Fidel Castro

by Volker Skierka

  People hoped that, under these oppressive conditions, Castro would at least allow the reopening of the farmers’ markets that had helped to keep the population supplied with food in the eighties. But he was convinced that such a step would immediately spur corruption and produce a dangerous inequality. The main task was to ensure “that whatever we have we distribute evenly among everyone.” And he promised: “Not even in the special period will we have beggars, there won’t be anyone without food … no one will be left out in the street.”91

  The período especial meant – in 1991, for instance – that everyone with a ration book received just under 200 grams of fish every ten days, half a kilo of meat a week (or alternatively, only chicken for up to 50 days at a time), three to four eggs a week, half a kilo of rice, 500 to 750 grams of sugar, 125 grams of beans, and 25 grams of coffee. Cooking oil and flour were rarely available, and there were few vegetables or fruit, no jam, virtually no butter, milk only for small children, old people and those in special need; the bread allowance was 250 grams a day. Soap, detergent, toilet paper, and matches were not often seen. The lack of chlorine made it advisable to boil water, but there was also a shortage of methylated spirits to use as fuel. Every two years, citizens were entitled to buy four underpants or bras, two pairs of socks, one shirt or blouse, and 4 meters of material for trousers or dresses. Castro appealed to women to wear or recycle old clothes for the next five years – the estimated length of the special period.

  Everything that can help to counteract the terrible blow is being discussed not only in the National Assembly, but also in the hundreds of thousands of meetings that take place in factories, production and service centers, trade unions, universities, secondary schools, and all the organizations of farmers, women or flatdwellers and other organizations of a social character.

  And again: “The little we have will be distributed with the greatest degree of equality.”92

  The restrictions most likely to be strengthened were those on journalistic products. The papers Juventud Rebelde (“Rebel Youth”) and Trabajadores (“Workers”) began to appear only weekly, with a reduced size and printrun. The army paper Verde Olivo ceased publication, and the Party paper Granma appeared with a smaller number of pages and in a reduced format. Because of the paper shortage, virtually the only books to be published were for use in schools. Television broadcasts were limited for the time being to 48 hours a week.

  The economy measures, together with falling output in every sector, led to a rise in unemployment and also in underemployment, which at times affected up to a third of all employees. On the other hand, more and more people failed to show up at work, partly because they had to spend as many as 15 hours a week standing in queues and fighting for food that was often not there. To cut down on absenteeism, the government eventually allowed others to keep someone’s place in the queue – for a price.

  One of the most important economies was the slashing of energy consumption by 50 percent. The Juragua nuclear power station being built with Soviet help near Cienfuegos might have brought some relief: Castro hoped that it would halve oil requirements from the early nineties. But when the Soviet Union pulled out its technicians and the “special period” hit the country, the uncompleted edifice remained as a ruin in the landscape. Castro had to write off $1.2 billion in Cuban investment for the project and make the head of the nuclear program redundant – none other than his son Fidelito, who had a doctorate in nuclear physics. Nor was Cuba’s own offshore oil production sufficiently developed to offer more than slight relief. In the end, nearly half of all industrial enterprises – mainly those dependent upon old Eastern bloc technology – had to order a full or partial shutdown. Textile production came to an almost complete standstill, as did the cement, nickel, and chemical industries. As time passed, moreover, the electricity supply was sometimes working for only six or seven hours a day. Another of the “precapitalist” survival strategies was to lay up the country’s 90,000 petrol-guzzling tractors and replace them with 9,000 ox-carts – with dramatic consequences for agricultural production. Machine labor was replaced with manual labor, especially in sowing and reaping, and even 70 percent of the 1993 sugar harvest was brought in by hand. Bus, taxi, and car transport was cut by up to 50 percent, and the few personal vehicles on the road mostly belonged to state enterprises, organizations, and ministries. People queued for two or three hours at bus stops, to get a place in or on one of the packed camellos (“camels”), municipal buses so called because of the hump-like structure in their middle.

  Cuban society almost literally stopped moving – until the Comandante had the saving idea that the mass of the population should ride back to the future on horse-drawn carts and bicycles. Still filled with optimism, he knew how to sell this to people: “The special period also has its positive sides – like the fact that we are now entering the age of the bicycle. In a sense, this too is a revolution.” For, in the end, cycling was good for one’s health. Although Cubans were by no means a nation of cyclists and many had first to learn how to ride the new means of locomotion, he went into real raptures: “I have no doubt that in the summer we’ll see whole clouds of cyclists heading for the beaches of our capital.”93 Nearly a million machines were bought from China, and sold to students for 60 pesos each and to employees for 120 pesos. The Chinese also helped build five factories around the country, with the capacity to produce half a million bicycles over the next five years. At the same time, 60,000 tricycles were supposed to cover half the transport of goods. The armed forces too were required to use the new vehicles, so that at the annual May Day parade soldiers rode past the state and Party leadership on olive-green bicycles. Soon a half of all households had purchased at least one, removing a third of the burden from car and bus transport and covering a quarter of all journeys to work. When supply failed for a short time to keep up with demand, the number of bicycle thefts increased and people had to cart their 55-pound machines into their offices and homes. And, however healthy it was, it also cost energy and sharpened the hunger that was becoming less and less easy to still. “Daily calorie consumption,” Castro reported, “fell from 3000 to 1900, and daily protein consumption from 80 to 50.”94

  Thus, Castro set out an ambitious food program which, instead of suggesting a return to an earlier phase in the development of Homo sapiens, reflected the struggle for survival of a relatively advanced agrarian and industrial society located somewhere between the First and Third Worlds. The aim, as we have seen, was pure self-sufficiency. Twenty thousand hectares of sugar land was set aside for the production of rice, fruit, and vegetables. Fish farms and 1,800 chicken farms (producing 10 percent more eggs and poultry), as well as 1,000 dairies, were supposed to come into being over the next ten years. In the cities, back yards, railway sidings, waste ground, ornamental gardens and balconies were converted into “victory gardens” for the growing of fruit and vegetables. By the middle of 1992, there were more than a million such places looked after by tenants, neighborhood welfare groups, and students. Vegetable production was supposed to rise 50 percent within five years. But such huge advances in survival techniques failed to happen, simply because the system was so inaccessible and earlier omissions and neglect began to take their toll. Thus, a high percentage of products – some estimates put the figure at almost a third – went bad as a result of transport problems, improper storage, or defective refrigeration. A lot was stolen, however, and ended up on the black market – where at least it reached the final consumer.

  As Fidel Castro still opposed the reintroduction of farmers’ markets and insisted that all produce must be distributed by the state, people continued to rely on the thriving black market when they wanted or needed something on top of their ration. For, under the counter, it was miraculously possible to find almost everything, at astronomical prices. Unofficial figures (which need to be treated with caution) estimate that between 1989 and the middle of 1993 turnover on the black market shot up from the equivalent of $2 billion to $14.5
billion, outstripping the volume of state retail trade with its fixed prices.95 With average monthly earnings running at 200 to 300 pesos, the price of a black-market chicken rose from 70 to 200 pesos in the space of a year. Half a kilo of lard cost 10 pesos, a packet of cigarettes 5 to 10 pesos. Traders wanted 500 pesos for a pair of jeans, or 300 for a pair of shoes.

  All the inventiveness and organizational talent lacking in the official approach to scarcity appeared to be concentrated in the black market. Over the years, the Soviet military and technical personnel based in the country supplied (and joined) the 60,000 negocieros of this shadowy world, and before their final departure they sold off anything that would make a fast buck, even weapons and uniforms. Cubans also stole what there was to steal, mostly at work, in agriculture or from stocks intended for the tourist industry. The crime rate was a source of concern, despite drastic measures such as the rounding up of whole rings of criminals specializing in theft, speculation, bribery, illegal currency trading, or the receiving of stolen goods in and around the port of Havana. Not infrequently, high state officials were also implicated: for example, at the tourist center of Varadero, the chief airport customs officer was found to be the head of a gang. The criminals seemed to have contacts everywhere, even in the police and at the various ministries. In 1991 the railway parcel service had to be closed down, because too many consignments (often containing food) were being stolen en route. In the same year, weapons were handed out to farmworkers so that they could protect themselves against armed robbers who wanted to steal the fruits of their labor.

