Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence
Page 40
Members of the Communist Party and Young Communists studied that speech in detail over the next months, not as commandments to be repeated by rote, but almost as Delphic pronouncements that needed to be debated and interpreted. Journalist Marc Frank obtained the guide prepared for discussion leaders and reports that it admonished them to foster a “profound debate.” This should occur, Frank quotes it saying, “in an atmosphere of complete freedom and sincerity around the central themes of the [July 26th] speech.” The main topics suggested for discussion included food production, import substitution, and increasing production and efficiency.6 But as discussions moved beyond the party into work centers, community meetings, and even some publications, a new set of issues replaced the recommended topics.
Cubans vented their anger over the dual-currency system, the resulting inequality, and their declining ability to purchase necessities with the state salaries they were earning. They also complained about longer wait times to see a medical professional, or the lack of a family doctor’s availability because so many were serving in other countries. A large percentage of complaints focused on onerous rules and bureaucratic red tape, which made bribes an increasingly necessary cost in order to obtain a state service or license or to avoid trouble from inspectors or the police.
There were still many achievements for which Cubans could be proud. The UN’s 2009 Human Development Report ranked Cuba at 51 out of 194 countries, just behind Argentina (49) and Uruguay (50), and ahead of Mexico (53), Costa Rica (54), and Brazil (75).7 In the 2004 Summer Olympics, Cuba came in eleventh with twenty-seven medals. But the Special Period clearly had taken an enormous toll. Increasing inequality, decreasing access to health care and a good education, and above all a growing individualism and a declining sense of communal solidarity had eroded distinctive aspects of the Cuban Revolution. The wellspring of hope that nurtured Cubans’ belief in the future, which had given them the energy and strength to defy the odds in building a new society, seemed depleted.
No wonder, then, that the founding leaders worried about the Revolution’s survival. In a 2005 speech, Fidel publicly vented his own foreboding about the consequences of corruption. He declared, “This country can self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself, but they [the United States] can never destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.”8 For this reason, Raúl sought to overcome the public’s ennui by renewing a flame of idealism in his July 26, 2007, speech: “We must always remember—and not to repeat it from memory like a dogma, but rather to apply it creatively in our work every day—what comrade Fidel affirmed on May 1, 2000. . . . Revolution is unity, it is independence, it is fighting for our dreams for justice for Cuba and for the world, it is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism and our internationalism.”
President Raúl Castro
A Shared Vision of Sovereignty
Andres Oppenheimer, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist for the Miami Herald, captured the conventional wisdom in Washington and Miami when he wrote in 1992 that “Cuba’s socialist experiment” would soon be over. Fidel Castro, he predicted, “would be able to muddle through and stretch his final hour for a few months, perhaps even a few years, but his socialist dream was doomed.”9 Yet Fidel managed to confound knowledgeable journalists, pundits, politicians, government analysts, and scholars who predicted his and the regime’s demise.
They mistakenly assumed the Cuban Revolution was akin either to East European regimes, which fell quickly when the threat of Soviet intervention evaporated, or South American military dictatorships led by caudillos, which collapsed when the leader died or was removed. The Cuban Revolution was different. It was a genuinely popular revolution, a revolution whose aims the broad mass of Cubans supported.
Historian Antoni Kapcia discerningly summarizes the Revolution’s essence as an “emphasis on the ‘nation’ and sovereignty, a belief in community (and especially in solidarity and social conscience) and a reawakened sense of Cuba’s ‘Latin American-ness.’”10 While Cubans throughout the island believed that Raúl fully embraced these goals, they also wanted a government that helped them secure basic needs and fulfill their dreams.
Raúl Castro
Known for his discipline, extraordinary organizational ability, and pragmatism, Raúl Castro’s essential role in shaping Cuban history was long overshadowed by his larger-than-life older brother, Fidel. Born in Biran, Holguín, on June 3, 1931, Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz also was the son of Ángel Castro and Lina Ruz. Raúl attended Colegio Dolores in Santiago de Cuba and Belén Jesuit Preparatory School in Havana, and studied social sciences at the University of Havana. In 1953, he joined Socialist Youth, a wing of the Popular Socialist Party, and represented the group at a Soviet-sponsored International Conference in Vienna.
With his older brother, Fidel, Raúl then planned and engaged in the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, for which he was sent to prison. Released in 1955, when Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista issued a general amnesty, Raúl went to Mexico to work on plans for the guerrilla war in Cuba. He was the leader who recruited Che Guevara into the effort. In 1958, Raúl became commander of the second front in Oriente (Cuba’s eastern-most province), which entailed aggregating and coordinating several disparate guerrilla groups and establishing a quasi-government that even had its own medical clinics, hospitals, and schools.
