are likely to prove more effective because a successor communist or military regime is certain to be far more vulnerable due to the comandante’s absence, internal factionalism, worsening economy, and lack of popular support. The following are some of the instruments the United States can employ unilaterally to exert pressures and provide inducements to achieve regime replacement:

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Issue a presidential declaration that notifies the Cuban people that the United States will maintain the economic embargo and withhold diplomatic recognition until the regime is replaced from within by means of a negotiated settlement or by force.18 Use public diplomacy to signal further the United States’ resolve to see a free, democratic government installed in Cuba and its readiness to improve relations with Cuba quickly once that occurs. Launch a sustained public diplomacy campaign, pledging U.S. respect for the independence, dignity, and sovereignty of a free, democratic Cuba, along with economic and technical assistance and trade and investment ties. Provide increased funding and technical assistance (such as computers, fax machines, and so on) to human rights activists, dissidents, and opposition groups. Communicate to the FAR that the United States is ready to have normal military-to-military relations and to provide technical assistance to the FAR, once the Cuban military detaches itself from a successor communist or military regime. Reassure civilian officials and especially military officers that they will have a role to play in a democratic Cuba if they are innocent of human rights violations.

The first four policies would intensify the pressure on the regime and its isolation within society. The last two would seek to exploit the cleavages within the new regime by driving a wedge between the FAR on the one hand, and the regime and MININT on the other. The potential effectiveness of such a strategy should not be dismissed. Following President Clinton’s reassuring message to the FAR contained in his 1997 offer of help for Cuba’s peaceful transition, all active and reserve military personnel were required to swear an oath of allegiance publicly to Fidel and Raúl Castro. On the international front, the United States should move to enlist the Canadian, European, and Latin American governments in a concerted, coordinated campaign to isolate and ultimately replace Cuba’s new regime. They should be urged to condemn Cuba’s human rights violations in international forums, deny credits and loans to the new regime, and in general demand that Cuba’s polity and economy be opened up. These governments should be urged to curtail foreign investments from their countries or to at least make them conditional on Cuba’s observance of labor rights along lines of the Arcos Principles and to discourage tourist travel to the island. On the non-governmental level, human rights organizations should be encouraged to keep a close watch on the island and to disseminate their reports on the human rights situation widely. Internet contact between Americans and Cubans should be facilitated when possible to open up the island. Contacts between U.S. and foreign NGOs with their Cuban counterparts should also be facilitated in order to strengthen civil society and the Cuban people’s ties to the

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outside world. Once again, the aim here would be to increase the internal isolation of the successor communist or military regime within Cuba itself. Responses and Outcomes. The successor communist regime, led by hardliners or centrists or a military regime, is certain to try to portray U.S. policy as an act of aggression in order to rally domestic support. However, the appeal to Cuban nationalism may well fall on deaf ears, not only because Castro will no longer be around to manipulate public opinion against “imperialism,” but also because U.S. policy would be clearly targeting the regime, not the Cuban people. The regime might also threaten to open the floodgates of immigration to counter U.S. policy. Such a move, however, would be particularly dangerous for the regime, given what is certain to be a volatile atmosphere in the post-Castro period. Indeed, were it to get out of control, a mass exodus from the island could unhinge the regime itself. In any event, the U.S. government needs to make clear that it would be prepared to take whatever steps necessary to prevent a new wave of rafters from coming across the Florida Straits. This includes stationing Coast Guard vessels off Cuban waters and returning Cubans to the island. Once again, the aim is to intensify pressure on the regime. Regime replacement could come about through popular uprising in the streets or a military revolt. Or, as happened in many of the former East European bloc states, the regime could buckle in the face of popular demonstrations and external pressures, exiting power peacefully through a negotiated pact with opposition groups. Here, the lessons of Central Europe may be instructive: Where the ruling communist leadership remained inflexible and unwilling to make concessions, as in Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania, regime change was compressed into short time intervals. In the case of Romania, it was also accompanied by violence. But Central Europe also holds another lesson that concerns negotiated pacts between the outgoing regime and opposition groups. The pact sometimes left the communists entrenched in the party, the mass organizations, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and the military, while also carrying over many of the constitutional and other arrangements of the old order.19 In Cuba, it will be up to the opposition and perhaps the reformers to preclude a similar negotiated pact in order to remove obstacles to Cuba’s advancement toward a democratic polity and market-based economy. Regime Change Through Conditional Engagement Were a successor regime under communist reformers to come to power, the United States would shift to a strategy of engagement for the purpose of gaining optimal leverage in pressing for further regime change. The reformist-led regime would thus be viewed as a temporary way station on the road to a transitional democratic government.

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In the United States, engagement is likely to encounter opposition from the Cuban-American community and conservative politicians, and policymakers. They would argue for the application of maximum pressures against the reformist-led regime in order to install a democratic transition regime in power. Depending on the internal situation in Cuba, however, such a policy preference may not be attainable. For instance, the reformers may enjoy domestic support from the populace and key organs of power such as the FAR. Or the opposition might not be strong enough to assume and hold onto power even with United States help, with the attendant risk that the island would then be plunged into anarchy. Hence, the reality inside Cuba may require that the United States not only deal with but also actively engage a reformist-led successor regime as the best alternative for speeding Cuba’s ultimate democratic transition. A policy of engagement would probably attract even stronger support abroad than would a policy of replacement. This would be particularly true of socialist and Social-Democratic governments, who have long been critical of U.S. policy and who would be more inclined to view a reformist-led successor government as the way to bring Cuba back into the democratic fold. Most Latin American governments would also be generally supportive of engagement, if only because it smacks less of U.S. interventionism than does the replacement policy. Strategy and Instruments. To gain optimal leverage over the regime, a strategy of engagement would capitalize on the regime’s vulnerabilities in the aftermath of Castro’s passing and on the reformers’ interests in surviving politically and starting Cuba on the path of economic recovery. The leverage gained would be used to obtain political and economic concessions that would commit the regime to: ! ! ! !

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Set a timetable for the holding of free, internationally supervised elections; Legalize the formation of opposition political parties; Observe civil liberties and human rights for all Cubans; Open the state-owned media to all groups and permit the establishment of a free, independent press, radio, and television; Open-up Cuba to foreign visitors without discriminating against Cuban-Americans or others critical of Cuban communism; Open-up Cuba to the Internet; Foster the formation of Cuban-owned private enterprise; Begin the privatization of agriculture and state enterprises; Abide by the Arcos Principles by allowing Cuban workers to be directly hired and paid by foreign enterprises; Begin replacing the Constitution and legal system with the rule of law; and Commence negotiations on the issue of compensation for the $1.8 billion in certified U.S. property claims.

Engagement would not be a zero-sum game for Cuban reformers, however. In return for the above concessions, the United States would:

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Restore diplomatic relations with the new regime and lift the economic embargo; Provide economic and technical assistance through USAID to the government, new small and medium-sized private Cuban businesses, and Cuban NGOs; Facilitate new lines of credit, promote trade and investments by United States companies, and facilitate tourist travel to the island; Support Cuba’s requests for assistance before multilateral lending agencies; and Provide scholarships to qualified Cuban students to study economics, management, public administration, and law in U.S. universities.

To reiterate, these offers would not be made unconditionally but would be contingent upon the Cuban regime following through with its commitments. Normalization; lifting the embargo; and prospects of concrete assistance, investments, trade, and tourism would all serve the regime’s interests—and reduce its vulnerabilities—by supplying the reformers with the means by which to begin redressing the island’s problems and launching it on the path toward economic recovery. This, in turn, would advance the reformers’ immediate and longer-term political interests by improving their chances of winning public office in Cuba’s future democratic elections. Well before elections were scheduled, however, the regime would have to allow USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy and its affiliates (the National Democratic Institute and National Republican Institute), private foundations, and NGOs to work with opposition groups and others in building democracy. Through their efforts in political-party building, devising a competitive electoral system, and developing democratic government institutions, these organizations would help ensure that opposition groups in Cuba would be operating on a level playing field as election time approached. On the international front, the United States would work with Western governments to coordinate their policies on trade, investments, and credits with those of the United States. The aim would be to act in concert, maintaining pressure on the regime to fulfill its promises of political, economic, and juridical reforms. The Central Europeans could play a special role in spurring the reform process by holding seminars and training programs in Cuba on the lessons that can be applied from their experiences of transitions. Where needed, the United States should assist in this effort by helping to fund the salaries and expenses of the Central European contingents. On the non-governmental front, Congress could provide incentives for universities to establish training programs in Cuba and exchange programs with Cuban universities. Major U.S. foundations as well as NGOs could be encouraged to establish their on-site presence in Cuba to contribute to the rebuilding of civil society. Programs could be also be devised for providing ordinary Cubans with unfettered access to the Internet. This could be done, for example, through donations—with tax write-offs—by corporations and other organizations of new

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and used computers for use in cyber-cafës throughout the island. These and other measures would be aimed at building up civil society and stoking the fires of change from below. Responses and Outcomes. As with a democratic transition regime, a reformist-led regime would be vulnerable to charges from Castro’s admirers and oldline communists of yielding to the dictates of Washington, the IMF, global capitalism, and so forth. Here, the reformers would need to articulate Cuba’s interests forcefully when negotiating with the United States. Just as important, they would need to refute their critics by countering that they are in fact pursuing a genuine nationalist course—not by adopting an intransigent, selfdefeating posture of defiance, but by putting Cuba squarely on the path to economic recovery and prosperity. In the meantime, there would have to be incentives for reformers to carry through not only with sweeping economic reforms, but also with the democratic reforms that could ultimately cost them their power. Here, the reformers would need to be assured by the United States and other governments and by internal opposition groups that they would remain part of the political community with the same rights as other Cubans to run for office when democratic elections are held. Given that in the Communist Party, or its progressive wing if the party splits, they would control an organized, disciplined political party, they would have reason to believe that they stood a good chance of being voted back into office, particularly if they ran on a record of accomplishment. Regime Support Through Closer Ties A proactive U.S. policy that aims at fully supporting a democratic transition regime is certain to garner widespread support in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Latin America, and among international organizations and NGOs dedicated to promoting development and democratic societies. Equally critical, support for a democratic transition regime would draw the backing of the Cuban-American community, whose role in the reconstruction of Cuba cannot be minimized. Whether as a source of new investments, trade opportunities, and technical assistance; as an intermediary with Washington; or as a source of academic expertise in management, economics, political science, law, communications, and other disciplines; Cuban-Americans will surely become pivotal players in the reconstruction of a democratic Cuba. As was emphasized earlier, however, Cuba’s transition to democracy, markets, and the rule of law will not be easy for a country that has experienced the likes of a Fidel Castro and decades of totalitarian and post-totalitarian rule. In fact, achieving a successful democratic transition could prove much harder and take considerably more time than bringing down a communist- or military-led successor regime because the task is infinitely more complex. It will require sustained effort and the shoring-up of the new government by the United

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States, other western countries, private foundations, NGOs, and Cuban-Americans if democracy is to prevail in a new Cuba. Strategy and Instruments. The strategy for supporting a democratic transition regime would essentially resemble the engagement policy toward the reformists, except that levels of assistance would need to be increased substantially, while the same kinds of conditions would not be attached. The United States would thus step-up its economic and technical assistance, promote greater investments and trade, develop closer academic and NGO ties between the two countries, and assist in the building of democratic institutions and practices. The latter, especially with help from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, along with international organizations and observers, is critical to the establishment of democratic election procedures, electoral political parties, and a de-politicized bureaucracy and judiciary, among other things. However, two significant differences would distinguish the policy of support for a democratic transition regime from the policy of engagement: First, rather than having a finite set of goals, such as the holding of democratic elections or the privatization of sectors of the economy, the policy would focus on supporting an open-ended process of democratization, marketization, and law- and institution-building. Second, rather than being realizable within a relatively short period of time, as in the case of setting up an election timetable, the policy of support would have to be sustained over an indefinite number of years, perhaps decades. Both of the above suggest that United States will be burdened with a nationbuilding task in the post-Castro era. This may prove difficult to sustain domestically over the long term, although the Cuban-American community should serve as a countervailing force that supplies constancy and commitment in U.S. policy toward the island. In any event, the United States cannot afford for Cuba to exist as an impoverished or failed state across the Florida Straits: With its close proximity, more than 11 million people, and strategic location, Cuba is the Caribbean’s largest island and second only to Mexico in terms of a Latin American country’s importance to U.S. national interests. Responses and Outcomes. Well over a century after it gained independence, Cuba may ultimately take its place as a democratic, market-oriented, law-based state, but, to get there, it will first have to travel a long, uncertain path. Democratic elections will be the first threshold the new Cuba must cross, and here the outcome could be critical for the island’s democratic future—much as Violeta Chamorro’s stunning 1990 electoral victory over Sandinista President Daniel Ortega launched Nicaragua on the road to democracy.20 However, elections would not only need to be closely monitored by international observers. They also should not be called too soon in light of the current absence of opposition parties and a civil society. Opposition groups would require time to coalesce, organize themselves into political parties, agree on party platforms, gain access to the state- and privately-owned media, establish grass-

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roots support, and begin campaigning. Otherwise the communist party or its successor, which may or may not represent itself as a socialist democratic party, could have an immense organizational advantage. On the other hand, the anticommunist or democratic opposition groups do have some potential advantage, provided they form a single opposition party or an electoral front, promise to maintain a social safety net for the populace, and field an attractive candidate for the presidency. The opposition can present itself as the party of inclusiveness and national reconciliation and as the party of individual liberty and freedom for all in contrast with its communist opponents. It can further present itself as the one party capable of effectively pursuing a new “national project” for the reconstruction and prosperity of the island, because only the democrats—not the communists—can count on broad U.S. and international support. A national project of reconstruction and prosperity could have particular appeal to nationalist-minded Cubans. It could be especially important to AfroCubans, potentially the key bloc of voters, in that they would expect to receive a more equitable share of power and wealth in the new Cuba, including more resources devoted to the development of the eastern half of the island. And such a reconstruction effort would have broad appeal to the majority of Cubans, who are exhausted by more than 40 years of misrule by the Castro regime. Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

This term is used by Damián J. Fernandez to describe the present state of development of Cuba’s civil society: He further observes, “Compared to the experiences of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, civil society in Cuba is somewhere between a passive stage in which private individuals and independent groups actively or passively defend their autonomy, identity, and interests vis-à-vis the state and an emergent stage in which groups take their limited demands into a wider social arena.” In “Society, Civil Society, and the State,” Problems of Post-Communism, November-December 2001, 60. For a vivid picture of the alienation and anomie of sectors of the Cuban youth, see “Cubans stand by for a long, hot summer,” The Economist, June 13, 1998, 35-36. Defense Intelligence Agency, The Cuban Threat to U.S. National Security, November 18, 1997. Espinosa, 23-24. Espinosa, p. 24. Espinosa, 25-27. While most theories of democracy hold that the voters elect representatives who express their policy preferences, the type of democratic system that is in place largely determines the extent of actual voter influence over policy. In a majoritarian system of winner-take-all, the winning party that

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9. 10.

11.

12.

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assumes office may more or less be unencumbered in its policymaking, especially in a parliamentary system, as in the United Kingdom. In such a system, only the majority has effective influence through its elected representatives. In a proportional representation system as in other western countries, all citizens at least in theory have inf luence over policy. No single party is likely to command a parliamentary majority; instead, power is weakened and dispersed among several parties, with the result that minority views must often be entertained and reflected in the outcome of policy. See C. Bingham Powell, Jr., Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Views, Yale University Press, 2000. The year 2000 was thus a banner election year for democracy: The PRI in Mexico lost its more than 70-year grip on power, the Socialist Party in Senegal lost its 40-year hold on the presidency and parliament, and the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan similarly was turned out of office by the opposition after decades of monopolizing power. See Grigore Pop-Lelches, “Romania’s Politics of Dejection,” Journal of Democracy 12:3 (July 2001), 156-169. See Edward Gonzalez, Cuba Under Castro: The Limits of Charisma, (CITY: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), esp. 25-52. The ineffectiveness and corruption of Venezuela’s two major political parties similarly allowed Hugo Chavez to come to power through a popular mandate at the polls and then subsequently to begin dismantling the country’s democratic institutions in his march toward authoritarian rule. According to Samuel P. Huntington, professionalism instills the officer corps not only with expertise in military affairs and a sense of military corporateness, but also with a sense of civic responsibility toward state and society. The latter includes the professional soldier’s belief in and acceptance of civilian authority. See his The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957). For example, see the country case studies in Constantine P. Danopoulos and Daniel Zirker, eds., The Military and Society in the Former Eastern Bloc (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999); and Kleran Williams and Dennis Deletant, Security Intelligence Services in New Democracies: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, Palgrave, 2001. One reason why democratic institutions and practices have been so slow to take root in Russia is because of the imprint left by seven decades of communist rule. Save for intellectuals and dissidents, it was not until the 1980s, when the information revolution began to spread and a younger generation emerged, that sectors of society began to act independently from the Communist Party and state. Much of the population, however, remained ill-prepared for Russia’s abrupt democratic transition. The overloading of a government with excessive demands is the underlying theme of Samuel P. Huntington’s seminal work, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press), 1968.

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15. Compare Cuba to the United States, for example, where the American ethos of individualism and self-reliance provides a margin of safety for the government by helping to reduce the level of demands that society would otherwise make on the government. 16. Law and democracy, Fried points out, are missing in either “bandit or tyrant capitalist societies” like China and Russia. See Charles Fried, “Markets, Law, and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, 11:3, (July 2000), 5-18. 17. Irving Louis Horowitz, “One Hundred Years of Ambiguity — U.S.-Cuba Relations in the 20th Century,” The National Interest, Spring 2002, 64. 18. The use of the embargo as an instrument by which to bring about change in a Cuba after Castro thus constitutes one reason for not lifting it at this time. 19. See the selections in Jirí Pribán and James Young, eds, The Rule of Law in Central Europe: The Reconstruction of Legality, Constitutionalism and Civil Society in the Post-Communist Countries (CITY: Ashgate/Darmouth Publishing, Ltd., 1999. 20. The Nicaraguan experience is not an analogous case for Cuba because in 11 years the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional – FSLN) never established a totalitarian state. The Church, civil society, a private sector, and even political parties existed.

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37 Festina Lente: The United States and Cuba After Castro Michael Radu It may appear that dealing with a post-Castro, probably post-communist and perhaps (in the short term) “neo-communist” Cuba is a simple matter. After all, we have a 20/20 hindsight, based upon the experience of 1989–1991 in Eastern Europe and Russia. Russia aside, given her size, mythical proportion in the American political mind, and nuclear arsenal, what, if anything, are we to “learn” from the experience of the United States—specifically the Executive and Congress—relations with, activities in, and ultimate impact on the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe—the late East Germany excepted for obvious reasons? The first, and most fundamental lesson is that chaos theory, rather than market logic and democratic rules of the game, is the most applicable road map to a post-Castro environment. Cuba’s underlining Latin American political culture, albeit heavily distorted by four decades of communism, will play an essential role; but so would the decades of Marxist rule. The second factor to be assumed, and is assumed by this author, is that we now know more, and better, what Castroite Cuba is all about than we ever did in 1989 about Poland, Hungary, and Russia, not to mention such exotic places as Romania, Bulgaria, Albania or Mongolia. On the other hand—and these words are inevitably present throughout this article—since this author does not claim prophetic powers and not every problem faced or error made in Eastern Europe should be expected to reappear in a post-Castro Cuba, there are limits to what this comparative analysis could provide. The most important caveats in this respect are related to Cuba’s historic relations with the United States and the uniquely close overlap between Ameri-

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can domestic politics and policy toward Havana, which make the third factor in assessing American policy toward a post-communist Cuba. Without entering into details—most of which well known to this audience— two immediate political realities have to be faced by American policy makers in respect to post-Castro Cuba. First, that whereas Eastern Europe in 1989 was, and remains to this day, the most unambiguously “pro-American” region of the world, ambiguity defines the Cubans’ attitude vis a vis the United States. Second, the importance of domestic factors in the making of the United States’ policy toward Havana virtually guarantees a greater and more complicated role of Congress in the formulation and implementation of that policy than was the case with Eastern Europe a decade ago. For these reasons, this article will concentrate on the role of the Executive Branch (henceforth USEB), while aware of the role of Congress. All these being said, however, the likelihood of the USEB (United States Government) repeating or engaging in the same mistakes it made in Eastern Europe and Russia since 1989 and until recently—when domestic developments in the United States and common sense in the former Soviet bloc began a reassessment of those policies is high. The general assumptions upon which this presentation is based are that: a) in practical political terms the transition from communism in Cuba will only start after Fidel’s death; b) that the social and economic transition has already started; c) that Castro’s immediately successor regime, whoever happens to lead it, will formally discard Marxism Leninism and Communism in favor of “social democracy “or some form of “socialism with democracy and a human face”; d) that such regime will formally and publicly discard anti-Americanism as its basic ideology, while at the same time use it internally, albeit discreetly for electoral and political gain; e) that, in a dramatic reversal of decades of “revolutionary” rhetoric, such a regime will actually ask for U.S. aid, while proclaiming a continuous commitment to Cuban “nationalism and values.” In light of these assumptions, the question raises as to the extent to which the experience of the USEB, European Union, and various Western private foundations and organizations in post-communist Eastern Europe and former USSR may be relevant in a post-Castro Cuba. In this respect one may well start by stating a few obvious facts. First, Cuba in the late 1990s or whenever the required and inevitable political change will take place, provides a clear opportunity to learn, or unlearn from the experience of Eastern Europe and the former USSR a decade earlier. Second, that one may well assume that some of those lessons will be disregarded, particularly in light of Cuba’s peculiar position within the U.S. domestic political discourse.

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The Political Culture of Transition Without going into a lengthy discussion over whether Cuba is “different” or “similar” to other former communist regimes, there are a number of aspects related to the political culture of all post-communist transitions, which are likely to be present in Cuba as well. Those are clear in the common experience of Mongolia and Cambodia—obviously “different” in so many other ways—as well as in Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The first is the fragmentation of the political scene, demonstrated by the mushrooming of “political parties.” Most of those parties were simply vehicles for personal ambitions; some were grandiose titles for what in other political systems would simply be interest groups of various sizes or just NGOs; some were disguises for criminal groups; and some, very few, proved to have the potential for becoming effective political parties. Russia had hundreds of “political parties” competing in the 1993 elections; so did Romania in 1990, and virtually every other former communist state in Eurasia. A simple look into the composition of the Concilio Cubano’s member organizations strongly suggests that this process has already begun in Cuba as well. Indeed, we find there socialists, social-democrats, Christian democrats, agramontistas, liberals, and everything in between, at least as tendencies and claims, if not yet as ideologically coalesced “parties.” The second, and related, reality is that the initially dominant and by far the largest (and most “real”) party in a Havana transition period will most likely be the Cuban Communist party (PCC), under whatever name it will chose—very probably something including the words “social” and “democracy.” That party will also engage in extensive efforts, again in the name of “democracy” to encourage further proliferation of “parties.” That is the very pattern exhibited in 1990 Romania (where this author was an electoral observer) and Bulgaria, where the dominant ex—or neo—communists promulgated electoral laws allowing for the registration of groups as small as 250 as “political parties.” The reasons are quite obvious—the more fragmented the opposition, the more confused the electorate and hence more likely to prefer the discipline of the PCC successor to the cacophony of the available alternatives. Recommendation Unlike the behavior exhibited in Eastern Europe, the U.S. Administration should not encourage the proliferation of “parties,” regardless of how vocal demands to the contrary—at home or in Havana—may and likely will be. While a good case may be made that Washington’s ability to influence the process of political fragmentation will be quite limited, it should not be dismissed. The point is not that Washington—or at least the Executive—should decree how many parties Cuba should have, but that resources should be concentrated and high

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standards of proven organizational ability and programs compatible with democratic and capitalist values enforced. That attitude should particularly be encouraged by organizations funded, related, or perceived to be related to the United States Government—such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its various party-controlled segments (National Democratic Institute [NDI] and National Republican Institute [NRI]). As an aside, the experience of Eastern Europe suggests that, regardless of their actual legal status in the United States, such organizations are very likely to be perceived as representative of the United States. Hence, their support is likely to be interpreted locally as an “American” accolade. To the contrary, funds, technical support, and advice, indeed the weight of the American private and public attitudes, should discourage party proliferation and, at least for the first two electoral cycles, make it clear that coalitions, rather than individual parties, are to be preferred. It would also be important for the Cuban American members of Congress and their friends in both parties to realize that such a discerning attitude is also likely to be more productive, in the medium and long run, than support for some misguided notion of an open ended “democracy” risking to result in anarchy and a PCC victory. Finally on this point, the West Europeans will likely play a significant role— and if Eastern Europe is a model, they will be quite selective in their support for Cuban political parties. Indeed, the Socialist, Liberal, and Christian Democratic Internationals have all tended to select one party per country for technical, financial, and political support. Social Realities The third aspect of political culture in a transitional Cuba is largely sociological and hence difficult to “prove.” However, there are both some common occurrences in all Eurasian former communist states and indications of their existence in today’s Cuba. The most significant of these is the fact that for most of the population, and particularly its younger segments, hostility to the communist regime does not inevitably, or even necessarily, translate into support for a political alternative to it, whatever its nature. At least among the youth, nihilism and political cynicism are far more important than positive beliefs in political, as different from social, cultural, or economic-freedom. Indeed, in virtually all former communist regimes the electoral participation of the youth has been small to begin with, and has declined with every free election since 1989. There is no reason to believe that Cuba will be different—indeed, the opposite seems to be true. As far as we know—or at least this author knows from his admittedly limited knowledge of Cuba—general interest in politics there is quite low. This also seems to be proven by the reverse relationship between the time

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of emigration to the United States and the intensity of political interest and participation among Cuban emigres: the later their arrival and more protracted their experience with the Castro regime, the lower their interest and participation in local ethnic Cuban American or American electoral politics. This is a pattern also to be found among East European immigrants—the more recent their arrival to the U.S., the less involved in politics, American or of country of origin, they appear to be. What this suggests is that communism, and life under communism, has generally resulted in general political cynicism and apathy, rather than what we may all prefer to believe and certainly hope—an insatiable thirst for political democracy and political freedom. It also suggests that a revolutionary political wave against Castroism is less than likely. Recommendation The U.S. Executive Branch, its agencies and congressionally funded organizations, as well as private organizations, should understand that attempts to overly politicize their activities in a transitional Cuba will likely backfire, to the advantage of the successor to the PCC. Hence, efforts should be concentrated less on the ideological and political aspects of their activities than on the organizational, economic, and social ones. Of particular importance are the groups most likely to be attracted by the PCC’s siren song—the retired persons, the employees of large state enterprises, and a large number of Cuba’s black population. For these groups the economic interests—dependence on state, provided pensions and jobs—is more important than any political and/or ideological consideration. With that in mind, if any official U.S. aid to Cuba is to be provided, it should be directly, openly and strictly centered on (a) support for the pension, health, and social security funds for the retired, and (b) retraining of public employees below managerial level. That would weaken, if not eliminate those two groups’ natural drift toward the appeal of a “welfare state” likely to be offered by the PCC and/or its successor, and one Cuba itself—now or later—cannot realistically afford. As for the black population, its possible support for the successor of the PCC will also be grounded on economic motivations, related to that group’s already disadvantaged position in society and fear of further deterioration in a free market environment. General Considerations Starting from the experience of Eurasia, and the nature of communism itself, one may assume that transition should concentrate upon dismantling key elements of communist power. One of those elements, in the case of Cuba (but also of Latin American states in general) and other communist systems is centralization of power, decision

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making and bureaucracy. That means the capital—whether Moscow, Bucharest, Warsaw, or Sofia, but also Lima, Ciudad de Mexico, and Havana, absorbs and consumes a disproportionate share of national resources, enjoys absolute national political power, and concentrates the country’s cultural, political, and economic decision-making. However, unlike most of those other cases, Cuba does not have a separatist, ethnic, or otherwise, or even a regionalist problem, and thus political, economic, and administrative decentralization is both feasible and necessary. Indeed, this is a clear case of Cuban exceptionalism in the context of post-communist transitions, and allows for support of local initiatives and leaders—some of whom may be younger PCC officials—in a way that does not threaten national integrity the way support for Hungarians in Romania or Slovakia, Turks in Bulgaria, or Albanians in Serbia did. Recommendation The USEB will have to avoid, publicly and concretely, any concentration of support, aid (financial or otherwise), or encouragement of the Havana bureaucracy, and encourage, mostly by distribution of funds, regional and local decision making, in both economic and political terms. Local interests, long time neglect, and control from Havana combine to allow development of regional (Oriente, Matanzas, etc.) projects, require, both economic and social, creating healthy competition and ultimately healthy political debates within the island. The NGOs A general phenomenon in post-communist Eurasia is the proliferation of NGOs, largely, in fact almost exclusively funded, advised, and trained by large American and European foundations, some with their own political and ideological agendas. While such groups are legitimate and perhaps natural results of democratization, their activities, importance, and influence in a transitional period, when political parties and government decision making are at their weakest, often tend to increase confusion. NGOs, particularly those involved in human rights, also tend to create unrealistic demands and heighten expectations which are often unrealistically high. When those expectations are not fulfilled by weak governments lacking experience, a supporting national consensus, and the necessary judicial and legal instruments, the result is a reinforcement of existing political apathy and cynicism toward institutions. The latest aspect is particularly relevant since NGOs are often seen as alternatives to parties, and found convenient by many—particularly the young—of those uninterested in electoral politics. The fact is that the proliferation of NGOs weakens still shaky political institutions in ex-communist states. Furthermore, while NGOs may increase participation, they do not promote representative institutions.

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Recommendation None of the earlier statements should be interpreted as hostility to NGOs in general. Some play an important role in encouraging participation and mobilization of the population in causes directly relevant to their lives: associations of producers, small businessmen, and professionals are good examples. However, the USEB and Congress alike would be wise to avoid interference, whether through statements or funding, with post-Castro NGOs, because of their potentially ambiguous impact on the political and market transition. Furthermore, notwithstanding their likely claims to the taxpayers’ support, Cuban NGOs will probably have abundant private outside sources of support. The Political Economy of Transition and USEB Aid While economics are well above this author’s pay rank, some basic facts of political realities in transition states are inevitably economic in their nature. Furthermore, rightly or wrongly, the Cuban population as a whole will inevitably—whether consciously or not—judge everything happening during a transitional regime as valid on the basis of economic realities. To Aid or Not to Aid Is there a need to provide U.S. aid, financial or otherwise, to a post-Castro Cuba? While many today and more in the future will claim that USEB aid is essential, and a few will oppose it, the fact is that reason, Cuba’s peculiar position in U.S. strategic considerations and domestic politics, and common sense, all suggest that American aid of some sort will be needed, provided, and should be strictly limited. That being said, there should be some strict rules as to the nature, focus, and distribution of such aid. Billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Eastern Europe, and even more in Russia, have produced little, if any, change in political and economic developments in those areas that would not have occurred in the absence of most of that aid. Here are some specifics: Education and Personnel Exchange Support Tens of thousands of Eurasian ex-communist states’ citizens have benefited from research, education, and training fellowships, scholarships, and travel support grants to the West. The overwhelming majority of those beneficiaries have been former nomenklatura products, able to speak foreign languages and to establish useful contacts with relevant Western European and American groups, organizations, and individuals. Most of those stays in the West have only reinforced existing opinions, ways of thinking, and personal “self-esteem,” and a disturbing number of beneficia-

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ries have put those interests above their self-assumed role as vanguards of their peoples’ road to free markets and democracy. That being said, there is no reason a new generation of Cuban technocrats, intellectuals, and general elites cannot be trained in Cuba, by Cuban exiles or Latin Americans. Nor is there any reason why scholarships should be provided to Ivy League schools, especially at taxpayers’ expense (or even at the schools’), for existing Cuban elites. On the other hand, some small USEB support for Latin American universities to enable them to accept students or open branches in Cuba could be far more effective. Such institutions could include Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, the Monterey Technological Institute of Mexico, or the Catholic Universities of Lima and Santiago—all private institutions. Finally in this regard, one of the most egregious mistakes made in Eastern Europe and Russia, and one with serious political implications, has been the invasion of those countries by Western experts, real or pretended, often paid by the taxpayers, and always very expensive. Their presence—whatever the merits of their activities—has often created resentment, inferiority complexes, and nationalist reactions. All of these negative effects, and more, should be expected in Cuba. For all these reasons, U.S. funding for academic, technical, and cultural personnel exchanges should give first priority to the training of Cubans in Cuba; second, training of Cubans in the United States; third, training in Latin America; and only as a last resort should funds be spent on American personnel in Cuba. Distribution of Funds In Eurasia the USEB, mostly through AID, has tended to distribute funds through non-competitive awards. The case of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) in Russia was typical: it did not work, and it had to be changed, in light of the close, indeed unseemly connections between HIID and prominent members of both Russian and U.S. Administrations. Furthermore, USAID should only provide limited funds, on the basis of competitive bids from Cuba, rather than the United States, and those funds should be limited in both time and amount. Such a process would eliminate the trouble of irresponsible behavior by local, subcontracting organizations, supported by their main contractor in the United States, an all too common pattern in Eastern Europe between 1989–1994. Economics Any analysis of Cuban economics, present or likely in the transition phase, implies a level of expertise this author is not best qualified to comment on. However, there are certain political, as well as economic considerations to be examined and considered. The first and foremost is that capitalism, rather than

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central planning, is more likely to serve the economic interests of the Cuban people in the long term. The very nature of communism requires concentration of economic activity (and thus political control) in large units—hence “industrialization” from Stalin to Mao to Ceausescu to Castro. In the case of Cuba, “industrialization” meant, as in Eurasia, the creation of massive state enterprises producing large financial losses and little else, but employing large numbers of people. It may be, and it will certainly be so described by political demagogues, that a policy of “de-industrialization” of Cuba will be seen as hostile to the national interest. However, the elimination of communist era large industrial companies is necessary in economic, political, and social terms. This may sound as old wisdom, but it is true nevertheless. In Cuba’s case, unlike most of Eastern Europe, this is also made more politically acceptable as the regime itself has in fact admitted its mistake in creating huge industrial enterprises, by the recent dismissal of many of their employees. The more people are involved in free market economics, the less support is likely to be given to the PCC successor. That also means that services, including tourism, are more likely to provide such involvement than the state enterprises, most of which are already unprofitable by the Cuban regime’s own admission. Similarly, for a brief period—no more than one year or two—the USEB may provide training support for Cuban state employees likely to be laid off by the restructuring of the state sector. Most of those are already underemployed, and few should, or are seeking, alternative employment by the government. In fact, most are already involved in the informal sector, the one the USEB should support. Ultimately, the key problems facing the USEB in transitional Cuba will be related to the economic, social, and political fallout from the restructuring of the economy and the shrinking of the State. Obstacles One of the main problems to be dealt with in terms of economic and social policies, is that the post-communist transition government in Havana is likely to be faced with a wave of anti-free market rejection policies throughout Latin America—from Argentina to Mexico—demonstrated by left wing populist electoral victories. When possible or already existing left-of center governments in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, or Caracas try to find a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, it will be so much more difficult to counter post-Castro, new fanged “ex”PCC demagoguery. Whether there is any short term “solution” to this problem is doubtful, and whether the USEB could do anything about it even more so. Recommendation Absolute priority should be given to the privatization of the Cuban agricultural sector, particularly to its division into individually owned properties and,

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with absolutely necessary, albeit temporary USEB financial aid, associated technical and financial support. In this respect, a USEB supported Agrarian Bank in Cuba, with small loan insurance provided for small loans, would probably produce more anti-communist electors than any NED effort with similar money expenditure. It would also serve to wean Cuba from its fateful, harmful and ecologically destructive sugar cane industry. USEB should concentrate on small, rather than big enterprises—a seemingly obvious statement, but not one followed in Eastern Europe or Russia. Against conventional wisdom, one should leave aside the inevitable issue of the sugar quotas. Any reduction of quotas to old and loyal U.S. allies and friends in favor of a transitional Cuba will be counterproductive to both Cuban and American long term interests. Therefore, Cuba should not be allowed anything but, at the most, a one or two year additional quota, and no more—the only true “shock therapy” the USEB can and should impose unilaterally. The clear, stated, and practical goal should be the elimination of sugar as Cuba’s main export. Land, even marginal one, now dedicated to sugar, should be used for other crops. Sugar growers should be encouraged to shift to either food or alternative export products (such as palm hearts), as they individually see fit. Ultimately, no successful transition from communism, economic or political, is possible unless sugar is displaced from its dominant position in the island’s economy—the very same slogan Castro proclaimed in 1959, and never fulfilled since. Simply put, dependence upon sugar and its producers, all large agricultural enterprises, state owned or not, is incompatible with the existence of free markets or political democracy in Cuba. Furthermore, regardless of the advice of experts, land now dedicated to sugar, even marginal one, will anyway shift to food crops once the alien and oppressive hand of Havana is removed. While such a shift may be theoretically disruptive, it would allow peasant economic freedom—including the freedom to fail—and destroy Havana’s main lever of control over the rest of the island. Ultimately, the USEB should reject the demands—likely to come from PCC as well as opposition parties—for an increased sugar quota for Cuba. To the contrary, it should make it clear that sugar is not, and should not be, seen as an essential part of Cuba’s economy, and that it should be eliminated as a major national export asset. If that will be seen as tough rather than love by many Cubans, so be it. That, by itself, would prevent the survival of the politically poisonous communist, managerial type, political influence and interests in rural Cuba, and encourage small farm production of food crops. Once again, regional and international support, rather than aid through Havana, would be most effective, and to be recommended for the USEB and particularly the U.S. Congress. An important, perhaps decisive role in helping the future transitional government in Cuba should be played by multilateral institutions in which the

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United States plays a key role—the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Inter American Development Bank (IDB). The first two institutions have played a key role in Eastern Europe’s economic restructuring; their ability to condition funding on reform has proved to be largely effective, and that very capacity has channeled local resentment from Western capitals to international bureaucrats. The same pattern should be encouraged in Cuba—limited United States official aid should be provided and targeted on institutions and areas outside the reach of international financial institutions, while the bulk of financial support for Cuba should come through multilateral organizations. Dealing with the Institutions At the time of transition, whether we like it or not, Cuba will still be dominated by the institutions established during the Revolution—particularly the military, Communist Party and its associate organizations, and state bureaucracy. Unlike the situation in most of Eastern Europe, one of the key such institutions, and the most difficult to reform, the internal security apparatus (Interior Ministry—MININT in Cuba’s case, Securitate in Romania, Stasi in East Germany, Sigurimi in Albania) will be less of a problem in transitional Cuba, since it lost its institutional autonomy and strength as a result of the 1989–1990 purges following the Ochoa and Abrantes affairs. As a result, MININT is controlled by the military, a fact which, in addition to weakening the loyalty of its professionals, will also simplify efforts to dismantle or reform it—through the military. The Military Throughout Eastern Europe at the time of transition and since, the military has consistently remained (generally with the Church—Catholic or Orthodox) the most respected institution in popular eyes. There is no reason to believe that the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) will be in any way different. Hence, attempts to dismantle or reform the FAR in a wholesale manner—beyond the removal of the older and most loyal Castroite generals—will be not just unrealistic but counterproductive. For this reason, pressure from exile or dissident groups to drastically change, or even dismantle the FAR should be resisted. As for bringing it under direct civilian control—a desirable but not required element of democracy, as demonstrated by the numerous uniformed defense ministers throughout Latin America today—it should be seen as a medium or even long term proposition. While the experience of post-Sandinista Nicaragua should not be repeated, it should certainly be kept in mind. Unlike the FSLN, however, the PCC control over FAR is more theoretical than practical, and thus the nature of the problem is different.