  The survival program was only formally based on doctrinal purity; it harked back to capitalist and pre-capitalist elements as well as socialist ones. “This is no time for theorizing but instead for advancing, resisting and overcoming,” Castro told the Federation of University Students in December 1990.96 And shortly afterwards, he raised the question: “How could a capitalist country accomplish this?”97 To put people in the mood for the “zero option” of complete economic isolation, he had less and less recourse to the exhortations of Marxism-Leninism. Official discourse had long preferred the word “fatherland” to “socialism,” and in this hour of need Castro returned to the original roots of his revolution, dramatically presenting the “special period” as one more episode in Cuba’s long struggle for national independence. Thus in April 1991, on the thirtieth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, he strengthened the leadership’s resolve by appealing to the spiritual fathers of the independence struggle:

  We will tell the imperialists, no, you can’t do what you want with us! … And if we have to put up with material deprivation, we will put up with it, because we can never forget that those who began our independence struggle spent ten years in the woods … and when some of them got tired and thought that it was impossible to fight under such difficult conditions … and wanted peace without independence, [Antonio] Maceo said “No!” And, along with Maceo, the best representatives of that heroic people said “No!” … That is who we are: the heirs of Maceo … the heirs of Martí.98

  The country presented a curious picture in the early nineties, a cross between impending collapse and burgeoning confidence. The grand Hotel Nacional, a Mafia stronghold in Batista’s time, had no life in it. The huge propaganda board on the Malecón, Havana’s wide seafront promenade, defiantly announced: “Patria o Muerte – Venceremos! ” (“Fatherland or death – we shall conquer!”).

  Expectations were great in October 1991 when the Fourth Party Congress eventually met in an atmosphere of privation, after months of preparation and several postponements. The gathering had been preceded by nearly 90,000 local meetings around the country, where more than 3 million citizens had taken part. A wide-ranging questionnaire had solicited the views of more than a million people about a series of issues concerning everyday life and the state of the Revolution. Never before – and not again, unfortunately – did the Cuban people have such an opportunity for democratic rank-and-file participation. Perhaps they took it too seriously. For Castro was confronted with an endless list of complaints about the wild inefficiency and horrendous incompetence of the bureaucracy, and he was reminded of the massive criticisms of the Party and state apparatus following the failure of the campaign in 1970 for the 10 million tons harvest.

  The congress recommended a set of constitutional amendments to the National Assembly, including a form of direct election of deputies to the national assembly of the one-party state. Previously the ordinary population had voted for only 150 regional assemblies. These then chose the members of 14 provincial parliaments, from the ranks of which the 600 or so members of the National Assembly were finally appointed. Now, in the run-up to parliamentary elections, those entitled to vote would be able to choose directly at local and regional level, in 14,686 constituencies, among several candidates for the National Assembly, even if all came from the ranks of the only permitted party, the PCC.

  The procedure was a sham, however, for in the end there would still be only one candidate for each seat in parliament, and that one candidate would be a Party loyalist who had been gone over with a fine toothcomb. It was true that, as Castro pointed out, the candidate needed more than half of the votes. But, because of the nature of the election process, it was unlikely that any candidate would receive too few votes. Instead of choosing the full list of candidates in their constituency, voters would have the option of going into the booth, selecting individual candidates, and “voting” others off the list. But it was exceptional for anyone to do this, observed by everyone else around; nor was there much point. With the vote for candidates always well above 90 percent, few ever adopted a procedure that took time and made them look conspicuous. Besides, at that point in the election process there were no alternative candidates and no oppositional contenders.

  Of course, anyone dispatched to the really influential and powerful structures – the Central Committee and Politbureau of the PCC, the Council of State – ultimately remained subject to the will of the Máximo Líder.

  Another recommended change to the Constitution was, however, seen as the signal for a cautious opening of the political system: namely, the deletion of the duty to raise all Cubans only in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism. This came at a time when belief in the doctrine had anyway begun to evaporate; the more patriotic fidelismo, though still with a socialist orientation, was again on the upswing at Party schools. But, from now on, men and women professing allegiance to any of the Christian denominations would be allowed to join the Communist Party. The discrimination against Church members in the allocation of jobs and college places, which had been the norm since the sixties, was supposed to become a thing of the past. “There’s no country in the world,” Castro claimed, “where the people participate in shaping their future as much as in ours. . . . No other regime is as democratic as a socialist regime.”99

  Nevertheless, the restructuring of the leadership apparatus that took place on Castro’s instructions was quite spectacular. The number of Party members was reduced by two-thirds, the number of Central Committee secretariats halved from 19 to 9, with a corresponding reduction in the number of jobs. Further down, local Party functionaries found themselves relieved of their posts; whole networks were dissolved. Delegates to the congress replaced more than half the 225 members of the Central Committee and more than half of the 25-person Politbureau. The new members of these bodies came almost exclusively from the generation of 30- and 40-year-olds, representing a broader spectrum of occupational groups than before – even including the field of culture.

  But the congress disappointed hopes of a material improvement. The tense situation in the country was reflected in the fact that this important congress took place far from the capital, in Santiago de Cuba, not coincidentally the heart of Castro’s traditionally rebellious native province. Accredited foreign journalists were not permitted to attend, and even had to leave the island for the duration. Those who failed to do so were expelled.

  After the Party Congress, po
litical observers, journalists, and diplomats concluded from Castro’s obvious immobility and the initial lack of economic liberalization that the days of “Castroism” were numbered, that its collapse was looming on the horizon. They were strengthened in this view when, at the concluding rally, the nation and the world saw on their television screens a Máximo Líder with a bunker mentality who could control himself only with difficulty, as he fiercely reaffirmed that he would rather go down with the revolution than abandon the socialist road. A multiparty system was “fake pluralism,” he grumbled. Never would Cuba “stumble into the trap of making large or small concessions.”100 He accused the USA of “hegemonism” and compared it to Hitler’s Germany. To be sure, in recent months Washington had further tightened the blockade and exerted ever more ruthless pressure on firms and governments in other countries because of their trade links with Cuba.

  The population directly felt the effects. It was hardly possible any more to import food containing important vitamins, or powdered milk for young children. As a result, deficiency diseases began to assume epidemic proportions, although the more or less functioning health system fairly soon managed to bring these under control with the help of European governments. After the Party Congress, however, the economic decline turned into a free fall toward catastrophe. Not even the libreta ration-book could guarantee a basic supply of food, as there was no longer the minimum to go round. The transport system virtually collapsed, as the lack of spare parts and fuel made itself ever more sharply felt. And more and more of the ever scarcer goods rotted away.

  In July 1992, three-quarters of a year after the Party Congress, the Cuban National Assembly adopted its recommendations in the form of a number of laws and constitutional amendments. The state form of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” which had been enshrined in 1976 at the height of the Cuban–Soviet friendship, was simply deleted. The father and hero of the revolution was no longer Karl Marx but again José Martí – and, with him, Fidel Castro. In order to underline this claim to leadership, Castro could be seen almost daily on television or in public campaigns, including in his new position as president of the “National Security Council” that had been reconstituted because of recent events. The Constitution also incorporated the new religious freedom and guaranteed the freedom of opinion, so long as this was exercised in accordance with the socialist principles of society. Anyone who, in the Party’s opinion, contravened those principles would have to face the newly formed “rapid deployment force” of the interior ministry and its so-called actos de repudio (acts of repudiation or rejection). These repressive groups, unpopular and highly controversial among the public and even inside the Party, were the other side of the charisma of fidelismo, whose “repudiation” of oppositional activity involved the crudest threat or application of force.