Possessing little equipment and starting only with young fighters from the July 26th Movement, Raúl built a professional military force during the first years of the revolutionary government’s operation. Initially named as second commander, he became minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in late 1959 and held that position until 2008. Under his leadership, the Cuban military not only had an international reputation for combat effectiveness; it took on many roles, from developing the country’s infrastructure to organizing a one-million-person militia. In the early 1990s, in the face of Special Period shortages, Raúl successfully managed to downsize the military by 60 percent without significant reaction. He advocated economic reforms such as the legalization of the US dollar as a currency, and developed semi–state enterprises that employed former military personnel and were largely controlled by the military.
Raúl also served as the first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers and second secretary of the PCC from the time of its founding in 1965 until 2011, when he was elected first secretary. In 2006, he became the temporary president when Fidel took ill; the National Assembly elected him president on February 24, 2008. Reelected in 2013, he announced that he would not stand for election again when his term ends in 2018. The Seventh Congress of the PCC reelected him as first secretary in 2016 for a five-year term.
In 1959, Raúl married Vilma Espín Guillois, a July 26th Movement revolutionary who also fought in the 1956–1958 conflict. She founded and served as president of the Cuban Federation of Women until her death in 2007. They had four children.
The Cuban Communist Party (PCC), according to the country’s constitution, “is the highest leading force [la fuerza dirigente superior] of the society and State.”11 Yet by 2008, it was languishing. Led by old men and increasingly disconnected from the travails most Cubans felt at the grassroots, it had not even managed to hold a Party Congress since 1997, though one was supposed to be held every five years. In part, its decline resulted from Fidel’s efforts to energize Cubans through participation in new mass organizations disconnected from the PCC. These included the Association of Veterans of the Cuban Revolution and the revitalized Federation of University Students.
In seeking to instill revolutionary fervor among younger Cubans, as the 1961 Literacy Campaign did, and in building off the popular emotional campaigns in support of Elián González’s return to Cuba, Fidel also inaugurated several projects outside of regular institutional boundaries in 2000 and 2001. The government sent tens of thousands of university students identified as “dis
affected” to new schools of social work, where they were trained in a one-year course and then deployed to communities to work with the elderly, young prisoners, and the physically challenged. High school students from eastern provinces were brought to Havana to teach in elementary schools abandoned by seasoned instructors who sought to earn hard currency in tourism or abroad. As an accompaniment to new projects, the government began to air university-level classes on television—Universidad Para Todos (University for Everyone)—to train the “emergency teachers” and to provide new skills for laid-off workers in the downsized sugar industry.12
Raúl’s Preference for Organizational Order
Most of these ad hoc efforts ended after the National Assembly formally elected Raúl as the new president in February 2008. In his inauguration speech, he emphasized the importance of institutionalization and reestablishing the PCC in the role the constitution gave it, as the highest leading force of the society and state. “Fidel is Fidel, we all know it well. Fidel is irreplaceable,” he declared, in effect acknowledging that this was the moment to transfer the basis of the Revolution’s legitimacy from charisma to legal-rational structures. “Only the Communist Party, the certain guarantor of the Cuban nation’s unity,” he proclaimed, “can be the worthy heir to the confidence the people endow in their leader.” In addition, he said, “Today’s circumstances require a more compact and functional structure, with fewer centralized State administrative agencies and a better distribution of the functions they fulfill. This will . . . allow us to aggregate some decisive economic activities that are presently dispersed among several agencies.”13
Perhaps because he had been so successful in building a well-functioning military organization and then succeeded in adapting it to the Special Period circumstances, or perhaps because he had worked in that organization for nearly fifty years, or maybe because his personality was so different from his brother’s, Raúl honored well-defined lines of authority and sought to establish accountability for achievements and errors.
Under Fidel’s leadership, the administration of policy tended to lack coherence because three power centers had overlapping authority: governmental ministries, the PCC, and the so-called Grupo de Apoyo (Support Group)—Fidel Castro’s tight-knit, little-publicized kitchen cabinet of confidants who were in their twenties and early thirties. This not only led to duplication of efforts and poor coordination. It allowed the people in each group to avoid taking responsibility for failures—passing the blame onto those in another group. Young and inexperienced though they were, members of the Grupo de Apoyo wielded the greatest influence because of their proximity to Fidel and their personal connections when he appointed them to high posts in the PCC or ministries.