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A number of steps could and should be taken, however, in order to change the FAR’s role in society. These include: a) Retirement of all senior generals, and certainly of those closely associated with the Castro brothers, occupying party or government positions; as a general proposition, the top heavy institution should be streamlined, its size reduced, and younger officers promoted; b) Every form of formal link between the FAR and the PCC or government should be immediately severed—including links with the Interior Ministry. All forms of political activity within or by FAR should also be curtailed; c) FAR economic activities (e.g. Gaviota, etc.) should be curtailed, and military expenditures provided exclusively from the state budget; d) Draft should be eliminated and replaced by a voluntary force, with members carefully screened and retrained—preferably by Latin Americans (from Brazil and Argentina, for instance) rather than the United States, although funds for this will have to be provided by the USEB. The Cuban Communist Party It is quite likely that in a post-Castro transition period the PCC itself will try to change its image and name, probably seeking to acquire a social-democratic facade. This “social-democratic” (i.e., neocommunist) successor of the PCC will try and probably succeed in associating itself with the Socialist International. Whether such ideological esthetic surgery is ultimately “sincere” or not may be less significant in the short term than the changes it will necessarily imply. At least two of those changes will be very real—a purge of those senior cadres most publicly associated with the Castro regime and a dramatic reduction in total membership. Furthermore, it is likely that at least some hardline Castroites will split and form an “orthodox,” still Marxist party—the pattern that occurred in Russia, Romania, the Czech Republic, or Moldova. The first and foremost measures to be taken by a new Cuban government— with the support of the USEB—should be the dismantlement of the PCC auxiliary organizations: the Committees for the Defense of the revolution (CDR’s), partycontrolled unions, youth and women organizations. Unions aside, this should not be as difficult as it may appear—most of those organizations are already in an advanced state of decay and will most likely disband with, at best, a whimper. This, indeed, is what happened in the Eurasian ex-communist states once the Communist parties began losing power and the massive patronage associated with it. Second, all PCC property should be transferred to the government—a key step if meaningful multi-party competition is to develop. Wherever in Eastern Europe that was not done—Romania being the best example—the neocommunists had an insurmountable financial advantage over non-communist parties.

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Third, the PCC’s control over the media should be immediately eliminated— but not replaced by that of the new government. As an aside, Radio Martí should certainly continue its operations—despite likely Congressional objections similar to those against post-1989 Radio Free Europe—as an alternative to what will likely be an enthusiastic but not overly professional, objective, or responsible post-communist media in Cuba. TV Martí, however, is another matter, and its continuing operation will be hard to justify. Even if all these measures are rapidly and effectively implemented, however, the future “new style” PCC will remain the largest Cuban political party, with an electoral base among older people, bureaucrats, professionals, and industrial workers. This has been the pattern in each and every Eurasian former communist country, and, Cuba’s sociological realities being what they are, should be expected to occur there as well. In the short term at least, there is little that could be done to avoid this pattern. To the inevitable extent that the already moribund Cuban industrial state sector will have to be dramatically pared down, the resulting unemployment will strengthen the appeal of neocommunist, populist appeals among former state employees. While private investments from abroad—which should be encouraged, perhaps with tax incentives—may create a force of well paid and efficient workers—they will inevitably be a small minority for a long time. However, one key factor that could be influenced from outside—i.e., by the USEB—is the attitude of the rural population. In most ex-communist countries it has tended to support the neo-communists (Poland, Russia, Moldova), but that attitude was not universal—in Hungary, Bulgaria, and the more developed parts of Romania it did not. To the extent agricultural prices remain stable and relatively high (i.e., if food imports are kept under control) and the baleful impact of the sugar industry, with its large labor force, on Cuba’s agricultural sector is reduced or eliminated—small producers of food staples could support economic and political change. The USEB could help in this process by strongly encouraging the development of a small and medium farm sector. This could be done by: a) Massive land reform, directly targeted to the elimination of all collective farms, rapid and complete privatization of land, including rapid provision of property titles to individuals. In Eastern Europe (Poland and Hungary, not collectivized during the Communist period, being the exceptions) postponement of land privatization has led to decline in production, higher food prices and imports—themselves resulting in huge trade deficits—rural unemployment and dissatisfaction with reform. b) limiting the sugar quota given Cuba and denying support to that industry. To the extent foreign companies will become involved, their impact will not necessarily be negative: mechanization, higher efficiency, and a drastic reduction in labor requirements will likely force many Cubans to leave the industry and shift to other crops.

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c) Encouraging the formation of and providing short term financial support to private or cooperative agrarian banks; temporary (3–5 years) technical support, subsidized prices for fertilizers, seeds and equipment should also be considered by the Department of Agriculture. Justice and Public Order Ordinary crime—from prostitution to theft of state property to corruption—is on sharp rise today—as the Cuban regime itself now admits, and as demonstrated by the recent changes in the penal code. During the postCastro transition that trend should be expected to gather even more speed. The first reason for this is the universal trend in all recent post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian regimes, from post-Franco Spain to post-communist Eastern Europe and Russia, and is directly related to the general relaxation of repression and internal control and the de-legitimization of the old law and order institutions (courts and police). The second is related to the fact that while the old legal system has rapidly ceased to be applied or accepted, an alternative one requires a long time to be formulated, understood, and applied. Dramatic increase in crime will be the most immediate challenge facing any transitional democratic government. It will provide neocommunists with antidemocratic arguments, creating the impression that criminality and democracy come hand in hand. The USEB influence in this area is probably limited to the following: a) to dissuade transitional authorities from giving up to the expected pressure from European governments and international human rights groups to abolish the death penalty, even if it would be applied in only a few cases. The issue is one of political perceptions rather than practical impact—whereas for some elite elements, particularly intellectuals, abolition is a proof of democracy and Westernization, for most Cubans is likely to be seen as capitulation to the criminal elements—elements whose influence, size, and role will be likely overestimated in popular eyes. That type of reaction was demonstrated in Russia and Romania, Ukraine and the Caucasian successor states of the USSR, but also in such “liberal and westernized” states as Lithuania, Estonia and Slovakia. b) to cooperate with the few Latin American democracies with a functioning judiciary and a relatively low level of criminality: Costa Rica and Uruguay. c) help train and fund the development of a small police detective force—like in Costa Rica—strictly centered on crime control, and recruited from MININT members fired in 1989, new personnel and/or Latin American expatriates. Finally there are two basic political and indeed moral issues to be considered: dissidents and the Church.

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The Dissidents The present Cuban dissidents exhibit the very same characteristics as those in Russia and most of Eastern Europe (Poland and Hungary aside)—and the same delicate dilemmas as those did. To begin with, they are largely unknown by the overwhelming majority of Cubans, particularly those outside Havana. Second, they are seen as suspicious supporters of the Left—a democratic one to be sure—and thus irrelevant in a post- and likely anti-communist Cuba. Indeed, for the ordinary Cuban with political interests, it is not clear why dissident intellectuals, mostly descendants of the ruling nomenklatura, and still committed to some form of “socialism” should be preferred to neocommunists. Third, the dissidents are mostly intellectuals, a protected and relatively privileged urban group, even if they were successfully marginalized socially by the Castro regime. A persecuted intellectual is seen by most Cubans—when they ever heard of him—as it was seen by most Romanians, Russians, or Bulgarians before 1989: as a spoiled rebel. Finally, dissidents in Eastern Europe have a poor record of post-communist political savvy, performance and popular—including electoral—acceptance in each and every former communist state. From Russia to Poland (Maszowiecki), Romania (Doina Cornea), The Czech Republic (Havel’s party), to Slovakia, to former East Germany, parties run by intellectuals, or those so perceived, lost elections badly—most of the time to neocommunists. Considering the social origin, even the names (e.g., Roca) of Cuban dissidents, they will likely fare no better. Regardless of their individual courage and suffering in resisting Castro, present dissidents in Cuba are best seen as the moral heroes many of them are—but certainly not as automatically plausible future political leaders. Recommendation The USEB should in no way—including statements by high officials—confuse respect for dissidents, their courage and commitment to democracy, with a willingness to support their specific political projects—no more, and no less, than doing so in regard to emigré organizations. While members of Congress are likely to press for preferential treatment of specific groups, such pressures should be strongly resisted. The Church The Catholic Church in Cuba today is, as this author has repeatedly and publicly made it clear, the only autonomous institution. As such, it should be, and it is supported by the USEB through the channeling of aid via Caritas. On the other hand, given reality and based upon the experience of such Catholic countries in Eastern Europe as Poland, Lithuania, and parts of Ukraine,

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there is no reason to believe that the likely post-Castro revival of Christianity and its public expressions, mostly Catholic, will either last or translate into acceptance of Catholic political influence. Indeed, any transitional government in Havana will likely face the same problem post-communist governments in Warsaw and Vilnius faced—how to combine popular respect for the Church with Catholic social and economic agendas largely opposed by the population. To the dismay of the Vatican, in Poland and Hungary the Church consistently lost public and political support for its pronatalist, anti-divorce and education policies—and perceived hostility to free market economics. Therefore, the USEB should make, now and certainly during the transition, a clear distinction between the interests of the Catholic Church in Cuba and its own. That is a distinction the Catholic Church and Cardinal Ortega himself are already making, by their vocal disagreement with both the embargo and, more importantly, capitalism in general. Since Catholic influence in a post-communist Cuba is bound to decline—as it did in post-communist Poland, Lithuania, Croatia, and Slovenia—certainly at the political and legal levels, there is no reason for the United States, Executive and Congress alike, to operate on the assumption that the present de facto coincidence of interests with the Cuban Church—and the Vatican’s policy in Cuba—will have to continue. While mutual respect is a permanent fact, Catholic insistence on population growth, family integrity (i.e., rejection of divorce), and opposition to free markets are not likely to be accepted by most Cubans—nor are they issues Washington should be associated with. As a specific suggestion, once the Catholic Church loses its present status as the only autonomous institution in Cuba, official United States aid should cease to be channeled through Caritas and instead be distributed through Executive Branch agencies. Preparing for the Transition Some of the possible USEB reactions, policies and attitudes vis a vis the postCastro, post-communist Cuba were already mentioned. In light of the East European/Russian experience, with its failures and successes, a few additional measures could and should be taken now to avoid some of the problems likely to be faced in Cuba. From a policymaking viewpoint, inter-departmental and inter-agency competition and differences, inevitable as they are, should be minimized before the specific chain of political events leading to the post-Castro transition begins. Unlike 1989, when surprise at the extent and speed of communism’s collapse was perhaps understandable, that should not be the case in Cuba. To that effect, within the Executive, a coordinating group should be established, bringing together State, Justice, Commerce, Defense, and Trade repre-

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sentatives, as well as the FBI, CIA, and USAID (also Radio Martí), in a coordinating and permanent decision-making group. Second, a parallel, bi-partisan group of experts and opinion makers, including representatives of the Cuban American organizations (i.e., excluding extreme groups, such as pro-Castro elements or violent anti-Castro factions) should be established, with the task of providing a clear and specific program for USEB policies in Havana after Fidel and Raúl Castro disappear from the scene. Most importantly, such a group should include members of the Congressional staff. This group should be jointly appointed by the Administration and the Congressional leadership of both parties.

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38 Humanitarian Assistance during a Democratic Transition in Cuba Andrew S. Natsios

Background Cuba is governed by one of the few remaining Marxist political and economic systems since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The longevity of the surviving system may be measured in years not decades, given the severity of the economic crisis initiated by the precipitous cut off of Soviet economic subsidies and the declining support of the Cuban people for the political system. Estimates of the economic depression caused by the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies between 1989–1993 range from a decline of 30 to 50 percent of the gross national product. (CRS Issue Brief 1998) While Fidel Castro as the last remaining Latin American “El Caudillo” has completely dominated the political system for forty years, at 71 years old his remaining tenure in office is surely limited. Cuba will shortly be facing a major transition. This article attempts to describe the relationship between that transition and any international humanitarian relief program initiated by the United States and other donor governments following his departure from office. This article focuses on the emergency and rehabilitation phase of a response to an emergency in Cuba; the reconstruction, democratic institution building, and economic reforms essential to the long-term health of the country are not covered. Assumptions The robustness of U.S. humanitarian responses to crisis is driven by three factors: the level of severity measured by human suffering and death rates, the perceived national interest of the United States in the crisis, and public constitu607

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ency support for a generous response. (Natsios 1997). Based purely on human need compared to other current humanitarian crisis, Cuba will not likely rank high compared to say North Korea, Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, or the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Our existing state of knowledge about Cuba does not indicate high morbidity or mortality rates, high incidence of acute malnutrition (a drought in 1998 may have caused high malnutrition rates in eastern Cuba, but this was temporary), or other traditional indicators of suffering. This assessment, however, may well be wrong, as trustworthy data on conditions in the country are not available. Our experience with other totalitarian regimes in this century suggests widespread human suffering can be disguised from outsiders by a determined government through its internal security apparatus (see Becker 1997 on how the Chinese Great Leap Forward famine was disguised from both the central government and foreigners). We may not be seeing terrible conditions in Cuba because the central government does not wish us to. The difference between the uncovering of reality in Cuba versus crisis in other totalitarian regimes, is that language is no barrier in Cuba for the foreign visitor as many speak Spanish unlike the Ethiopian, Russian, Chinese, Cambodians, and Korean famines where humanitarian workers had to work through government translators who disguised bad news by censoring what they translated. The shear number of foreign visitors to Cuba is probably greater than other totalitarian regimes, and thus would make it easier to see the reality of human suffering if it were widespread. Given the other two categories driving a U.S. government humanitarian response—public support for a major response by organized constituencies and perceived national interest—Cuba ranks very high in importance. For U.S. policymakers, Cuba has been a central foreign policy concern for a very long time: it is so close geographically to American shores, and the likelihood of large scale and rapid population movement out of Cuba to the United States in the aftermath of Castro’s departure is very high. The real possibility exists that a failed Cuban transition could mutate into a complex humanitarian emergency and failed state status. The chaos ensuing from such a failed state so close to American shores would profoundly affect U.S. national interest. Thus we may conclude that the U.S. government’s response will be robust, providing sufficient funding for major humanitarian programs. Most funding for humanitarian relief comes from the U.S. government and the European Union; thus, donor enthusiasm for a robust response is critically important to our analysis. How the transition in Cuba proceeds will profoundly affect the nature of the humanitarian response. Based on other democratic transitions we may speculate that three (or more) scenarios are possible: (1) a stable democratic transition government takes over with broad public support, no disruptive opposition from the old order, and no violence or unrest;

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(2) an unstable democratic transition government takes over, shaken by internal divisions, with sporadic, violence and disruption from renegade military units or frightened party cadre, but no immediate threat to national stability; or (3) An unstable democratic government takes over which dissembles into a failed state, with widespread violence from a national military divided into factions supporting various elements of the old party elite, widespread human rights abuses occur and the political system and economy collapse. The third scenario, more commonly called a complex humanitarian emergency by relief agencies, could either take place when a democratic transition unravels into chaos leading to a food and health crisis or when an economic crisis, which might be caused in Cuba by a major failure of the sugar harvest, precludes the purchase of food abroad. This could lead to starvation, popular unrest, and an overturning of the government. During the Great Sahelian Famine of 1968–1974 every African government affected by the crisis, save Senegal’s, fell from a coup or popular revolution induced by the failure of the government to deal with the famine (Fields, 1993). Despite this, Jasper Becker in Hungry Ghosts argues that no totalitarian regime in this century has been overturned as a result of a famine probably because they exercise such tight control over the society and the military. Humanitarian relief managers as a professional principal plan for the worst and hope for the best. In keeping with this principle this article presumes that either scenario two or three occurs with widespread human suffering. If the first scenario takes place, humanitarian aid funding would be minimal since a true emergency would not be occurring. Instead, this funding could be focused on an immediate longer-term development program. The greater the degree of instability and the more widespread the violence, the more tenuous the humanitarian response will be should either the second or third scenarios occur. Fewer humanitarian organizations will work in Cuba under these circumstances; more funding will be spent on basic needs to keep people alive and less on rehabilitation and reconstruction; and humanitarian relief resources, such as food aid, medicine, computers, trucks, and other equipment, brought into the country by aid agencies will become a treasure for armed factions to attack and steal for use in their war effort. If the second or particularly the third scenario were to occur, the likelihood of diversions of relief supplies and kidnapping of or violence against relief workers would be very high. The relief effort would become an unwilling participant, manipulated and threatened by various factions, in their internal political battles, a common pathology in other transitions gone awry. Most democratic transitions in the post-cold war world have become highly politicized as the old guard frightened by its loss of power, influence, and privilege fights to protect itself, and the new guard tries to establish its authority over entrenched interests. However much humanitarian relief agencies may try to

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avoid being drawn into incipient political battles, they will find it nearly impossible to be entirely neutral and non-political, though they should certainly try. Humanitarian Aid Strategy At the heart of all humanitarian relief strategies lie two essential imperatives: saving lives and reducing human suffering. This should not be done primarily through the importing of humanitarian relief commodities such as food and medicine by aid agencies into Cuba, but through the strengthening of the traditional coping mechanisms of the population. While commodities can supplement a humanitarian relief effort, it is the immediate rehabilitation programs that yield the greatest and most productive result in making people selfsufficient (for a fuller treatment of this point see Cuny 1994). While other secondary objectives may be added to the mission, these other objectives should not compromise these two essential missions or else the United Nations agencies, the Red Cross movement, non-governmental organizations, or donor aid agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development carrying out the humanitarian response will rebel. These objectives lie at the heart of their missions; how far afield the humanitarian efforts goes into political and military objectives will determine how cooperative aid agencies are with the U.S. governments aid effort. An implied part of these two imperatives is the notion that humanitarian intervention should stabilize people’s condition at a minimum so it does not get any worse or through the rule of unintended consequences, make matters worse inadvertently through flawed programming. The more chaotic conditions become, the more operative the rule of unintended consequences where humanitarian relief programming gets drawn into the chaos and if not properly designed may even exacerbate it (Clarke and Herbst 1997; Natsios ). A set of secondary objectives should be considered in the case of Cuba, so long as they do not compromise the first and primary mission. These include: !

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Discouraging population movements through media broadcasts and the rapid establishment of humanitarian aid efforts in rural areas and small towns to reduce the incentive to move to the cities. People on the move during this emergency phase of the aid effort will be at much greater risk of communicable disease, violence, and acute malnutrition than would have had they stayed in their villages. Supporting the democratic transition through the relief effort by having relief organizations work closely with ministries in the transition government, so that the public credits the new government with the improvement in living conditions rather than international groups. Encouraging the building of civil society and democratic pluralism by having relief organizations work with emerging local institutions such as churches to administer the relief effort. This joint work should be designed to build local capacity and institutional strength in running programs.

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Preparing for long term development by creatively designed relief programs so they serve both purposes simultaneously. This is called the relief to development continuum where the humanitarian aid programs are designed to encourage long term development. For example, seed programs to increase food production over the short term on an emergency basis could be used to introduce new seed varieties (after they have been locally tested for appropriateness), improved cropping techniques could increase yields, and better storage of the harvest and marketing of produce could increase general availability of food. Food for work programs might be appropriate to distribute food aid to ablebodied adults, focusing in the case of Cuba, on land renewal given the level of soil erosion in some areas (see Anderson and Woodrow 1989).

The adoption of these secondary objectives depends on the political situation, the nature of the transition government, and the diplomatic objectives of donor governments. If the transition government is contending for permanent status in an election campaign against other legitimate democratic parties, then the humanitarian relief program should attempt to remain neutral in the campaign by distancing itself from any political party including the incumbent government. This will not be easy, as cooperation of the government will be needed in getting access, obtaining travel permits and visas for expatriate staff, and establishing coordination mechanisms. If the democratic transition government has already been elected in free and fair elections, and the newly enfranchised voters have made their choice, then the relief effort should consider supporting the new cabinet ministries in visible ways as USAID/OFDA did in Panama in early 1990 in Panama. Humanitarian Assessment and Program Design We will not know for certain what the needs are in Cuba until a humanitarian assessment can be done by an objective outside agency, given that current reports from the Cuban government are likely politicized. This assessment can be done by the United States government through the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance within USAID using a standard format widely accepted among humanitarian agencies. The UN agencies or the Red Cross movement could also do such an assessment in a reasonably objective manner except when the political pressures to distort the assessment are strong; then the assessments are frequently altered because of pressures from the host governments. A humanitarian aid program can not be properly designed until this assessment has been completed. Given the need for a rapid response following the departure of Castro and establishment of a transition government, efforts could now be initiated through NGOs operating in Cuba to conduct discrete, informal humanitarian assessment on a periodic basis drawing from their collective field operations. A properly done assessment will determine the food supply, nutritional status of children, shelter, agricultural production, water, sanitation, medical, and the microeconomic situation in Cuba, and recommend programmatic measures to

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address the findings. Accepting media accounts or reports from non-technical people on these conditions is usually a short route to serious trouble: the wrong medicines, the wrong tonnage and kind of food, and the wrong economic remedies are frequently ordered by people who accept uncritically what they see or hear. This assessment of the microeconomic situation will be of central importance, particularly in the case of Cuba because its economy has been so distorted by Marxist ideology for so long. The microeconomic study will explain the cause of malnutrition or starvation, the relationship of family income to food prices, how expensive food is on local markets, whether famine conditions are developing, the robustness of markets in various regions of the country and any impediments to the development of more efficient markets, and whether localized political tensions or conflicts are rooted in economics. Cubans have used four coping mechanisms to survive given the severely depressed economy and collapsed public services caused by the withdrawal of massive Soviet subsidies: remittances from relatives abroad, a return to the rural areas to grow food, humanitarian aid, and tourism. The weakness of these coping mechanisms is that a great portion of the population does not have access to them; this gap combined with the 50 percent unemployment rate has meant that a sizeable portion of the population has suffered great deprivation. We may speculate that much of this distressed population is in urban areas particularly where there is little tourism. Evidence for this distress may be found in the decline of caloric intake to the lowest per capita level in Latin America at 2,291 calories in 1995 (U.S. Senate Committee 1998). This level of caloric intake has likely deteriorated since 1995 given the recent drought and continuing deterioration of the agricultural economy. These officially reported ration levels are likely not distributed evenly among all classes of the population given the tendency of Marxist societies to distribute declining food and medicine based on bureaucratic rank—the more important you are to the survival of the state apparatus the higher your ration. We may conclude from this that the official food distribution system is no longer a main source of food for the Cuban poor who increasingly survive through the informal sector or that there is widespread acute malnutrition (or both). A well designed humanitarian aid program should be targeted on this distressed population of urban poor for whom these four coping mechanisms are not available, who are suffering disproportionate deprivation from the economic collapse, and whose precarious livelihood may be endangered during the inevitable disruptions during the transition. Problems which will Face the Humanitarian Aid Effort The challenges to the proper design and successful implementation of the program will be substantial like other humanitarian aid efforts under other highly politicized circumstances. Some of the conflicts are predictable.

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International humanitarian agencies have developed a set of standards for working in complex emergencies called the Code of Conduct, which has sought to correct problems uncovered in previous relief efforts. The political transition in Cuba will stimulate a generous and robust response from new aid groups, many growing out of the Cuban-American community. Many of these new aid groups will be unfamiliar with the Code of Conduct and of established international standards, and may see them as a way of limiting their work or keeping them out of the aid effort. Many of these new groups will be unfamiliar with the complex USAID application process for grants and food aid and will feel at an unfair disadvantage in competing for these USAID resources with established aid agencies. This same problem has taken place in the North Korean famine response, where newly created South Korean and existing relief aid standards and structures disadvantage Korean-American aid agencies. The aid effort may face substantial pressures from the State Department and the Cuban-American community to provide general assistance to everyone, which will only dilute limited resources on a large population who are not all equally needy, or to areas from which the Cuban-American population may have immigrated. These same pressures are at work in North Korea now and have resulted in an aid program focused on the wrong population, a failure that has caused many needless deaths. Conflicts between local political pressure, American diplomacy, and the demands of the humanitarian imperative will likely complicate the aid effort in some unhelpful ways. The old order will not relinquish power willingly. In other post-communist countries the party cadres have used their inside understanding of bureaucratic offices, their old boy network of connections within the party cadres, their superior education, and any money they had amassed under the old regime to put themselves in a commanding position to disrupt the transition or use it to further enrich themselves. They will likely see the resources represented in the aid effort as a source of wealth from which they may further enrich themselves. In Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, members of the internal security apparatus privatized themselves forming an organized criminal syndicate to feed off legitimate new businesses and the humanitarian aid agencies working in Russia. They did this through protection rackets; threats of violence against aid agencies, rake off on rent and equipment, and other schemes. It is likely that this same phenomenon will appear in Cuba as the old order seeks to protect its privileges, unless an organized effort is made to protect the aid agencies doing the humanitarian response. A very large number of aid agencies will likely want to participate in the humanitarian aid response in Cuba because of its visibility within the United States and the public demand for action. Directing and managing the excessive response of humanitarian agencies to the Cuban transition will not be easy: reducing overlapping aid agencies sectoral and geographic jurisdiction, managing the inevitable competition for aid resources and media coverage, and coordinating programmatic conflict among agencies will be a major undertaking. Some coordination models have worked well, others have been remarkably unsuccessful in other emergencies.

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The participation of people at the village and city neighborhood level in making decisions about the aid effort in their communities will build civil society, help develop local institutions, and nurture the democratic values needed to build selfgovernment. Because Cuba has not functioned under a stable democratic system within the living memory of most people in the country we can not expect democratic values and decision-making processes to be understood. The transformation of values will be rocky but important to encourage nevertheless. The transition period will likely see population movements, legal and otherwise, both to and from the country. Cuban-Americans will return to Cuba, even if temporarily, to see their homes and families, while Cubans will use their new freedom to immigrate, seeking refugee asylum in the United States if chaotic conditions ensue during the transition. These population movements will cause political tensions within the United States and Cuba that will have to be managed carefully. Implementation

The architecture of the international humanitarian response system which has grown up in the post-cold war period to respond to other emergencies similar to Cuba is highly diffuse, decentralized, extraordinarily complex, and full of internal tension (for a full description of this system see Natsios 1995). When the response requires the presence of peacekeeping troops or combat units to keep order in chaotic circumstances, this complexity and these tensions increase. The architecture of the system includes non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which are the front line distributors of aid and managers of local aid programs. While there are perhaps 400 NGOs registered with USAID, only 150 of them are members of the NGO trade association called InterAction, and of these only 40– 50 do humanitarian relief programming (the rest are focused entirely on longterm development). Of these 40–50 NGOs, only 20–25 run large enough programs, are technically proficient enough, and have the staff and technical resources to have a serious impact in Cuba. These NGOs have developed, through past experience as well as their own internal strategic planning, certain sectoral expertise in areas such as public health, medicine, agriculture, and food aid. Many of these 20–25 NGOs have been informally meeting within the InterAction umbrella for the past three years to coordinate their ongoing work in Cuba. Those NGOs with a presence in Cuba now have a comparative advantage over those who enter the country during a democratic transition for the first time. They know the local elite, for better or worse, the operation of the local markets, agricultural conditions, medical facilities, and have a staff of some kind in place. One major benefit of NGOs beyond their experience in emergency response and technical field expertise is that they are a grassroots network within American society for mobilizing public support through their fund raising efforts among their contributors for an aid effort in an emergency. NGOs have been increasing their ground presence in Cuba gradually as the economic deterioration has

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grown more severe. Because they are constrained by the Cuban government from developing indigenous, grass roots organizational structures, NGOs do not have the ground presence they might have in other countries. Four UN agencies have the operational and legal mandates under the UN charter to do humanitarian relief work: the World Food Program (expert at providing food aid and food for work projects), UNICEF (expert at water, sanitation, women and children’s programs), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (which will likely have no role in Cuba unless there is a civil war), and the UN Development Program (expertise in long-term development). One UN secretariat level agency, OCHA (Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Assistance), has the mandate to coordinate the emergency response for UN agencies and NGOs, though it carries out its broad mandate using the weak tool of persuasion. The new and untested High Commissioner for Human Rights has been given the mandate to monitor and protect against human rights abuses and may have a role in Cuba if the transition turns ugly. The U.S. Defense Department (and the military forces of other countries usually under UN mandate if not command) has a role to play should combat forces be needed to protect humanitarian agencies (as in Somalia), protect noncombatants (as in Northern Iraq), or enforce a peace agreement (as in Bosnia). While under these conditions, U.S. military forces will sometimes help in the relief effort, particularly if the death rates are high when they arrive, they generally are not trained nor organizationally designed to do this sort of work. Military units do have the great advantage of being self-contained and do have the logistical capacity to get relief supplies to remote locations quickly and efficiently, but the cost of these operations is very high. They are not skilled at relief programming which they generally prefer leaving to aid agencies. Nearly 86 percent of the funding for the aid which moves through this international aid system comes from two sources: the U.S. government through USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and Food for Peace and the European Union’s ECHO-European Community Humanitarian Office (EU press statement 1995). During a large scale refugee emergency the State Department’s Population, Refugee, and Migration program office will be crucial to the response, however, in the case of an island like Cuba, a refugee emergency is unlikely. When the EU and the U.S. government wish to, they can bring discipline and strategic order to an otherwise highly diffuse, decentralized, autonomous response system—UN agencies, NGOs, Red Cross, and peacekeeping force—because they control the purse strings, and they have had years of experience in doing this sort of work and have the technical expertise to oversee programming. Most importantly, the humanitarian aid agencies expect leadership from donor governments through these official agencies as long as it is not too intrusive or heavy-handed. While this implementation structure has many weaknesses, the political and managerial constraints in attempting to create a new response mechanism or

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reform the existing one in order to better manage the humanitarian response to the transition in Cuba are enormous. The best approach would be to try to make this existing system work better. Recommendations We have learned enough from other humanitarian emergencies to begin planning for what we may shortly witness in Cuba. 1. An effort could be made to encourage existing Cuban-American charities which will likely wish to participate in an emergency response, to become members of InterAction, the NGO trade association, and to become registered with USAID, and learn USAID grant-making processes and InterAction governance and programming standards. Some of these charities, particularly those without field experience, might also be encouraged to begin collaborative programming efforts with established NGOs in Central American or Caribbean countries as a means for learning the realities of field operations. 2. Terms and conditions could be developed now for four tracking systems— two in food and two in public health. These include nutritional surveys of children under five, morbidity and mortality tracking, food market surveys of prices, and household surveys of family food stocks. Data from these surveys are crucial in predicting crisis before they occur, determining whether aid programs are reaching the needy population, and where aid should be targeted. 3. Should the food security system in Cuba deteriorate and malnutrition rates rise, children under five will be at particular risk. A plan should be developed for the immediate immunization of all children under five for the major childhood diseases who have not been already immunized under the existing health system. The reported high level of immunization coverage in Cuba should be surveyed, as the quality control in the production of these immunizations may be weak if other eastern bloc countries are a good predictor. This will reduce the mortality rates among children under five who are always the most vulnerable in any food emergency. Given the existence of a well-developed primary and secondary school system, these institutions could be used to provide the nutritional supplements to children to maintain an adequate diet until the new government can create its own public health system. 4. If other communist societies are any measure of what will happen in Cuba, the Church will grow rapidly across the country during the transition. These church structures as grassroots institutions could be used through their Church-NGO counterparts as mechanisms for the provision of humanitarian assistance if careful accountability systems are set up to ensure proper targeting of need and control over relief commodities. While official U.S. government funding cannot and should not be used to build or support churches, these grassroots institutions in fact can be a stabilizing force

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during the stresses of transition and an important force in longer-term development of civil society to guard against the return of totalitarianism. A system should be worked out for NGOs and UN agencies experiencing problems with organized criminal syndicates threatening their programs to have the American Embassy and consulates intervene for them. This system has worked effectively in Russia to insulate humanitarian agencies from these syndicates. NGOs could be commissioned to manage large-scale public works projects using day labor to provide immediate jobs paid with food for work or more preferably cash for work to ensure minimal income for families that are most at risk during the economic transition. Such public works projects could be centered on the rehabilitation of the road system. The success of these programs can discourage young men from joining paramilitary units or local militias, which could disrupt the transition. Every effort should be made to keep all public schools open during the emergency phase of the transition, even if teachers are paid with food aid, in order to keep children and teenagers off the streets during this unstable period. Regularizing the schedules of teenagers through their schools in particular can avoid their becoming involved in street crime, their being drafted into incipient militia movements, and restores a degree of normalcy to home life. While support for the public schools are not typically seen as a humanitarian relief program, these schools can have an ameliorative affect on the social order during a time of high stress. Household gardens were one of the most important coping mechanisms used during the transition in the Soviet Union to maintain an adequate diet as the economy was in free fall. These gardens even a decade after the transition is over in Russia continue to be a major factor in maintaining an adequate diet for the Russian population during continuing economic turbulence. A plan should be considered for an aggressive national household garden campaign using the electronic media, which is widely available in Cuba, to teach people how to grow their own food and can it for use later in the agricultural year. Free seed could be nationally distributed. The seed should be chosen well: seed trials should be run now in other islands of the Caribbean with similar climate and soil conditions to Cuba to ensure the seed is appropriate and can be distributed without delay once the transition begins. Once the harvest is taken the seed will become a permanent part of the Cuban agricultural system and will supply households with future year food supply. A household garden initiative would make use of the favorable climate and the high per capita availability of abundant land with rich soils. If food prices are too high compared to average family income at the start of the humanitarian aid effort (a determination that should be made in the microeconomic assessment) or if security conditions begin to deteriorate making food aid distributions through NGOs untenable or too dangerous, a food aid monetization program to merchants should be initiated to maintain the price of food at a reasonable level. Most food emergencies take place when family income either declines rapidly or remains static as food prices rise rapidly (for a fuller treatment of this see Sen 1992). We found in Soma-

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lia that local merchants could protect their food stocks for markets much better than the relief effort or U.S. military forces could. Thus, any serious insecurity could use monetization as an alternative food distribution system, though an allowance would have to be made for some food distributions to those families that are completely destitute and without resources to buy food (Clarke and Herbst 1997; Natsios ) 10. Studies of coordination mechanisms in other emergencies have found that the most effective system is for the indigenous government to demand the NGOs, Red Cross movement, and the UN agencies form their own coordination unit which would deal with the government ministries as a single humanitarian voice. The indigenous government should avoid trying to set up the coordination mechanism itself or interfere in the internal management of the unit. Its role should be to demand the unit be set up and that humanitarian agencies all join this unit and work through it with the government agencies. 11. The humanitarian aid program could be used to encourage the democratic transition. Much of the literature on democratization (Dahl 1971) argues that democratic process is best taught through local government. USAID could encourage the several NGOs which specialize in democratization programming to develop a joint program with humanitarian relief NGOs to set up local mechanisms for the public at the village and neighborhood level to participate in making important decisions in the relief program. 12. Should the strategy described earlier fail to encourage people to stay in their villages and neighborhoods rather than migrate to large cities or immigrate to the United States, a large scale refugee emergency could occur to the United States. While a plan could be designed now to deal with the potential for such a refugee emergency, commodity stockpiling is unnecessary as the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance maintains in this hemisphere stockpiles of relief supplies at large warehouses in Maryland and in Panama. References NATSIOS, ANDREW S. 1997 U.S. Foreign Policy and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. BECKER, JASPER 1997 Hungry Ghosts. Owl Books. FIELD, JOHN OSGOOD, ED. 1993 The Challenge of Famine. Kumerian Press. CUNY, FRED 1994 Disasters and Development. Intertect Press. CLARK, WALTER AND JEFFREY HERBST, EDS. 1997 Learning from Somalia. Westview Press. NATSIOS, ANDREW Humanitarian relief intervention in Somalia: The economics of chaos. ANDERSON, MARY AND PETER WOODROW 1989 Rising from the Ashes. Harvard University Press.

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U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE 1998 Cuba at the crossroads. Staff report on Foreign Relations and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, March 4. NATSIOS, ANDREW S. 1995 The international humanitarian response system. Parameters, Vol. xxv, No. 1 (Spring). THE EUROPEAN UNION 1995 Humanitarian leaders issue call for action. EU Press statement, December 14. SEN, ARMATYA 1992 Poverty and Famine. Oxford: Clarendon Press. DAHL 1971 Polyarchy. CRS ISSUE BRIEF 1998 Cuba: Issue for Congress, page 1. October 27.

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39 Economic and Social Disparities in Cuba: Recommendations for Change Carmelo Mesa-Lago Whether we agree with their views or not, many Cubans believe that socioeconomic equity was one of the most important accomplishments of the Revolution. The current crisis of the regime’s legitimacy partly results from the violation of the principle of equity, which has led to the significant inequalities discussed in this essay. In order to design policies to correct, or at least ameliorate, current socioeconomic disparities in Cuba, two different scenarios must be considered: (1) in the medium term, the continuation of the current regime, albeit with a resumption of market-oriented reforms, and (2) in the long term, the potential collapse of the regime and further transition toward a true market economy. In both scenarios, we assume a move to the market, but a significantly smaller move in the first scenario than in the second. If the first scenario does not materialize in the medium term, socioeconomic disparities will continue to increase, aggravating the current situation. The economic reforms that began in 1993 induced a halt in the dramatic GDP decline and led to a mild recovery after 1995. Despite these positive economic results, the move to the market was stopped in mid-1996, and only marginal changes have occurred since then; indeed, some reform policies have even been reversed. Measures planned in 1995-1996 which had not been implemented by May 2002 include the establishment of a true convertible peso, the dismissal of 500,000 to 800,000 unneeded workers in the state sector, a general price reform, the reintroduction of worker contributions to social security, the approval of self-employment in university-graduate occupations, and authorization for Cubans to own and operate their own businesses. The reason for the stoppage and even the reversal of some reform policies is the Cuban leaders’ fear that a continuous move to the market would demand delegation of economic power

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and further weaken the feeble regime. Political logic, therefore, has taken precedence over economic logic and people’s welfare. And yet, as several Cuban reformist scholars and technocrats agree, without a return to the reform path, the island’s economy will be unable to sustain its recovery, which slowed in 2001 (when GDP per capita was still 23 percent below the 1989 level). The tragic events of September 11, 2001, combined with the world recession and a decrease in world travel, provoked a decline in nickel and sugar prices, international tourism, and foreign remittances, all of them crucial for the Cuban economy, and raised the specter of another severe crisis (Mesa-Lago 2001, 2002). As in 1993, such a predicament might force the Cuban leadership to resume its move toward the market. In such a scenario, certain changes can be recommended to ameliorate some of the nation’s socioeconomic disparities. In the long run, the Cuban regime should be transformed, preferably in a peaceful manner and toward a pluralistic democracy. At that time, the scenario of a stronger move to the market could materialize, allowing the enactment of more far-reaching policies to cope with socioeconomic disparities. The experience of Eastern European countries suggests that unless proper policies are implemented, inequalities will increase during such a transition. An adequate set of policies must therefore be designed to meet the needs of the second scenario (for a previous approach to the “second transition,” see Mesa-Lago 1993). Overall Macroeconomic Reforms In order to cope with the current socioeconomic disparities in Cuba, overall macroeconomic reforms must be implemented to increase GDP, output of goods, employment, real wages, government revenue, and satisfaction of basic needs, and to reduce poverty and improve the quality of social services. Although this crucial issue goes beyond the scope of this essay, general guidelines are offered below. In the first scenario, continuation of the regime with some modest reforms, the changes would be limited by the situation described above, but Cuba could follow the path of China and Vietnam and move toward a socialist market economy with the following changes: (1) expansion of productive and service activities in the private, cooperative, and mixed sectors, plus introduction of competition within the state sector; (2) transformation of state-controlled cooperatives (UBPCs) into truly autonomous cooperatives (able to decide freely what to produce, to whom they sell their produce, and what prices to set), thus providing economic incentives for increased production and delivery of goods to free agricultural markets; (3) granting of more land parcels to individuals and families in order to increase both self-consumption and delivery of produce to free agricultural markets; (4) increased food production and competition, which would push prices down and help to raise consumption and meet basic food

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needs by means of measures 2 and 3; (5) authorization of Cuban citizens and groups of workers to manage small and medium-sized businesses, elimination of current restrictions imposed on self-employment work, and granting of permission for university graduates to practice their professions as self-employed, thereby creating enough jobs in the non-state sector to permit the dismissal of non-needed workers in the state sector while expanding the supply of goods and services; (6) allowing foreign enterprises and joint ventures to hire, promote, and pay their employees directly, using both salaries and other economic incentives, all of which should be declared for tax purposes; and (7) completion of the banking reform, implementation of a comprehensive price reform, and a move to the establishment of a truly convertible peso tradable in international markets, resulting in gradual elimination of the current dual monetary system. In the second scenario, Cuba would move much faster and deeper into a market economy, and more radical changes in property and market relations would be introduced. These changes would include selective privatization of state enterprises, the setting of most prices by supply and demand, more flexible rules for foreign investment, the free practice of all professions and occupations, monetary and banking reforms, assured convertibility of the peso and unification of the exchange rate, free entry of foreign remittances at the unified exchange rate, introduction of capital markets, and more. Under this scenario, Cuba would be able to rejoin international financial organizations and receive economic and technical aid (see the section on recommendations: the need for foreign aid). This transition should be gradual and in combination with a social safety net, not based on a “shock therapy” approach. In Latin America, Costa Rica provides a successful example of this kind of gradualist approach (MesaLago 2000; see also the numerous articles on this issue published in Cuba in Transition, volumes 1 to 11). Regardless of the scenario considered, the need is serious and urgent to fill the enormous vacuum of data on socioeconomic disparities in Cuba by collecting and analyzing statistics on the subject. These data will be needed to identify the most vulnerable population, design adequate corrective policies, and estimate their costs. In addition, an informed public discussion must address disparities and ways to cope with them. The participation of the populace in this process will constitute an important step toward democracy and in the forging of a national consensus. Overhaul of the Tax System In either of the two scenarios, proper economic incentives are essential for promotion of growth and development, which means that some level of income and wealth inequality should be maintained. To reject differences in wealth would hark back to the nefarious egalitarianism practiced in past stages of Cuban socialism, but to ignore or permit such inequalities without taking any

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corrective action would be tantamount to preserving the current situation in Cuba, which could worsen during the transition (second scenario). The question is how to reach an optimal level between needed economic inequalities and the adverse social effects they cause. This problem would be aggravated in the transition, as happened in almost all Eastern European countries, which experienced a rapid decline in tax revenue because of losses in state-enterprise profits and turnover tax revenue as well as lack of institutional capacity to collect taxes in the new market economy (Gallagher 1999). The proper approach would be to reform the tax system completely in order to provide resources needed for market reforms, including the implementation of a social safety net and other social changes. The tax policy is discussed in this section, and the remaining policies are addressed in sections containing recommendations for changes in social services, coping with racial disparities, introducing a social safety net, and the need for foreign aid. Making the Tax System More Progressive. The tax law of 1994 did not include a general income tax, although it stipulated other progressive taxes, such as those on inheritance and hard-currency income from abroad. Because of the enormous restrictions on wealth accumulation in Cuba, however, inheritance of a sizable amount is virtually unknown in Cuba today, and so is tax revenue from that source (the same is true for real estate taxes). Hard-currency income earned abroad mainly comes from famous artists and musicians and likewise is not a very significant source of fiscal revenue (professionals working abroad pay as much as 50 percent in taxes on income of $60,000 and above in order to retain the right to return to Cuba). On the other hand, several taxes and other measures imposed on self-employment, owners of paladares, and house rentals for tourists have backfired by reducing, rather than promoting, those positive activities and resulting tax revenues. All these independent activities and others not authorized today (such as self-employment of university graduates, ownership of small and medium-sized businesses by Cuban citizens, and, in the second scenario, ownership of large enterprises) should be promoted, instead of discouraged, and their income taxed properly. At this time, however, only 3 percent of tax revenue is generated by direct personal income. Indirect taxes contribute 56 percent of tax revenue, and such taxes have a generally regressive impact on distribution. Taxes on alcohol and tobacco, in contrast, generate 20 percent of fiscal revenue and should be retained because of their additional positive health effects. Sales taxes, which contribute 30 percent of fiscal revenue, impose a heavy burden on the lowest-income groups and do not correct income inequalities. The value-added tax (VAT) has not been a major fiscal revenue generator during the early years of the transition because it has developed slowly, but it could become significant once economic reforms are implemented successfully. Current sales taxes should be limited to a minimum and should be replaced by a combination of progressive personal income tax and corporate tax. All residents, as well as Cubans who earn income abroad,

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should pay income tax, and the tax should have few rates and exemptions (for those below a minimum income) and should be withheld on salaries, interest, and dividends. The 1994 law also included a tax on natural resource extraction, which covers activities such as mining, forestry, and fishing, but apparently generates little revenue although the expanding nickel industry, for instance, should be an important generator of tax revenue. Other taxes to consider include import duties, excise tax on hydrocarbons, and tourism taxes collected either as special taxes or as part of the VAT. Technical aid will be needed to develop the institutional capacity of the Cuban government to collect taxes (Gallagher 1999). Taxing Savings and Remittances. In 1995, three Cuban economists who ironically were purged for their advanced reformist ideas recommended a measure to avoid excessive concentration of savings in bank accounts: a change in currency, which in practice would result in confiscation of savings above a given level (Carranza, Gutiérrez, and Monreal 1995). The income tax explained above should handle savings properly by taxing the interest income. Capturing income from remittances, on the other hand, is problematic because of the informal nature of most remittances. Currently, part of the remittance income is taxed in state dollar shops, but at a very high rate. In the second scenario, as more consumer goods become available and private shops are established, the sales tax rate should be reduced because increased sales volume ought to make up for the tax cut without any decline in sales tax revenue. Changes in Social Services Perhaps the most important accomplishment of the Revolution, and one generally praised both domestically and by foreign experts, was universal free access to health care, education, and social security pensions. Severe problems now faced by those services, problems such as deterioration of healthcare and education, reduction in pension coverage and the real value of pensions, and escalation of costs and state subsidies. We have seen the steady increase in the housing deficit since the Revolution, and we have noted expanding disparities in social services. In this section, policies are suggested to address these problems. Healthcare. The national health system (NHS) should be preserved, but with some changes that will make it financially solvent, improve the quality of services, increase efficiency, allow the functioning of private activities, and eliminate current disparities (for various approaches, see Alonso, Lago, and Donate Armada 1994; Mesa-Lago 2003). Currently, all healthcare services are free for all the population regardless of income, which increases costs and reduces the quality of the services provided, thus making the NHS financially untenable. To make the NHS financially solvent and to improve efficiency and quality of services, it is essential to take user income into account when providing health services, particularly curative care.

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The following measures, which are feasible under both scenarios outlined above, are recommended to reduce expenditures of the NHS: (1) Place more emphasis on prevention, particularly regarding the infrastructure for potable water and sanitation, instead of emphasizing the more expensive curative medicine; (2) cut the overhead of the Ministry of Public Health, which is two or three times the international average; (3) halt investment in new physical plant because of the current low occupancy rate and high number of days of stay, and give priority to maintenance of buildings and equipment (and buy the most needed equipment); (4) convert unneeded hospitals (particularly those specializing in gynecology and pediatrics, which are the most underutilized) into asylums for old people in need; (5) shift scarce resources invested in reducing the already-low infant mortality rate (and those devoted to the extremely expensive and relatively unnecessary family doctor program) to other areas in need, such as basic infrastructure, prevention and care of contagious diseases with high morbidity rates, and importation of essential medicines and prophylactics; (6) establish entry quotas in schools of medicine until the current glut of physicians subsides, encourage the enrollment of nurses and paramedics, and reduce the number of physicians in the state sector by facilitating private practice; (7) terminate the free overseas medical assistance program and fellowships for foreign students, since Cuba lacks resources for these expensive programs and needs to spend its resources at home; and (8) maintain the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industries, but in an efficient manner and on a competitive basis in order to make them profitable. The following changes are needed to increase income: (1) Introduce user fees and copayments for hospitals and laboratories (not in prevention and primary care) according to the users’ income, exempting the lowest-income groups; (2) charge the full cost of upgraded hospital rooms and services (single rooms, better food, and so on) to high-income groups wanting better quality of service and able to afford it (these two measures would be very difficult to introduce under the first scenario); (3) maintain and extend contracts of medical personnel working abroad, and collect tax on their income; and (4) attract Cubans living abroad, particularly those who are retired, to obtain healthcare in Cuba and pay for services, negotiating the transfer of insurance costs with foreign governments (this is more likely in the second scenario). The promotion of the private healthcare sector not only would reduce costs in the state sector, but also would create competition and allow high-income groups to get more personalized attention by paying for services. The national health system then would target low-income groups and could improve the quality of their care. To achieve these goals, the following steps should be taken: (1) Authorize the private practice of physicians, dentists, and other healthcare personnel as self-employed or members of cooperatives (first scenario) and in private clinics and hospitals (second scenario), with their income subject to the general income tax; (2) encourage large enterprises to provide

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primary healthcare to their employees by deducting those expenses from their corporate taxes (both scenarios); and (3) allow the private sector to provide paid services to foreigners, in competition with the state sector (unfeasible under the first scenario). To cope with current disparities in healthcare, the parallel, privileged, and costly scheme for the armed forces, internal security, and top leaders should be integrated with the NHS, which would reduce costs and promote equality of treatment. Members of these three groups who have high income and want to have more personalized care and upgraded hospital services should pay for them in either the NHS or the new private sector. This measure will be politically difficult to implement, albeit more under the first scenario than under the second; if the armed forces play an essential role in the transition, they would strongly oppose such integration. Persistent healthcare inequalities among the Cuban provinces (particularly in those with the worst situation, such as Las Tunas, Granma, and Guantanamo) should be the subject of targeting policies that establish priorities in the allocation of resources, initially for the first and second levels of care and later on, when more resources are available, for the third level as well. Education. A strong public educational system should continue, although with policies similar to those proposed in the previous section to make the system financially solvent and improve efficiency and quality of services. Cuba still has plenty of teachers, and declining population growth and the aging process mean fewer resources are needed for elementary school. However, it is important to reestablish economic incentives (adequate wages) to cope with future demands at the elementary and secondary education levels. Education (particularly at the secondary and higher levels) should be adjusted to the requirements of a competitive world market (including some shifts from formal toward vocational education), and resources should be reassigned accordingly. Internal efficiency must be improved; rates for dropouts and grade repetition must be reduced; and rigorous quality standards should govern the evaluation of educational attainments. Proper incentives should be provided for university-level training of the technicians, agronomists, business administrators, bankers, and other professionals needed for development. As with all higher-education graduates, teachers should be allowed to practice either as self-employed or in their own schools. Private education, under general rules set by the state, should be allowed, and cost recovery in higher education should be introduced for those who have high income (this would be rejected under the first scenario). Concentration of educational resources on the most needy population, the poorest provinces, and the most needed jobs is essential (Castañeda and Montalván 1997). Social Security Pensions. Cuba’s unified and fairly universal pension system is an important accomplishment that should be preserved. At present, the system has been besieged by a sharp decrease in real pensions, the virtual disap-

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pearance of the supplementary safety net, declining coverage of the population as the non-state sector expands, and intolerable costs that require increasing state subsidies. The situation is aggravated by the rapid aging of the population (for divergent approaches, see Alonso, Lago, and Donate Armada 1994; Peñate and Gutiérrez 2000; Mesa-Lago 2003). To cope with the problems, it is essential first to reduce costs and increase income in order to balance the system and secure resources to raise the level of pensions. On the expenditure side, the most important measure to be taken, regardless of the scenario, is the gradual increase in the age of retirement from 55 for females and 60 for males to 65 years for both sexes, over a period of 10 years for females and 5 years for males; if this step were politically unfeasible, then ages should be raised to 60 and 65 over a period of 5 years. This action would substantially reduce the costs of the system, but would be insufficient to cover expenses particularly in the long run, given the aging process. It is urgent, therefore, to implement the 1994 tax reform law’s clause stipulating the reintroduction of contributions by workers to pensions, which were suspended for political and socioeconomic reasons. Such contributions would have to be from 3 percent to 8 percent of salary (based on two different estimates) and would increase over time. An alternative would be to close the current pension system, make the state responsible for ongoing pensions, and create a new mandatory system with younger insured and at lower cost, at least for a fairly long time. The new system would be financed by employer and worker contributions and by a reserve fund that would be invested and have its yield used to help finance future benefits. A supplementary voluntary pension program financed by worker contributions could be made available to high-income groups. The very low level of pensions could be increased gradually by the combination of all these measures and by an economic expansion that may be possible if the other kinds of measures recommended in this essay are implemented. The expanding non-state sector, both formal and informal (self-employed, owners of paladares, and small businesspersons, private farmers, and their potential salaried employees) should be covered mandatorily by the new system, with special conditions and benefits for informal workers (Mesa-Lago 2003). The cost of separate privileged pension schemes for the armed forces and the internal security forces equals the deficit of the general system and creates unjustifiable inequalities because conditions of entitlement and benefits for these groups exceed those available in the general system. These schemes should be integrated with the general pension system, and if this is not politically feasible, their members should make appropriate contributions to support their privileges. Housing. In 2000, the housing deficit in Cuba was equal to half of the existing stock, and half of the existing stock was not in good shape—making this problem one of the island’s worst. Furthermore, the very low rate of housing construction since the Revolution, combined with the destruction of part of the previous stock due to lack of maintenance, preserved the prerevolutionary dis-

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parities in housing, particularly among blacks. Disparities among provinces and within Havana neighborhoods, in terms of the quality of housing, also are significant. In per capita current pesos, the 2001 budget allocated 12 times as much to education and 10 times as much to healthcare as the amount allocated to housing (MINFP 2001). The government’s incapacity to ameliorate, much less solve, this problem has been compounded by its excessive regulations and restrictions on housing construction, repair, trading, and leasing. According to the 1970 census, 86 percent of families in Cuba either owned their homes or were paying monthly installments to buy one (in the form of rent to the government), while 8 percent paid rent for public housing (fixed at 6 percent of monthly household income), and 6 percent were exempt from paying any rent because their monthly income was below 25 pesos. The 1981 census did not provide data on this distribution. A housing law passed in 1984 allowed tenants to convert state leases into purchasing contracts with monthly installments equal to the rent they were paying; by 1988, between 200,000 and 500,000 contracts had been signed (Mesa-Lago 1993). The combined data that is available indicates that in 2002 the overwhelming majority of Cubans owned their own homes, but endured significant overcrowding, structural deterioration, and even risk of structural collapse. Clearly, the state is incapable of solving the existing housing problems; therefore, more freedom has to be granted for people to repair their own homes, trade or rent them, and build new ones. The degree of such freedom under the first scenario would be considerably less than under the second scenario. In any case, the poorest segment of the population, who currently occupy public dwellings without paying anything, should be allowed to either continue with that arrangement or be paid a means-tested housing allowance to replace rental exemption. The amount the government spends on housing must be increased, but its allocation and use must be changed. Part of the resources available for direct housing construction by the government should be used to help the households in most need (the poor, blacks, and inhabitants of the least-developed provinces). Preferably, aid recipients should repair their own dwellings under minimal building norms. Funds also should be allocated for small loans to repair and build modest dwellings. The Banco Popular de Ahorro provides personal loans to buy new housing units, as well as for self-construction and maintenance, but no data are available on those loans and their amounts. Furthermore, the Bank does not provide credit to purchase existing houses or land or to build new houses or for trading homes. It would be better to create a bank specializing in housing, which could provide loans for all those purposes (Dammert 1997). Coping with Remaining Racial Disparities Despite significant advances by blacks in Cuba (in education, healthcare, employment, and equal access to recreational facilities), important disparities

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remain (for example, concentration in poor housing, underrepresentation in top managerial and political positions, overrepresentation in prisons). The crisis of the 1990s and 2000s reversed some previous gains and created new inequalities (blacks are underrepresented in reception of foreign remittances and in jobs in tourist facilities). The government improperly claims that the racial problem has been solved, and the proscription of public discussion on this issue has blocked solutions that might reduce disparities. A public discussion must take place in schools, at work, and in the news media to address remaining issues of racial discrimination in Cuba and the ways to resolve them. Blacks should be allowed to organize associations and movements to defend their rights and continue their advancement in the same manner as they have done in South Africa, the United States, and other countries. Particular attention should be given to providing housing for blacks and ensuring that they are treated equally in job hiring and promotion, especially in foreign enterprises. Existing discrimination against Cuban citizens, including blacks, in terms of access to tourist facilities should be terminated in both scenarios. Introduction of a Social Safety Net In view of the nation’s increasing inequality and poverty, Cuba’s policy of providing free social services and subsidies to rationed goods for all the population, including those who have very high income and savings, receive awards in kind and/or get foreign remittances, wastes scarce resources and obstructs the provision of help to those who are desperately in need. Real social welfare expenditures shrank by 29 percent in 1989-1998, and the state budget share spent on social welfare in 2001 was only 2 percent of total expenditures, or 0.7 percent of GDP. In the 2001 budget, the per capita expenditure, in current pesos, allocated to social welfare was 9 percent of the allotment for education, 12 percent of the benefits for healthcare and social security, and roughly equal to the amounts devoted to sports and art (MINFP 2001). The policies suggested in this essay would transform the free provision of social services and subsidies to rationed goods by taking income into account. Those considerable resources that would be freed up by the policy changes in the social services area should be shifted and targeted to provide social assistance to in the population under the poverty line, particularly to the extremely poor whose income cannot even satisfy food needs. The change from indiscriminate subsidies for social services and consumer goods toward targeted aid for those in need would alleviate current inequalities, have a progressive impact on distribution, and correct many current price distortions. Since Cuban reformist scholars and technicians advocated such shifts in policy in the early 1990s, it should be feasible under the first scenario (Carranza, Gutiérrez, and Monreal 1995). Under the second scenario, in which market forces would operate much

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more freely, prices of consumer goods, services, and housing would rise significantly, which would therefore increase the need for a social safety net (SSN). The SSN should provide temporary income supplements, preferably in the form of flat payments targeted to the poor (means-tested) and guaranteeing a subsistence minimum (food, housing, energy). The SSN also should have a simple administration and careful monitoring to ensure its restriction to those in need. Cash payments should be supplemented by continuous free healthcare and education for the poor, as explained above. The SSN is a key instrument for facilitating the other reforms suggested in this essay and ameliorating their potential harmful effects. This reform should be accompanied by a widespread, intelligent information campaign addressed to the population, explaining the human logic and priorities of the SSN program and other reforms (Mesa-Lago 1993; Alonso, Lago, and Donate Armada 1994). The Need for Foreign Aid Most of the reforms recommended in this essay require substantial international aid and technical support. However, although Cuba is a member of the United Nations agencies, the country does not belong to international financial organizations (IFOs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), nor to the financial-aid institutions of nations that belong to the Club of Paris. The Cuban government withdrew from the IMF and the World Bank in 1962 and never signed the founding agreement and does not belong to the IDB, and its 1986 suspension of debt payments to Club of Paris members impedes Cuba’s ability to become a beneficiary of their financial-aid institutions. The possibility of becoming a member of the major IFOs under the first scenario is slim because of the prominent role that the United States plays in them and the stipulations of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 (Helms-Burton). The situation would be more propitious under the second scenario. In any case, Cuba would have to apply for membership in the IFOs, and it would take time to be admitted and have membership quotas set. Still, although Cuba has a significant foreign debt ($11 billion in 2001) that would have to be negotiated and restructured, it has the advantage of having no debt with the IFOs. This means that a Cuban government committed to the reforms suggested in this essay could expect to receive aid in a shorter-than-normal period. Furthermore, Cuba could gain admittance to the International Development Association and become a beneficiary of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Program, provided that it signs an agreement with creditors to reduce the debt and introduce economic and social reforms (see the proposal in Castañeda and Montalván 1997). In view of the widespread poverty suffered by Cubans and the enormous difficulties Cuba will face in reforming its economy and launching a program of sustained development, the Club of Paris and other creditors

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should consider forgiving part of the Cuban debt if the island nation will agree to make needed reforms, including those that will alleviate its significant socioeconomic disparities. References Alonso, José, Armando Lago, and Ricardo Donate Armada. 1994. “A First Approximation Design of the Social Safety Net for a Democratic Cuba.” In Cuba in Transition 4. Miami: Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE). Banco Central de Cuba (BCC). 2001. Informe Económico 2000. Havana: Banco Central de Cuba. Bauza, Vanessa, and Tim Collie. 2002. “Housing Crisis on Island Literally Killing Some Cubans.” (Fort Lauderdale) Sun Sentinel, January 18. Benítez Pérez, María Elena. 2001. “La Política Social y la Vejez en Cuba: Algunas Reflexiones.” Unpublished paper. Paper presented at the CISS VI Conferencia de Actuarios y Financistas a Nivel Internacional, Mexico City, September 3-5. Carranza, Julio, Luis Gutiérrez, and Pedro Monreal. 1995. Cuba la Reestructuración de la Economía: Una Propuesta para el Debate. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Castañeda, Rolando, and George Plinio Montalván. 1997. “Cuba: Cooperación Internacional de Emergencia y para la Recuperación.” In Cuba in Transition 7: 269-274.Washington, D.C.: ASCE. Castro, Fidel. 1993a. “Discurso en la Clausura del 40 Aniversario del Asalto al Cuartel Moncada.” Granma, July 28: 3-7. Castro, Fidel. 1993b. “Speech at the 5th UNEAC Congress.” Granma, December 8: 3-4. Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM). 1997. Investigación Sobre Desarrollo Humano en Cuba 1996. Havana: Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD). Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM). 2000a. Investigación Sobre Desarrollo Humano y Equidad en Cuba 1999. Havana: PNUD. Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM). 2001a. Balance Preliminar de las Economías de América Latina y el Caribe 2001. Santiago de Chile. Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial (CIEM). 2000b, 2001b. Cuba: Evolución Económica Durante 1999, 2000. México City: CIEM. Comisión Económica de América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). 2000. La Economía Cubana: Reformas Estructurales y Desempeño en los Noventa. 2nd ed. México City: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Comisión Económica de América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). 2001. Cuba: Evolución Económica Durante 2000. México: LC/MEX/L.465, May 21. Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (CEE). 1991. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 1989. Havana: CEE.

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Dammert, Lucía. 1997. “Políticas de Vivienda en Cuba: Análisis y Perspectivas.” Unpublished graduate seminar paper, University of Pittsburgh. De la Fuente, Alejandro. 2001. A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press. Espinosa Chepe, Oscar. 2001a. “Suben los Precios en los Mercados Agropecuarios Estatales en La Habana.” Havana: Cubanet Independiente, December 19. Espinosa Chepe, Oscar. 2001b. “El Cuentapropista Continúa Reduciéndose.” Havana: Cubanet Independiente, March 18. Espinosa Chepe, Oscar. 2002. “Huevos Sólo para Diplomáticos.” Havana: Cubanet Independiente, February 26. Ferriol Muruaga, Angela. 2001. “Reforma Económica Cubana e Impactos Sociales.” Paper presented at the Congreso de Latinoamericanistas y Caribólogos, Moscow, June 25-29. Unpublished paper. Gallagher, Mark. 1999. “Some Ideas for Taxation During Cuba’s Transition.” In Cuba in Transition 9: 36-46. Washington, D.C.: ASCE. Informe de Cuba. 1997. “Proyecto: Efecto de Políticas Macroeconómicas y Sociales sobre Niveles de Pobreza.” Havana: Segunda Versión, October. Unpublished paper. León, Francisco. 2002. “Cuba, las Reformas Económicas en las Negociaciones Internacionales: La Coyuntura Actual.” Prepared for the Conferencia sobre Globalización y la Economía de Cuba, held in Madrid on April 4-5. Unpublished paper. Maseda, Héctor. 2002. “El Ministerio de los Televisores Panda.” Havana: Cubanet Independiente, February 25. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 1993. “The Social Safety Net in the Two Cuban Transitions. “ In Transition in Cuba: New Challenges for U.S. Policy. Miami: FIU, Cuban Research Institute. Unpublished document. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 1998. “Assessing Economic and Social Performance in the Cuban Transition of the 1990s,” World Development 26 (5) (May): 857-876. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 2000. Market, Socialist and Mixed Economies: Comparative Policy and Performance—Chile, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 2001. “The Cuban Economy in 1999-2001.” In Cuba in Transition, 11. Washington, D.C.: ASCE. Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. Forthcoming 2002. “Cuba at the Start of the 21st Century.” Mesa-Lago, Carmelo. 2003. “La Seguridad Social en Cuba en el Período Especial: Diagnóstico y Sugerencias de Políticas en Pensiones, Salud y Empleo.” Forthcoming. Ministerio de Economía y Planificación (MINEP). 2000. Plan Económico y Social 2001. Havana: MINEP. Ministerio de Finanzas y Precios (MINFP). 2001. Presupuesto del Estado Proyecto 2002. Havana: MINFP. Ministerio de Salud Pública (MINSAP). 2001. Anuario Estadístico 2000. Havana: Dirección Nacional de Estadística. Monreal, Pedro. 1999. “Las Remesas Familiares en la Economía Cubana.” Encuentro (Otoño): 49-62.

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Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas (ONE). 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000. Havana: ONE. Peñate, Orlando, and Luis Gutiérrez. 2000. La Reforma de los Sistemas de Pensiones en América Latina: La Alternativa Cubana. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Pérez Villanueva, Omar Everleny. 2001. “Ciudad de La Habana, Desempeño Económico y Situación Social.” In La Economía Cubana en el 2000: Desempeño Macroeconómico y Transformación Empresarial. Havana: Universidad de La Habana CEEC and Fundación Friedrich Ebert. Pérez Villanueva, Omar Everleny. 2002. “La Evolución de la Economía Cubana en los 90s: Una Valoración.” Paper presented at the Conferencia sobre Globalización y la Economía de Cuba, Madrid, April 4-5. Proyecto Varela. 2002. Havana. Ritter, Archibald R.M. 2002. “Cuba: ‘Dollarization’ and ‘De-Dollarization’.” Paper presented at the Conferencia sobre Globalización y la Economía de Cuba, Madrid, April 4-5. Unpublished paper. Rodríguez, José Luis. 2000. Report on the Cuban Economy. Granma, December 5: 1, 5. Sixto, Felipe. 2002. “An Evaluation of Four Decades of Cuban Healthcare.” Paper presented at the CRI 4th Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, Florida International University, Miami, March 6-9. Togores González, Viviana. 1999. “Cuba: Efectos Sociales de la Crisis y el Ajuste Económico en los 90s.” Balance de la Economía Cubana a Finales de los 90s. Havana: Universidad de La Habana CEEC, March. 82-112. Triana Cordoví, Juan. 2000. “La Economía Cubana en 1999.” In La Economía Cubana: Coyuntura, Ref lexiones y Oportunidades, 1-16. Havana: Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana y Fundación Friedrich Ebert. Trumbull, Charles. 2000. “Economic Reforms and Social Contradictions in Cuba.” In Cuba in Transition, 10: 305-320. Washington, D.C.: ASCE. UNESCO. 2001. Available at http://unescotat.unesco.org/en/stas/stats.htm.

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Appendix I Chronology of the Cuban Revolution: 1959–2002 1959

Fidel Castro assumed command and began consolidation of power. Castro visited Caracas, the U.S., Canada, and Buenos Aires. First Agrarian Reform Law promulgated. Castro became prime minister and replaced Manuel Urrutia with his hand-picked candidate, Osvaldo Dorticós. Major Camilo Cienfuegos died in a plane crash. Major Huber Matos sentenced to twenty years in jail.

1960

Cuba and the Soviet Union signed a commercial treaty and reestablished diplomatic relations. Major foreign businesses were nationalized by the government. Transportation, banking, communications, and the media and educational systems were taken over by the government. Central Planning Board (JUCEPLAN) created to plan and direct the economy. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) were organized. Castro issued the “Declaration of Havana” claiming Cuba’s right to export revolution and calling for Soviet support. The Soviet government purchased Cuban sugar that the U.S. had refused to buy. Soviet bloc armaments began arriving in Cuba.

1961

U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro proclaimed the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion was defeated. The U.S. declared an embargo on trade with Cuba. The Cuban government proceeded to socialize the economy. Castro declared himself to be a Marxist-Leninist.

1962

Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States. Castro issued the “Second Declaration of Havana” calling for continued revolution at home and abroad. 637

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Castro formed the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), an amalgamation of revolutionary groups and the Communists. The Cuban government introduced rationing of most items including food. Missile crisis brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. 1963

Castro visited the Soviet Union for the first time. Second Agrarian Reform Law was issued. Support for revolutionary groups, particularly in Venezuela, increased. Cuba refused to sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

1964

Castro visited the Soviet Union, signed a long-term trade agreement providing for Cuban sugar deliveries for 1965–70 of 24 million tons at a fixed price of U.S. $.06 per pound. Marcos A. Rodríguez tried and executed. Partido Socialista Popular leaders purged. Castro announced that Cuba would produce 10 million tons of sugar in 1970, signaling a return to dependence on one agricultural crop and the abandonment of plans for major industrialization. Conference of Latin American Communist Parties held in Havana subscribed to the Soviet line.

1965

Cuba participated in the Consultative Meeting of Communist Parties held in Moscow. Ernesto “Che” Guevara initiated a series of trips to Asia and Africa. Three-year Soviet-Cuban trade agreement signed. Fidel Castro assumed greater personal control over the economy. Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista (PURS) created. Cuba allowed for the exodus of tens of thousands of Cubans. Castro rejected the Communist doctrine on “the leading role” of Communist parties in the revolutionary struggle and criticized bitterly Latin American Communist parties for not supporting guerrilla warfare.

1966

Cuba and China criticized each other, straining relations. Tricontinental Conference held in Havana and the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAL) was founded. Castro and delegates from most Latin American leftist groups formed the Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO). Economic situation continued to deteriorate and Castro proclaimed the supremacy of moral over material incentives.

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1967

Castro admitted to Cuban-Soviet disagreement over Cuban support for guerrilla activities in Latin America. First Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO) conference held in Havana. Flights resumed to take U.S. citizens out of Cuba after one-year su pension. Che Guevara killed in Bolivia. Cuba refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

1968

The “microfaction,” nine pro-Soviet members of the Central Committee including Aníbal Escalante, were tried as “traitors to the revolution” and received jail terms. All remaining private business except small agricultural plots were confiscated. The University of Havana was placed under strict military discipline and control following student demonstrations. Castro made a major address justifying the Soviet invasion of Czech slovakia.

1969

Castro committed Cuba to a long-range agricultural development plan thereby postponing the country’s move to industrialization. U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement to return passengers aboard airliners hijacked to Cuba. Cuba became the first nation to establish formal relations with the Vietcong (National Liberation Front). Cuba participated in the Moscow-based World Conference of Communist Parties. Soviet Defense Minister, Marshall Andrei Grechko visited Cuba. Soviet naval squadron visited the island for the first time.

1970

Castro announced the capture of leaders of exile group Alpha 66 which had landed in Cuba in April. Cuba’s attempt to produce 10 million tons of sugar failed and the Labor Ministry reported that productivity among sugar workers was so low that the cost of the 1970 harvest was three times higher than its value on the world market. Economic problems compelled Castro to replace several civilian ministers with military officers. The possibility of a Soviet naval base in Cienfuegos led to a diplomatic exchange between the U.S. and the Soviets and a final statement by the latter that they were not building “military bases in Cuba . . . [nor] doing anything that would contradict the understanding reached between the governments of the USSR and the U.S. in 1962.”

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Cuba faced economic crisis with declines in production in almost all sectors and the Labor Minister attributed the problems to “wide spread passive resistance” by all workers. Castro called for closer ties with the Soviet Union and acknowledged that forms of struggle other than Castroism were possible in Latin America. A joint Inter-Governmental Soviet-Cuban Commission for Economic, Scientific, and Technological Cooperation was established and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was appointed chairman. 1971

Castro urged Cubans to work harder to increase low levels of productivity of Cuban economy. Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin visited Cuba. Castro visited Salvador Allende in Chile. Cuba and the Soviet Union signed a long-term economic and trade agreement.

1972

The Cuban government withdrew 600 million pesos from circulation (out of 3 billion total) to combat inflation. Castro toured Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union on official visits. Cuba was formally admitted as the ninth member to COMECON, the Soviet bloc’s economic alliance. Castro signed a new long-term Soviet-Cuban economic agreement whereby Cuba’s large debt to the Soviets was deferred to 1986, after which it would be repaid over the next twenty-five years at no interest. Castro announced a major reorganization of administration strengthening the structural capacity of the government to manage major economic activities.

1973

U.S. and Cuba signed an agreement on hijacking. Castro supported a pan Latin American regional grouping which would exclude the U.S. An experiment in local government, Poder Popular (People’s Power), was begun in Matanzas province. At a meeting of the Confederation of Cuban Labor (CTC) Castro anounced the abandonment of moral incentives and the establishment of Soviet-type norms for the labor force in an attempt to increase productivity. At the Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in Algiers Castro praised the Soviets and attacked the theory of two imperialisms espoused by other non-aligned leaders.

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1974

Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev visited Cuba on official mission. Cuban-Argentine trade agreement of $1.2 billion signed—the largest between Cuba and any Latin American nation. President Ford indicated U.S. support of Organization of American States’ move to improve relations between member nations and Cuba. Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa García at United Nations declared there would be no normalized moves with U.S. until the latter had lifted economic blockade. Cuba stepped up its training and support of Communist groups in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola.

1975

Cuban voter referendum on new constitution provided for National Assembly with five-year terms for those elected (by Cubans sixteen and older). Also involved, a thirty-one-member State Council with a president, a first vice-president, and five second vice-presidents. U.S. eased restrictions on exports to Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of American companies; direct trade remained embargoed. U.S. reported Cuban soldiers and advisers in Angola to support the Marxist group MPLA. Castro presided over first Cuban Communist Party Congress which approved Cuba’s new Socialist constitution and five-year economic plan.

1976

Cuba announced it would not withdraw troops from Angola supporting the MPLA. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned Cuba about its intervention in Angola. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau visited Cuba. Cuba informed Sweden of its intention to withdraw half its troops from Angola by December 1976. Castro accused the U.S. of sabotage in the crash of a Cuban passenger jet near Barbados. Cuba’s new socialist constitution was promulgated.

1977

COMECON announced decision to build a nuclear power station in Cuba. Week of Cuban solidarity with Nicaragua held in Havana. Castro visited Africa and the Soviet Union and agreed with Brezhnev to continue support for national liberation movements. Castro and Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley exchanged official visits to each other’s countries. President Jimmy Carter ended travel restrictions on U.S. citizens to Cuba and “interest” sections of consular officials were set up in Washington and Havana.

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Cuban military advisers and combat troops entered Ethiopia. All Cuban officials were expelled from Somalia as a reaction to Cuban presence in Ethiopia. Castro reasserted Cuba’s determination to help black African liberation movements, reaffirmed support for Puerto Rican independence, and claimed that Cuba’s presence in Africa was non-negotiable with the U.S. Granma article complained about Chinese attacks on the Cuban Revolution and on Cuba’s internationalist commitments in Africa. 1978

Cuba hosted the World Youth Festival. Cuban radio hailed the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Cuban troop strength in Ethiopia reported by the U.S. at 3,500 5,000. U.S. accused Cuba of supporting invading rebels in Zaire. Tomás Borge, leader of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), arrived in Cuba and met with Party leaders. Castro attacked the foreign policies of the U.S. and China. One hundred fifty Cuban-American political prisoners allowed to leave Cuba. Central Planning Board President Humberto Pérez explained that Cuba had not reached a rate of economic growth allowing it to emerge from underdevelopment.

1979

Cuba supported Vietnam and condemned China’s “military aggression.” The Soviet Union commenced a build-up and modernization of the Cuban military by providing the Castro government with its first submarine and two torpedo boats. Cuba announced the release of several hundred political prisoners. National Assembly of People’s Power met in Havana. Castro called for higher discipline and working standards. He criticized public services, especially transportation. Cuba and Jamaica signed economic, scientific, and technical cooperation agreements and continued to maintain close relations. Cuban military, technical, and economic advisers arrived in Nicaragua following the overthrow of Somoza’s government. Close relations and collaboration developed between the two countries. Cuba’s Movement for Peace and Sovereignty of Peoples (MPSP) appealed for solidarity with the people of El Salvador in their struggles. The U.S. charged that a Soviet combat brigade was stationed in Cuba; Castro denied it. The Sixth Non-aligned Summit Meeting was held in Havana. Grenada admitted that it received arms from Cuba, but only for defensive

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purposes. The two countries signed a two-year technical and economic cooperation agreement. 1980

Castro shuffled Cuban cabinet; assumed personal control over Ministries of Defense, Interior, Public Health, and Culture. Ten thousand Cuban refugees entered the Peruvian Embassy in Havana seeking asylum and starting a mass exodus of Cubans to Peru and the U.S. Cuba and Nicaragua signed an economic, scientific, and technical agreement an established a joint intergovernmental commission to set the standards of relations in those fields. Angolan President José Eduardo Dos Santos visited Cuba and signed an agreement establishing bilateral exchanges between Cuba and Angola. Cuban MIGs attacked and sunk the Bahamian patrol boat Flamingo. The Cuban government apologized, saying “it sincerely regretted the incident.” The M-19 guerrilla group that held diplomats hostage in the Dominican Republic’s embassy in Colombian for sixty-one days arrived in Cuba with eleven hostages. Hostages were released while the guerillas remained in the island. Daniel Ortega, member of the Nicaraguan governing junta, and Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop addressed the May Day rally in Havana, Cuba and the USSR signed an agreement for the building of a nuclear research center in Cuba. Fidel Castro and a large delegation attended the first anniversary celebrations of the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua. Cuba and the USSR signed a bilateral economic cooperation agreement for 1981–85. Trade would increase by 50 percent and would average over U.S. $8 billion per year. Raúl Castro announced the creation of territorial militias. President Carter accused Cuba of aiding the supply of arms and insurgents to leftist groups trying to overthrow the government of El Salvador. The Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) organized a drive of solidarity with Puerto Rico to help Puerto Rican people gain their full sovereignty and independence. During Mexican President José López Portillo’s visit to Cuba, the two countries signed a joint communiqué that included a call for ending the economic blockade against the Cuban people and the cessation of violations of Cuban air space. The Mexican president condemned the cold war and the arms buildup, noting that nothing could be achieved without détente.

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Addressing the Second Cuban Communist Party Congress, Fidel Castro admitted failure to reach the goal of 6 percent economic growth set by the First Congress during 1976–80. 1981

Eleven new “alternative” members of the Politburo were named. Five of them, Humberto Pérez, Vilma Espín, Roberto Viega, José Ramírez Cruz, and Armando Acosta would represent “mass organizations” in order to facilitate grass-roots relations. The other six members were all Army leaders. The government organized militias of territorial troops on a regional basis (Milicias de Tropas territoriales—MTT). Many militiamen were veterans of Angola and Ethiopia. Militias would fight sabotage from exile groups. Foreign Minister Isidoro Malmierca flew to Guyana on official visit. Affirmed Guyana’s territorial integrity in dispute with Venezuela. Nominee for U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig rejected notion of improved relations with Cuba during confirmation hearings. U.S. FBI arrested seven anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida Keys. Exiles were linked to Alpha 66. U.S. State Department failed to convince Castro to accept the return of 2,000 undesirables from 1980 Mariel boatlift. Trade agreements signed with Guyana included increased technical assistance. Government reported slight increase in rate of infant mortality from 1.93 percent in 1979 to 1.96 percent in 1980. U.S. reported that $532 million had been spent on entry and resettlement of 125,000 Cuban and 12,4000 Haitian refugees who emigrated to the United States in 1980. U.S. expelled First Secretary of Cuban Interest Section, Ricardo Escortín, for illegal business deals with U.S. businessmen and for alleged intelligence activities. Group of Cubans seized Ecuadorean Embassy in Havana, holding Ecuadorean envoys hostage, demanding political asylum. Valdilev M. Vasev, Minister Counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., denied that the Soviet Union had supplied arms to Salvadorean rebels, but said that Soviets were shipping arms to Cuba without restrictions on their shipment to third countries. Cuban security forces entered Ecuadoran Embassy and arrested wouldbe Cuban emigrants. Castro gave speech to Soviet Communist Party Congress; said that U.S. threatened a blockade and denied that Cuba was instigating the Salvadoran rebellion.

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Castro met with Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet leader assured Castro of Soviet’s continued support. Colombia broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba over Cuban links to Colombian guerrilla insurgency. Alpha 66 reported thirty sabotage missions accomplished in six months inside Cuba, including attack at Regla power plant. Castro reaffirmed solidarity with Soviet Union in speech marking twentieth anniversary of Bay of Pigs. Fidel Castro made overtures to Christian groups for revolutionary unity in country. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Croker linked solution of Southwest African problem with withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. ANAP President José Ramírez launched campaign to aid small, private farmers, especially those belonging to independent cooperatives, in new agricultural policy. Costa Rica broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba over human rights issues. Soviet four-ship naval squadron left Cuba after month-long visit and maneuvers in Caribbean. U.S. Department of State reported Cuban transfer of Soviet-made T-55 tanks to Nicaraguan Sandinista government. Vice-President Raúl Castro was awarded the USSR Order of the October Revolution. Aid pact with COMECON signed in Sophia. Plans made to improve sugar production by modernizing mills and transport system. Aid package worth about $1.2 billion over ten years. Cuba’s largest cement factory, christened Karl Marx Plant, completed after six years of construction. Manuel Urrutia Lleo, first President of Revolutionary Cuba, who later became Castro foe, died in New York City at age seventy-nine. Castro voiced “profound suspicion” over the origin of crop blights and dengue fever that killed 113 Cubans and damaged harvests. He said that the epidemics had possibly been introduced by the CIA. Castro met with President López Portillo of Mexico on the Mexican island of Cozumel. Castro accepted that his presence at the Cancún North/South summit would jeopardize meetings in light of U.S. warnings to stay away. National Census put Cuban population at 9,706,369; Havana at 1,924,000. 97.2 percent of registered voters in Cuba voted in municipal elections to elect 9,763 members. Jamaica broke diplomatic relations with Cuba, citing lack of cooperation in the extradition of Jamaican criminals.

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Félix Fidel Castro Díaz, Fidel Castro’s only son, became Director of Atomic Energy Commission. Mexican government offered to act as “communicator” between Castro regime and U.S. government. Fidel Castro was re-elected President of the Council of State with his brother, Raúl Castro, as first Vice-President. Other Vice-Presidents elected were Juan Almeida Bosque, Ramiro Valdés, Guillermo García, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, and Blas Roca. Flavio Bravo replaced Roca as Council Chairman. Humberto Pérez announced 1981 budget deficit of 785 million pesos, compared to 249 million pesos in 1980. He blamed falling commodity prices and dengue fever for shortfalls. Government raised prices 10–30 percent on rationed goods and most catering services (restaurants, bars, etc.). Two ministers, including Minister of Interior Trade Serafín Rodríguez, were ousted after public outcry swelled over excessive increases in some areas. Manuel Vila Sosa replaced Fernández as Internal Trade Minister. 1982

Castro announced new record sugar harvest for 1981–82; 8.21 million tons was second largest ever. Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez announced cutbacks in Cuban imports to offset shortfalls from low sugar prices. U.S. House of Representatives voted to authorize $7.5 million for Radio Martí. U.S. Senate voted to prevent by any means, including the force of arms, the extension of Cuban influence in the Western Hemisphere. Action was amendment to a $9 billion supplemental appropriations bill. Cuban government announced that it had asked Japanese and Western banks to renegotiate the terms of debt payments due in the next three years. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve Radio Martí. Cuban authorities released poet Armando Valladares after appeals from French President Mitterrand and Nobel prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez. NATO Report claimed that Cuba received $3 billion in economic aid from the Soviet Union in 1981, 60 percent of all aid from Soviet Union to the Third World. Cuba was seventh in ranking of military aid recipients from the Soviet Union, after Ethiopia, Vietnam, South Yemen, Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Angola, with $54 million. Four high-ranking Cuban officials were indicted in Miami on Federal charges of drug trafficking. Included was Cuban navy Vice-Admiral Aldo Santamaría Cuadrado.

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Canadian University Service Overseas (SUCO), Inter-Church Fund for International Development, and OXFAM-Canada all signed a pact with the Cuban government pledging to promote continued scientific and technical collaboration. There was a call for an end to the embargo on official Canadian aid to Cuba. Fidel Castro conferred with new Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in Moscow. U.S. and USSR held high-level talks on Cuban troops in Angola. Trade deal signed with Libya after visit by delegation headed by State Committee for Economic Cooperation President Héctor Rodríguez Llampart. Andrés Rodríguez Hernández, a stowaway aboard Miami jetliner, was first refugee to be deported to Cuba. President Ronald Reagan named F. Clifton White to lead Radio Martí, U.S. broadcasting initiative designed to counter anti-American broadcasts from Cuba. President Reagan said that Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig met secretly with Cuban Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez in Mexico in the fall of 1980. Haig discussed arms shipments from the Soviet Union to Cuba. U.S. Justice Department lifted embargo on Cuban publications to the United States subscribers in effect since mid-1981. Foreign Minister Isidoro Malmierca visited Angola; Deputy Foreign Minister Oscar Oramas, General Abelardo Colomé, and Politburo member Jorge Risquet visited Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Cuban government liberalized restrictions on foreign investment in Cuba in effort to revive tourist industry and gain foreign exchange. Reagan administration announced new restrictions on travel to Cuba, banning tourist and business travel after May 15. Only academic and family unification exit visas would be granted. Castro rejected Reagan administration’s appeal for breaking off relations with the Soviet Union in speech to Association of Small Farmers (ANAP). ANAP President José Ramírez said that small private farmers and cooperatives produced 70 percent of country’s tobacco, 67 percent of cocoa, 54 percent of coffee, 50 percent of vegetables, 18 percent of sugarcane, and owned 21 percent of beef and dairy cattle stock. Castro admitted that “free market” food policy of 1980 was a failure due to unscrupulous “middlemen.” Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez visited France. Cuban government cracked down on “capitalist activities” in free markets for food and clothing, and made 200 arrests.

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Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez addressed U.N. General Assembly and said Cuba had received “huge quantities of modern and sophisticated weapons” from the Soviet Union and allies. Torrential rains and flooding caused extensive damage to Cuban property and agriculture. Cuban government announced that 180,000 foreigners had visited Cuba in 1981, bringing in $80 million. U.S. expelled two Cuban envoys at Cuban mission to the U.N. after finding sophisticated telecommunications equipment in Orlando, Florida, warehouse. Former Foreign Minister Raúl Roa died. President Fidel Castro, in Bayamo, in address during Moncada celebrations commemorating the Cuban Revolution, blamed the “capitalist crisis” for Cuba’s economic woes. He asked Cuban people to work harder and endure, and said Cuban troops would not leave Angola until all South American troops were out of Namibia. 1983

Cuban officials met in Panama with economic ministers from several Western nations to renegotiate payments on $2.6 billion in foreign debt. U.S. reported that Cuba—with Soviet backing—had expanded its amphibious fleet. Cuba also completed building shelters for a fleet of about 225 Soviet-built MIG fighter bombers and plans to receive four more Foxtrot submarines from the Soviet Union. Former Cuban agent turned federal informer revealed, at U.S. Senate hearings, that his work as a drug dealer for the Cuban government earned $7 million for the Castro regime. The federal informer also estimated that 3,000 Cuban agents entered the U.S. during the 1980 boatlift. Cuba rejected charges that two diplomats in their U.N. delegation in New York City were guilty of spying. The U.S. government ordered the Cuban diplomats to leave the U.S. within 48 hours. Cuban government charged that U.S. reconnaissance plane violated Cuban airspace in a “deliberate and cold provocation.” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders met with the head of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, Ramón SánchezParodi, to request that Cuba take back thousands of Cubans (who came to the U.S. via the 1980 Mariel boatlift) because of their criminal conduct in Cuba. U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 13 to 4 to authorize Radio Martí. Cuban Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez claimed that Cuba was willing to open “serious negotiations” on re-establishing normal

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relations with the United States, provided that the Reagan administration took the first step. Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, former President of Cuba, committed suicide. Cuba informed the United States that it was willing to discuss the return of some of the Cubans who came to the U.S. illegally in 1980, but only as part of overall negotiations on “normalizing of migration” between the two countries. President Reagan emphasized that the Soviet Union had repeatedly violated the 1962 agreement that ended the missile crisis by continuing to ship “offensive weapons” into the American hemisphere. Americas Watch, a human rights organization, claimed that at least 250 long-term political prisoners were confined in Cuban jails under “brutal conditions” and that up to 2,000 former prisoners were denied decent work. French officials reported that Cuba arrested Ricardo Bofill, former ViceRector of Havana University, after promises that he would be allowed to leave the country. Bofill had sought refuge in the French Embassy. The United States tightened its economic embargo against Cuba by banning imports of semifinished nickel products from the Soviet Union which is a major buyer of Cuban nickel ore. Cuba reached a tentative agreement with its creditors to reschedule $810 million in short- and medium-term commercial debt and nearly half of its $3.5 billion debt owed to Western governments and banks. 1984

President Reagan accused Cuban leaders of having betrayed the Cuban people and not telling them the truth about Cuban activities around the world. Reagan said that there were as many as 10,000 political prisoners in Cuban jails. Reagan also charged that Cuba’s economy failed to provide even elementary needs. The United States Immigration and Justice Department officials decided that 100,000 of the Cubans who came to the United States in the 1980 Mariel boatlift were eligible for legal status and citizenship opportunities under the 1966 U.S. law on earlier Cuban migration. Cuban President Castro visited Western Europe for the first time. President Castro made an unscheduled stop in Spain en route home from Yuri Andropov’s funeral in Moscow. Angolan guerrillas reported that Cuban-led Angolan forces opened a major offensive against rebel strongholds along the southeast border. South Africa labeled “unacceptable” Cuba’s heavily conditioned offer to withdraw its 25,000 troops from Angola, dimming hopes for efforts to negotiate independence for Namibia.

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Roberto Veiga Menéndez, alternate member of the Cuban military politburo and Secretary General of the Cuban Federation of Workers, said that the Cuban government had doubled the size of its militia forces to more than one million men and women. Jorge Vals, prominent Cuban poet and political dissident, was released after being imprisoned for more than twenty years. Reverend Jesse Jackson arrived in Cuba for a two-day visit and in airport meeting with Fidel Castro said that the United States and Cuba “must give peace a chance.” Castro said that he invited the Reverend Jackson as a “gesture of friendship to the people of the United States.” Reverend Jesse Jackson returned to the U.S. with twenty-six freed American and Cuban prisoners. Cuban and United States officials started discussions in New York about immigration issues, including the possible return of 1,000 Cuban refugees from the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Supreme Court reinstated Reagan administration’s curbs on tourist and business travel to Cuba. Western commercial banks reportedly agreed to reschedule about $100 million of Cuba’s debts for this year on easier terms than those of 1983. Foreign Minister Wu Xuequian said that China and Cuba agreed to improve trade, cultural, and technological ties despite their differences on international matters. President Fidel Castro, in speech marking thirty-first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, said he would welcome any steps to lessen bitter hostility between U.S. and Cuba. State Department sees no change in Cuban policy reflected in President Fidel Castro’s speech; rules out comprehensive talks for now, demanding Cuba first make fundamental foreign policy changes. 1985

Cuban President Fidel Castro ordered austerity measures expected to sharply slow the country’s economic growth and possibly cause more reliance on the Soviet Union. The measures are aimed at saving badly needed foreign exchange. Twenty-three Cuban 1980 Mariel refugees were returned to Havana. These are the first of more than 2,700 unwanted Cubans who could be sent back by the United States as part of an agreement with Fidel Castro’s government. The Reagan administration claimed that Fidel Castro’s absence from Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko’s funeral was evidence of friction between Cuba and the Soviet Union over economic aid. The Reagan administration also viewed the absence as one of Castro’s periodic urges to show his independence from the Soviet Union.

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Cuban leader Fidel Castro said that Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union had never been better and that his absence from the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko was not significant. Cuba offered to withdraw 100 of its military advisors from Nicaragua but vowed to return even more if the U.S. continued “its dirty war” against Nicaragua. Ecuadorean President León Febres Cordero arrived in Cuba for an official sit and was welcomed by Fidel Castro. Talks centered on the Latin American debt problem and unrest in Central America. Radio Martí, the U.S. Information Agency news service for Cuba, began broadcasts to Cuba. Havana suspended all immigration proceedings between Cuba and the United States in response to the start-up of Radio Martí. Cuban Americans will be prohibited from visiting Cuba. Fidel Castro suggested that the United States and other industrialized nations pay the Latin American 4,360 billion debt. The Cuban government sought to improve relations with churches and synagogues and urged mutual cooperation. Cuban Central Planning Boare head Humberto Pérez González was replaced by Construction Minister José López Moreno in a continuing government shakeup that is expected to lead to a more prominent role for Fidel Castro’s younger brother, Raúl. Fidel Castro said that Cuba was going nuclear. A four-unit nuclear plant is already being built and two more are planned. Fidel Castro urged Latin American nations to band together and simply refuse to pay their foreign debt. Castro refinanced Cuba’s $3.5 billion debt and promised to continue making payments on loans. United States and Cuba officials agreed that relations between the two countries had reached one of the lowest points in years. A slight warming in the relationship halted abruptly when the U.S. inaugurated Radio Martí’s broadcast service to Cuba, which was denounced by Fidel Castro as a U.S. attempt at subversion. Cuba signed a pact rescheduling $90 million owed to foreign commercial banks. President Reagan imposed immediate restrictions on entry of Cuban officials into the U.S. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Sheverdnadze arrived in Cuba for talks with President Fidel Castro. About 20,000 protesters denounced the United States, outside the U.S. Mission in Havana, after Cuba protested what it called spy flights by U.S. surveillance planes.

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Four Cuban Embassy employees in Madrid, Spain, tried to kidnap former Cuban official Manuel Antonio Sánchez Pérez, who had asked for political asylum. The attempt was foiled by the intervention of thirty bystanders. Four employees, including the vice-consul, were arrested. Cuba reportedly planned to reduce its outlays for military and public security in 1986, after failing to meet production goals for leading exports in 1985. President Reagan warned that the U.S. had a legal right to defend itself against five nations that he claimed were sponsoring terrorist “acts of war” against America: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua. 1986

Cuban President Fidel Castro opened the third congress of the Cuban Communist Party with a harsh attack on bureaucracy and inefficiency and praised the economic growth of 7.8 percent per year during the previous five years. Cuba’s Communist Party reshuffled its Politburo and promoted women to full membership for the first time. Cuban leader Fidel Castro marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs victory with an attack on President Reagan and pledged to fight laziness and corruption in Cuban society. In an effort to reschedule its $3.5 billion foreign debt, Cuba began new talks with its Western creditors. The United States and Cuba agreed to negotiate the revival of the 1984 immigration agreement that enabled the United States to deport several thousand Cubans who had histories of crime or mental illness who had arrived in the United States as part of the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Talks collapsed when the United States refuses to recognize Cuba’s right to broadcast over an AM frequency in the United States to match Voice of America’s Radio Marti transmissions. President Reagan ordered measures designed to tighten the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba and responded to Cuba’s decision to suspend immigration agreement by making it more difficult for some Cubans to enter the United States. Cuba allowed seventy political prisoners, many of whom had been in prison for more than twenty years, to leave the country and fly to Miami. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that most prisoners had been members of the Cuban armed forces under President Fulgencio Batista. 100,000 Cubans rallied outside the former U.S. Embassy in Havana protesting against what the Cuban Government says was the overflight of a U.S. espionage plane over Cuban territory. Millions of

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Cubans took part in military exercises aimed at preparing the population to defend the island against a surprise air attack. The Third Party Congress was held. 1987

Cuban President Fidel Castro halted two ventures into capitalism he himself instituted—farmers markets and private home ownership—in the face of signs that some people were accumulating wealth through them. Antagonism between Cuba and the United States was greater than at any time in the previous ten years. Bitter conflict between the Church and the State in Cuba eased considerably. Rafael del Pino Diaz, deputy chief of staff of Cuban Defense Ministry and former chief of Cuban Air Force defected to the United States; he had knowledge of significant military and political information. Cuba agreed to release 348 political prisoners following a request from the U.S. Catholic Church. Cuban Government charged that U.S. diplomats in Havana have been spying and plotting to assassinate Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The Cuban Government, in a policy reversal, agreed to restore an immigration pact with the United States by which 2,600 Cubans, whose criminal records make them ineligible for U.S. residence, will be deported from the United States and up to 27,000 Cubans will be allowed to emigrate to the United States each year. Outraged at the prospect of being deported, Cuban inmates took over Federal detention centers in Oakdale, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia. After several days of negotiations, uprising ended and hostages were released. A new process to decide whether the inmates should be sent to Cuba was established. Cuba’s economy shrunk 3.5 percent in 1987 after growing 7.2 per year between 1981 and 1985.

1988

Pat Robertson claimed that Soviet missiles are pointed at the United States from Cuba; both the White House and Cuban President Fidel Castro denied it. United Nations Human Rights Commission unanimously agreed to accept an unexpected invitation from Havana to investigate human rights in Cuba. Even though U.N. specialists encounter harsh penal systems in Cuban prisons, they found no evidence to support U.S. charges of torture and executions. The official United Nations investigation concluded that abuses have declined. Cuban National Bank documents obtained by a human rights group indicated that the Soviet Union was reducing support for Cuban economy.

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U.S. officials said they expect between 12,000 and 15,000 Cubans to emigrate to the United States by the end of the year in the first major exodus from the island since 1980. In an apparent effort to improve his international standing, Cuban President Fidel Castro moved towards reconciliation with Cuban Christians and the country’s small Jewish population. In the first five months since the protest riots in two Federal penitentiaries, the U.S. Government released 1,153 Cuban detainees from jail. President Fidel Castro indicated that Cuba will not emulate Mikhail Gorbachev’s plan for social and economic reform in the Soviet Union. Restrictions on importing and exporting books, films, phonograph records and other informational material to and from Cuba were eliminated by a trade bill signed into law by President Reagan. Radio Marti expanded its Family Bridge program which enables listeners in the United States to convey messages to relatives in Cuba. Mikhail Gorbachev cut short a visit to the United States and canceled a trip to Cuba to return to the Soviet Union after news of a devastating earthquake in Armenia. 1989

Fidel Castro played down his differences with Soviet Union even as he reaffirmed his refusal to adopt Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of economic liberalization to remedy critical economic problems. Cuban National Bank data showed Soviet Union cut its trade with Cuba by 12 percent in 1988 first quarter; data, presented to Western government creditors in June, showed Cuba’s output of goods and services fell 3.5 percent in 1987; trade figures gave clear indication of USSR’s effort to trim its $5 billion-a-year subsidy of Cuban economy. Leaders of Cuba’s two main human rights groups said there has been increased pressure and new tactics that the government of Fidel Castro was using against dissidents since United Nations team looked into abuses of human rights in mid-September. Americas Watch, human rights organization based in New York, issued report saying Cuba has improved its prisons and permitted some dissident groups to form, but it continues to commit serious violations of human rights. Soviet official revealed that Soviet nuclear warheads were deployed in Cuba and could have been launched at American cities within hours during 1962 Cuban missile crisis. United Nations issued report on human rights situation in Cuba; suggested that while there have been big improvement in church

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state relations and treatment of political prisoners, basic political liberties were still widely denied. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev began visit to Cuba with effusive welcome from Fidel Castro. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in Havana, called for end to all outside military aid to Latin America and signed friendship treaty condemning use of force as instrument of foreign policy. Gen. Arnaldo T. Ochoa Sanchez of Cuba was arrested on corruption charges; American officials said action suggests dissension at highest levels of Cuban military; Cuba’s Transportation Minister, Diocles Torralba Gonzalez, a friend of Ochoa’s, was earlier relieved of his duties; Ochoa was accused of being involved in illicit sales in Angola. Cuban officials said senior Cuban military officers helped Medellin drug cartel of Colombia smuggle six tons of cocaine and marijuana into United States over last two and a half years. Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez was shown on Cuban television making abject confession to drug trafficking and corruption and saying “I deserve to die.” Cuba’s Interior Minister, Gen. Jose Abrantes Fernandez, was replaced as top security officer following official charges that high military officers in Cuba were involved in drug trafficking; Abrantes himself was not singled out as key defendants in Government’s case. Cuba announced that firing squad has executed four Cuban Army officers convicted by court-martial of conspiring to ship tons of cocaine and marijuana to United States; four include Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, a highly decorated war hero. Cuban leader Fidel Castro portrayed Cuba as nation under siege by United States at a speech in Camaguey, marking thirty-sixth anniversary of start of Cuban revolution. Cuba’s former Interior Minister, Jose Abrantes Fernandez, and three other former officials were charged with corruption. Cuban Communist Party banned circulation of Soviet Union journals Moscow News and Sputnik, holding they promote bourgeois democracy and American way of life. Sudden changes in East Germany and rest of Eastern Europe appeared to be deepening political isolation of Fidel Castro and creating more problems for ailing Cuban economy. Havana court sentenced three Cuban human rights advocates to prison after convicting them of giving false information to foreign jounalists. Fidel Castro vowed that Cuba will not undergo profound political and economic changes now sweeping rest of Soviet bloc.

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1990

Cuba’s Communist Party announced plans for reforms in the country’s political system but made it clear that it will not abandon the oneparty Communist rule. The press in the Soviet Union painted an unflattering portrait of Cuba as an impoverished police state still mimicking Brezhnev-era communism. In his first visit to Brazil in thirty years, Fidel Castro said that Cuba may turn more to Latin American markets to make up for the loss of trade with the Eastern European countries that disapprove of his policies. Experts on Cuba believe that despite growing economic problems, Fidel Castro’s popularity remained too high to allow the sort of political change overtaking Eastern Europe. The Communist Party newspaper claimed that Cuba has almost completely succeeded in jamming broadcasts to the island by Radio Marti. The Cuban government refused to negotiate the departure of Cubans seeking refuge in foreign embassies in Havana straining relations between Cuba and its most important Western economic partners, Canada and Spain; asylum-seekers surrendered in exchange for a promise that they will not be punished. The government of Fidel Castro, anticipating the end of large-scale Soviet economic subsidies, prepared the nation for a type of wartime austerity and full-scale mobilization. Cuba’s Communist Party moved to streamline its bloated bureaucracy, slashing national and provincial party posts by 50 percent. In the first phase of a program that envisions thousands of urban dwellers working for twenty-one-day shifts in the countryside to increase food production, the Cuban government sent several hundred office workers to plant potatoes. The Cuban government forged ahead with crash efforts to create world class industries in tourism and biotechnology. The Soviet Union’s decision to cut aid to Cuba and work with the United states to solve regional conflicts left Cuba as one of the last standard bearers in the ideological war against what it perceives as U.S. imperialism. The Castro regime announced a series of austerity measures, the “Special Period.”

1991

In a move seen as a sign of Havana’s growing isolation, Czechoslovakia decided it will no longer represent Cuba in Washington. Switzerland, which sponsors U.S. diplomats in Havana, offered to sponsor the Cuban Interests Section in Washington to ensure that both countries have diplomatic representation in each other’s capital.

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The deteriorating economic situation in Cuba prompted a large increase in the number of Cubans seeking to leave their country. The Cuban government rejected an appeal by President Bush for political change and accused him of being obsessively anti-Cuban. Reflecting increased religious tolerance, bibles were put on sale in Cuba for the first time in three decades. Cuban President Fidel Castro received only token gestures of friendship for his beleaguered government during a meeting with fellow Latin American leaders in Guadalajara, Mexico. Cuba announced the lifting of restrictions on travel abroad; anyone aged twenty or over will be allowed to leave and visit other countries, provided that the host nation gives them a visa. Cuban inmates seized control of the medium-security section of a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama to avoid deportation; after ten days, federal assault teams stormed the prison cellblock, freed several hostages, and took custody of 121 inmates. In order to remove a major obstacle to increased U.S. economic aid to the Soviet Union, President Gorbachev declared he will remove Soviet troops from Cuba and end the $2–billion-a-year trade subsidy Moscow gives Havana. For the first time in the thirty-two-year leadership of President Fidel Castro, Cuba banned foreign delegations and journalists from the Congress of its ruling Communist Party. The Cuban Communist Party unveiled an economic plan meant to boost hard-currency exports, tourism, and foreign investment. The Presidents of Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Cozumel, Mexico; urged him to quicken the pace of reform in his country and offered him prospects of closer relations in return. The government of President Fidel Castro unleashed a violent crackdown on political dissent. The Fourth Party Congress was held. 1992

The government of Cuban President Fidel Castro stepped up efforts to crush internal opposition as growing numbers of citizens take desperate measures to flee a life of hardship. Eduardo Diaz Betancourt, a Cuban exile convicted of sabotage and terrorism was executed by a firing squad in Cuba. In a rare exception to the economic blockade of Cuba, the Bush Administration granted permission to AT&T to expand telephone services between Cuba and the United States; Cuba rejected AT&T’s proposal. A growing number of U.S. companies, lured by the prospect of approaching change in Cuba as the island tries to ward off economic

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collapse, followed their foreign counterparts in showing interest in the island. Cuban officials say that the thirty-year U.S. economic embargo against Cuba has cost the island more than $20 billion and was blocking Cuban efforts to renegotiate a $7 billion debt to U.S. allies. Havana began a sophisticated campaign to court U.S. businessmen in hope that their thirst for opportunities will bring them to lobby in Washington for a change in U.S. relations with Cuba. Americas Watch, a human rights organization, claimed that anti-Castro Cuban American leaders in Miami use violence and intimidation to quiet exiles who favor the softening of United States policies toward Cuba. Russia and Cuba agreed to the withdrawal of a former Soviet infantry brigade that has been on the island since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Cuba halted monthly gasoline rations for private vehicles admitting that the Government lacks foreign currency to buy fuel. Cuba and Russia signed trade accords for new ties based on mutual benefits; Cuba will trade sugar for Russian oil at world market prices. The United Nations Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for an end to the thirty-year U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. 1993

Cuban industry was reported to be all but paralyzed by shortages of oil, electricity, and spare parts. Cuban President Fidel Castro said he was willing to negotiate his departure from power in exchange for the lifting of the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. General Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, said Cuba is reducing its armed forces as a result of not having received any weapons from the former Soviet Union since 1990. Cuba offered to negotiate reparations for U.S. properties confiscated in the 1960s. Challenging the hegemony of the Cuban American National Foundation and other established groups, new voices calling for a more flexible attitude towards Fidel Castro’s government emerged in Miami’s Cuban exile community. The last remaining members of a Soviet military brigade that was sent to Cuba after the missile crisis of 1965 left the island. Cuban officials said that they will open their economy by permitting Cubans to hold dollars and foreigners to open joint-venture banks on the island.

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In a meeting in Salvador, Brazil, the leaders of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal called for an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Cuba took a step towards the establishment of a mixed economy authorizing limited individual private enterprises in a wide range of trades, crafts, and services. The Clinton Administration, in secret talks with Fidel Castro, agreed to hand over to Havana some 1,500 Cuban inmates held in U.S. Federal prisons spreading waves of alarm among Cuban exiles in Miami; Cuba denied such an agreement. As Cuba’s economic and political crisis deepens, exiles in Miami reach out to their kin on the island as never before by sending aid, exchanging visits, and seeking their advice on how to ease Fidel Castro from power. Of 900 Cuban athletes participating in the Central American and Caribbean Games in Puerto Rico, thirty-nine defected and twentyseven formally applied for U.S. asylum. 1994

Granddaughter of Fidel Castro, sixteen-year-old Alina-Maria Salgado Fernandez, was allowed to leave Cuba and be reunited with her mother, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, who fled in December 1996. Record number of Cuban refugees floated to Florida in 1993; Coast Guard report that total amount, 3,656, was up 43 percent from 1992 total. Federal appeals court ruled that Cubans from 1980 Mariel boatlift cannot be held indefinitely in federal prisons; Cuba sent off many prisoners and mental patients; U.S. authorities later revoked freedom of those who committed new crimes. Cuba announced series of measures aimed at encouraging more Cuban Americans to visit and to attract foreign investment; hosted threeday conference in Havana that is first sizable meeting between Communist leadership and representatives of exile population in sixteen years. Dozens of Cubans broke into Belgian ambassador’s residence, Havana, demanding political asylum. Brazil and Cuba agreed on way for Cuba to start repaying part of nearly $40 million debt through export of Cuban medicine to Brazil. Three Cuban gunboats trying to stop freighter loaded with people trying to flee Cuba fired on vessel for more than four hours sinking it; thirty people were killed. Cuban President Fidel Castro broke thirty-five-year tradition of wearing military uniforms in public and wore civilian clothes at summit

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meeting, Cartagena, Colombia, of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese leaders; leaders, in indirect slap at United States embargo of Cuba, called for elimination of “unilateral coercive economic and trade measures.” Clinton Administration, responding to Cuban President Fidel Castro’s threat to unleash flood of refugees on United States warned it will not permit repeat of 1980 Mariel boat lift, in which Cuba dropped emigration curbs and 120,000 Cubans fled to U.S. Clinton Administration ended open-door policy toward Cuban refugees, who will be detained for indefinite period after they arrive in United States, effective immediately. United States stopped refugees aboard rafts and boats off Florida coast and began detaining them at its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, base, as President Clinton ends long-standing policy of welcoming fleeing Cubans. President Clinton barred Americans from sending cash to Cuba and cuts off flights to island to intensify pressure on Castro regime and punish it for encouraging Cubans to set out in boats. U.S. moved to beef up patrol vessels in Florida Straits as hundreds of Cubans set sail despite Clinton administration’s efforts to stem exodus. Clinton administration, alarmed that new policy failed to stem flow of Cuban refugees, considered expanding capacity of Guantanamo Bay naval base to handle them. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said administration will react positively if President Fidel Castro takes meaningful steps, such as allowing free elections; denies administration’s policies are being driven by domestic politics. Once quiet U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was crowded with thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees, all uncomfortable and angry over failure to make it to U.S. Cuba and U.S. reach agreement under which Cuba pledges to stop citizens from fleeing in small boats and U.S. promised to accept at least 20,000 Cuban immigrants a year. Flood of Cuban refugees ended as Cuban government implemented terms of agreement reached with U.S. aimed at halting exodus. Cuba took step away from highly centralized communist system that has defined its economy for more than three decades; it will for first time allow all farmers to sell part of their produce on open market. Clinton administration gave American telecommunication companies permission to establish direct telephone links with Cuba. Interview with Fidel Castro, who celebrated thirty-sixth anniversary as President of Cuba; he admitted he has real reservations about

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market-oriented reforms his government has undertaken to save economy devastated by collapse of Soviet bloc, but said he recognized world economy has changed. Appointment of Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino as Cuba’s first Roman Catholic prelate in more than thirty years, and passionate reaction of his flock, seen as new signs of reinvigoration of Catholic Church in Cuba. 1995

President Francois Mitterrand welcomed President Fidel Castro to France for three-day private stay that has hallmarks of state visit. Cuban officials and athletes at Pan-American Games are admitting for first time that nation’s worsening economic crisis and political isolation severely erode sports programs. Clinton administration ended thirty-five years of special treatment for Cuban refugees and started returning them to homeland after admitting final group of about 20,000 held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. Clinton administration, which was signaling new cooperation with Cuba, opposed Republican bill to tighten thirty-three-year-old U.S. trade embargo. Cuban government, in effort to make Cuba’s sagging economy more efficient, abandoned one of most cherished concepts of communist state, guarantee of full lifetime employment, and begun layoffs. Role and responsibilities of Cuban armed forces expanded rapidly while those of Communist Party sharply decline. Military, traditionally one of President Fidel Castro’s principal pillars of support are producing and distributing between a quarter and a third of country’s food supply; set up highly profitable tourism, construction and retailing companies of its own, and officers were put in charge of many state enterprises. U.S. officials report Cuba has arrested fugitive financier Robert L. Vesco and approached U.S. about extraditing him; Vesco fled U.S. in 1973 to avoid prosecution for allegedly swindling mutual fund investors out of $224 million. Latin America increasingly ignored United States trade embargo on Cuba, choosing to develop full economic and diplomatic ties. Cuba passed new foreign investment law, which allows foreign investors access to all economic sectors, except defense, health care and education, and to fully own businesses in Cuba. House voted 294 to 130 to tighten trade embargo against Cuba; despite Clinton administration’s veto threat. President Clinton signed executive order to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans, academics, artists and clergymen.

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President Fidel Castro addressed U.N. General Assembly as part of world body’s fiftieth anniversary celebration; revisited Harlem for first time in thirty-five years. Cuban government permitted citizens to buy and sell foreign currencies on open market for first time in more than thirty years in attempt to challenge flourishing black market for American dollars and to soak up surplus pesos that have fueled inflation. President Fidel Castro visited China, whose leaders welcome him warmly and pledge a small increase in economic aid. Cuban government restored the personal income tax—in effort to go after newly affluent Cubans who earn money in dollars and other foreign currency. 1996

Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy briefly visited Cuba to sign human rights and foreign investment declarations and met with President Fidel Castro and other aides. Clinton administration’s annual report on human rights in 193 countries concluded that despite U.S. efforts, human rights performance worsened last year in China, Nigeria, Cuba and Myanmar. U.S. closed tent city on Guantanamo naval base allowing remaining refugees to enter U.S. Coalition of Cuban dissidents and human rights groups “Concilio Cubano,” canceled plans to hold conference in Havana, citing crackdown by state security apparatus against organizers of event. Two small unarmed aircraft belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, Miami-based Cuban exile group, were shot down by Cuban Air Force MIG jet fighters in international waters and survivors of incident said four are dead. President Clinton denounced Cuba’s downing of two private American planes as flagrant violation of international law; suspend air charter travel between both countries and pledged to reach agreement with Congress on pending bill to tighten economic sanctions. President Clinton agreed to package of sanctions, the Helms-Burton law, to punish Fidel Castro by curbing foreign investment in Cuba. Communist Party of Cuba called for crackdown on dissent and on economic reforms. Senate, 74–22, approved legislation to tighten embargo on American trade with Cuba, and punish other countries that insist on continuing such trade; Canada, Russia and European Union condemned measure. Organization of American States, at annual meeting, Panama, approved resolution criticizing U.S. extension of economic embargo of Cuba as probable violation of international law.

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Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, visiting Canada, and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien scorned United States efforts to penalize foreign firms that trade with Cuba. U.N. investigation concluded that Cuba’s downing in February of two light civilian aircraft flown by Cuban-Americans occurred over international waters. Leaders of fifteen European Union countries criticized U.S. legislation that would impose economic penalties on foreign companies that invest in Cuba, Iran and Libya. Clinton administration struck for first time against foreign companies doing business in Cuba, informing top executives and biggest shareholders of Canada’s Sherrit International Corp. that they and their families will be barred from the U.S. Fugitive U.S. financier Robert L. Vesco, who had been in custody in Cuba for thirteen months was tried and sentenced to thirteen years in jail. President Clinton granted Americans right to sue foreign companies using American plants seized by Cuba more than thirty-five years ago, but immediately suspended filing of suits for six months. Clinton Administration, unable to gain international support for strong action against Cuba over the shooting down in February of two civilian planes flown by Cuban-Americans, got United Nations Security Council backing for only a mild resolution of regret over the incident. Cuba expelled American diplomat Robin Meyer for activities incompatible with diplomatic status. Cuba rejected part of planeload of food aid for Hurricane Lili victims sent by Cuban Americans because some of the packages carry “counterrevolutionary” slogans. President Fidel Castro attended annual Ibero-American Summit Conference in Santiago, Chile. Latin leaders end summit denouncing moves by U.S. to isolate Cuba, while pressing Fidel Castro to make democratic changes on island. John Paul II met with Fidel Castro for first time at the Vatican and accepted invitation to visit Cuba in 1997. European Union urged Cuba to improve its policies on human rights and political freedoms, clearing way for President Clinton to once again waive most controversial part of new law intended to punish foreign companies that use confiscated American property in Cuba. Cuba countered Helms-Burton law, which toughens U.S. economic embargo on the country, by declaring invalid any claim made under the law and saying Americans seeking to make claims will be

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excluded from any possible settlement of the property issue by Cuba and U.S. 1997

President Clinton announced a suspension in the implementation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, on an official visit to Cuba, signed with Cuban counterpart, Roberto Robaina, a joint declaration establishing fourteen areas of bilateral cooperation, including human rights, as part of Canada’s policy of constructive engagement toward Cuba. President Clinton made public his plan for a Cuba without Castro. Called “Support for a Democratic Transition in Cuba,” it included a special appeal to the Cuban Armed Forces and an aid package of 4 to 8 billion dollars. The White House approved licenses for ten press organizations interested in establishing bureaus in Havana. The Cuban government approved only CNN. In an official visit to Cuba, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori signed an agreement of cooperation between the two countries. The Cuban government stated its willingness to mediate the hostage crisis and receive the MRTA group if Peru and Japan should ask it do so. Italian group STET doubled its investments in Cuba when taking over Grupo Domo’s telephone investment, while compensating AT&T to avoid Helms-Burton sanctions. Human Rights Watch, Rapporteurs Sans Frontiers, and the Interamerican Press Association denounced persistent harassment against independent press in Cuba. Foreign Affairs ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement reiterated their demand to the U. S. to put an end to the embargo against Cuba. Roberto Robaina’s tour throughout Southeast Asia is reported as being very successful in terms of diplomatic recognition and cooperation agreements with Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. The President of the Spanish government, Jose M. Aznar, declared that Spain is against the Helms-Burton Act and advocated for a peaceful and democratic transition in Cuba. Fidel Castro admitted publicly that the sugar harvest will not achieve its original goal of 4.4 million tons. Instead it will be 4.2 million tons. Percival Patterson, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, paid an official visit to Cuba as part of an increased relationship between CARICOM countries and Cuba. Bombs exploded in several hotels in Havana.

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The U. S. made a public statement advising countries not to become involved in supporting the electro-nuclear project in Cuba (Juragua). Decree 172 created the Banco Central de Cuba (Cuba’s Central Bank). The President of the Basque government paid an official visit to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro. Dominican Republic and Cuba restored consular relations. Some dissident leaders challenged the official platform of the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba and made public their own platform “La Patria es de Todos.” The first public mass was held in Havana since 1959. Four dissident leaders, the authors of “La Patria es de Todos,” were arrested in Havana. They are Vladimiro Roca, Social Democrat Party; Felix Bonne Carcases, Cuban Civic Current; Raul Gomez Manzano, Independent Lawyers Agramonte’s Current; and Marta Beatriz Roque, Independent Economists. New round of negotiations on immigration were held between the U. S. and Cuba. Cuba celebrated the XIVth World Youth & Students Festival with some 15,000 participants. Cuba and Honduras agreed to establish interests sections as part of the normalization of bilateral relations. Tourist industry was officially acknowledged as Cuba’s number one industry. Ministry of Interior announced the capture of a Salvadorian citizen responsible for the bombings and blamed the Cuban-American National Foundation as being involved. The Fifth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba took place in Havana. The Central Committee was reduced from 225 to 150 members; the Politburo from twenty-six to twenty-four. Raul Castro was ratified as successor to Fidel Castro. Communists from Latin America met in Havana to plan a return to power “when capitalism fails.” Div. Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera, fifty-three, was appointed new Chief of the General Staff, replacing General Ulises Rosales del Toro, who became Minister of the Sugar Industry. United Nations General Assembly voted against the U. S. embargo on Cuba by 143 votes against, 17 abstentions, and only 3 in favor, the largest majority ever achieved. Fidel Castro received criticism and some support in Margarita’s IberoAmerican summit. President Clinton declared that “an improvement of relations between his country and Cuba depends on the political changes that may be set in motion by the government of Fidel Castro.”

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Raúl Castro paid an official visit to China that lasted for two weeks, stopping briefly in Italy on his return to Cuba. German Foreign Affairs Minister, Helmut Schafter, concluded a fourday official visit to Cuba with a meeting with Fidel Castro; both parties emphasized the need to further enhance bilateral relations. Jorge Mas Canosa, Chairman of the Cuban-American National Foundation, passed away. The U. S. and Cuba held a new round of negotiations on immigration in Havana. The Russian Chief of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, paid an official visit to Cuba with the purpose of signing agreements on bilateral cooperation, on the Lourdes station and on Russian military supplies and spare parts, to help Cuba to maintain the combat readiness of its armed forces. The official program for the Pope’s visit in January 1998 was announced in Havana, including a Holy Mass at Jose Marti Revolution Square. Castro allowed Christmas celebration for the first time. 1998

Pope John Paul II visited Cuba. President Clinton eased restrictions on travel to Cuba and on export of medical supplies. Raúl Castro assumed greater role in the managing and control of Cuban society. Fidel Castro visited Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, and South Africa. The United Nations World Food Program made an emergency food aid appeal to help drought-stricken eastern Cuba, but the drought itself was ended by Hurricane George. The European Union dropped its legal challenge to the Helms-Burton Act. The four members of the “Internal Dissidence Working Group” were threatened with five to six years’ imprisonment despite appeals from the Vatican and elsewhere abroad. The United Nations Human Rights Commission, in a vote of 19–16, rejected a U.S.-led effort to censure Cuba’s human rights abuses. Cuba admitted to the Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (ALADI). Alina Fernandez discussed her disenchantment with her father, Fidel Castro, both as a father and as Cuba’s leader which is the subject of her new book Castro’s Daughter: An Exile Memoir of Cuba.

1999

Death penalty extended to armed robbery, attacks on the police, corruption of minors, and some drug offenses. Cuba also introduced the harshest penalties ever for political activities.

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Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bone, Rene Gomez Manzano and Maria Beatriz Roque sentenced to three to five years in prison for publicly criticizing Cuba’s system of government. Sugar harvest of 3.6 million tons is just enough to stave off default on Cuba’s international debts. Cuba adopted the Euro as its official currency for trading with Europe. Smith Kline Beacham signed agreement with Cuba to distribute meningitis B vaccine on the world market. Cuba came second (after the United States) in the Pan American Games after its four gold medal winners were disqualified for drug use following urine tests. The Cuban government sold the right to make deep-water searches for galleon wrecks to Canadian Visa Gold Exploration. Spain protested U.S. threat of sanctions against the Sol Melia hotel chain for occupying American owned land in Varadero. Castro replaced his ministers of foreign relations, labor, and tourism. The IX Ibero-American Conference was held in Havana. Castro was criticized for human rights abuses and political repression. An asylum dispute over Elían Gonzalez, a 6-year-old refugee picked up at sea near Florida after his mother perished in the Cuba to Miami voyage, caused major strains in U.S.-Cuba relations. [The single most compelling development in the first half of 2000 concerns the struggle and disposition of Elián Gonzalez. The following chronology is an effort at highlighting the flight from and return to Cuba. ILH-JS] Nov. 22 — Elián, his mother, Elisabet, and 12 others leave Cuba for the United States aboard a 16-foot motor boat. Nov. 23 — The boat capsizes, killing his mother and ten other escapees from Cuba. Nov. 25 — Two passengers come ashore; Elián is rescued at sea. Nov. 26 — Elián leaves the hospital; is released to great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez under a temporary custody arrangement granted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Nov. 27 — Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elián’s father, demands his son’s return to Cuba—with Fidel Castro at his side. Dec. 10 — Lazaro Gonzalez applies for political asylum on behalf of Elián. Dec. 31 — Immigration and Naturalization Service officials interview Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Havana. 2000

Jan. 5 — Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner decides Elián “belongs with his father” and must be returned to Cuba by Jan. 14. Attorneys for the Florida relatives ask Attorney General Janet Reno to reconsider.

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Jan. 7 — Lazaro Gonzalez files a petition for temporary custody in state court. Jan. 12 — Reno upholds the father’s right to custody of Elián Gonzalez. Jan. 19 — Lazaro Gonzalez files federal lawsuit challenging Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling. Jan. 21 — Elián’s grandmothers arrive in New York from Cuba. Jan. 26 — The grandmothers meet with Elián in Miami. Jan. 28 — Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s U.S. lawyers seek dismissal of the federal lawsuit. March 21 — U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore dismisses the lawsuit, a ruling appealed to federal appeals court in Atlanta. April 3 — The State Department approves visas for Elián’s father and others. April 6 — Juan Miguel Gonzalez leaves Cuba for the United States. April 12 — Reno meets with the Florida relatives; orders them to surrender Elián. April 13 — The relatives defy the order; obtain a court order that keeps Elián in the United States. A Miami family court judge rules she has no jurisdiction on custody. April 19 — The federal appeals court in Atlanta extends the court order until a hearing in May. April 22 — Negotiations between the two sides fail. Federal agents seize Elián in Miami in a pre-dawn raid; Elián is reunited with his father in Washington. More than 350 people are arrested during subsequent unrest and demonstrations in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. May 2 — Miami’s mayor, city manager, and new police chief express solidarity with Elián Gonzalez remaining in the United States with his great-uncle, Lazaro. June 2 — Appellate Court upholds the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s rejection of asylum effort for Cuban boy. June 16 — Miami relatives seek review of decision that would let boy return to Cuba. June 21 — Justice Department asks Appeals Court to allow Elián to return to Cuba. June 27 — Miami relatives of Elián ask Supreme Courts Justices to block his return to Cuba. June 28 — Seven months after he was rescued clinging to an inner tube in the waters off Florida, Elián Gonzalez headed home to Cuba today. His departure came hours after the Supreme Court refused to consider further appeals from the boy’s Miami relatives that would have kept him in the United States. June 28 — Cuban government urges calm as the nation prepares for Elián’s return.

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The first major trial of a Cuban dissident in over a year ended with the sentencing of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, to three years in prison—for hanging the nation’s flag upside-down. The first American trade show in four decades occurred in Havana with nearly 100 companies taking part in a United States health care exhibit. A senior official in Miami field office of Immigration and Naturalization Service, Mariano M. Faget, was charged in federal court with spying for the Cuban government. The United States deported Cuban diplomat Jose Imperatori on espionage charges. Jose Imperatori left Canada after overstaying his Canadian transit visa by almost three days. In a negotiated departure, Imperatori left the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa, and boarded a Cubana jet sent to take him to Havana. Armed US immigration agents smash their way into the Miami home of relatives of Elián Gonzalez in early morning raid, seized the sobbing six-year-old from a bedroom closet and flew him to a reunion with father at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Sadako Ogata, praised the Cuban government for giving asylum in recent decades to thousands of people, most fleeing conflict and political persecution in Latin America and Africa. Scores of leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America gathered in Havana for one of the largest Third World meetings ever held, intended to set a new, united agenda for narrowing global wealth inequalities. More than 65 heads of state from the 133 member nations of the Group of 77 attended the five-day meeting led by President Fidel Castro. Castro told the leaders of the world’s poorer nations meeting in Havana that the capitalist system had caused suffering comparable to that of the Holocaust. Group of Cubans on homemade vessel returned to Cuba after violent standoff with US Coast Guard off Miami during failed effort to reach US. Federal jury in Miami convicted Mariano M. Faget, veteran US immigration official, on charges of espionage in a case that resulted in the expulsion of a Cuban diplomat and heightened political tensions between the US and Cuba. Angry over European criticism of its human rights record, Cuba cancelled the planned visit to Havana by senior European Union officials. A delegation led by the Portuguese cooperation minister, Luis Amado, had intended to have talks on issues including trade and human rights.

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The government freed Rene Gomez Manzano, a dissident lawyer, from prison in the third early release of a prominent anti-government activist. The early release of Gomez, 56, who was serving a fouryear sentence for anti-government activities, followed the freeing of two of his dissident colleagues, Felix Bonne, 60, an academic, and Marta Beatriz Roque, 55, an economist. House Republican leaders agreed to end four decades of sanctions on sales of food to Cuba, but Cuban-American lawmakers managed to place severe restrictions in the bill. American farmers and agricultural businesses could sell directly to Cuba, but the federal government and American bankers could not provide any financing to the Castro regime. Elián Gonzalez returned to Cuba with his father and other family members aboard a chartered jet after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal brought by Miami relatives who wanted an asylum hearing for the boy. The State Department accused Cuba of causing widespread suffering by refusing to let Cubans leave the island even if they held United States visas. Separately, officials said, the United States told Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the Cuban National Assembly, that he cannot attend a meeting of international lawmakers at the United Nations in New York. Ending a two-month suspension, Cuba agreed to resume talks on legal migration of Cubans to the United States under accords signed in 1994 and 1995. The agreements grant visas to 20,000 Cubans a year. The House of Representatives approved, by a vote of 232-186, a measure ordering the Treasury Department to stop enforcing restrictions on travel to Cuba and sale of food and medicines. World leaders, including Fidel Castro, arrived in New York City for three-day Millennium summit of the UN General Assembly. The Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News learned that they will be allowed to open offices in Havana, joining the Associated Press and CNN as the only United States news organizations with bureaus in the country. President Fidel Castro on a visit to the United Nations, denounced the American economic embargo against his country and presented a bleak vision of the world’s future before thousands of cheering and flag-waving supporters gathered at Riverside Church in Manhattan. Testifying in Washington before the International Trade Commission, Cuba’s top diplomat in the United States, Fernando Ramirez de Estenoz, called for an end to all sanctions on Havana rather than

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the smaller step being fought in Congress for fewer limits on sales of American food and medicine. The rare appearance by a Cuban official before a federal agency was protested by two Florida lawmakers. Reacting to the United States decision last week to give asylum to nine Cuban defectors, Castro and thousands of protestors converged on a Havana plaza in front of the American diplomatic offices. The nine fled in a small plane that crashed into the sea. Iran’s President visited Cuba. Pedro Riera Escalante, a longtime Cuban intelligence official who had broken with his government and sought refuge in Mexico, was arrested and deported to Cuba. After years of deadlock, creditor nations in the so-called Paris Club were willing to try to reschedule the estimated $3.5 billion debt Cuba has with them. Cuba’s total hard-currency foreign debt at the end of 1999 was just over $11 billion. The Senate approved a bill easing nearly four decades of sanctions on the sale of food to Cuba, all but assuring the measure would become law. While the vote was viewed as a victory for farming groups, the legislation was not expected to lead to large sales of food products to Cuba any time soon. Havana levied a 10 percent tax on the cost of telephone calls between Cuba and the United States in retaliation for a bill in the United States Congress that makes use of Cuban money frozen in the United States. Fidel Castro began his first official visit to Venezuela in four decades. He and President Hugo Chavez, an ally and friend, are expected to sign a bilateral oil agreement that would ease Cuba’s crippling fuel shortage, allowing Cuba to import oil from Venezuela on preferential terms. Cuban officials signed an agreement for Venezuela to supply one-third of Cuba’s oil needs at cut-rate prices. The deal came at the end of Castro’s five-day visit to Caracas. Jury selection began in the case of five people accused of spying for the Cuban government by trying to infiltrate exile groups and the US military. The defendants are Miami-area residents arrested in South Florida in 1998. The Cuban government announced that it would cut off direct phone service with the United States unless American phone companies paid a new 10 percent tax imposed after Congress approved antiterrorism legislation that uses frozen Cuban assets in the United States to compensate relatives of anti-Castro exiles killed in 1996.

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For the ninth year, the United Nations General Assembly called by a wide margin for the lifting of the United States embargo on Cuba. The vote was 167 to 3, with 4 abstentions. Only Israel and the Marshall Islands voted with the United States. El Salvador, Latvia, Morocco, and Nicaragua abstained. Cuba and Venezuela were seeking the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who Fidel Castro said planned to kill him during the weekend’s Ibero-American summit meeting in Panama City. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on a visit to the island and President Fidel Castro pledged to reinvent their countries’ relationship, which foundered after the Soviet Union’s demise. It will be based on a modest agenda of trade and commerce and a bit of ideological alignment. Russia and Cuba agreed to abandon an incomplete nuclear power plant station at Juragua on the southern coast of the island. Angry that United States telephone companies will not pay a new Cuban tax, the Cuban government blocked all phone calls from the United States. 2001

President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic called for the immediate release of two prominent Czechs being held in Cuba for meeting dissidents opposed to Fidel Castro. Cuba said the former Finance Minister Ivan Pilip and a former student leader, Jan Bubenik, will be tried for plotting on behalf of American interests. Two prominent Czechs jailed for more than three weeks after meeting with Cuban dissidents headed home after they admitted breaking Cuban law. They were released after drawing up an admission signed before diplomats from several nations. Treasury Department authorized the release of $96.7 million in frozen Cuban funds to families of three Miami-based pilots shot down by Cuban fighter jets in 1996. Fidel Castro met for first time with veterans of the Bay of Pigs in Havana, at a three-day conference organized by American historians, scholars, and open-government advocates who uncovered to secret archives of the American, Cuban, and other governments. Argentine government withdrew its ambassador to Cuba to protest comments by Fidel Castro that characterized President Fernando de la Rua’s government as “bootlickers of the Yankees.” Fidel Castro made his first visit to Iran and was welcomed in grand style with a guard of honor at the former imperial palace. Discussions were expected to focus on bilateral co-operation and new ways to improve the effectiveness of the G-77 group of developing nations, which is currently headed by Iran.

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Senators Jesse Helms and Joseph I. Lieberman offered bill to send $100 million in aid to government opponents in Cuba over four years. Five Cubans were convicted of conspiring to spy on United States for Cuba; Gerardo Hernandez, the group leader, was found guilty of contributing to the deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue Cuban exile group members whose plane was downed by Cuban jets in international airspace in 1996; others convicted were Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Rene Gonzalez. Five other indicted members of the group pleaded guilty and four others are fugitives. The House voted, 240 to 186, for a measure that would effectively lift the ban on most travel to Cuba. The vote reflected growing sentiment in Congress that many sanctions on Castro’s government have outlived their usefulness. Members of the House Republican leadership who oppose lifting sanctions are expected to intervene and kill the measure as they did with similar legislation last year. Fidel Castro and a senior Cuban government delegation visit Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Qatar, Syria, and Libya to bolster political and economic ties with authoritarian Muslim states before returning to Cuba via Lisbon. Speaking at the Islamic University of Tehran on May 10, Fidel Castro states: “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up.” During his stay in Iran, Castro inspected a joint Cuban-Iranian “biotechnology complex, the largest and most modern of its type in the Middle East,” according to the official Cuban press. Fidel Castro visits the former residence of Mohammar Qaddafi bombed by the U.S. in 1986. Castro writes in the visitors’ log: “It is one thing to hear about the barbarity of the Yankee empire and quite another to see it in all its horror. It is something that can never be forgotten.” Smugglers dropped 55 Cubans in the Florida Keys, bringing to 107 the number of such immigrants who arrived there over three days. Hojjatoleslam Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, walked side-by-side with Fidel Castro as his guest of honor during the annual July 26 demonstration in Havana. Federal government arrested and charged Ana Belen Montes, the Pentagon’s top intelligence analyst for Cuba, with spying for the Cuban government. She provided Havana with highly classified information, including American assessments of Cuban military readiness.

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President Vladimir V. Putin said Russia will abandon its largest electronic eavesdropping post in the West, at Lourdes, Cuba, and will spend much of savings on modern weapons for its armed forces. Havana is negotiating deals with American producers to buy food and agricultural products to replenish stocks destroyed by a recent hurricane. This would be first such transaction in four decades since the United States imposed trade sanctions against Cuba. The small value of purchases suggested that Cuba might be using the catastrophe to undermine the American embargo rather than to seek actual relief. Four American companies became the first in four decades to sign trade deals with Cuba and will supply food to help with recovery from Hurricane Michelle. The companies are Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Riceland Foods, and ConAgra. The widow and four children of Howard F. Anderson, an American businessman executed in Cuba more than 40 years ago on charges of conspiring against Castro’s revolutionary government, filed a wrongful death suit against the Cuban government. The leader of a Cuban spy ring was sentenced to life without parole for conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. The Cuban, Gerardo Hernández, was convicted of trying to obtain United States military secrets by seeking to infiltrate military bases at Boca Chica Naval Base and United States Southern Command and for his involvement in the 1996 downing of two American civilian aircraft by Cuban MiGs over international waters. The first shipment of American goods to be purchased by the Cuban government since the trade embargo was imposed nearly 40 years ago arrived in Havana harbor. The purchase was made possible by legislation passed in Congress that exempted food and medicine from the trade embargo. 2002

Fidel Castro’s government publicly signaled its acceptance of the decision by the Bush administration to imprison hundreds of suspected Al Qaeda members at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay on Cuba’s eastern tip. Bush administration named Otto J. Reich as the State Department’s top policy maker for Latin America. President Vicente Fox of Mexico met with Fidel Castro in Havana in an effort to restore a century-old diplomatic relationship. The visit focused on Mexico’s desire to improve commercial ties with Cuba. President Fox ended his goodwill mission to Cuba by meeting with several of the government’s most prominent opponents. Mexico

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issued a statement pressing the Cuban government to pursue democratic reforms and increase human rights protections. Iran’s Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, Mostafa Moin, in Havana signed a memorandum of understanding with his Cuban counterpart, Rosa Elena Simeon, on scientific and research cooperation. Dr. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, director of the Frank Pais Scientific Complex in Havana and head of the Cuban-Arab Friendship Association, led a Cuban delegation to Yemen and met with President Ali Addullah Saleh and formalize an agreement to build, and staff with Cuban personnel, a new orthopedic hospital in Sanaa. A bus carrying Cubans seeking to leave the island crashed through the gates of the Mexican Embassy in Havana. Officials said the Cubans inside the embassy do not qualify for political asylum. Cuban parliamentary delegation led by Kaheimi Hernandez visited to Algeria to “exchange viewpoints concerning several current international issues” and develop bilateral relations. Ana B. Montes, an intelligence analyst who was the Pentagon’s top expert on Cuba, pleaded guilty to espionage charges, admitting that she spied for the Cuban government for 16 years. Ms. Montes’s plea confirms the most serious penetration of the United States intelligence community ever by Fidel Castro’s Communist government. Iran’s Vice President, Mohsen Mehr Alizadeh, visited Havana to “explore” transfer of Cuban technology to Iran and “expand” cooperation in other areas. Bush administration allowed Jimmy Carter and Rosalind Carter visit to Cuba as part of small delegation. The visit was the first by a former U.S. president since the 1959 revolution. Fidel Castro released audio tape of phone call in which Mexican President Vincent Fox tried to persuade Castro to cancel or cut short his attendance at a United Nations development summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, in order not to “complicate” Mexico’s relationship with United States. The Bush administration’s Under Secretary of State John R. Bolton, in speech to the Heritage Foundation, accused Cuba of producing small quantities of germs that can be used in biological warfare. Cuba’s special envoy to Iraq, Dr. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, met with Saddam Hussein to affirm “Cuba’s absolute support” and convey a verbal message from Fidel Castro on enhancing bilateral relations with Iraq. Cuban human rights activist Oswaldo Paya issued an extraordinary challenge to the Castro government two days before historic visit

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by former President Jimmy Carter. He delivered a petition, called the Project Varela, signed by over 11,000 people to Cuba’s National Assembly; calling for a referendum on whether there should be more freedom of expression, amnesty for political prisoners and chance for ordinary citizens to own small businesses. Former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn arrived in Havana and called on Fidel Castro to allow referendum on broad political reforms. He criticized Cuba’s socialist system for denying basic freedoms in a speech broadcasted live across the nation. President Bush said that he would not lift the trade embargo against Cuba without substantial movement toward democracy. Syrian vice president, Mohamed Zouheir Macharka arrived in Cuba for a six-day visit hosted by the Communist Party of Cuba. The Syrian delegation visited Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the island’s petroleum industry facilities. Vowing never to return to capitalism, the National Assembly voted unanimously that Cuba’s socialist system is “irrevocable.” The vote was an effort to block the Varela Project which calls for increased personal and political freedoms. Iranian Deputy Minister of Health Mohammad Nouri arrived in Havana and was received by Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, Cuba’s National Assembly speaker. The Iranian delegation visited “research and medical centers and inspected ongoing medical, agricultural and economic projects.” On a visit to Baghdad, Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, head of the CubanIraqi Friendship Society and member of the National Assembly, met with Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz. Alvarez Cambras condemned U.S. policies against the Hussein regime, expressed “Cuba’s solidarity with and support for Iraq,” and discussed the “international situation.” Iranian ambassador in Havana, Davood Salehi, met with Cuban vice president Jose Ramon Fernandez. Fernandez stated that “Cuba attaches special significance to promote relations with the Islamic Republic, and expressed Cuba’s “support for the Iranian nation’s struggle against U.S. hegemonic policies and its unauthorized interferences.” State Department accused Cuba of deliberately subverting American efforts to fight terrorism by steadily providing Washington with erroneous tips and other false information about potential threats. Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque of Cuba angrily rebutted State Department charges that Cuba is providing the United States with false leads on terrorism.

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Fidel Castro and 300 American companies set aside four decades of estrangement to kick off the largest American trade show ever in Cuba in a suburb of Havana. In Havana, Youssef Mokaddem, Tunisia’s minister of foreign affairs, and Ernesto Senti, Cuba’s vice minister for foreign investment and cooperation, agreed to the transfer of Cuban biotechnology know-how to Tunisia and to establish a biotech production facility in the North African country. Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and Tunis’ Institut Pasteur will implement the agreement. Grenada accepted the first ambassador from Cuba in nearly two decades and will name an envoy to Cuba. Oswaldo Payá, attracted a great deal of international attention from politicians and leaders in the United States and Europe, head of the Varela Project. He was proposed by the Czech president, Vaclav Havel for the Nobel Peace Prize. The National Democratic Institute in Washington bestowed its highest honor on him. American and Soviet protagonists in Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which brought world to brink of nuclear war, met in Havana to discuss issues that arose from crisis, as well as its possible lessons for today. Ana B. Montes, former Pentagon intelligence analyst who spied for Cuba for 16 years was sentenced in the United States to 25 years, followed by five years’ probation. In Kuala Lumpur, Cuba’s Heber Biotec S.A. and Malaysia’s Bioven Holdings Sdn Bhd launched a new biotech joint venture to manufacture and distribute Cuban biotechnology products in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian markets. 2003

On March 6, Havana’s National Assembly (Cuba’s unicameral parliament consisting of 609 deputies which were “voted” into office in a one-party, one-candidate election held in January) formally approved Fidel Castro for a new five-year term as president of the Council of State, the communist regime’s executive ruling body. The deputies also rubber-stamped Fidel Castro’s slate of candidates for the Council of State. Cuban authorities conducted an islandwide roundup of dissidents, journalists and other opposition figures. Diplomats and dissidents said at least 72 people, and possibly as many as 87, have been arrested since the crackdown began. They face criminal charges for collaborating with American diplomats opposed to President Fidel Castro. Several high-profile dissidents have been arrested, including Raúl Rivero, the dean of the country’s independent journalists. The crackdown battered the Varela Project, a petition drive seeking political, civil and economic freedoms.

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Appendix II Current and Past Revolutionary Leaders This is intended as a representative selection of biographies of significant past and current leaders of the Cuban Revolution. ALARCON, Ricardo (1937– ). Born in Havana, Alarcon attended primary and secondary schools in the capital and graduated with a bachelor in Philosophy and Arts from the University of Havana. During the latter part of the Batista period (1952–59), he was a member of Castro’s 26th of July movement and its Frente Estudiantil Universitario. He was also active in student politics, becoming one of the leaders of the Federation of Cuban Students (FEU) at the University of Havana. In 1959, he joined the Castro government, working mainly in the diplomatic field. In 1962, he was head of the Latin American Department in the Ministry of Foreign Relations and became Vice-Minister and Cuba’s representative to the United Nations with the rank of Ambassador. He was also ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas. He served briefly as Minister of Foreign Relations. He is currently President of the National Popular Assembly and Chief Negotiator for the U.S.-Cuba immigration accords. Alarcon joined the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in 1961 and Cuba’s Communist Party (PPC) in 1971. He became an alternate member of the Central Committee of the PCC in 1980, and in the 1991 Party Congress, he was selected as a full member as well as Politburo member. ALMEIDA BOSQUE, Juan (1927– ). Communist government leader and one of Fidel Castro’s oldest comrades, whom he met in the early 1950s. This Havanaborn black took part in the 1953 Moncada attack and consequently shared imprisonment with the Castro brothers. On release he joined the Movimiento Veintiseis de Julio in Mexico and then sailed on the Granma expedition, being one of the few survivors to escape into the Sierra Maestra and form the nucleus of the rebel army. Promoted to major in 1958, he commanded the Third Front which operated in the Bayamo-Santiago de Cuba region. Following the Revolu678

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tion of 1959 he served in a number of command positions in the new Defense Ministry (MINFAR). In 1962–1965 he was a member of the national directorate of the Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas and its successor Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista (PURS). Since PURS became the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), he has been a member of its Central Committee and Politburo. In 1967–1970 he served as Politburo delegate to Oriente province. In December 1976 he became a Vice-President of the Council of State. As a deputy to the National Assembly he has represented the municipio of Santiago de Cuba since November 1976. At this time the PCC Central Committee appointed him chairman of its National Commission on Party Control and Revisions. Since 1990 he has been working with Raúl in the MINFAR as advisor. Besides his official positions, Almeida, who is seldom seen by non-Communist foreigners except on official occasions, is an accomplished poet and songwriter, author of the hit song “Dame un traguito” (“Give me a little drink”). CASAS REGUEIRO, Julio (1936– ). Born in Oriente, Casas Regueiro attended private schools and worked in his father’s business. He joined Castro’s guerrilla forces in the Sierra Maestra in 1958. He rose to the rank of lieutenant while in the Sierra. After the revolution he became a brigadier general in 1976 and a major general in 1979. He is currently the chief of Rearguard and Special Services and vice-minister and first substitute of the minister of the armed forces. Since 1985 he has been the architect of the economic involvement of the FAR in the Cuban economy, especially in Gaviota, the tourist enterprise run by the military. He is a member of the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party and is in charge of political and military cooperation with China. He attended the Soviet School of the General Staff in Moscow and is a close associate of Raul Castro. CASTRO, Fidel (Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, 1927– ). Cuban President, Chief of the Armed Forces and first secretary of the Partido Comunista de Cuba. A lawyer by training, a revolutionary by vocation, he has led the Revolution of 1959 for nearly forty years, transforming Cuba into a communist state in perpetual conflict with the United States. He was born August 13th on his family’s sugar plantation near Birán, northern Oriente province: the year was misstated as 1926 to advance his education. Fourth child and second son of Gallician immigrants, Ángel Castro y Argiz and Lina Ruz González de Castro—an alleged explanation of Castro’s strangely good relations with the Spain of fellow Gallician Francisco Franco—he was educated at the Jesuit Colegio Dolores in Santiago de Cuba and Colegio Belén in Havana. At Belen he was exposed to and became influenced by Falangismo, the Spanish brand of European fascism. He became an admirer of Primo de Rivera, head of the Spanish Falange. Father Amando Llorente S.J., one of his teachers at the latter, described him as “motivated, proud, different from the others” with “a desire to distinguish himself primarily

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in sports” where “he liked to win regardless of effort; he was little interested in parties or socializing, and seemed alienated from Cuban society.” In 1945 he entered the University of Havana law school. Protected by its autonomy, the University was a sanctuary for political agitators, where student activism, violence and gang fights were common. Castro soon became an activist, joining the Unión Insurrecional Revolucionaria. Although the police implicated him in the murder of a rival student leader and in other violent actions, nothing was proved. Castro acquired a reputation for personal ambition, forcefulness, and fine oratory. Yet he never became a prominent student leader. Several times he was defeated in student elections, an experience that could possibly have originated the dislike for voting evinced after he came to power. In 1947 he enrolled in the aborted Confites Expedition against Dominican dictator Trujillo and in 1948 participated in the “Bogotazo” riots in Colombia where he distributed anti-U.S. propaganda before resuming his studies. At the University he was exposed to ideologies of every type. On campus, more than anywhere else in Cuba, were the nation’s problems discussed and debated with vigor. In 1947 he was unsuccessfully prosecuted for killing Manolo Castro of the anti-Communist Movimiento Socialista Revolucionario. Above all, the nationalist program of the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxo)—economic independence, political liberty, social justice, and an end to corruption—captured the students’ imagination. The party’s charismatic leader, Eduardo Chibás, became their idol. Castro developed into a devoted follower, absorbing Chibás’ somewhat vague but puritanical ideology. While at university, Castro married Mirta Díaz-Balart, a young philosophy student, mother of their son Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart. The marriage later broke down. In 1950 Castro graduated and began practicing law in Havana. Law soon gave way to politics and revolution. He ran as an Orthodoxo candidate for congress but the June 1952 election was aborted by Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état, convincing Castro that violence was the only effective means of opposition. He organized the unsuccessful Moncada attack of July 26, 1953, was captured, tried and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The “history will absolve me” speech attacking the regime and outlining his political and economic ideas (most of them within the mainstream of Cuba’s political traditions) was smuggled out and published. Released by an amnesty in 1955, the untiring and determined Castro fled to Mexico where he began organizing an expedition against Batista. On December 2, 1956, Fidel, his brother Raúl Castro, and eighty others landed from the yacht Granma, on Cuba’s Oriente province. After all but twelve of the expeditionaries had been killed or captured in encounters with the army, the survivors fled into the Sierra Maestra to form a nucleus for a guerrilla operation. Meanwhile opposition to the Batista regime was growing. A March 13, 1957 attack on the Presidential Palace by students and followers of deposed President Prío nearly succeeded in killing Batista. On April 9, 1958 Castro called an unsuccessful general strike. The government met terrorism with counter-terrorism. Its oppo-

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nents were tortured and assassinated. By now a movement of national revulsion against Batista had developed. Castro emerged as the undisputed leader of the anti-Batista forces and his guerrillas increased their control over rural Cuba. Finally, army defections precipitated the regime’s collapse on New Year’s Eve. On January 1, 1959, Castro and his Movimiento 26 de Julio took power in the Revolution of 1959. Castro proclaimed a provisional government and began public trials and executions of the “criminals” of the ousted regime. A powerful speaker and a charismatic leader, Castro exerted an almost mystical hold over the Cuban masses. As Martí had done three quarters of a century earlier and Chibás only a decade before, Fidel lectured the Cubans on morality and public virtue. His administration was almost puritanical. He emphasized his commitment to democracy and social reform, promising to hold free elections. Denying the he was a Communist, he described his revolution as being humanistic and promised a nationalistic government which would respect private property and Cuba’s international obligations. Attempting to consolidate his support inside Cuba, Castro introduced several reforms. First, he confiscated wealth “illegally” acquired by Batista’s followers. Then, he substantially reduced rents paid by tenants of houses and apartments. Finally, he passed an agrarian reform law which confiscated landed property. Although the avowed purpose of this law to develop a class of independent farmers, in reality the regime transformed the areas seized into cooperatives managed by a National Institute of Agrarian Reform. As time went by, cooperatives gave way to state farms, with farmers becoming government employees. Toward the end of 1959 a radicalization of the revolution took place. This was accompanied by the defection or purge of revolutionary leaders and their replacement by more radical and oftentimes Communist militants. Castro accused the United States of harboring aggressive designs against the revolution. In February 1960, Anastas Mikoyan, Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, visited Havana and signed a Cuban-Soviet trade agreement, and soon after Cuba established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and most Communist countries. Castro’s verbal attacks against the United States increased. Several months later, when the three largest American oil refineries in Cuba refused to refine Soviet petroleum, Castro confiscated them. The United States retaliated by cutting Cuba’s sugar quota. Castro in turn nationalized other American properties as well as many Cuban businesses. In September 1960 Castro attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York, exchanging embraces with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In January 1961 President Eisenhower broke relations with Cuba. By that time anti-Castro exiles, supported by the United States, were training for an invasion of the island. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 consolidated Castro’s power and eventually led to the introduction of missiles in Cuba and to the October 1962 missile crisis. Before the invasion, Castro declared his regime to be socialist. Economic centralization increased. Private schools fell under government control. This was ac-

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companied by a nation-wide literacy campaign and by an increase of educational facilities. Sanitation and health improved with the establishment of rural hospitals under state control. Religious institutions were suppressed and clergymen expelled from the island. In December 1961, Castro openly espoused Communism. “I am a Marxist-Leninist,” he said, “and shall be one until the end of my life.” Castro also organized a single-party to rule Cuba. By the middle of 1961, he merged all groups that had fought against Batista into the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, a preparatory step toward the creation later of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution, transformed in 1965 into the Communist Party of Cuba—the island’s present and only ruling party. In foreign affairs Castro moved closer to the Soviet Union. The October 1962 missile crises, however, strained Cuban-Soviet relations. By negotiating directly with the U.S., the Soviet Union humiliated Castro. Despite Castro’s two visits to the Soviet Union in April 1963 and January 1964 and increased Soviet aid, uneasy relations prevailed between Havana and Moscow. At the same time, pro-Soviet Cuban communists were eliminated from positions of power. Until the end of 1963 Castro attempted to maintain a position of neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute. But following the 1964 Havana Conference of pro-Soviet Latin American Communist parties, the Soviet Union pressured Fidel into supporting its policies. Cuba’s relations with China deteriorated, and early in 1966 Castro denounced the Peking regime. By supporting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 Castro demonstrated his dependence on the Soviet Union as well as his determination to move closer to the Soviet camp. Another source of conflict in Cuban-Soviet relations has been Castro’s determination to export his revolution. After the 1964 Havana Conference of Latin American Communist parties, the Soviet Union was temporarily able to slow down Castro’s support for armed struggle in Latin America. But by 1966 Castro founded in Havana the Asia-Africa-Latin America People’s Solidarity Organization (AALAPSO) to promote revolution in three continents. In July 1967 he formed the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS), specifically designed to impel violence in Latin America. Castro’s efforts in the 1960s were unsuccessful, as evidenced by the failure of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967. Yet in the 1970s he could claim that the Nicaraguan revolution vindicated his commitment to violence as the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. Also Cuba, with Soviet support, dispatched more than 25,000 troops to Angola to establish a pro-Soviet Marxist regime. Castro continues to support revolutionary, terrorist, and anti-American groups throughout the world. For almost four decades now Castro has led the Cuban Revolution. Supervising projects, making decisions, traveling constantly, Castro has conducted his government in a highly personal style. A vague ideologist himself, he has transformed the island into a Communist state aligned with the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1989. He defied the United States’ power and brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. A determined revolutionary, he has made the shock waves of the Cuban Revolution felt not only in Latin

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America but throughout the world. Within Cuba he has maintained tight political control by clamping down on enemies and by allowing potential foes to leave the island. A hero to some, a traitor to others, a criminal demagogue to still others, Fidel Castro is undoubtedly one of these decades’ most controversial political leaders. CASTRO, Raúl (1931– ). Raúl Castro Ruz, younger brother of Fidel Castro, and fifth in the family, his education was at the same Jesuit schools and at the University of Havana where his interest in politics became evident. In 1953 as a member of the Juventud Socialista an affiliate of the Moscow-oriented Partido Socialista Popular, Cuba’s Communist Party, he participated in the World Youth Congress in Vienna and visited the Communist bloc capitals of Bucharest, Budapest and Prague. On his return he supposedly broke from the Socialist Youth and joined Fidel in his fight, saying that “the government must be overthrown so that the revolution can begin,” and agreeing that reform in Cuba could not be achieved constitutionally. Captured with his brother in the Moncada attack, he was sentenced to thirteen years, but released in the general amnesty of May, 1955. He then accompanied Fidel to Mexico and on the subsequent expedition aboard the Granma. Escaping together into the Sierra Madre, the Castro brothers gained support and Raúl, on February 27, 1958, received the rank of major. He then took some supporters and established a second front, named for Frank País in the Sierra Cristal. There he gained a reputation as “the most hot-headed, impetuous and violently anti-American” of the rebels, and for possessing a killer instinct. He reportedly matched Batista “terror for terror.” In the summer of 1958, when his force had reached a strength of several hundred, he kidnapped forty-seven Americans and three Canadians, ranging from engineers employed at the Moa Nickel Company to U.S. servicemen stationed at Guantánamo. Fidel reportedly disapproved and ordered the hostages released. Raúl refused, knowing that Batista would not attack his camp as long as he held Americans there. When the U.S. government accepted his demands, he released the prisoners, July 18, 1958. The kidnappings made world headlines, and new accusations of communism. With the triumph of the Revolution of 1959, Raúl decided to marry his fiancée, Vilma Espín, who had fought with him in the mountains. As soon as he and his brother assumed power he began to punish Batista supporters. Made head of the armed forces in mid 1959, he directed the execution of nearly 100 officers and men of the defeated army and had them buried in a mass grave near Santiago de Cuba. The same year he was named Minister for the Revolutionary Armed Forces, with ministerial rank and complete control in reorganizing the armed forces. He built the army up into a highly professional modern military establishment closely modeled on that of the Soviets, and armed with the latest Soviet equipment. Its motto was “At your orders, commander-in-chief, for no matter what, no matter where, and under all circumstances.” He introduced

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compulsory military service and sent thousands of young officers for training in the USSR. In 1969 he completed an advanced course taught by Soviet experts. In March of that year he asked that soldiers be trained “to exhibit friendship with the sister armies of socialist countries, especially the Great Soviet Army, whose representatives work at the side of were hurled at Raúl. our officers and also harvest the fruits of our common efforts.” As commander of Cuba’s two military intelligence organizations, he directly thwarted numerous counter-revolutionary activities. He called the presence of the Guantánamo naval base a “cancer” and a permanent focus of provocation. During the 1960s it was he who played a major role in transforming the framework of the Cuban government into a “Soviet-like single political party” structure. His power was consolidated with his positions as second secretary of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) and vice-premier. It was Raúl together with Fidel who arranged for the deployment of the Soviet long-range missiles which led to the Missile Crisis of 1962. In the 1970s and early 1980s he visited the USSR and Eastern Europe and was an observer of the Warsaw Pact maneuvers. In the early 1970s he was promoted to first vice-premier and made a comandante de división, a new rank equivalent to that of major general. He is also a member of the PCC’s Secretariat and Politburo. He was one of the principal figures in the move to a more Sovietized bureaucracy and long enjoyed Moscow’s confidence as a politically reliable Cuban leader and competent administrator. CIENFUEGOS GORRIARÁN, Camilo (1932–1959). Raúl Castro’s predecessor as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, born in la Vibora, district of Havana, Cienfuegos was an early supporter of Fidel Castro who sailed on the Granma and fought alongside him in the Sierra Maestra. He entered Havana as a major in the victorious rebel army in January 1959 and was appointed its commander. His influence on Castro was strong and his position following the Revolution of 1959 was due largely to his prominence during the last months of the war. Castro, nonetheless, popularized Cienfuegos, along with himself, his brother Raúl, and Ernesto Guevara. After Cienfuegos’ disappearance in a plane crash over the ocean in October, he became a martyr of the Revolution, although some suspected that Castro had eliminated him as a popular and potential rival. CIENFUEGOS GORRIARÁN, Osmani (1929– ). Elder brother of Camilo Cienfuegos and trained as an architect. Active in student politcs, he was a member of the youth branch of the Partido Socialista Popular, PSP. He did not fight in the revolutionary army, but following the Revolution of 1959 he entered politics as Minister of Public Works, a position he held until 1963. In 1965 he joined the national directorate of the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC). In 1966 he served as secretary general of the Organización para la Solidaridad de los Pueblos de África, Asia y América Latina. During 1966–1973 he was chairman of the PCC

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Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1973 he became minister-secretary of the Council of Ministers. In 1980 became vice-president of the Council of Ministers, with responsibility for the Cuban Tourist Institute, the State committees for technical and material supply, finance and labor and social security. In 1986 he became a member of the politburo and temporarily succeeded Ramiro Valdes Menéndez as interior minister. In general, it was his Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers that helped administer Cuba on a day-to-day basis. His latest post is Minister of Tourism although at the V Party Congress in 1997 he was dismissed from the PCC Politburo. In mid-1999 he was replaced as Minister of Tourism. COLOMÉ IBARRA, Abelardo (1940– ). Santiago-born General de división “Furry” Colomé joined the Movimiento 26 de Julio in 1957 and took part in Raúl Castro’s “Frank País Second Front.” Since 1959 he has held numerous positions within the intelligence apparatus, working directly under Ramiro Valdés Menéndez and Manuel Piñeiro Losada. In 1963 he joined the Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC), and was elected to the Central Committee. He also became an official of the Dirección General de Inteligencia. In that capacity he is reported to have been involved in various subversive activities in Latin America. In 1971 he became vice defense minister in charge of counter-intelligence. His position in the government hierarchy was consolidated with his appointment as chief of the Angola expeditionary corps. At the end of the third PCC congress in 1986 he emerged as one of the principal figures in the government and a member of the Politburo of the Party. He was later appointed as Head of the Army and Minister of the Interior. DORTICÓS TORRADO, Osvaldo (1919–1983). President of Cuba, 1959–1975. Born in Cienfuegos, where he attended the Roman Catholic Instituto Champagnat primary school and the public high school. Politically active at an early age, he took part in the general strike of 1935. He graduated from the University of Havana law school in 1941 and returned to practice in Cienfuegos, served as dean of the local bar association, and later as vice-president of the national bar association. He became a member of the Partido Socialista Popular as the Cuban Communists were known prior to 1959. A member of Movimiento de Resistencia Civica, he was briefly imprisoned following an abortive rising in Cienfuegos in 1957 against the Batista dictatorship. On his release he joined the Movimiento 26 de Julio, becoming its coordinator in Cienfuegos and supplying troops for Che Guevara in the Sierra Escambray. Rearrested in December 1958, he was soon released and fled to Mexico, returning after the Revolution of 1959 to become Minister of Revolutionary Laws. As such he was responsible for the Fundamental Law of 1959 to modify the Constitution of 1940. On Manuel Urrutia’s July 17th ouster, Dorticós became Cuba’s youngest-ever President. Real power remained in the hands of Prime Minister Fidel Castro but, as his loyal ally, Dorticós

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received such additional posts as those of Minister of the Economy and Director of the Junta Central de Planificación (Juceplán). In 1965 he became a member of the Partido Comunista de Cuba, its Politburo and Secretariat. After Aníbal Escalante lost his post as Secretary of the National Organization of the Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista in 1962, Dorticós temporarily replaced him. When Castro reorganized the Cuban government in 1975–76, Dorticós stepped down from the Presidency but was made Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Justice, held posts in the National Assembly and on the Council of State, and remained on the Politburo. His wife, María Caridad Molina died in 1982; they were childless, and Dorticós committed suicide the following year. ESPÍN, Vilma (1934- ). President of the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, and wife of Raúl Castro whom she wed on January 26, 1959. She was born in Santiago de Cuba, the daughter of an upper-middle class rum distiller of Santiago de Cuba of a Cuban father and French mother, and studied to be a chemical engineer. In her fourth year as a student (1952), she became a political activist after Batista’s pre-election coup which ended democratic government, joining the big street demonstrations. After graduating from the University of Oriente, she studied chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the Movimiento 26 de Julio in 1956. After visiting Fidel Castro in Mexico, she worked to form the first aid brigades and women’s units in preparation for the abortive revolution of November 1956, and afterwards joined the guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra. There, under the name of “Debora,” she fought alongside Raúl and was reported to have been his “political mentor.” In 1959, after Castro came to power, she took a delegation to the Congress of the International Federation of Democratic Women in Chile, and in 1960 they established the Federation of Cuban Women, to fight illiteracy, organize workshops and employment, and to gain their political participation. Vilma Espín became its head, and also rose to become a member of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party, while working in the Ministry of Food, in the Chemical Engineers Office. She has since divorced Raúl but remains an important member of the “new class” in power. GUEVARA, “Che” (Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, 1928–1967). Argentine revolutionary, Cuba’s former Minister of Industries, guerrilla theoretician and Fidel Castro’s trusted adviser. Born June 14 in Rosario, Argentina, of Spanish and Irish descent, he suffered from asthma, spending his childhood in a mountain town near Rosario. At an early age he read history and sociology books in the family library and was particularly influenced by the poetry of Chilean Communist Pablo Neruda. In 1952 he broke off his medical studies at the University of Buenos Aires to set off on with a friend on a transcontinental trip that included motorcycling to Chile, riding a raft on the Amazon and taking a plane to Florida.

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He returned to his studies in Argentina, graduating doctor of medicine and surgery in 1953. Late that year he left his country for good, moving to Guatemala, where he supported the leftist Arbenz regime and had his first experience of war when he observed the military overthrow of Arbenz. He sought asylum in the Argentine embassy until he could travel to Mexico to attend a medical conference. In Mexico he met Fidel and Raúl Castro and agreed to be their doctor on the Granma expedition. With the consummation of the Revolution of 1959 he was one of the first rebel commanders to enter Havana and take control of the capital. Guevara held several posts in the new government: commander of La Cabaña fortress, President of the Banco Nacional (signing currency bills “Che”), Industry Minister—and always, one of Castro’s most influential advisers. As Industry Minister he pursued a poorly thought out policy of import substitution by way of rapid industrialization which was contrary to the USSR’s policy for Cuba, and advocated the supremacy of moral over material incentives to increase production. In the fall of 1960 he visited Communist countries to build up trade relations. He attended the 1961 Organization of American States Conference in Punta del Este. He also masterminded Cuba’s subversive program in Latin America and wrote extensively on this subject. His first book, La Guerra de guerrillas (1960) provided basic instructions, and claimed the Cuban experience as proof that rural guerrilla campaigns can defeat conventional armies. His official tasks did not cure him of his restlessness. In December 1964 he set out on a long journey to Europe, Africa, and Asia. He criticized the Soviet Union for not supporting armed struggle. After his return he surprisingly disappeared from public view. His wanderings next took him to the Belgian Congo where he participated in an unsuccessful guerrilla movement. He returned and prepared a team of Cuban army officers to accompany him on his next expedition, to Bolivia. He expected that a spreading guerrilla operation there would force United States intervention, creating “two, three, or many Vietnams.” Instead the U.S. provided the Bolivian army with arms and training in counter-insurgency. Despite initial success, the guerrillas failed to gain peasant support and were tracked down and killed and captured by the Bolivians. Che was captured on October 8 and executed the next day. Some have labeled him a restless incompetent, promoted by Castro for the propaganda value of his good looks, romantic rhetoric and as, in his Argentine nationality, a symbol of Latin American solidarity, only to be repudiated and abandoned in Bolivia as soon as he had ceased to be useful. LAGE, Carlos (1951– ). Member of the Political Bureau of Central Committee of the Partido Comunista de Cuba. Member of the Council of State and Deputy to the National Assembly. A member of the Grupo de Apoyo al Comandante and Vice President in charge of the Economy, Lage is one of the key officials under

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the Castro brothers. In the early 1990s he was promoted to Head of the Seretariat of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers. By training a physician, he also received a masters degree in Social Science. He was active in the Student Federation at the University of Havana and became First Secretary of the National Committee of the Union of Young Communists and head of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers. He served in Ethiopia as a pediatrician and joined the Cuban Communist Party in 1976. LOPEZ MIERA, Alvaro (1944– ). Born in Havana, he attended school in the capital and in Santiago de Cuba. He became a member of Juventud Socialista, youth branch of Cuba’s old communist party, the Partido Socialista Popular in the 1950s and joined Castro’s rebel army in the Sierra Maestra in 1958. After the revolutionary victory he was a member of the militia and later chief of Artillery Group in Havana. He rose quickly in the military, reaching in 1990 the rank of brigadier general and in 1997, major general. He saw combat in Angola and attended Voroshilov Academy in the USSR and the Superior War College in Cuba. He is currently the chief of the General Staff of Cuba’s armed forces. In 1995 he received the title of “Hero of the Cuban Republic.” A close ally of Raul Castro, he participated in the tribunal that sentenced Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa to death in 1989. MACHADO VENTURA, José Ramón (1930– ). Politburo member. Born in Santa Clara province, he graduated in medicine from the University of Havana in 1954, after which he became involved in activity against the Batista regime, eventually joining the Movimiento 26 de Julio forces under Raúl Castro in northern Oriente province. While assigned as Raúl’s military health chief he was made a major. Following the Revolution of 1959 he directed medical services in Havana and was then health minister in 1968. He was appointed to the Central Committee of the Partido Comunista de Cuba in October 1965, to its Politburo in December 1975, and to its Secretariat in November 1976. He served as the Politburo’s delegate in Matanzas province in 1968–1971. He was PCC First Secretary of Havana from 1971 to 1976 when he was assigned to the PCC Secretariat. Since November 1976 he has been a deputy for the municipio of Playa (City of Havana province) in the Asamblea Nacional. Machado has been a member of the Council of State since December 1976. In 1975 he became Politburo member in charge of PCC organization. During crises he has helped set up massive progovernment demonstrations in the Plaza de la Revolución. One of the most influential figures of the Politburo controlling the Party machinery and its “nomenklatura.” He helped build Cuba’s health care system. MATOS, Huber (1918– ). Revolutionary (and former rice grower in Manzanillo, Oriente province) who became commander of the Santiago column of the

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Movimiento 26 de Julio. In January 1959 he was appointed military commander of the Rebel Army in Camaguey Province. In October 1959 he resigned from the government and the army to protest Communist infiltration and was arrested by Fidel Castro who saw this as treason. His December 1959 trial sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment, after which he went into exile in Venezuela and founded the Cuba Independiente y Democrática organization. Matos eventually settled in Miami and continued the struggle against Castro. OCHOA SÁNCHEZ, Arnaldo T. (1932–1989). Revolutionary soldier. Born in Cauto Cristo in Holguín province, he was one of seven children, and left school on completing the sixth grade. At the age of eighteen he joined Castro’s rebels in the Sierra Maestra. With the Revolution of 1959 he became an army captain. Involved in Cuban-sponsored guerrilla activities throughout the world during the 1960s and 1970s he quickly rose through the ranks and received special military training in the Soviet Union where he graduated form the Frunze Military Academy. In 1963 he became a comandante, chief of the Central Army and a member of the Central Committee of the Partido Comunista de Cuba. Five years later he was promoted to command the Army of Havana. In 1967 he led a large group of guerrillas sent to Venezuela to support Douglas Bravo’s insurgency. In 1977–78 he led Yemeni and Cuban forces who assisted Mengistu Haile Marian in defeating a Somali invasion in Ethiopia. In the 1970s he was involved in training and advising the Sandinistas in their struggle against Somoza and later in the organization of their army. In the 1980s he led the 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola. He rose to the rank of general de división and became chief of the Cuban forces in Ethiopia. In 1981 he was promoted to deputy interior minister and three years later he received Cuba’s highest military honors, the title of Hero of the Republic and the Order of Máximo Gómez. All this changed on June 12, 1989, when he was arrested on charges of narcotics trafficking and corruption. It was alleged that during his Angolan service in the 1980s he had been guilty of smuggling and of selling food on the black market. The allegations reached high into the Interior Ministry, implicating also the minister, José Abrantes Fernández. Others arrested included Brigadier General Patricio de la Guardia Font and his twin brother Colonel Antonio. A court martial of twenty-seven generals stripped Ochoa of his military rank, awards and honors, dishonorably discharged him and sentenced him to death by firing squad. On July 13, he, Antonio de la Guardia and two other military officers were executed. Most observers believed that Ochoa was executed because of disagreements with the Castro brothers, while the others were killed to silence possible accomplices in drug trafficking who could have implicated the Castros. The absence of reference to drug dealing in Raúl Castro’s final speech for the prosecution fueled speculation that there were political reasons for this major purge.

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PEREZ ROQUE, Felipe (1965– ). Born in Havana he attended local schools and the University of Havana from where he graduated as an engineer specializing in computer technology. At the University he became president of the Federation of University Students and a prominent member of the Union of Young Communists. In the late 1980s Fidel Castro entrusted one his closest associates, Vecino Alegret, to “train” Perez Roque in governmental affairs and Cuban history. Alegret took the young pupil on an extended trip of the Sierra Maestra where Perez Roque learned about Castro’s revolutionary struggle and experienced life in a rural environment. At age 25 he joined the Grupo de Coordinacion y Apoyo del Comandante en Jefe, a small elite of bright young cadres engaged in specialized tasks assigned to them by Fidel Castro. In 1991 he became a member of the Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party and a deputy of the National Assembly of the People’s Power. He also became a member of the Council of State and since May 1999 has been Cuba’s minister of foreign relations. He is married to Jaime Crombet’s daughter. Crombet is the vice president of the Assembly and one of Castro’s closest associates. PORTAL LEÓN, Marcos (1945- ). Marcos Portal was born in Las Villas in 1945. Since his early youth he was entirely dedicated to the Revolution as a member of the Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes (AJR) and of the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas or UJOTAC (Union of Young Communists). Portal is an outstanding student, excelling in the field of chemical engineering as a student at the University of Havana where he was very active in research projects. During his years at the university, he became acquainted and worked very close with Dr. José M. Miyar and with Fidel Castro. A member of the Party since 1970, he has always combined his professional activities with Party activities. As a student he was also secretary general of the UJOTAC at the university. After graduation in 1973, he was appointed as head director of the fertilizer plant at Nuevitas, in the province of Camaguey. Appointed to the National Assembly since 1976, his role as a political leader has not prevented him from continuous studies in his field. By 1979, he was promoted to work as a member of the Equipo de Coordinación y Apoyo del Comandante en Jefe. Portal has been a member of the Central Committee since 1980. Three years later, he was appointed as Minister of Basic Industries. He was the first civilian minister to join the process of Perfeccionamiento Empresarial at the beginning of the 1990s, sponsored and led by FAR. He was allowed to redesign his ministry from top to bottom, following patterns of capitalist industrial organization and granting the different branches considerable autonomy and economic incentives, something that makes him a key player in the process of economic reform. Portal has been a member of the Politburo since the V Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1997. He has also been a key player in crucial negotiations and deals with Sherrit, Petrobras, Castrol, Repsol,

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and other important foreign partners, in particular with British companies since early 2000. Portal was distinguished as the best government official in 1997. He is married to one of Raúl Castro’s daughters and has a strong reputation as being extremely dedicated, brilliant, and honest. ROBAINA, Roberto (—). The youngest member of the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party (PCC) and of the Council of State, Robaina has had a meteoric rise within the ranks of Cuba’s government. From a humble peasant background, Robaina obtained a degree in mathematics. He joined the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in the 1970s, and in 1982 he was appointed second secretary of the organization. In 1986, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Party, in 1990 alternate member of the Politburo, and in 1991 full member. He was Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Relations until mid-1999 when he was replaced by Felipe Perez-Roque. RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ, Carlos Rafael (1913–1997). Communist Party leader, lawyer and economist, he graduated in law from the University of Havana and served intermittently on the faculty. Following the downfall of President Machado, Rodríguez served as alcalde of his native Cienfuegos and in 1936 joined the Unión Revolucionaria Comunista; in 1939 he was elected to its Central Committee. From 1936 to 1939 he edited a new Communist magazine, Mediodía and in 1938 became coeditor of the magazine Universidad. He married Communist leader Edith García Buchaca, but she left him for other Communist leader, Joaquín Ordoqui. He became minister without portfolio and a member of the National Committee for Post-War Studies in Batista’s 1940–1944 administration; from 1943– 1944 he was court attorney for the City of Havana and a civil servant. He became interested in economics and wrote extensively on Marxist theory. He opposed Batista’s 1952–1959 administration and in early 1958 traveled to the Sierra Maestra to negotiate an alliance between the Communists and Fidel Castro’s Movimiento 26 de Julio. He spent the rest of the war there, establishing a close relationship with Castro and his top followers. After the Revolution of 1959, Rodríguez became editor of Hoy. He helped draw up government decrees and in 1960–1961 was involved in university reform. In the power struggle with the Old Guard Communists, he supported Castro. In the 1960s he was made head of the Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria, becoming a minister when INRA’s status was upgraded. As INRA gathered holdings into granjas del pueblo, production fell and food shortages increased. In 1965 Castro took over the presidency of INRA and Rodríguez was appointed to the party secretariat. In 1970 he became President of the National Commission of the Council of Ministers on Economic, Scientific and Technical Collaboration. His importance increased when in 1971 he became Vice-President of the Council of Ministers. When Castro reorganized the government in 1972,

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Rodríguez was named one of Cuba’s seven vice-presidents. He was also a member of the Politburo and the party secretariat, a member of the Asamblea Nacional and a vice-president of both the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. He has been one of the most important figures in the government and has remained closely associated with Castro rather than with the “Old Communists.” He served as Fidel’s principal liaison with the Soviet Union and eastern European nations. At age eighty-four he was retired from the Politburo of Cuba’s Communist Party during the Fifth Party Congress in October, 1997. He died on December 9, 1997. ROSALES DEL TORO, Ulises (1942– ). Born and raised in El Cobre, the son of a Spanish small merchant and a mulatta. He had reached a secondary education when he joined the guerrillas in December 1957, fighting under the command of Fidel Castro, Juan Almeida, and Guillermo Garcia. One of the amazing features is that in 1959 he was just a soldier and in four years he was already a captain soon to become a comandante. He has taken every course available in Cuba and in the former Soviet Union, including three on strategy and operations at the highest level in the Voroshilov Academy, achieving excellence in the field of strategy and General Staff leadership. He was in Algeria for nine months during the border clashes with Morocco as Chief of Staff of the Cuban Combat Task Force that was sent to assist the Algerian government. Three years later he infiltrated in Venezuela with a group of Cuban officers and Venezuelan guerrilla leaders for the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria), where he fought for 14 months (1967–1968), being wounded in action,. He had an outstanding role in conducting operations of 1975–1976 in Angola. He also played a major role in the negotiations with South Africa and the U.S. to achieve a settlement to the conflict in Southern Africa. Since 1981 he has been Chief of the General Staff. A Division General and a “Hero of the Republic of Cuba,” he was appointed a full member of the Politburo after the III Congress of the CCP in 1985, becoming thus one of the most influential figures in Cuba’s power structure. In 1997 he was appointed Minister of the Sugar Industry in an attempt to bring discipline and productivity to that sagging industry. SÁNCHEZ MANDULEY, Celia (1920-1980). Born in Pilón, Media Luna on May 9, 1920, the daughter of a prominent doctor Manuel Sanchez Silveira, she became the leader of Fidel Castro’s clandestine rebel movement in Manzanillo, and later Castro’s personal secretary and confidant. Sanchez was the first woman incorporated into Castro’s Rebel Army, which fought Batista’s dictatorship in the Sierra Maestra mountains. She is recognized as “la primera guerillera.” Sanchez was one of the active founders of the Movimiento 26 de Julio, responsible for the preparations of Fidel Castro’s arrival on the Granma in Manazanillo. Acting under her alias “Norma,” she funneled guns, food and clothing to Castro and his

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Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra for two years, helping fortify the guerrilla movement. Sanchez was instrumental in promoting the creation of the women’s brigade Mariana Grajales in the Sierra, and the incorporation of Cuban women into the guerilla movement. After the war she was a top confident of Fidel and a leader in Cuba’s women’s movement. Later she became a member of Cuba’s Communist Party’s central committee. On January 11, 1980 Celia Sanchez Manduley died in Cuba. URRUTIA LLEO, [Dr.] Manuel (1901–1981). An honest and principled judge, selected by Fidel Castro and the Caracas Pact in 1958 to become provisional President of Cuba following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista. Born in Yaguajay, he graduated from law school in 1923. Appointed judge in Santiago, he presided over the 1957 trial of a group of Fidel Castro’s supporters from the Granma expedition. He opposed the sentencing of Castro’s followers whom he acquitted The decision brought him a reprimand from the Batista government. In December 1957 he went into exile in Miami as Castro’s favored candidate for the presidency. In November 1958 he flew to the guerrilla stronghold to consult with the revolutionaries. With the triumph of the Revolution of 1959, he took over the Presidency and appointed José Miró Cardona as prime minister, with a civilian cabinet composed mainly of figures outside traditional politics, but generally older and more moderate than the rebels, some prominent Ortodoxos. He then proceeded to tear down the old governmental structure, dissolving Congress, removing all office holders, purging the bureaucracy and abolishing censorship and other martial law restrictions. It soon became clear, however, that Castro held the real power, often announcing major policy changes without consulting the cabinet and publicly complaining about the slowness of reform. For his part, Urrutia publicly attacked the Communists. His downfall followed, and a television speech by Fidel Castro attacking Urrutia as counter-revolutionary. On July 17, 1959 Castro accused Urrutia of being an obstacle to the Revolution and fabricating the legend of a Communist danger. Urrutia resigned and was replaced by Osvaldo Dorticós. Escaping from house arrest, Urrutia took refuge in the Venezuelan embassy and remained in asylum for two years before being allowed to leave Cuba. He retired from politics and became a teacher of Spanish at Queens College, New York. VALDÉS MENÉNDEZ, Ramiro (1932– ). Born in Artemisa, Pinar del Río, he took part in the Moncada barracks attack. As a member of the Movimiento Veintiseis de Julio he also sailed on the Granma. He has been a member of the Politburo of the Partido Comunista de Cuba since October 1965. He has served as Interior Minister (1960–1968 and 1981–1986), Vice-Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (1970–1971), chief of the construction sector (1971–1972), Vice-Prime Minister (1972–1976) and vice-president of the Council of Ministers (since De-

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cember 1976). He was a member of the Communist Party Politburo until he was dismissed in 1985 during the Third Party Congress. In November 1976 he was elected a deputy to the Asamblea Nacional for his home town. For the past decade he has been in charge of a centralized state project concerning the development of computer systems throughout the country. VALLE JIMENEZ, Sergio del (1927– ). A native of Pinar del Rio provence and a graduate of the University of Havana medical school, he joined the Movimiento Veintiseis de Julio in the late 1950s and reached the rank of comandante fighting in the Sierra Maestra. He then held various posts in the Defense Ministry as Chief of the General Staff. He was then Interior Minister 1970–1979 when he became Health Minister. He has appointed a member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Partido Comunista de Cuba in 1965. He was removed from the Politburo during the Third Party Congress in 1985. In November 1976 he was elected deputy for Pinar del Rio in the Asamblea Nacional. He is currently an advisor to Raul Castro in the Ministry of the Armed Forces with the rank of division general.

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Appendix III Chronology of Cuba and the Middle East: 2000-2002 2000 September 13: Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, arrived in Cuba on the first-ever official visit by a Persian Gulf head of state. Fidel Castro decorated al-Thani with Cuba’s highest distinction, the Jose Marti Order. The Qatari delegation visited Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Cuba and Qatar signed cooperation accords in health, science, and technology. September 15: Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, concluded an official three-day visit to Havana. Fidel Castro honored Saleh with the Jose Marti Order and received the Order of the Republic of Yemen from Yemen’s president. Saleh and the Yemeni delegation toured the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the Frank Pais orthopedic hospital in Havana. Cuba and Yemen agreed to expand joint ventures, facilitate investment, and increase technical cooperation. September 30: Iranian president Mohammad Khatami arrived in Havana on a landmark two-day official visit to Cuba. Castro conferred the Jose Marti Order on the Iran’s president. Castro and Khatami discussed oil and bilateral relations. Khatami visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana where he praised Cuba’s scientific achievements stating that “imperialist powers could not monopolize knowledge and technology.” 2001 May 5-17: Fidel Castro and a senior Cuban government delegation visited Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Qatar, Syria, and Libya to bolster political and economic ties with Muslim states before returning to Cuba. May 5-7: Fidel Castro bestowed the Cuban state’s highest honor—the Jose Marti Order—on Algeria’s current president and his long-time ally, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The Algerian president inducted Castro as

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an honorary member of the Algerian armed forces, decorating him with the Medals of the Algeria Liberation Army and the National Liberation Front. The two heads of state held official and private talks on regional and international matters and committed to strengthening bilateral ties. May 8-10: In Tehran, Castro laid a floral wreath at the tomb of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and called Iran a “friend, brother, and ally of the progressive and independence-loving peoples of the world.” Castro was received by and conferred with the highest political and religious powers in Iran, including president Mohammad Khatami, the current supreme leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, and former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, among others. May 10: Speaking at the Islamic University of Tehran, Fidel Castro stated: “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up.” During his stay in Iran, Castro inspected the construction of a joint Cuban-Iranian “biotechnology complex, the largest and most modern of its type in the Middle East,” according to Granma, the official Cuban newspaper. May 10-13: In Kuala Lumpur, Fidel Castro met with Malaysian prime minister and strongman Mahathir bin Mohammad. Castro praised Mohammad as the “rebel of the East” for his authoritarian regime’s opposition to Western democracy. Cuba and Malaysia signed an accord to expand bilateral economic, scientific, and cultural ties. May 13-15: Fidel Castro arrived in Doha for his first visit to Qatar. He was received by Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and interviewed by the al-Jazeera news network. Castro visited Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas complex and sought to strengthen ties to the petroleum-rich emirate. May 15: Syria’s president Bashar Hafez al-Assad welcomed Castro to Damascus. The two heads of state held official and private talks on building bilateral relations and coordinating a response to U.S. policies. Castro recalled the participation of Cuban military units in Syria during the 1973-1975 war with Israel. May 16: In Libya, Fidel Castro and Mohammar Qaddafi conversed in public and private on ways to strengthen Cuba-Libya relations and bolster cooperation that peaked in the 1970s and 1980s. Castro visited Qaddafi’s former residence bombed by the U.S. in 1986. Castro wrote in the visitors’ log: “It is one thing to hear about the barbarity of the Yankee empire and quite another to see it in all its horror. It is something that can never be forgotten.” July 26: Hojjatoleslam Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic in Iran, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, walked side-by-

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side with Fidel Castro as his guest of honor during the annual July 26 demonstration in Havana. December 5-8: Zuhair Dhaif, Latin America liaison for the ruling Iraqi Baathist Party, as well as an unidentified Libyan envoy, attended the 10th annual Foro de Sao Paulo conference (gathering of the Latin American radical and terrorist left) hosted by Fidel Castro and the Communist Party of Cuba in Havana. 2002 February 26: Iran’s Minister of Science, Research and Technology, Mostafa Moin, visited Havana to sign a memorandum of understanding with Cuban counterpart Rosa Elena Simeon on scientific and research cooperation. February 27: Dr. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, director of the Frank Pais Scientific Complex in Havana and head of the Cuban-Arab Friendship Association, led a Cuban delegation to Yemen to meet with president Ali Addullah Saleh and formalize an agreement to build, and staff with Cuban personnel, a new orthopedic hospital in Sanaa. March 6: Cuban parliamentary delegation led by Kaheimi Hernandez arrived in Algeria on a three-day visit to “exchange viewpoints concerning several current international issues” and develop bilateral relations. April 18: Iran’s vice-president, Mohsen Mehr Alizadeh, visited Havana to “explore” the transfer of Cuban technology to Iran and “expand” cooperation in other areas. May 7: Cuba’s special envoy to Iraq, Dr. Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, met with Saddam Hussein to affirm “Cuba’s absolute support” and convey a verbal message from Fidel Castro on enhancing bilateral relations with Iraq. June 16: Syria’s vice president, Mohamed Zouheir Macharka, arrived in Cuba for a six-day visit hosted by the Communist Party of Cuba. The Syrian delegation visited Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and the island’s petroleum industry facilities. July 17: Fidel Castro sent a congratulatory telegram to Saddam Hussein on the occasion of the rise to power of Hussein’s socialist Baath Party in 1968. Castro attacked the “savage policy of the United States towards the friendly Iraqi people” and reiterated his solidarity with Iraq. July 17: Iranian Deputy Minister of Health Mohammad Nouri and delegation in Havana. Received by Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, head of Cuba’s National Assembly. The Iranian delegation visited “research and medical centers” and “inspected ongoing medical, agricultural and economic projects.” July 21: On a visit to Baghdad, Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, head of the Cuban-Iraqi Friendship Society and member of the National Assembly,

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met with Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz. Alvarez Cambras condemned U.S. policies against the Hussein regime, expressed “Cuba’s solidarity with and support for Iraq,” and discussed the “international situation” with the Iraqi official. July 25: Iranian ambassador in Havana, Davood Salehi, met with Cuban vice president Jose Ramon Fernandez. Fernandez stated that “Cuba attaches special significance to promoting relations with the Islamic Republic,” and expressed Cuba’s “support for the Iranian nation’s struggle against US hegemonic policies and its unauthorized interferences.” October 2: In Kuala Lumpur, Cuba’s Heber Biotec S.A. and Malaysia’s Bioven Holdings Sdn Bhd launched a new biotech joint venture to manufacture and distribute Cuban biotechnology products in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian markets. October 3: In Havana, Youssef Mokaddem, Tunisia’s minister of foreign affairs, and Ernesto Senti, Cuba’s vice minister for foreign investment and cooperation, agreed to the transfer of Cuban biotechnology know-how to Tunisia to establish a biotech production facility in the North African country. Havana’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and Tunis’ Institut Pasteur will implement the accord.

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Appendix IV Castro and Terrorism: Chronology and Glossary 1959-1967

Raúl Castro and Che Guevara visited Cairo and established contacts with African liberation movements stationed in and supported by Cairo. Both Cuban leaders visited Gaza and expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Members of the Dominican Republic “Agrupación Política Catorce de Junio” received military training in Cuba. Major emphasis was placed on instructing several hundred proCastro Latin Americans in violence and guerrilla warfare. Dominicans, Guatemalans, Venezuelans and Chileans were trained in special camps in Cuba and infiltrated back to their countries. Castro established relations with the Algerian FLN; official and public support was extended, weapons were shipped to the FLN through Morocco (1960-1961). Cuba provided shelter, medical and educational services and cooperation in the fields of counter-intelligence and intelligence. African leaders from Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Spanish Guinea, Tanganyika and Zanzibar arrived in Cuba for military training. Che Guevara engaged in guerrilla operations in Congo-Kinshasa (former Zaire) in 1965. A revolutionary trained in Cuba, John Okello, overthrew the proWestern government in Zanzibar in 1964 and proclaimed the “People’s Republic of Zanzibar” which was promptly recognized by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Conference of Latin American Communist Parties held in Havana agreed to “help actively the guerrilla forces in Venezuela, Guatemala, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras and Haiti”.

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Group of Venezuelans, members of the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), trained in Cuba and landed in the Venezuela coast in the State of Miranda. Cuban trained Guatemalans Cesar Montes and Luis Turcios Lima led a violent terrorist/guerrilla campaign against the government in Guatemala. Montes organized the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) in Guatemala. In the 1980’s he joined the FMLN in El Salvador and participated actively in the bloody civil war in that country. Cuba welcomed the founding of the PLO. First contacts with Palestinian FATAH in 1965 in Algiers and Damascus. The Tricontinental Conference was held in Havana in January 1966 to adopt a common political strategy against colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. Cuba provided the organizational structure to support terrorist, anti-American groups in the Middle East and Latin America. The Organization for the Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAL) was created. Fidel Castro created The National Liberation Directorate (DLN) in Cuba to support revolutionary groups throughout the world. DLN was responsible for planning and coordinating Cuba’s terrorist training camps in the island, covert movement of personnel and military supplies from Cuba and a propaganda apparatus. A Cuban controlled Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO), with its permanent seat in Havana was created to “coordinate and foment the fight against North American imperialism”. In Venezuela, Castro made a relentless and determined effort to create another Cuba by supporting the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN) and promoting violence and terrorism against the democratically elected regime of Rómulo Betancourt. Castro sent weapons via Cairo, to the NLF in Southern Yemen. Cuban agents were sent on fact-finding missions to North and South Yemen (1967- 1968). Cuba published a small book by French Marxist journalist Regis Debray Revolution in the Revolution, promoting guerrilla warfare in Latin America. The book was translated into various languages and distributed widely. Cuban supported guerrillas led by Che Guevara moved into Bolivia in an attempt to create “many Vietnams “ in South America.

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Cuba and Syria developed a close alliance and supported FATAH and the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). 1968-1975

Cuba continued its military and political support for FATAH after the Syrians broke with the latter, and Cuban military, political and intelligence support was granted to other Palestinian organizations. Castro sent military instructors and advisors into Palestinian bases in Jordan to train Palestinian Fedayeen (1968); first high-level delegation from FATAH-PLO visited Cuba (1970). Several missions sent to Southern Yemen to support NLF/FATAH Ismail both politically and militarily. Castro began supporting and training of M19, a Colombian guerrilla group that captured the Dominican Embassy and the Justice building in Bogota and assassinated several prominent Colombian judges. In 1970 a “Mini Manual for Revolutionaries” was published in the official LASO publication Tricontinental, written by Brazilian urban terrorist leader Carlos Marighella. The mini manual gives precise instruction in terror tactics, kidnappings, etc. The short book was translated into numerous languages and distributed worldwide by Cuba. Cuba commenced political and military cooperation with Somalia’s Siad Barre (1969). Economic and political cooperation began with Libya in 1974. In 1974 the National Liberation Directorate (DLN) was reorganized into the America Department (DA) under the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee. The DA centralized control over Cuban activities for supporting national liberation movements. The DA was responsible for planning and coordinating Cuba’s secret guerrilla and terrorist training camps, networks for the covert movement of personnel and material from Cuba, and a propaganda apparatus. DA agents also operated in Europe and other regions. Trusted Castro ally Manuel Piñeiro, “ Barbaroja” was placed in charge. Cuba provided training and support to the Tupamaros, a terrorist group operating in Uruguay. Cuba’s America Department (DA) set up a network for the funneling of weapons and supplies to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. In 1979 second in command in Cuba’s America Department (DA) Armando Ulises Estrada, helped unify Sandinista factions fighting Somoza.

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Closer connections with FATAH-PLO and other Palestinian organizations were reinforced, including training of Latin American guerrillas in Lebanon; Cuba’s military support included counter-intelligence and intelligence training. Arafat visited Cuba in 1974. Cuba provided military support and personnel to Syria during the Yom Kippur War (1973-1975). Black Panther Party members from the U.S. were trained in Canada by Cuban personnel. Black Panther leaders and other U.S. blacks also received weapons and explosives training in Havana. Cuba joined with Algeria and Libya on a diplomatic/political offensive in support of Frente POLISARIO (People’s Front for the Liberation of Western Sahara and Río del Oro); later on provided military cooperation, and medical services. 1976-1982

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated that there were 300 Palestinians training in Cuban camps. Cuba supported the so-called “Steadfastness Front” against the U.S. backed Camp David accord. Illich Rámirez Sánchez, known as “Carlos, the Jackal”, responsible for numerous terrorist acts in Europe, trained in Cuba. He attended the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana and later trained in urban guerrilla tactics, automatic weapons, explosives and sabotage in Cuba. Abu Iyad, a close aid to Yasser Arafat, stated in 1978 that hundreds of Palestinian had been sent to Cuban terrorist camps. Additional military and political support provided to the Palestinian cause; Arafat attended the Sixth Non-Aligned Conference in Havana (1979). During Havana visit, Arafat signed agreement for military cooperation and arms supply. Significant hard currency loans (tens of million) were facilitated by Arafat-PLO to the Cuban government under very soft terms; Cuba granted diplomatic and political support to Arafat during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Aden (South Yemen) regime supported the Ethiopian radical officers commanded by Mengistu Haile Mariam, sending Yemeni military units in support of the latter against Somali aggression, and asking the Cubans to do the same. Cuba joined in, first with a group of officers headed by General Arnaldo Ochoa, a move that was followed later on by the deployment of large Cuban forces against the Somali invasion. Also as part of the

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alliance with the Aden regime, Cuba granted some small-scale support to the Dhofaris in their armed struggle against the monarchy in Oman. The Cuban trained Congolese National Liberation Front invaded Shala, Zaire. As part of Cuba’s alliance with Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime in Ethiopia, the Cuban leadership decided to engage in active political and military support of the Liberation Movement of Southern Sudan headed by John Garang against the ArabMuslim regime in Khartoum. Cuba developed closer ties with and sent military advisors to Iraq. Cuba’s America Department (DA) operated a weapons pipeline to the Farabundo Martí National Front (FMLN) a terrorist group attempting to gain power in El Salvador. Cuba cooperated with Libya in the political founding of the World MATHABA in Tripoli, to provide political support and coordinate revolutionary violence throughout the world. Cuba supported Libya’s stand on Chad and the FRENTE POLISARIO. Cuban trained terrorists members of the Guatemalan EGP kidnapped a businessman in Guatemala. Several were arrested in Mexico when attempting to collect ransom. Despite its close links with Baghdad, Cuba recognized and praised the Iranian Revolution. Once Iraq attacked Iran, Castro withdrew his military advisors from Baghdad and adopted a position of official impartiality, though more sympathetic to Baghdad, due to his past relations. 1983-1990

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Argentine born Cuban intelligence agent Jorge Massetti helped funnel Cuban funds to finance Puerto Rican terrorists belonging to the Machetero group. The Macheteros hijacked a Wells Fargo truck in Connecticut in September 1983 and stole $7.2 million. Cuba’s America Department (DA) provided, thru Jorge Massetti, weapons and several thousand dollars to the Chilean MIR. Libyan support to Latin American revolutionary movements, especially in Central America and the whole of the World MATHABA project, declined after the U.S. bombing of Tripoli in 1986. Cuban agents in Mexico engaged in bank robberies to finance several terrorist groups from Latin America operating out of Mexico. The Palestinian Intifada increased Cuba’s support for Arafat and the PLO, both diplomatic and military.

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Several dozen Mexicans received training in terrorism and guerrilla warfare in Sierra del Rosario, Pinar del Rio Province and in Guanabo, in eastern Cuba. After the negotiations leading to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, Cuban-Palestinian military cooperation was enhanced, including the areas of counter-intelligence and intelligence. In early 1989, Cuban General Patricio de la Guardia directed a plot in Havana and charged Jorge Massetti with blowing up the U.S. transmission balloon of TV Martí located in the Florida Keys. Cuba condemned Iraq for its invasion and annexation of Kuwait, supporting the latter’s sovereignty; it also condemned U.S. military operations in the Gulf and abstained at the U.N. from supporting the bulk of the sanctions imposed on Baghdad. A Cuban military delegation was sent to Iraq to learn and share what was considered vital information and experiences from U.S. combat operations in Kuwait and Iraq. Cuba provided advanced weapons and demolition training to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in Perú. The Tupac Amaru attacked the U.S. Embassy in 1984; bombed the Texaco offices in 1985 and attacked the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in 1985 all in Lima, Perú. 1991-2001

ETA, a Spanish terrorist organization seeking a separate Basque homeland, established the Cuartel General (General Headquarters) in Havana. A high-level PLO military delegation including the head of Intelligence paid a visit to Cuba. On February 24, 1996, Cuban Air Force MiGs shot down, in international waters, two small unarmed civilian planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami based group. All occupants were killed, including three American citizens. The election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (April 1999) as President of Algeria, opened new opportunities for Cuba, given Bouteflika’s close relationship with the Cuban government for more than three decades. PLO leaders continue to have close relations with the Cuban leadership, having access to specialized military and intelligence training, either in Cuba or Palestinian territory, and in the sharing of intelligence. A spokesman for the Basque government in Spain met in Havana with two high level ETA terrorist taking refuge in Cuba, José Angel Urtiaga Martinez and Jesús Lucio Abrisqueta Corte.

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Cuba continued to provide safe haven to several terrorist fugitives from the U.S. They include: Black Liberation Army leader Joanne Chesimard aka Assata Shakur, one of New Jersey’s most wanted fugitives for killing a New Jersey State trooper in 1973 and Charlie Hill a member of the Republic of New Afrika Movement wanted for the hijacking of TWA 727 and the murder of a New Mexico State trooper A number of Basque ETA terrorists who gained sanctuary in Cuba some years ago continued to live on the island, as did several Puerto Ricans members of the Machetero Group. Castro refused to join the other Ibero-American heads of state in condemning ETA terrorism at the 2000 Ibero-American Summit in Panamá and slammed Mexico for its support of the Summit’s statement against terrorism. Castro continues to maintain ties to several state sponsors of terrorism in Latin America. Colombia’s two largest terrorist organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), both maintain a permanent presence on the island. Colombian officials arrested IRA members Niall Connelly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan and accused them of training the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Connelly had been living in Cuba as the representative of the IRA for Latin America. Former Defense Department counter-terrorism expert John More told UPI that Cubans, militant Palestinians, Hezbollah and even advisors from the leftist government of Venezuela are all active in Colombia. During the trial of several Cuban spies in Miami, one of the accused Alejandro Alonso revealed on December 30, 2000 that he was instructed from Havana to locate areas in South Florida “where we can move persons as well as things, including arms and explosives.” Speaking at Tehran University in Iran on May 10, 2001 Fidel Castro vowed that “the imperialist king will finally fall”. Glossary BPP—Black Panther Party—Founded in the United States in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It adopted Marxist-Leninist principles along with urban guerrilla warfare, and a structure similar to the American Communist party.

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DGI—Directório General de Inteligencia—The Cuban Department in charge of collecting intelligence and carrying out covert operations outside Cuba. DA—America Department—Centralized control over Cuban activities for supporting national liberation movements, responsible for planning and coordinating Cuba’s secret guerrilla and terrorist camps, and propaganda apparatus. DLN—National Liberation Directorate—Organization created in Cuba to support revolutionary groups throughout the world. Responsible for planning and coordinating Cuba’s terrorist training camps in the island, covert movement of personnel and military supplies from Cuba, and propaganda apparatus. EGP—Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres—A political-military Marxist-Leninist organization that followed Cuba and Vietnam as revolutionary models. This Guatemalan insurgent organization was trained in Cuba and was very active during the 1970s, seeking to depose the political and military structure of the country. ELF—Eritrean Liberation Front—The most influential Eritrean organization fighting for secession from Ethiopia in the 1960s, actively supported by the Cuban and Syrian regime since 1965. Various internal divisions developed later on until the late 1970s, when a new front was built based on very different domestic and external alliances and, eventually led the Eritreans to victory. Cuba’s support to Mengistu Haile Mariam’s regime in 1978 meant the cessation of previous Cuban backing to the Eritrean cause. ELN—National Liberation Army—Organized by the Castro regime, this Colombian Marxist insurgent group was founded in 1965. Its main terrorist activities include kidnappings and extortion targeting foreign employees of large corporations. ETA—Basque Separatist Movement—This organization was founded by militants and leftist students from the University of Madrid in 1962. They formed guerilla units that commit violent terrorist acts claiming that they are fighting for freedom of the Basque Region, in Spain. This group has close relations with the IRA. The two groups have offices in Havana and their members have found safe haven in Cuba. FALN—Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional—A Venezuelan guerrilla organization trained by Cuba in violence and terrorism. FARC—Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—Established in 1964, the FARC is the oldest and best-equipped Marxist insurgency in Colombia. It is a well-organized terrorist group that controls several rural and urban areas. It has received financial and military

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aid from Cuba and many of its members were trained in Havana. FATAH—Palestine National Liberation Movement—Founded in 1959 by younger generations of Palestinians that had experienced the defeats of 1948 and 1956. The FATAH are strongly committed to a radical nationalist platform to fight for Palestine and against Arab intervention and manipulations of the Palestinian problem. Mostly an underground organization until the June War in 1967 when it transformed itself into the most powerful and influential party inside Palestinian and Arab politics. FLN—Front de Libération National—The political and military organization that led the war of national liberation against French colonial rule between 1954 and 1962. Ruling political party until the 1980s in Algeria. FMLN—Farabundo Martí National Front—Formed in 1970, the FMLN is a terrorist Marxist-Leninist organization intent on establishing a communist revolutionary regime in El Salvador. The FMLN was extremely active in its terrorist campaign, receiving assistance from Nicaragua and Cuba. FSLN—Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional—This organization was founded in Havana in 1961 when Carlos Fonseca-Amador’s Nicaraguan Patriotic Youth organization merged with Tomas Borge’s Cuban-supported insurgent group. The group adopted Marxist-Leninist ideology and gained support from the Castro government, employing low-level guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism tactics to overthrow the Somoza dictatorship. IRA—Irish Republican Army—The IRA is the most dangerous terrorist organization of Northern Ireland dating back to the early 1920s. Although, it wasn’t until the 1970’s when the IRA began terrorist actions and resurrected the historical conflicts. The IRA targets political transformation for United Ireland by eliminating Britain from Northern Ireland and replacing the government of Northern Ireland with a socialist government. Its Latin American headquarters are in Havana. LASO—Latin American Solidarity Organization—A Cuban controlled organization founded during the 1966 Tri-Continental Conference in Havana to “coordinate and foment the fight against North American imperialism.” M-19—Movimiento 19 de Abril—A Castro supported group formed in 1974 to disrupt Colombia’s government through acts of terrorism and violence. The M-19 was very active throughout the 1980s receiving assistance and training from the Montoneros and

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Tupamaros groups and the Cuban government, causing Colombia to temporarily sever diplomatic relations with Cuba. M-6-14—Agrupación Politica Catorce de Junio—Dominican guerrilla organization trained in Cuba. MACHETEROS—This terrorist organization is composed of four Puerto Rican groups: 1) the Macheteros, 2) the Ejercito Popular Borícua (EPB), 3) the Movimiento Popular Revolucionario, and 4) the Partido Revolucionario de Trabajadores Puertorriqueños. Most of the Macheteros have been trained in Cuba, were they have established relations with other terrorist groups. They are responsible for several terrorist acts within the United States and throughout Puerto Rico. MIR—Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria—A Chilean insurgent organization founded in 1965 and supported by Castro. The MIR was very active in the mid-1970s when they promoted violence and occupied several rural areas in Chile. The group encountered several set backs during the 1980s that essentially ended their activity. MONTONEROS—An Argentinean guerilla organization that was formed in 1968 as a Peronist urban anti-government group. It adopted a Marxist ideology in the mid-1970s after it united with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Argentina. In 1977, many of its members were exiled and its numbers reduced to less than 300. MRTA—Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement—Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization formed in 1983 and supported by the Castro regime. The MRTA’s intent was to establish a Marxist regime in Peru through terrorism, although Peru’s counter terrorism program diminished the groups’ ability to effectively carry out terrorist attacks. NLF—National Front for the Liberation of South Yemen—Created in 1962 in the course of the revolution in North Yemen against the monarchy and supported by Nasser, the NLF is another important and successful branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement. Since 1965 it has had very close relations with Cuba. In 1966-1967, it broke with Nasser and finally forced the British to negotiate and evacuate Aden. OSPAAL—Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America—Founded in 1966 in Cuba at the Tri-Continental Conference, this organization aims to support the struggle of the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. PLO—Palestine Liberation Organization—This organization was founded in Cairo in 1964 under the auspices of Egypt (then known as the United

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Arab Republic) to serve Nasser’s manipulations of the Palestinian cause. The group was composed mostly of conservative Palestinian intellectuals and bureaucrats serving Arab governments. The PLO was an instrument of Nasser’s foreign policy until the June War of 1967, when the old PLO leadership collapsed to be replaced by FATAH’s leadership headed by Arafat. POLISARIO—People’s Front for the Liberation of Western Sahara and Río del Oro —The Frente POLISARIO was inspired by the ANM tradition and the Algerian FLN and was created to fight against the Spanish-Morrocan-Mauritinian arrangements to split the former colony of Saguía el Hamra/Río del Oro (known as Western Sahara) between the two African states. This group enjoyed active support from Algeria and Libya and Cuba. POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE—The most important branch of the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), created in the 1950s as radical followers of Nasser. After the June War of 1967, the group disassociated itself from Nasser and focused on building a more radical alternative within the Palestinians under the name of Popular Front. The group has strong alliances within Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, and the Gulf, and was heavily engaged in terrorist activities during the 1970s. TRICONTINENTAL—Cuban publication disseminated by the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (OSPAAL) in four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian / promoting the Castro line of armed struggle. TUPAMAROS or MNL—Movimiento Nacional de Liberación Tupamaros—This Uruguay insurgent group was organized in the early 1960s by law student Raul Sendic. The Tupamaros were one of the first terrorist groups to use guerrilla warfare in urban areas and established independent terrorist cells throughout the country. WORLD MATHABA—A Libyan project from the late 1970s to promote political, financial, and military support for revolutionary movements throughout the world. Ghaddafi called on other “revolutionary governments” to support this project, which Cuba did. MATHABA was essentially a tool in the hands of the Libyans to project their individual goals and agenda. Financial and military assistance was never a collective decision, but responded for the most part to bilateral arrangements between Ghaddafi’s regime and individual organizations, some of which resorted, at different stages, to terrorist methods like the IRA and ETA. Insurgencies in Central America, like the

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Sandinistas and others, were privileged beneficiaries along with the African National Congress, Frente POLISARIO, and others. Prepared by Eugene Pons

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Appendix V Fidel Castro on the United States: Selected Statements, 1958-2003 For the past four decades Fidel Castro and his regime have been the most vocal and active proponents of anti-Americanism throughout the developing world. The often-repeated view in many countries that the U.S. is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems and sufferings of the poor nations, is owed in great part to the propaganda efforts of Castro and his officials. The roots of Castro’s anti-Americanism go back long before he rose to power. The son of Spanish immigrants, Castro was raised in a household where his father supported Spain against the U.S. during the Spanish American War (1898-1902). Castro grew up believing that the U.S. took advantage of a weak Spain and frustrated the Cubans’ aspirations to real independence. As a student at the Jesuit Belen High School in Havana in the early 1940s, Castro fell under the particular influence of two of his teachers, the Spaniard Father Armando Llorente and Father Alberto de Castro. Admirers of Franco’s Spain and Falangist ideology (a Spanish brand of fascism), both transmitted to their young disciple their enthusiasm for their cause and for Hispanidad, a movement initiated by Ramiro de Maetzu, then much in vogue in Spain. In his course on the history of Latin America, de Castro expounded on some of the ideas of Hispanidad. He explained that the independence of Latin America had been frustrated because of lack of social reforms and lamented that Anglo-Saxon values had supplanted Spanish cultural domination. He called for unity among the Latin American nations and with Spain and emphasized that the new Spain had been liberated from both Marxism-Leninism and Anglo-Saxon materialism. He, furthermore, criticized liberal democracy as “decadent,” and proclaimed the supremacy of spiritual over material values. Castro seemed to have been captivated by the teachings of his professors. He read the works of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera who, in 1933, founded the Spanish Falange. He was fascinated by Primo de Rivera’s speeches and by the

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idea of a rich man who left everything and went to fight for what he believed in. This is not to say that Castro was a fascist or that he admired the fascist powers by the time he left Belen. But his stay at the school and the ideas of his teachers left an impact on his young mind. Castro had thus been exposed to a variety of ideologies and had become acquainted at a young age with an antiAmerican, totalitarian ideology. Once he left Belen and entered the university, Castro fell under the spell of Eduardo Chibas, a charismatic, highly nationalistic leader of the Ortodoxo Party. Chiba’s firebrand of nationalism combined criticism of the U.S. and of Communism. Castro was impressed by the rhetoric of Chibas and the use of radio to communicate his message to the Cuban masses. While studying law at the University of Havana in the late 1940s, Castro participated in the activities of student gangs and associated closely with violent student leaders. He soon acquired a reputation for personal ambition, forcefulness, and fine oratory. Yet, he never became a prominent student leader. On several occasions he was defeated in student elections or prevented from winning by the nature of student politics. In 1947 Castro enrolled in an aborted expedition against the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. The expeditionary force was allegedly financed by the Grau government and supported by Dominican exiles, backed by Dominican leader Juan Bosch. Training was held at Cayo Confites in eastern Cuba. Soon the Cuban government, pressured by several Latin American nations and the United States, called off the expedition. Castro returned to Havana and his university studies. One of the most controversial episodes of Castro’s student life was his participation in the “Bogotazo”—the riots in Bogota, Colombia following the assassination of Liberal party leader Jorge Elieer Gaitan in April 1948. Castro and a group of students had been organizing a Latin American Union of Students, financed by the Argentinean dictator Juan D. Peron. Peron favored the establishment of an anticolonialist, anti-imperialist Latin American Student group under his control. Opposing the Ninth Inter-American Conference scheduled to meet in Bogota, Peron suggested that the Cuban students hold a preliminary meeting in Bogota to coincide with the conference. Castro and several students traveled to Colombia. Not only Peron, but also the Communists were bent on disrupting the Inter-American Conference. When Gaitan was assassinated in Bogota riots and chaos followed. Castro was caught up in the violence that rocked Colombian society. Picking up a rifle from a police station, he joined the mobs and roamed through the streets distributing anti-United States propaganda and inciting the populace to revolt. Pursued by the Colombian government for his participation in the riots, Castro sought asylum in the Cuban Embassy and was later flown back to Havana. During his struggle against the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s, Castro showed once more his hatred of the United States and his willingness to confront the Americans. To his closest allies he confided that his real revolution,

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the one against the U.S., would commence once he reached power. His statements and actions after 1959 left no doubt that the U.S. faced an enemy bent on totally transforming Cuban society, remaining in power indefinitely and defying the U.S. Castro saw himself not only as the leader of the Cuban revolution, but of a continental movement against “the Yankees.” The Soviets provided the protective umbrella for Castro’s ambitions. Since becoming the leader of Cuba, one of Castro’s main objectives has been to undermine U.S. power and prestige in the world. His support of antiAmerican guerrillas and terrorists in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, his military involvement with and support for anti-American regimes and groups in Africa and the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s, and his constant denunciations of “U.S. imperialism,” “capitalism,” and “neo-liberalism” in international organizations and forums attest to his determination and consistency. Castro sees anti-Americanism, as well as his commitment to violence, as the main contributions of his revolution and leadership. Little does he care that his beliefs and actions remain a Communist project undertaken in stark isolation from and opposition to the course of history in the Americas—and for that matter, the rest of the contemporary world. The following selected statements by Castro over the last four decades clearly show his consistent anti-Americanism and his belief in the eventual success of Communism over capitalism even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist camp. History reveals instances when strong and even autocratic leaders have mellowed with age and softened their positions, but there is scant evidence that this is the case with Castro. On the contrary, as the Cuban leader has aged he has become more intransigent and difficult. At the 1997 Communist Party Congress in Havana, he reaffirmed his staunch opposition to the U.S. and his unwillingness to relinquish power. After the congress he gathered international friends and allies to exhort them to prepare for the eventual failure of capitalism and the rise of communism. — Jaime Suchlicki Fidel Castro on the United States, 1958-2003 1958 When this war is over a much wider and bigger war will commence for me: the war I am going to wage against them [the United States]. I am aware that this is my true destiny. We accuse the U.S. government … of selling to the Batista dictatorship the planes and bombs that have killed so many defenseless Cuban civilians. If the U.S. violates our sovereignty we will defend it with dignity.… We are ready to die in defense of our people.

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1959 If the Americans don’t like what is happening in Cuba, they can land the Marines and then there will be 200,000 gringos dead. 1960 If Kennedy were not an illiterate and ignorant millionaire, he would understand that it is not possible to carry out a [counter-] revolution supported by landowners against the peasants in the mountains, and that every time imperialism has tried to encourage counterrevolutionary groups, the peasant militia has captured them.… Let no one think, however, that these opinions as regards Kennedy’s statements indicate that we feel any sympathy toward the other one, Mr. Nixon, who has made similar statements. As far as we are concerned, both [Kennedy and Nixon] lack political brains. 1961 The invaders [at the Bay of Pigs] came to fight for free enterprise! Imagine, at this time for some idiot to come here to say that he fought for free enterprise! A revolution expressing the will of the people is an election every day, not every four years; it is a constant meeting with the people. The people know that the Revolution expressed their will; the Revolution does not come to power with Yankee arms. It comes to power through the will of the people fighting against Yankee arms. If Mr. Kennedy does not like socialism, well, we do not like imperialism! We do not like capitalism! We have as much right to protest over the existence of an imperialist-capitalist regime ninety miles away from our coast as he feels he has to protest over the existence of a socialist regime ninety miles from his coast. Mr. Kennedy … does not have a clear concept of international law or sovereignty. Who had such notions before Kennedy? Hitler and Mussolini! I am a Marxist-Leninist and I shall be a Marxist-Leninist to the end of my life. 1962 The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution. It is known that the revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world, but it is not for revolutionaries to sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by. The role of Job doesn’t suit a revolutionary. Each year that the liberation of America is speeded up will mean the lives of millions of children saved, millions of intelligences saved for culture, an infinite quantity of pain spared the people. Even if the Yankee imperialists prepare a bloody drama for America, they will not succeed in crushing the peoples’ struggles, they will only arouse universal hatred against themselves. And such a drama will also mark the death of their greedy and carnivorous system.

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At [the] Punta del Este [inter-American conference in Uruguay in 1961] a great ideological battle unfolded between the Cuban Revolution and Yankee imperialism. Who did they represent there, for whom did each speak? Cuba represented the people; the United States represented the monopolies. Cuba spoke for America’s exploited masses; the United States for the exploiting, oligarchical, and imperialist interests; Cuba for sovereignty; the United States for intervention; Cuba for the nationalization of foreign enterprises; the United States for new investments of foreign capital. Cuba for culture; the United States for ignorance. Cuba for agrarian reform; the United States for great landed estates. Cuba for the industrialization of America; the United States for underdevelopment.… Cuba for peace among peoples; the United States for aggression and war. Cuba for socialism; the United States for capitalism. [The Soviet Union] could have installed a thousand [nuclear] missiles [in Cuba in 1962]! That’s what I said to Biriouzov [the Soviet field marshal in charge of nuclear forces in Cuba]: a thousand missiles. I said to him: “Look, if it is in the interest and the defense of the entire socialist camp, we are prepared to install a thousand [nuclear] missiles here.” Imagine my reaction when they told me that they would [only] install [40] missiles. We defended these [nuclear] missiles with affection, with an incredible love. We were fighting for the first time almost on equal terms with an enemy [the United States] that had threatened and provoked us unceasingly. I wrote a letter [on October 26, 1962] to Khrushchev to give him courage. It was my opinion that, in case of an invasion, it was necessary to launch a massive and total nuclear strike [against the United States].… If they invade … one should not waste time … nor give the enemy the time to launch the first strike. [Nikita Khrushchev, on Fidel Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis:] Castro suggested that in order to prevent [the Soviet] nuclear missiles [in Cuba] from being destroyed, we [the Soviet Union] should launch a preemptive strike against the United States. He concluded that an attack was unavoidable and that this attack had to be preempted. In other words, we [the Soviet Union] needed to immediately deliver a nuclear missile strike against the United States. At one point, Castro ordered our [Soviet] antiaircraft officers to shoot down a U-2 reconnaissance plane. I [Nikita Khrushchev] talked with him [years] later too, after he had already been to the Soviet Union twice and was in a different frame of mind.… We discussed the past from hindsight and conducted an analysis of the events in a calm atmosphere. I saw that he still did not understand. I told Castro, “There is another aspect to this business. You wanted to start a war with the United States. If the war had begun we would somehow have survived, but Cuba no doubt would have ceased to exist. It would have been crushed into powder. Yet you suggested a nuclear strike!”

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1963 With my ideas and my temperament, even in my school and university days, I could not be a capitalist, a democrat, a liberal. I always had it in me to be a radical, a revolutionary, a reformer, and through instinctive preparation it was easy for me to move into Marxism-Leninism. Of course we engage in subversion, the training of guerrillas, propaganda! Why not? This is exactly what you [Americans] do to us. 1964 Some people pay higher prices than others. Such is the case with Vietnam. The enormous sacrifices having to be paid directly in the face of Yankee imperialism, which, virtually defeated there, still talks like a blackmailer and an aggressor of extending the war—playing with fire there, in its unjustifiable and undesirable plan to maintain its colonialist and imperialist domination over peoples, just as they tried to do over us. However, the struggle of the people against imperialism is growing. It grows, it spreads. It is a historical law that this law will be fulfilled. It is necessary for the enemy to realize the price it must pay for its evils, for each of its actions of banditry. That is why we must always be prepared to defend ourselves. 1965 Our enemies, our only enemies, are the Yankee imperialists. Our only insuperable contradiction is with Yankee imperialism. The only enemy against whom we are ready to break our lances is imperialism. We are in favor of giving Vietnam all the aid that may be necessary, we are in favor of the socialist camp running the risks that may be necessary for Vietnam. We are quite aware of the fact that in case of any serious international complication we will be one of the first targets of imperialism, but this does not worry us and has never worried us. And we don’t keep quiet or act like simpletons in order that our lives be spared. It’s true, everything that we say about the United States here [in Cuba] refers essentially to the worst aspects of the United States, and it is very rare that things in any way favorable to the United States will be published here.… We always try to create the worst opinion of everything there is in the United States, as a response to what they have always done with us. We emphasize the worst things [and] we omit things that could be viewed as positive. 1966 Between 1970 and 1980 Yankee imperialism will not have one square inch of imperialist property left in Latin America. We are absolutely certain of this.

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Mr. Johnson, that big ignorant Texas cowboy, said recently that … revolutions are retreating, and he cited such cases as Indonesia and Ghana, and he mentioned several other countries. [Yet] Vietnam is the place where Yankee imperialism, with all its criminal, reactionary, and savage spirit, is being disrobed. The U.S. attack on Vietnam cannot be compared with any other deed in contemporary history. It is compared with Hitler’s attacks on Poland and other small nations. However, the comparison cannot be made, because the crimes of the Yankees in Vietnam are worse than those of the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists, because of its [the United States] war resources, because of its destruction potential which is greater than that of the Germans and Italians, because of a similar lack of scruples. The Fascists never used toxic gases in the war. The United States uses not only conventional weapons in Vietnam, but also outlawed weapons like toxic gases, including bacteriological warfare. The only thing the United States has not used in Vietnam is the atomic weapon. The hate which the imperialists have stirred up is such, the indignation which they have provoked throughout the world and in this part of the world—in our country—is such that we feel sure that there will not be a single combat unit of our armed forces which is not ready to be among the first ones to go fight the imperialist Yankees there [in Vietnam]. We know the imperialists. They love their skin too much. The imperialists are so cowardly—how many blackmailers! As long as they can wage a war without the least possible casualties, industrial losses, as long as they can pick the mangos from the low branches, as long as they can use their big power in increasing degree against a small country, they gain courage from it. But we know the imperialists very well—Johnson and his herd of outlaws: the Rusks, the McNamaras and their gang—who have been trapped in a dead end street. 1967 The problems of Yankee imperialism do not consist simply of finding ways to crush the Cuban revolution, but rather how to prevent the revolutionary throughout the continent from crushing Yankee imperialism. To those who believe that peaceful transition [to communism] is possible in some countries of this continent, we say to them that we cannot understand what kind of peaceful transition they refer to, unless it is a peaceful transition in agreement with imperialism. And those who believe that they are going to win against the imperialists in elections are just plain naïve; and those who believe that the day will come when they will take over through elections are super-naïve. They’ll never see … the Revolution hesitating, the Revolution giving up; they’ll never see the Revolution yielding one iota of its principles! For Patria o Muerte [homeland or death] has many meanings. It means being revolutionaries until death, it means being a proud people until death! And

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the fact that we speak about Patria o Muerte does not mean that we have a sense of fatalism. It is an expression of determination. When we say “death,” we mean that not only we would be dead, but many of our enemies would be dead, as well. 1968 The Yankee imperialist policy reminds us today of Hitler’s policy. It reminds us of the acts of barbarity of Nazism save for one difference: imperialism has been able to collect technical resources, hence military resources; it has been able to accumulate a force of destruction and death that is incomparably greater than any which the Nazi-fascists could ever have imagined. If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism. We did not make a Revolution here to establish the right to trade! […] When will they finally understand that this is a revolution of socialists, a revolution of Communists? When will they finally understand that nobody shed his blood here … in order to establish the right for somebody to make two hundred pesos selling rum, or fifty pesos selling fried eggs or omelets.… A whole plague of businessmen remains.… Capitalism has to be dug out by the roots; parasitism has to be dug out by the roots; the exploitation of man has to be dug out by the roots. Anyway, it must be said very clearly that … private trade, self-employment, private industry, or anything like it will not have any future in this country. 1969 While a country like the United States approaches the moon and flies thousands and hundreds of thousands of kilometers through space by virtue of its industrial and technological development, it also maintains the most iniquitous exploitation of a 100 million human beings [throughout the world]. 1971 The Chileans may be assured that if there should be an aggression from abroad, planned by imperialism, millions of Cubans will be ready to go to fight for Chile. Consider all revolutionary Cubans enlisted as of now for action against a foreign attack. It may be said, therefore, that we are revolutionary soldiers of America. Cuban fighters have shed their blood helping peoples of other continents, helping African peoples. They have shed their blood helping Latin American peoples. This is part of the best tradition of our fatherland and of our revolution.

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The policy of the Cuban revolution is well established; it will accept relations only with governments which are independent, with governments capable of opposing Yankee dictates.… And there is no way to convince, there are no words in the dictionary to explain to the imperialist “gentlemen” that we are not nor will we be “good guys.” […] So, imperialist gentlemen … we do not agree to your painting us as “good guys.” For we wish to [be], and are determined to continue being, the “bad guys” in the eyes of the reactionaries and imperialists. Our position concerning the imperialist government of the United States is very clear: we have nothing to negotiate with them! [ … ] The day that they want to remove their blockade and cease all measures against Cuba, they must do it unconditionally and without discussing one single word with us. 1974 The United States will have to face the fact that, in the future, Cuba will not be the only revolutionary country in this hemisphere.… In the future, the United States will have to deal with one, two, ten socialist countries in this hemisphere, and maybe even with a union of these peoples. That we sympathize with revolutionaries. Yes, we do. That we have aided revolutionaries as much as we have been able to do so, yes, this is true. That the influence of the Cuban revolution can be felt in the revolution of another country. Yes. For us to support revolutionaries it is essential that they be fighting. When they do fight, we help them … morally and materially, because we [have] had no commitments of any sort to abide by.… We were not going to remain with our hands tied, tied to an international norm. We, therefore, felt that we had the right to help fighting revolutionaries who were trying to carry out a revolution in their countries.… 1975 The starting point of Cuba’s foreign policy, according to our Programmatic Platform, is the subordination of Cuban positions to the international needs of the struggle for socialism and for the national liberation of peoples. 1976 The United States has established around the world a system of military pacts, bases of aggression, centers of corruption, bribery, subversive propaganda and espionage, overt or covert actions, terror, and threats, which imperialism, because of its rapacious and exploitative nature, cannot do without. The victory in Angola was the twin sister of the victory at Giron [Bay of Pigs]. For the Yankee imperialists, Angola represents an African Giron. Ford and Kissinger are irritated by the defeat. And like two little thundering Jupiters, they have made terrible threats against Cuba.

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1977 We do not have your same perceptions. Our concept of freedom of the press is not yours. If you ask if a newspaper can appear against socialism, I can say very honestly, no, it cannot. In that sense, we do not have the freedom of the press that you possess in the United States, and we are very satisfied about that. 1978 Even though we don’t like to be the ones to speak of the irreproachable way in which the Cuban revolution has fulfilled its internationalist duty, it should be recalled that our military cooperation with Angola and Ethiopia was not something new. Cuban soldiers went to the sister republic of Algeria in 1963 to support it against foreign aggression when, in the months following the victory of it heroic struggle for independence, attempts were made to a grab a part of its territory. Cuban soldiers went to Syria in 1973 when that country requested our help right after the last war waged against the Zionist aggressors. Cuban fighters fought and died to help free Guinea-Bissau and Angola from Portuguese colonialism. It is no secret that worthy comrades from our guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra died with Che in Bolivia. 1979 If we were to help the revolutionaries [in Central America] we would have the right to do so, but I’m not going to say here that we are doing so. That is our affair and not a matter to be discussed on television. I neither confirm it nor deny it. I proclaim it as a right; furthermore, as a duty. We have no nuclear weapons.… It’s not that that we don’t have the right to; we don’t relinquish that right. We’ll relinquish that right when all countries of the world renounce nuclear weapons. 1980 The Guatemalan experience, the Salvadoran experience, the Chilean experience, the Bolivian experience, what have they taught us? That there is only one path: revolution! That there is only one way: revolutionary armed struggle! That is the thesis Cuba defended when it said to the people: they’re deceiving you. [ … ] And the peoples learned their lessons and saw that there was only one road to liberation: that of Cuba, that of Grenada, that of Nicaragua. There is no other formula. Now then, the imperialists are threatening us with intervention. Should we lose our sleep over that? … The peoples already know that there are possibilities for fighting not only in the mountains, not only in the rural areas, but also in the cities. They know how to dig tunnels, tear down walls, connect some houses with others on the same block, and turn rebellious cities into fortresses.

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1983 We have … drawn up plans to resist any naval blockade, no matter how long it lasts, and we have prepared ourselves to face any kind of aggression the imperialists may contrive. Our people will be prepared to fiercely resist not just naval and airborne landing operations and defend the cities and positions to the last inch and the last man, but also to go on fighting even when the country has been invaded and occupied. Every cadre of the [Communist] Party, the state, the armed forces; every officer, every combatant, every citizen and even every teenager will know what to do under any circumstances. In Lebanon, the Zionist aggressors are shaken by their losses caused almost daily by the growing Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. I hail all the peoples who in other continents are fighting in similar ways against the same imperialism: [ … ] our very dear friends the Palestinians [and] the Arab countries, which are constant victims of imperialist Zionist aggression.… I don’t have nuclear bombs, but I can produce a nuclear explosion.… I want to do something that they will remember for the rest of their lives and then, when we are gone, history will remind them [Americans] that we were the only ones who made them pay dearly for their imperialistic arrogance around the world. 1985 If the creditors insist on collecting the debt, if they implement the IMF measures against the people, and if a solution isn’t found for the economic crisis, there will be widespread revolutionary outbreaks throughout Latin America. I believe the United States has fewer and fewer things to offer Cuba. We export sugar, but the U.S. is reducing its sugar imports.… We might purchase certain medical equipment in the United States, some recent pharmaceutical products-things of that sort. But it wouldn’t be anything out of this world, because it would be inconceivable for us to start buying Cadillacs and other luxury items from the United States if our relations were normalized someday. We haven’t the slightest intention of spending a single cent on luxury items. My view is that the United States … [is] responsible for the survival of apartheid. I wonder: Is there any fascist regime in the last forty years that has not been an ally of the United States? 1989 In the past few days the United States has made a big uproar over an alleged chemical weapons factory in Libya and the president of the United States openly mentioned the possibility of an air attack on that factory.…

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The Libyans have said there is no such chemical weapons factory nor plan to build any; they are building a medicine plant; but I think even that explanation was unnecessary.… What’s at stake here is the right of the United States to determine who may or may not manufacture chemical weapons, to decide that if a country manufactures chemical weapons it will be attacked and bombed. Even if Libya were in fact manufacturing chemical weapons, what right does the United States have to bomb that country? What right does it have to bomb that factory? I even said … on July 26 [1989] in Camagüey that … if the socialist camp should disappear from the world, we will continue building socialism in our country.… I said, if the USSR separated, if the USSR crumbled, if the USSR disappeared, we would continue building socialism in our country. 1992 We are building hundreds of tunnels. This represents expenditures in the form of fuel, cement, and rods. Can we forget about the enemy? Now, when it is more conceited than ever, more aggressive than ever? When it believes itself master of the world? It is the master of most of the world, but of course, not of us. Of us, at least, imperialism is not master. Nor are we more afraid of that imperialism, despite its being the only superpower left in this unipolar world. We were not afraid of it while the USSR existed. We are even less afraid of it now that the USSR does not exist. Capitalist society and imperialism, I repeat, are indefensible.… Private ownership of the means of production is indefensible. There may be jineteras [prostitutes] here, but one would have to add that they are strictly voluntary ones. No woman in this country is forced to prostitute herself. Well, what can capitalism bring? What can it promise? For Cuban women, prostitution with a high educational level. The most ill-informed population in the world is the population of the United States. That is why we too feel we have the right to inform the population of the United States, and we are indeed going to inform them, employing that same right with which they wish to inform us, through certain radio stations that can reach U.S. territory perfectly well. 1995 In Cuba, we can do what our country sovereignly decides to do. Our position is that we do not accept any types of conditioning that may affect the country’s sovereignty and independence to solve economic problems between the United States and Cuba or political problems between the United States and Cuba. This is an old position. I can assure you categorically that we would not accept political conditioning.

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I do not see how my resignation could improve the country’s economy.… I have already said that we would not be willing to accept any sort of political conditions. If I accepted this idea I would be admitting that in Cuba political changes could be made, including the resignation of the revolution’s leaders, in exchange for solutions to economic problems. We are willing to give our lives for the country, but we are not willing to sacrifice its independence, the country’s sovereignty. We are not willing to sacrifice the principles. 1997 We will do what is necessary without renouncing our principles. We don’t like capitalism and we will not abandon our socialist system. Neo-liberalism and globalization create consumer societies like the U.S. throughout the world and this is not a model for anyone. 1998 In our view the United States was guilty of the sabotage of the Cuban airline over Barbados [on October 6, 1976], which cost the lives of 73 persons. The United States is guilty of the bombs that exploded in the capital’s [Havana] hotels [in 1997] in order to sabotage tourism, to damage our economy. It would seem they weren’t satisfied with the cruel and despicable blockade which it is applying against our country. The United States is guilty of the numerous attempts on my life, in this case, or against any other leader of the Revolution, carried out by these gentlemen, this mafia, these mercenary gangsters, actively or by omission in the pay of the Cuban-American National Foundation. And, evidently, in terms of all the facts that we have, it is actively guilty of many of those crimes and terrorist acts committed against our country. Yes, we have sometimes dispatched Cuban citizens to the United States to infiltrate counterrevolutionary organizations, to inform us about activities that are of interest to us. 1999 In a great number of Latin American countries there were better objective conditions for a revolution than there had been in Cuba. And we gave them our support.… [Chilean President Salvador] Allende was … a very good friend of the Cuban revolution, and a leftist, [ … ] so we supported the political line he was pursuing. We trained some people to look after his personal security, something in which we had experience.… And we conveyed our experience to [Allende] because we felt that he had some enemies.… We trained some of his people to look after his personal security and we provided his bodyguards with some light arms. What happened later [in Chile] proved that a profound revolution can really only be made in the kinds of conditions which prevailed in Cuba.

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The Sandinista movement emerged after the triumph of our Revolution, and the Cuban Revolution had a great influence on it. [ … ] And when the Cuban Revolution came, it had a great inf luence on the young, and the Sandinista movement was organized. And we supported them … out of revolutionary principle. [ … ] Anyway, the Sandinistas had all our support and cooperation over the course of many years. We also struggled to achieve unity among the Sandinistas, who unfortunately were divided. In Central America, we really did help the Nicaraguans, the Salvadorans and the Guatemalans. And the first kind of assistance we provided was to work for the unity of the revolutionary forces, because those three countries were divided into four or five groups. So that was our first contribution. Apart from that, we also helped in the training of cadres and personnel, and towards the end we sent as many weapons as we could to the Nicaraguans. [ … ] Yes, we did want a revolution, and what’s more, we believed that such a revolution was possible-we were absolutely convinced that it was possible in Latin America. And that would probably have changed the course of history. [ … ] Just like the Vietnam War, which had an influence on American thinking, a radical revolution in Latin America would have had a tremendous influence on U.S. policy. That’s what I believed then, and I still do. However, the course of history will change in the future; it will change because this globalized world is untenable within the framework of capitalism and neo-liberalism. This is my belief. But with respect to Latin America [ … ] the first thing we did in any country was to try to unite the [leftist] forces, and perhaps that was the greatest service we did to those countries. [With Cuba’s support] revolutionaries in small countries like El Salvador brought their government to the point of collapse, and it was only saved by the torrent of arms, technology and money that the United States sent them. Otherwise, the Salvadoran government would have been unable to sustain itself. In countries as small as those in Central America … the revolution triumphed in one of them [Nicaragua], and almost triumphed in others, and the United States had to resort to all its power to prevent it. Now imagine if there had been a revolution in other South American countries with better geographical conditions and a larger population-it would have been much more difficult for the United States to deal with than the Vietnam War, and that’s without the use of nuclear weapons. That’s why I said earlier, and I affirm that I think … that the course of history could have been different, because a revolution similar to the Cuban one might have taken place in Latin America. The United States of America … is involved [in Serbia] in what can be described, whether they like it or not, as genocide. [Cuba] cannot be conquered by anyone; no one can conquer a country that is willing to fight. It is wrong to try to conquer it. It already happened in Vietnam where the Americans understood it only when they had lost over 50 thousand lives and killed 4 million

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Vietnamese. Well, now, they are in a similar situation there, and one that can become more complicated if the Serbians everywhere give their support to the Serbians inside Serbia. 2000 We are not ready for reconciliation with the United States, and I will not reconcile myself with the imperialist system. But if the American people and their government are ready to respect the rights of others, we are ready, in this case, to work so that peace prevails. Otherwise, there will be no reconciliation. For the past 40 years I have been struggling against the world’s most powerful and dangerous force, and against the continuous embargo. Communist rule is still valid for the future because it is the most equitable system. We are defending our culture better than any other country because other countries are being subjected to a Western cultural invasion. 2001 A new administration has just assumed power in the United States, in a rather irregular fashion. Everything known about the background and thinking of the main figures in this administration, the public statements made by many of them, before and after the highly unusual electoral process in which the Cuban-American terrorist mob played a decisive role in the questionable victory of the current president, has created an atmosphere of doubt, distrust and fear reaching practically all of the world public opinion. Forty years have passed [since the Bay of Pigs invasion]. Nevertheless, the methods of lies and deception used by the empire and its mercenary allies remain unchanged. When we see that south of the Rio Grande there is a whole collection of balkanized countries … about to be devoured by the mighty, expansionist and insatiable superpower of the turbulent and brutal north that scorns us, we Cubans can cry to the top of our voices: Bless the day, a thousand times over, that we proclaimed our revolution to be socialist! Without socialism, Cuba would not be the only country in the world today that does not need to trade with the United States in order to survive, and even to advance, both economically and socially. Without socialism, Cuba would not have been able to endure the hostility of nine U.S. presidents.… I would have to add the one [George W. Bush] who has just assumed the presidential throne, since judging from his first steps in the international arena and the language of his advisors and allies in the Miami terrorist mob, there are signs that we could be facing a particularly aggressive and utterly unethical administration. At this very moment in history, the nations of Latin America are about to be devoured by the United States, the hegemonic superpower of today’s world.

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The people and the governments of Cuba and Iran can bring the United States to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up. Women are accorded better treatment in some Islamic nations than in the West. In the West, women are regarded as a commodity and an object of business. I think of Western women as those who have been asphyxiated because of the way they’re treated. On Thursday [September 20, 2001], before the United States Congress, the idea was designed of a world military dictatorship under the exclusive rule of force, irrespective of any international laws or institutions. The United Nations, simply ignored in the present crisis, would fail to have any authority or prerogative whatsoever. There would be only one boss, only one judge, and only one law. We have all been ordered to ally either with the United States government or with terrorism. [Americans’] capacity to destroy and kill is enormous, but their traits of equanimity, serenity, reflection and caution are, on the other hand, minimal. 2002 Our heroes [five Cuban spies tried, convicted, and sentenced in 2001 for espionage against U.S. military installations] will have to be freed. The enormous injustice committed against them will be known by the whole world.… The U.S. government will never have the moral authority to combat terrorism while it continues to use such practices against nations like Cuba and to support massive, repugnant, and brutal massacres like those carried out by its ally Israel against the Palestinian people. With unparalleled arrogance and prepotency, it has threatened over 80 countries and taken the liberty of deciding which is a terrorist nation and which is not. It has even been so cynical as to include Cuba among the so-called terrorist nations, when thousands of Cubans have died as victims of terrorism perpetrated from the United States, while not a single American has ever suffered so much as a scratch, nor has the least of damage ever been caused by any such actions on the part of Cuba. The power and prerogative of that country’s [the U.S.] President are so extensive, and the economic, technological, and military power network in that nation is so pervasive that due to circumstances that fully escape the American people, the world is coming under the rule of Nazi concepts and methods. Last September 20, 2001, when Mr. [George] W. Bush proclaimed [his war against terrorism] … at the same time, based on his military power he was assuming the role of world master and policeman. Long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, Bush had promoted enormous budgets for the research and production of more deadly and sophisticated weapons, although the Cold War was over.…

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[Bush perceives us as] the miserable insects that live in 60 or more countries of the world (chosen by him and his closest assistants)—and in the case of Cuba by his Miami friends—[which] are completely irrelevant. [We] are the “dark corners of the world” that may become targets of their unannounced and “preemptive” attacks. What is the difference between that philosophy and methods and those of the Nazis? Why is it that so many governments are trembling with fear and keeping silent? Arrogance, demagogy and lies are usually an inseparable part of [the U.S. President]. Mr. President, you are losing authority. In theory, you are empowered to bring death to a large part of the world, but you can’t do it alone. You need many other people to help you obliterate the rest of the world and among the military and civilian leaders who operate in your country’s power structures there are many learned and talented people … [who] will be less and less willing to be persuaded as they see that your political advisors lacking in capacity and military experience make one mistake after another. Dreadful and opportunistic lies do not suffice to launch preemptive and surprise attacks against any of the 60 or more countries [where terror cells are present, in reference to President Bush’s speech at West Point on June 1, 2002], or against several of them, or against them all. Hardly twelve years ago, many in the world expected to see Cuba, the last socialist state in the West, crumble. Not much time has gone by and today, instead, quite a number of us on this earth are waiting to see how the developed capitalist world led by the United States disengages from the colossal and chaotic economic mess in which it is enmeshed. Those who yesterday talked so much about the end of history might be wondering if this profound crisis is not the beginning of the end of the political, economic and social system it represents. Perhaps, of the evils brought about by developed capitalism none is so nefarious as the way of life and the consumerist habits. The set of problems that are piling up in the world point objectively to a disaster for neoliberal globalization and for that unsustainable economic order. The smallest municipality in Cuba is stronger than all the scum that met with [President George W.] Bush in the James L. Knight Center in Miami. 2003 [Americans] say the world is moving towards democracy because the Chinese introduced some reforms. The Chinese have a political system very similar to Cuba’s. They admit capitalists into the [Communist] Party. Our Party admits farmers earning a lot of money and religious people.… Bush could just as well say that, based on what we’ve done here in Cuba, that we’re moving towards democracy.

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We don’t want to become a consumer society.… We have implemented a number of reforms but we’re not headed towards capitalism.… We are not marching towards capitalism. [We will not] change [Cuba’s] constitution … [Cuba’s] political system … [or Cuba’s] economic system … in order to improve relations with the U.S. We need to be cautious [about importing agricultural products from the U.S.] because we cannot be tied to only one source of supplies. It would be too risky so we continue purchasing commodities from our traditional suppliers. Yes, my brother [Raúl Castro, the designated successor] has seniority but we should talk about the next generation. Even my brother is not that young.… I am thinking about the younger generation and how they are prepared to preserve the future.…

Prepared by Hans de Salas-del Valle

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Contributors to Cuban Communism, Eleventh Edition Luis E. Aguilar is professor emeritus of history at Georgetown University. His publications include Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution; Marxism in Latin America; and De como se me murieron las palabras. He is currently Senior Fellow at the Institute for Cuba and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. Benigno E. Aguirre is professor of sociology at Texas A & M University. He received his graduate education at Ohio State University. Professor Aguirre is the editor of Critical Mass Bulletin, the newsletter of the Collective Behavior and Social Movement section of the American Sociological Association. His most recent work has been on the Mariel Boat Lift and the Social Construction of Deviance. Ernesto F. Betancourt is the director of an independent agency for research and development in Latin America and an associate of Devtech Systems, Inc. Before that he was founding director of the Radio Marti Program for the Voice of America of the United States Information Agency. He spent sixteen years at the Organization of American States, first as coordinator of economic affairs during the Alliance for Progress period, then as its director of budget and finance. He was associated with the Castro government as managing director of the Bank for Foreign Trade, and the Cuban governor for the International Monetary Fund. Prior to 1959 he was Washington-based representative of the July 26th Movement. Taylor C. Boas is pursuing a Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is coauthor (with Shanthi Kalathil) of The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution (Carnegie Working Paper No. 21). Ramón L. Bonachea was born in Cuba, and was an active participant in the 1959 revolution. He was previously Director of the Office of Cuba Broadcast/ Radio Martí and taught history at Montclair State College. He is the co-author of

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both Castro and the New Intellectuals (1976), and The Cuban Insurrection, 1952-1959 (1972). Julie Marie Bunck is assistant professor of political science at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Her dissertation focused on the impact of the Cuban Revolution on the social and stratification aspects of Cuba. Joshua W. Busby is a doctoral candidate in international relations at Georgetown University. Josep M. Colomer is professor of political science at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He is also affiliated with the Higher Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) in Barcelona, Spain. His publications include Game Theory and the Transition to Democracy, Political Institutions in Europe, and Transition Games: Ways to Democracy in Eastern Europe (forthcoming). Efren Córdova, a Doctor of Law from the University of Havana, obtained his Master’s and Ph.D. from Cornell University. He taught at the Universities of Havana, Puerto Rico, and Florida International. A former high level official of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, Córdova is a member of the Iberoamerican Academy of Labor Law and Social Security. Born in Havana, Cuba, he is the author of nine books and dozens of articles on labor relations and labor law. Mary Katherine Crabb is currently completing her doctoral dissertation, Cuba at the End of Utopia: Ideology, Power, and the Health of the Revolution, in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. In 1997-1998 she conducted 10 months of ethnographic and archival research on political economy, health, and health services in Havana and Santiago, Cuba. She has written extensively on the subject of Cuba and her work has been published in journals, including Cuban Studies. Crabb has presented papers at several conferences; among her recent papers is Decline of the State, Growth of the Nation. Juan M. del Aguila is professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is the author of Cuba: Dilemmas of a Revolution. Sergio Díaz-Briquets is executive director of the Council for Human Development and vice president of Casals & Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C. area consulting firm. He has served as research director of the U.S. Congressional Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development, and project director with the Population Reference Bureau. DíazBriquets is the author or editor of several books, including Social Chance and Internal Migration (1977), The Health Revolution in Cuba (1983), Fertility Detriments in Cuba (1983), and Cuban Internationalism in Sub-Saharan Africa (1989). His most recent work is a co-authored book, The Environmental Legacy

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of Socialism in Cuba (1999). Díaz-Briquets has a Ph.D. in demography from the University of Pennsylvania. Jorge I. Domínguez is professor of government at Harvard University, a past president of the Latin American Studies Association, and a member of the InterAmerican Dialogue. He is the author of two major books on Cuba and its history. He is president of the Institute for Cuban Studies, and co-editor of the journal, Cuban Studies. As part of his professional work, he has visited Cuba several times in the present decade. Roberto Luque Escalona was born in Holguin, Cuba in 1936. He attended the University of Havana School of Law, but interrupted his studies during the final years of the Batista regime. He resumed his studies in the field of history at the National University of Mexico (UNAM). In 1961 he returned to Cuba and entered the diplomatic service to work at the Cuban Institute of Friendship Amongst Peoples. For several years thereafter he served as a correspondent for Prensa Latina. He then served in the editorial section of Revista de Economia y Desarrollo, where he wrote The Tiger and the Children: Fidel Castro and the Judgment of History. Juan Carlos Espinosa is director of the Office of Grants, City of Miami, Florida. Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and a former national fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. He has taught history at the University of Oregon, is co-editor of Peron: Argentina in Depression and War, 1930-1943, and has written widely on Latin America for professional and scholarly publications. Damian J. Fernandez is professor of international relations at Florida International University. His latest book is Cuba and the Politics of Passion (2000). Marisela Fleites-Lear is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is also a professor in the Department of Spanish at Green River Community College in Auburn, Washington. From 1982 until 1991 she was a professor of philosophy at a university in Havana, Cuba. Max Frankel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written for the New York Times for more than 50 years. He served as the paper’s executive editor from 1986 to 1994. Tim Golden is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is currently stationed in Havana, and has written a wide-ranging series of articles on the social and economic conditions of ordinary Cubans in the present, post-Soviet, period.

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Edward Gonzalez is professor emeritus of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles, and is also a resident consultant to the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. He is a specialist on Cuban affairs, CubanSoviet relations, and United States policy toward Cuba and Latin America. He is the author of Cuba Under Castro: The Limits of Charisma (1974), A Strategy for Dealing With Cuba in the 1980s (1982), co-author of Post-Revolutionary Cuba in a Changing World (1975), and joint author of U.S. Policy for Central America: A Briefing (1984). In 1996 he co-authored Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters. In 1998 he organized the “Rand Forum on Cuba”, funded by the Ford Foundation. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science & Sociology at Rutgers University. He is author of The Conscience of Worms and the Cowardice of Lions, first delivered at the Bacardi Lectures at the University of Miami. He is the editor with Jaime Suchlicki of Cuban Communism. Among his other works on Latin America and area development are Masses in Latin America; Three Worlds of Development; and, Beyond Empire & Revolution. His most recent book is Behemoth: Main Currents in the History & Theory of Political Sociology. He was director of a USAID project on transition to civil society in Cuba. Antonio Jorge is professor of political economy and international relations at Florida International University and senior research scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. He is widely regarded as a foremost expert on Cuban economic development in the context of Latin America. He has recently published a textbook on the foundations of political economy. Brian Latell has been teaching courses on Cuba and Latin America at Georgetown University for the past twenty-one years. He has written and lectured on Cuba, Mexico, and U.S. foreign intelligence issues. In 1998 he co-edited Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites. Latell served as national intelligence officer for Latin America at the National Intelligence Council between 1990 and 1994. From 1994 to 1998 he was director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence at the CIA and chaired the editorial board of Studies In Intelligence. Latell retired from government service in 1998 and was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. Carmelo Mesa-Lago was Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He has served as visiting professor at the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in Chile. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Cuba in the 1970s; Revolutionary Change in Cuba; The Economy of Socialist Cuba; Cuba in Africa; and Are Economic Reforms

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Pushing Cuba to the Market? He is founder and editor of Cuban StudiesEstudios Cubanos. Carlos Alberto Montaner was born in Cuba in 1943. He is a novelist, essayist, journalist, and film-scriptwriter. He has been a press correspondent in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. His syndicated column, “At Point Blank Range” is published in dozens of Spanish and Latin American newspapers. He is the director of the publishing house, Firmas, located in Madrid. Montaner is the author of 200 anos de gringos (1976); El ojo del ciclon (1979); Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution (1982); Cuba, Castro and the Caribbean (1985); and Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution (1989). Eduardo García Moure is the political secretary of Solidarity of Cuban Workers (STC), adviser to the Confederation of the Autonomous Labor Union of Venezuela (CODESA), assistant general secretary of Latin-American Central of Workers (CLAT) and director of Desafíos, the official magazine of Solidarity of Cuban Workers (STC). He was born in Havana, Cuba. Eusebio Mujal-León is associate professor of government at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. He is the author of Communism and Political Change in Spain (1983); European Socialism and the Crisis in Central America (1988); and Looking Beyond the Pyrenees: Spanish Foreign Policy After Franco (1989). He is also editor of The USSR and Latin America: A Developing Relationship (forthcoming), and co-editor of Spain at the Polls (1985). Andrew S. Natsios is admistrator of the United States Agency for International Development. Prior to his current position he was secretary of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1998 he was at the United States Institute for Peace as a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow, where he wrote a book on the North Korean famine. Natsios was vice president of World Vision U.S., and executive director, World Vision Relief and Development. From 1991 to 1993 he was assistant administrator of the Bureau of Food and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development. From 1989 to 1990 he was director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. He is the author of American Foreign Policy and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and numerous journal and magazine articles. Silvia Pedraza is professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Among her works are Political and Economic Migrants in America: Cubans and Mexicans, and Origins and Destinies: Immigration, Race and Ethnicity in America, which she co-authored with Rubén G. Rumbaut. Jorge F. Pérez-López is an international economist. He has written extensively on the Cuban economy. His most recent book on Cuba, written with Sergio Díaz-

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Briquets, is Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (2000). He also authored the chapter on Cuba’s economy in Cuba: A Country Study ( 2002). Eugene Pons is the coordinator of the Cuba Information System at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. Susan Kaufman Purcell is vice president of the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas in New York City. Between 1981 and 1988 she was a senior fellow and director of the Latin American Project at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was also a member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean, between 1980 and 1981. A former professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Purcell holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. She is a co-editor and co-author of Cuba: The Contours of Change (2000); Mexico Under Zedillo (1998); Brazil Under Cardoso (1997); Europe and Latin America in the World Economy (1995); and, Japan and Latin America in the New Global Order (1992). Michael Radu is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and contributing editor of Orbis. He was born and educated in Romania, where he obtained degrees in history and Marxist philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Radu has written widely on foreign affairs, including East European politics and Latin American Marxist movements. His most recent book is Collapse or Decay? Cuba and the East European Transitions from Communism (1998). Marta San Martín was born in Cuba and completed her graduate training in political science at Columbia University in New York. She has taught at Southampton College in Long Island, and more recently, conducted research on new migrants from Cuba on behalf of the Catholic Archdiocese of New Jersey. She is co-author of The Cuban Insurrection, 1952-1959 (1972) and a recent collection of articles entitled Doce ensayos sobre Cuba. Jaime Suchlicki is director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and Emilio Bacardi professor of history and international studies at the University of Miami. He was the founding executive director of the North-South Center. From 1984 to 1998 he was the editor of the Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs. Suchlicki is the author of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro, now in its fifth edition, and of Mexico: From Montezuma to NAFTA (1996). He is a highly regarded consultant to the private and public sector on Cuba and Latin American Affairs. He is the director of a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded project on transition to democracy in Cuba at the University of Miami.

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Tad Szulc, former journalist and free-lance reporter for The New York Times, was born in Warsaw, Poland. He studied at the University of Brazil in the mid1940s. Among his fifteen authored books are Twilight of the Tyrants (1950), The Cuban Invasion (1962); The Winds of Revolution (1963); The Illusion of Peace (1978); and Fidel Castro: A Critical Portrait (1986). Szulc died in May 2001. Hugh Thomas is a British historian and member of the House of Lords. He was educated at Cambridge University and then at the Sorbonne. He worked in the British Foreign Office, and later became United Kingdom delegate to the United Nations. He taught at the University of Reading in its Graduate School of European Studies, and was a visiting senior scholar at the Center for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C. His publications include The Spanish Civil War (1961); Cuba, or the Pursuit of Freedom (1971); and An Unfinished History of the World (1979). Phyllis Greene Walker recently completed her dissertation in political science at Georgetown University. She has written extensively on military and security issues in Latin America, including specific articles on national security for Mexico: A Country Study, and Argentina: A Country Study both edited by James D. Rudolph; and most recently, on “The Cuban Military Service System” for The Cuban Military Under Castro, edited by Jaime Suchlicki and James A. Morris.