The Revolution 55 years after Moncada
By
Saul Landau
You
can’t build socialism in one country chanted revolutionaries
throughout much of Europe as the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. In
four years, under Lenin’s leadership, the audacious insurrection
had extended to the far reaching corners of the Tsarist Empire. But
attempts to duplicate the first overthrow of capitalism failed in
other European countries. By 1921, socialism began to develop in one
country, the largest land mass in the world. The Soviet Union endured
as a painfully inefficient state-directed economy and repressive
society for some 70 years before it imploded.
By
the mid 1980s, the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions had already
begun to…
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
You
can’t build socialism in one country chanted revolutionaries
throughout much of Europe as the Bolsheviks took power in 1917. In
four years, under Lenin’s leadership, the audacious insurrection
had extended to the far reaching corners of the Tsarist Empire. But
attempts to duplicate the first overthrow of capitalism failed in
other European countries. By 1921, socialism began to develop in one
country, the largest land mass in the world. The Soviet Union endured
as a painfully inefficient state-directed economy and repressive
society for some 70 years before it imploded.
By
the mid 1980s, the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions had already
begun to morph into capitalist economies run by Communist Parties
claiming adherence to socialism.
Cuban
socialism remained unique, however, refusing to compromise with what
its leaders defined as basic principles: not allowing capitalist
institutions. Now, nearing its fifty year mark, aging revolutionaries
celebrate their having survived the unflagging hostility of the
world’s most dangerous and most capitalist neighbor. After the
Soviet sugar daddy collapsed in 1991, Cuba seemed doomed.
Washington’s national security celebrated.
At
office parties, “experts” bet on how many weeks — or months at
most — Castro could last. As years dragged by and no internal
opposition threatened the Communist leadership, despite passage of
two bills aimed at tightening the already tight embargo — Torricelli
(1992) and Helms-Burton (1996) — Washington simply continued
frothing at the mouth, and engaging in petty harassment.
Like
his predecessors, W Bush promised he would free Cuba. Indeed, he owed
a huge debt to the militant exiles who both contributed to his
campaign and helped stop vote counting in Florida. Bush blustered,
and then made silly new rules to “punish Fidel” — like limiting
remittances and tightening the travel ban on U.S.-based Cubans. He
even announced he would control Cuba’s transition — one that would
occur without Fidel, Raul and socialism.
Bush’s
transition plans remained both unread and unapplied. Fidel went to
the hospital in July 2006, ceding temporary power to Raul; then, he
resigned as President in February, 2008, after 49-plus years as
maximo jefe. As highly-paid — by the U.S. government — academics
published tomes on how the transition had to occur, Cuba underwent a
smooth transition. In February 2008, predictably, Cuba’s Assembly
chose Raul as the new President.
Cuba’s
socialism survived, but its problems grew, both as a result of Soviet
disappearance and the acute contradictions that arose in the “special
period” that followed that demise. Cubans had to violate basic
ethical tenets in order to survive. “Each person for himself”
replaced collective sharing. Social morale, already weakening in the
1980s from inflexible bureaucracy and hideous economic inefficiency,
grew starkly thinner. In 1991, the state was forced to retract major
clauses in its social contract with the people: it could no longer
guarantee all an adequate diet, real employment or many of the
multiple perks that Cubans alone enjoyed: free rent remained, but the
amount of subsidized food per person shrunk drastically.
As
Cuban foreign trade plunged by almost 30% and standards of living
fell coincidentally, Cubans began to adopt “survival hustles.”
Buying and selling illegally to get certain goods became daily
behavior patterns, hardly a stimulant for maintaining high socialist
morale.
In
addition, Cuba legalized the dollar and adopted foreign tourism as
its dubious money earner. As it did so, the gang of exiles that had
plotted violence in previous decades, returned with ever fiercer
armed attacks. By 1997, hotel and tourist site bombings became
frequent. In one bombing, an Italian tourist-businessman died.
Violence against tourist locations, reasoned the Miami-based
financiers of the attacks, would threaten the fragile basis of Cuba’s
main revenue source.
The
U.S. government responded to the terrorist attacks against Cuba by
doing nothing. Indeed, in 1998, Cuba gave the FBI ample material to
arrest the perps, but the Bureau arrested the sources of the
information: five agents of Cuban intelligence who had infiltrated
the violent gangs. In Miami, where a fair trial was as likely as pigs
flying, the men were convicted and sentenced to long terms.
Washington’s
keepers of the imperial flame — in Cuba’s case they pre-dated the
Monroe Doctrine — do not abide disobedience. Only one man had earned
himself a slot in the Guinness book of records for his half century
of resistance to U.S. dictates. For all the talk of the powerful
anti-Castro lobby, the super elite do not forgive the man who in
fifty years of Cuban Revolution led the fight to resist in Latin
America, an area that most of the world assumed axiomatically
“belonged” permanently in the U.S. sphere. Today, the ideological
sons of Fidel govern countries; some of his more distant cousins run
others.
As
the White House spent some time “hating” Cuba’s Monroe
Doctrine-slaying leader, it did little to learn about its enemy. The
tiny U.S. left spent endless hours discussing the facts and meaning
of the Cuban revolution, but the U.S. government followed the Bourbon
Kings of France model: they neither learned nor forget anything.
From
1959 on, for example, the United States willingly imported Fidel’s
opposition. This policy continues. As Nelson Valdes, a University of
New Mexico scholar and Cuba expert, presciently points out, U.S.
policy continues to direct its officials to cultivate dissidents in
Cuba for the purpose of destabilizing the regime. Then, Washington
grants these supposed troublemakers visas to come permanently to the
United States to join the exile ranks.
Similarly,
Washington shares with the violent exiles a common obsession with
Fidel — which makes it difficult to think clearly. Note how the
language promoting anti-Cuba laws has centered on “punishing
Castro,” who didn’t miss a meal or a conjugal opportunity as a
result.
Facts
rarely entered policy discussions. Thus, U.S. behavior did not
develop reality symptoms. Studied ignorance, never greater than over
the last eight years, contributed to vociferous rhetoric — scream at
the top of your lungs and carry no stick — and policies that make
little sense, except to the small hard line Cuban exile gang in south
Florida.
U.S.
ineptitude, however, does not solve Cuba’s problems. Aging Cuban
revolutionaries, no matter how frustrated by the vicissitudes of
daily life, can boast about accomplishing their goals. Cuba won
independence after numerous wars and uprisings since the 1860s. Cuba
defended its revolution over fifty years against constant U.S.
aggression. Cuba established a system of social justice and rights —
the right to eat, have housing, medical care, education, etc… As a
kind of gravy over the meat of success, Cubans danced — and still
mambo — on the world stage, as liberators of parts of Africa,
slayers of the Monroe Doctrine, purveyors of emergency medical teams
that saved Pakistanis, Hondurans and many others from the
aftereffects of natural disaster. Cuban doctors rescued the vision of
countless third world people. Cuban artists, athletes and scientists
have etched their names on the honor roles of talent throughout the
world.
A
good sector of younger Cubans, however, do rate their present lives
with past glories. Possessing good education, high skill levels and
good health, they feel they deserve good jobs. But those jobs are
scarce on the island and a typical Cuban youth will shrug and claim:
“I don’t see much future for myself here.”
Aside
from sagging morale among a significant sector, Cuba faces a dramatic
shortage of teachers — 8,000 officially — an agricultural system
that forces the government to import more than 70% of its food last
year, a wage structure that makes little sense when measured against
productivity or fairness and a parasitic Havana of 2 million people
who produce little and consume a lot, albeit not as much as they
want.
Under
Raul, and with Fidel’s literary support, Cuba’s Communist Party
has begun to face these challenges. To offer younger generations that
sense of optimism that frames the future as bright opportunity rather
than dark uncertainty, Raúl Castro initiated a reform process,
including democratizing the Party itself — including the need to
reflect diverse opinions. “In 1994,” he said on TV, “the most
critical moment of the Special Period, considerable adjustments were
made leading to the reduction and merging of institutions as well as
to the redistribution of the tasks previously entrusted to some of
them. However, these changes were undertaken with the rush imposed by
the necessity to quickly adapt to a radically different, very hostile
and extremely dangerous scenario."
On
July 11, he made a speech offering specific plans to begin to address
the multiple issues that have gone unattended on the island. Those
who have watched Cuba and seen some of its inspiring programs will
wish him the best of democratic and socialist luck. He will need it,
and the revenues that come from the recently discovered oil reserves
off Cuba’s coast.