With Fidel at the hub of the three-pronged power structure, stagnation tended to accompany any policy initiative. No one felt secure in making decisions; it seemed as if every action had to wait for the comandante’s approval. Even his closest allies acknowledged that Fidel could only make so many decisions that were based on well-reasoned analysis. Raúl would not run a system that he perceived was so chaotic.
Slow but Deliberate Change
Raúl’s election came with widespread anticipation that he would bring about significant changes in Cuba’s economy and even its politics. There was thus a nearly ear-shattering sigh of disappointment when he chose seventy-eight-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura to be first vice president of the Council of State. A mere eight months younger than the president, Machado Ventura commanded broad respect from older and still powerful members of the PCC, many of whom opposed the introduction of market mechanisms. He shared their skepticism about Cuba’s salvation via the market and his selection served to reassure party members that Raúl would take their views into account. While Raúl had the military solidly behind him, he could not assume unconditional support from the PCC. Moreover, even though the National Assembly had elected him as president, he was still only the interim head of the PCC. Fidel continued to retain the title of first secretary. (See table 23.1 for an overview of how the Cuban government is organized at the national, provincial, and local levels.)
Cuba’s Power Structure
Formally, Cuba has a tripartite governmental structure like the United States, with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Laid over this structure is the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), which in effect acts as a coordinating mechanism. High officials in the executive and legislative branches are also leaders in the PCC.
The National Assembly of People’s Power is composed of 614 delegates elected directly from districts of roughly equal population throughout the country. It elects the president of the country, whose formal title is president of the Council of State, which is the executive committee of the Assembly. All the Council’s members are elected deputies in the National Assembly, which meets twice each year. When it is not in session, the Council of State issues decrees on its behalf. There is also a president of the National Assembly.
The executive branch is headed by the Council of Ministers, which is similar to the president’s cabinet in the United States, though it meets more frequently and makes formal decisions. There are twenty-two members of the Council. An additional nine members, which include President Raúl Castro, the first vice president (currently Miguel Díaz-Canel), and four other vice presidents, serve as the Executive Committee.
The PCC is nominally governed by the Party Congress, which is supposed to meet once in five years. Its most recent meeting occurred in April 2016, when nearly 1,200 delegates participated. The Party Congress elects the Central Committee (currently it has 120 members) and the first secretary of the PCC. Like his brother, Raúl Castro serves both as PCC first secretary and as president of the Councils of State and Ministers. While he announced in 2011 that he would not seek reelection as president in 2018, he was reelected as the PCC first secretary in 2016, and so will still hold some power until 2021.
Table 23.1. Cuban Government Organizational Structure
Legislative Bodies
Executive Bodies
Judicial Bodies
National Assembly
614 delegates elected directly from equally proportioned districts
Assembly formally approves all laws
Headed by the president of the National Assembly
Council of State
31 members
Serves as executive committee of National Assembly
Acts in place of the National Assembly when it is out of session
Headed by president of Cuba who is the chief of state
Council of Ministers
Highest administrative and executive body, which, in effect, constitutes the government of the republic
Coordinates and directs execution of political, economic, cultural, scientific, social, and defense policies
Members include: chief of state, vice presidents, and heads of government ministries; may include others designated by law; currently, the Council of Ministers has 33 members
People’s Supreme Court
Nominally independent
Elected by and accountable to the National Assembly
Provincial Assemblies
Each province has its own assembly
Delegates elected directly by districts
Responsible for overseeing provincial administration
Provincial Administration
Carries out provincial-level administrative functions
Responsible to provincial assembly
Appeals Courts
Seven regional courts
National Assembly elects judges
Municipal Assemblies
First level of political authority
Oversee functioning of municipal administration
One delegate elected from each district
Popular Councils
Support the municipal assembly in the exercise of its powers and facilitate better understanding and addressing the needs and interests of the inhabitants of its area of action
Municipal Administration
Carries out administrative functions at the local level
Responsible to municipal assembly
Expected to be given more authority in future as national government attempts to decentralize decision-making
People’s Courts
Municipal assemblies elect judges
Implement decisions from Supreme Court
District Courts
Adjudicate civil and criminal cases
Source: Chart produced by Philip Brenner and Teresa Garcia from Cuban government sources.
The new president waited one year to institute any major reform. Then, in a quick stroke on March 2, 2009, he dismissed Carlos Lage Dávila, secretary of the Council of Ministers and the vice president in charge of the Cuban economy, Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, head of the international committee of the Communist Party’s Central Committee who had been a vice minister of foreign relations, ambassador to the United Nations, and head of Cuban Interests Section in Washington, and eight ministers, including Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque.