Fidel Castro's market socialism in the labor community better resembles indentured servitude than a market economy. Average citizens have not benefitted from the economic growth which foreign investors generated in Cuba. The Castro regime takes 84 cents of every dollar paid by foreigners to Cuban employees and uses the money to finance Castro's political agenda, rather than creating economic reforms.
"While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State."
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,
The State and Revolution (1919)
"All I know is I'm not a Marxist." Karl Marx, quoted by Engels in a letter dated
5 August 1890, to Conrad Schmidt.
"The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true."
Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic (1970)
"Workers of the world forgive me."
Graffito on the bust of Karl Marx in
Bucharest, 4 May 1990.
Everyone steals in Cuba, and everyone talks about food. Theft, hunger, enslavement, and repression are the pillars of Fidel Castro's "market socialism." Everything in Cuba is for sale to foreign investors, including the young bodies of the children of the revolution, but ordinary Cubans are not participating in, or benefiting from, the Castro regime's market socialism. Cuban workers can be the indentured servants of foreign investors by day and their sexual playthings by night, but Castro allows his serfs nothing else. True, limited self-employment is now permitted for some Cubans, the legalization of the dollar has created a dual peso/dollar economy, open farmers "markets" have been resuscitated, there is a vigorous and widespread black market, Castro now allows foreign visitors to play on the beaches of Cuba, and foreigners with hard currency can get medical treatment that is denied to the Cuban people. However, if Cuba is enjoying a boom in foreign investment, as the Castro regime claims, none of the economic growth this investment supposedly is generating is trickling down to the inhabitants of Havana.
Many Americans have bought into the Castro regime's fiction that gradual market reforms are being introduced in Cuba. Look at how Cuba has changed, they say: Private ownership of dollars has been legalized, the Cuban government has issued self-employment licenses to about 200,000 people, and Cuba is actively courting foreign investment. The American news media are full of stories about the foreign investment boom in Cuba. Tourism has become big business in Cuba. The newspaper USA Today reported in January that fifty hotels for foreign tourists are now operating in Varadero, about 140 kilometers from Havana, and that twenty more hotels are in the planning stage. Foreign investors are also reportedly buying into mining, oil exploration, telecommunications, and manufacturing. In terms of population, the Cuban market is the largest in the Caribbean. As a result, some U.S. business leaders are becoming worried that America is missing out on wonderful investment opportunities in Cuba. The Mexicans, Canadians, Spaniards, and Germans are there, these businessmen complain, and American business should be in Cuba, too.
In Washington, the question of how to deal with Fidel Castro has divided both parties internally. Historically, Republicans have favored tougher treatment of Castro's regime, and while that is still generally true today, many leading conservatives have joined the swelling ranks of liberals, libertarians, businessmen, and news media who say it's time to change U.S. policy toward the Castro regime by ending the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Those who advocate the end of the trade embargo argue that it has outlived its usefulness as a foreign policy tool, that it never worked anyway because Castro was not forced out of power, and that it's time to engage Fidel with the forces of the free market. Trade with Cuba, they urge, and let the free market undermine Castro's totalitarian regime Let Americans invest in Cuba and travel to Cuba freely, they add, and Fidel will fall more quickly.
The problem with these reasonable assumptions, made by humane and intelligent American thinkers. is that Fidel Castro is not a reasonable or humane man. Moreover, Castro is vastly more intelligent than most of the Americans who want to engage him in trade and dialogue. Not Cuba, but Fidel Castro. Americans who want to trade with Castro have trouble understanding that there is only one Cuban who counts officially or unofficially in Cuba, and that person is Fidel Castro. Moreover, these Americans share the ingenuous notion that the market opening of Cuba will be similar to what has occurred in China and Vietnam, and that they will be doing business with millions of individual Cubans, as is happening today in China and Vietnam. However, that's not the case in Cuba.
The Cuban "partners" and "managers" of all "mixed" companies are personally chosen and approved by El Comandante. Moreover, all of the workers employed at these foreign capital ventures are selected and approved by the Cuban state before they can be hired and are permanently monitored at their jobs by the Castro regime's security apparatus. The salaries and wages paid to these Cuban workers are collected in dollars by the Cuban "partner," meaning the Castro regime, which then "pays" the workers in pesos at the official 1-to-1 peso/dollar exchange rate, enabling the Castro regime to pocket 84 cents of every dollar paid by foreign investors to their Cuban employees. In this respect, the labor market under Castro's market socialism is more analogous to indentured servitude or slavery than to a market economy.
Castro's market socialism is not an economic program to reform Cuba, but a political program to rescue the Cuban revolution and perpetuate Fidel Castro's absolute power. There is no difference between the "new" market socialism of post-Soviet Cuba, and the "old" Marxist-Leninism during the decades that Castro wallowed in billions of dollars of yearly Soviet subsidies that allowed him to hide the utter economic and social failure of his Cuban revolution. What has really changed in Cuba? Instead of bartering with Russia and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) countries, and artificially pricing its only export commodity (sugar) at levels three and four times higher than the world average, Fidel Castro today is actively courting hard currency inflows from private foreign investors because he simply has no other choice. The Cuban state, whose only reason for existing is to repress the Cuban people and maintain Castro's absolute power, needs large and sustained inflows of hard currency to survive and carry out its repressive functions.
Castro has "opened up" to foreign investors because, in today's post-cold war world, no other country will subsidize the Cuban government by paying inflated prices for sugar. Moreover, No one with an ounce of common sense will extend any credit to Fidel, who is infamous for seldom honoring his financial obligations. Fidel hasn't turned over a new leaf in the winter of his murderous life. Rather, as he has always done throughout his political career as a despot, Castro has simply adjusted to a changed external environment without sacrificing any control over Cuba and without making any real concessions.
Nevertheless, while the Castro regime cannot survive indefinitely without U.S. dollars, the American currency is also his biggest Achilles heel. The progressive dollarization of the Cuban economy is causing some weakening of the Castro regime's social control over the Cuban population. As more dollars enter the black market economy, more Cubans are abandoning their jobs in the formal state-controlled economy, where peso salaries average between $4 and $12 a month, to work in the dollarized black market where earnings are much higher. This reality raises the issue of what the United States could be doing to flood Cuba's black market economy with dollars and finance the development of the dozens of democratic opposition groups that have been created in the past two years. However, those who think that letting American investors and tourists into Cuba would finally bring down Castro are seriously mistaken.
For over three decades, American policymakers and scholars have spent millions of man-hours researching and debating the issue of how to deal with Fidel Castro and restore democracy in Cuba. Nothing has worked. Castro has outlasted eight U.S. presidents since he seized power in Cuba in 959. and he will probably outlast Bill Clinton as well, and perhaps Clinton's eventual successor. The truth is that Fidel Castro will probably die in power, as did other infamous dictators of the twentieth century, such as Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union, Tito in Yugoslavia, Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain, and Mao Tse Tung in China. Nothing the United States does will loosen Castro's hold on power, and the people around him will do everything they can to extend Castro's life as long as possible, because while Fidel still lives, their own security is assured. Castro will be seventy years old in 1996, and reportedly is suffering from Parkinson's disease. However, in recent meetings with U.S. Leaders such as Democratic Rep. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Castro still appears to be healthy, alert, and in full command of his Hacienda Cuba.
While Castro lives, says Vladimiro Roca, president of the Socialist Democratic Current, one of more than 150 pro-democracy dissident groups now active on the island, there will never be any real economic or democratic reforms in Cuba. Change in Cuba will not begin until after Castro dies, he says, and will probably-evolve in one of two directions. "If a transition pact exists when Castro dies," Roca said during an interview in his home in Havana, "a provisional government can be established and the process of opening up Cuba can be started. But this pact must include members of the government, the armed forces, and exile groups. If there is no transition pact in place when Castro dies, the chances of a bloody social explosion will be very great. Raul Castro has no chance of following his brother Fidel in power. Raul is widely hated, and he lacks Fidel's political skills. If Raul tries to take power after Fidel's death, there will be an explosion in Cuba."
Roca lives with his wife in the Nuevo Vedado section of Havana, in a single-family dwelling whose previous occupant was his father, Blas Roca, a so-called "Hero of the Cuban Revolution." Nuevo Vedado is the neighborhood where the leaders and children of the regime live, and where foreigners reside. The homes are small by the middle class standards of the United States and other Latin American countries, but Nuevo Vedado is to Old Havana (La Habana Vieja) what Georgetown is to Southeast Washington, D.C. Roca is one of the few privileged Cubans in Havana with a decent dwelling. The vast majority of Havana's residents live in appalling conditions.
Most streets in Havana are littered with piles of rotting garbage. sidewalks and road surfaces are pockmarked with more craters than the moon, the external facades of the city's old buildings are cracked and crumbling from decades of disrepair, and many structures housing dozens of families are collapsing internally. The stench of Castro's revolution pervades Havana and is especially overpowering in the old part of the city near the waterfront, where several thousand Cubans rioted in August 1994. It is a rancid smell, composed of many ingredients, including putrefying uncollected garbage, generations of mold and damp in the sagging buildings of Havana, raw human sewage, and unwashed bodies in dirty clothing. Power failures are frequent, and in the oldest parts of the city, water for cooking and bathing must be collected in buckets from portable cisterns in the streets, which are refilled infrequently by tanker trucks. Surprisingly, many Cuban families own dogs despite the economic hardship they are enduring, but there are no cats anywhere in the streets of Havana. Beef, pork, and chicken are seldom available in the state food markets, and anyone caught slaughtering livestock illegally may be imprisoned for up to four years, but it's not against the law to eat cats in Cuba.
The average salary in Cuba is 160 pesos per month, or about $5 a month at the Havana black market exchange rate Of 25 pesos to the dollar. However, a sandwich and bottle of mineral water in a tourist hotel cost $6.50, a continental breakfast costs at least $5, and the daily buffet supper in the Habana Libre Hotel starts at$15 per diner. Cubans receive a bar of soap every six months from the government, at a price of 20 Cuban centavos each, when there is soap to be had. In the dollarized black market, imported soap is easily available for 50 U.S. cents per bar, or 12.50 Cuban pesos. The dollar stores, called los shopping by the Cubans, are owned by the state, but they sell imported products to all Cubans with dollars. These dollar stores serve two purposes. First, they are part of the "front created, by the Castro regime to propagandize the fictional opening" of the Cuban economy. And, second. the dollar stores are a state vehicle for soaking up U.S. dollars entering the black market.
No questions are asked when Cubans come in from the street and buy Imported products in the state dollar stores The questions get asked in the street. when uniformed and plainclothes security officials spy Cubans talking with foreign visitors or accepting money from foreigners One of the Catch 22s of Castro's market socialism is that the private ownership of dollars is legal in Cuba, but only Cubans employed in the tourism sector or Cubans with self employment licenses issued by the state can legally engage in foreign currency transactions with foreigners. Everyone ignores the law, of course. but when a police official catches a Cuban earning dollars illegally. the police official can arrest that individual or shake him down for a bribe. Usually, the police official takes a bribe, because the revolution has failed the police. too The Castro government also frowns on too much contact between foreign visitors and Cubans not employed in the official tourism sector. unless that contact is of a sexual nature. On that front, the Cuban government does not appear to impose any restrictions at all. In fact. the state-owned tourist hotels charge guests a tee (S35 per night at the Habana Libre) to go upstairs with jineteras.
The sex trade in Havana is mind-boggling, and it is everywhere. All of the tourist hotels and dollar discos teem with young women hustling for dollars Single foreign men walking in the streets of Havana are regularly approached by women who offer themselves as 24-hour companions for as little as $10 or $15 a day, for trips to the beach, dollar stores, and discos, with after-hours entertainment of a more personal nature included as part of the "tour package." A five-day gig with a visiting "businessman" can net a working girl in Havana $100 or more, perhaps some new clothes and cosmetics in the dollar stores. three meals a day, daily showers with real soap and shampoo, and a nice place to sleep. In Havana, $100 is the equivalent of twenty months of official wages for the average Cuban worker The jineteras say their nicest clients are Canadian and British businessmen, that Mexican businessmen are cheap, that old Spanish businessmen want young teenage girls, and that Italians are nasty and abusive. Food is scarce for Cubans without a steady dollar income, but condoms are plentiful in Havana.
Cuban men hustling for dollars in the streets of Havana work as illegal taxi drivers, pimps, and purveyors of contraband cigars and drugs. Some. also sell their bodies to single foreign women from Canada and old Spanish queens. Sometimes the cigars are legitimate, stolen From the state-owned factories, but more often they are home-made imitations. Marijuana and cocaine can be purchased in some parts of Havana, but the principal drug in the underground markets of Havana is PPG-5, a small yellow pill that reduces cholesterol and supposedly rejuvenates the drooping libidos of aging men It's a popular drug among the gray-haired, paunchy foreign lotharios who fish for business opportunities by day inside the Castro government, and chase young Cuban women at night in the dollar discos for tourists.
Cubans caught working in the black market risk jail for as long as four years, the confiscation of all their trading goods and personal assets, and even the loss of their home. Yet, the Castro regime is the biggest actor in the black market. The Cuban state is the ultimate owner of everything in Cuba, and practically everything traded in the black market is stolen from state factories, warehouses, farms, and distribution facilities. The state also controls the black market for dollars. The official exchange rate in Cuba is one peso per U.S. dollar, but the black market (and tourism) exchange rate is 25 pesos to the dollar in Havana, and 30 pesos to the dollar in the interior. State-owned exchange houses buy and sell dollars at the black market rate, and have issued "Cubatur" coins for use in the tourism market. A 25-cent "Cubatur" coin is officially worth 25 U.S. cents in Cuba, but the state-owned exchange house will "buy" that Cubatur coin from tourists for exactly 6.25 Cuban pesos. State-owned dollar stores will not return U.S. coins when making change for tourist purchases, unless the tourist insists on ; receiving real money, but the Cubatur pesos are accepted in black market transactions at the 25 to-1 exchange rate.
Cuban workers employed legally in mixed or 100 percent foreign-owned ventures on the island never receive their full pay in dollars. Instead, the Cuban state collects these dollar wages and pays the Cuban workers their "salaries" in pesos at the official l-to-l exchange rate. The difference goes to the state. for example, a Cuban worker earning, say, $400 a month in a mixed company, does not receive 10,000 pesos for his labor. Instead, he only receives 400 pesos, or the equivalent of $16. That's how Castro's market socialism works.
I first see Maria (not her real name) while haggling with three black Cubans at the entrance of the Habana Libre Hotel (the old Havana Hilton) over a hex of contraband cigars they want to sell me "Seventy-five dollars for a box of Romeo y Julieta Churchills." says the biggest of the three Cubans "The real thing, fresh and just stolen out of the factory by a worker who supplies us directly But you have to come with us to see what we have. Caveat emptor, I think The streets of Havana are mostly dark and deserted at night. and robberies and muggings are increasingly common. Behind the trio, Maria is warning me with gestures to ignore the offer. I finally inrush them off and strike up a conversation with her. Her first words are. "I'm not a jinetera." She doesn't look like a prostitute. Maria is in her early forties, her hair is streaked with gray, and she walks with a limp. Still, I'm not convinced until I invite Maria to have a drink with me in the hotel lobby. The doorman blocks her admission politely. Maria has told me the truth. A half-hour later, we're sitting in the living room of her apartment, a few blocks from the hotel, and she is telling me what life is like for a single working woman in Cuba.
Transportation is a major problem in Maria's daily life. She leaves her apartment every morning at 5 a.m., but rarely arrives at her job before 8 a.m. Her employer is located outside the city, and bus service is infrequent. Maria walks at least six miles a day getting to her job and returning home, and she commutes in both directions up to four hours every day. She rides public transportation part of the way, on the Metrobus service that Cubans have dubbed "the Camel," but mostly Maria walks. The Camel is a creation of the revolution during the current "special period." The Camels are eighteen wheel, diesel-fueled tractor/trailer rigs that used to transport cattle, hogs, and other animals, but that were converted for the transport of humans. Maria says that Cubans call the Camel "the Saturday night movie,", because `a trip on the Camel consists of sex and violence. like a Saturday night movie.' Pockets and purses are picked frequently. she says. and passengers are jammed into the trucks so tightly that men frequently get away with groping and fondling women riders.
The Cuban state pays Maria 171 pesos per month, or exactly $6.84 at the black market rate of 25 pesos to the dollar. She is an intelligent woman, and she is scared, but she is determined to show me how Cubans "really" live in Havana. "Nothing will happen to you if we are caught talking in here," she says, "but I could lose my job, lose all my things. lose my house, and never be able to find work again. The state would turn me into a nonperson, and I would starve."
The U.S. trade embargo hurts the Cuban people, she says, but it does not hurt Castro. The embargo has never hurt Castro. Maria is also contemptuous of the idea that an embargo even exists. "There has never been a true embargo in Cuba," she says. "Look at what is sold in the diplo-stores (diplotiendas). Castro trades with everybody except the United States. If you Americans squeeze Castro more, you will only succeed in killing the Cuban people, because no matter how great Cuba's shortages become, Castro and his companeros will never go without anything."
The open markets created by the Castro regime in the past year are tightly controlled by the state, she says, explaining that "no small or independent food producer anywhere in the country has the refrigerated facilities to store vegetables and meats." Food dominates our conversation. Maria wants to know what Americans eat. In Cuba, she says, the state provides children with milk only until their seventh birthday. Food strictly rationed. Each month, Maria says, the state is supposed to provide each Cuban with six pounds of rice, six pounds of sugar, twenty ounces of beans, a half-pound of fat (which is rarely available), fourteen eggs, and twelve ounces of a meat substitute called picadillo texturizado, which Maria describes as "very small amounts of meat mixed with soya, to which animal blood is added for weight and protein." However, Cubans seldom receive their full monthly ration, and whatever is "owed" by the state stores is seldom supplied at a later date. Instead of milk, everyone over seven years receives something called "Cerelac" officially and "Fangolac" popularly (fango is mud.) Cerelac is a coarse, soya-based powder that crunches like sand when chewed. Maria believes her best friend's recent neurological problems were caused by ingesting too much soya. The government hardly ever pro vices any beef. sue said, although a half-pound of beef can be purchased in the black market for $1 or 25 pesos. However, black market beef and pork must be consumed quickly. "if state security finds black market beef or pork in my house, I can go to jail for as long as four years." Maria explains. The state lets us eat until the tenth of every month. and then we have to find dollars to survive."
Like all things in Cuba, however, that rule applies only to those without any privileges. Two nights later, I'm having supper with Maria at a paladar owned by a patriot of the Cuban revolution who spies on her neighbors for the state. and who also operates a prosperous capitalist enterprise licensed by the Castro regime. She is the president of her block's Revolutionary Defense Command (Comando de Defensa Revolucionario), and she drives a well-maintained white Lada sedan that she rents to tourists for dollars. Her name is Tania, and she is not happy because Fidel Castro has just announced a new progressive income tax regime for self-employed Cubans. "We may have to pay taxes of as much as 50 percent," she complains. That could put me out of business. A lot of people are returning their licenses so that they can go into the black marked, but my paladar is a public place. Estoy jodida." When Maria introduces me as a yanqui from Washington, Tania launches into a long tirade against the U.S. government. "The American blockade does not hurt Castro, but it does hurt Cuba, and is bad for my business," Tania finally concludes. "Americans ought to be allowed to visit Cuba. Go home and tell (Senator Jesse) Helms to leave Castro alone. Fidel is a great man."
After venting her spleen against the U.S. trade embargo, Tania tells me that she buys her beef and pork from state slaughterhouses, her produce from refrigerated warehouses owned by the state, and her ice cream from the state owned Coppellia ice cream factory. "Everybody steals in Cuba," she laughs. "If not for the state's managers and workers stealing from the state, I could not stay in business, and there would not be a black market. But there are some things about capitalism that don't like, such as paying taxes." Tania has two choices for dinner that night: steak or pork, and for dessert she has ice cream, chocolate cake, and a home made Cuban delicacy. Maria tells me that she hasn't eaten any beef in more than a year.
Critics of the U.S. trade embargo who say that it not working should take careful note of Fidel Castro's views on the issue. While he wallowed in Soviet subsidies, Castro thumbed his nose at America, tried to destabilize much of Latin America, and contemptuously dismissed the U.S. trade embargo as ineffectual. The great Cuban revolution, he bragged, was succeeding despite the embargo. Now that the Soviet Union is no more, Castro is blaming the trade embargo for Cuba's economic difficulties and demanding its unconditional, unilateral termination by the U.S. government. The Clinton administration has stated publicly that the United States is willing to consider easing the trade embargo in stages, if Castro reciprocates with real economic and democratic reforms. However, Castro has rejected any conditions for the embargo's removal, thundering in a recent speech that, for Cuba, the future is "socialism or death."
The U.S. trade embargo is effective in that it helps to discourage investors from other countries from venturing into Cuba. The issue of unresolved property rights disputes involving U.S. companies and landowners is an important factor when investments in Cuba are being studied. Track 11 of the Cuban Democracy Act, and the Helms-Burton "Libertad" bill tightening the U.S. trade embargo, is also braking foreign investment in Cuba. However, the biggest obstacle in Cuba to increased foreign investment is the Cuban state itself. Today, many of the foreign investments launched in Cuba during the past two or three years are quietly being scrapped. For example, Mexico's Domos Group is trying to bail out of its$1.5 billion "investment" in the Cuban National Telephone Company because the Castro government has been a difficult and conflictive partner. Similarly, Spain's Guitart Group reportedly has sold all of its interests in the Habana Libre Hotel and in Varadero. The reason, according lo a Spanish executive at the Habana Libre, is that "it's impossible to do business with the Cuban government. Too much bureaucracy, inefficiency, and corruption." Everyone steals in Cuba, he adds.
"The Cuban economy has failed," says Vladimiro Roca, "because the Castro regime conceives of the economy as a political instrument for maintaining social control. Castro destroyed the sugar industry and ruined the Cuban economy. The dollarization of Cuba has created dual peso and dollar economies, in which the dollar economy is more efficient than the state-controlled peso economy. The regime claims that the Cuban economy grew 2.5 percent in 1995, but two-thirds of that growth came from the private sector, including the informal economy. mixed companies, and foreign investors. The government admitted in Granma (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba), that al] state-owned companies were inefficient moneylosers. A free-market dollar economy has taken root in Cuba, with prices determined by supply and demand, and Castro is scared. Eventually, the dollarization of Cuba will destroy the peso economy and break the state's social control over the Cuban people."
The Castro government claims that Cuba started to recover economically in 1995, and that 1996 will be a year of strong growth. However, Roca disagrees with the government's forecasts. The official numbers are irrelevant and probably false, he said, and everything depends on the sugar harvest. Last year's disappointing harvest of 3.3 million tons was the greatest economic disaster in the history of the revolution. Another bad harvest in 1996 would cause serious economic difficulties in Cuba.
"The government is betting on a sugar harvest of between 4.2 and 4.5 million tons, but they won't make it," Roca said. "The industry's maximum potential output is about 4.2 million tons, and our independent estimates suggest the sugar harvest will total somewhat less than 4 million tons. The harvest is starting with yields of 6.7 percent, and will peak with yields of 9.9 to 10 percent. To make 4.2 million tons, a sustained yield of at least 10.5 percent would be necessary, but the government has already admitted on television that the industry's yields are below official targets. If the harvest this year does not total at least 4 million tons, the Cuban sugar industry will he virtually destroyed." The economic crisis will grow worse in Cuba during 1996, Roca said, although it may not be felt in Havana, where the dollar economy is growing larger by the day. However, in the interior of Cuba, a poor sugar harvest in 1996 will be felt keenly by millions of Cubans. Roca's assessment of the Cuban economy is shared by Marta Beatriz Roque, president of the Independent Economists' Guild. "The economic numbers on Cuba issued by the Castro regime are meaningless," she says. "They are cooked, false numbers. There is no way of accurately knowing what is happening in the Cuban economy. The only legal source of economic data in Cuba is what is published in Granma, Trabajadores, and other official publications. It is against the law to compile data bases from independent sources."
Roque no longer ventures into the streets of Havana because a man brandishing a handgun came to the door of her home recently and threatened to kill her. She left her apartment and moved in with relatives, and now she stays away from windows and balconies that can be observed from the street below. "I won't leave this apartment by myself or at night because I'm afraid that I would be assaulted or run over by a vehicle in a simulated accident," sire tells me. Other women playing prominent roles in the political opposition to Castro live under similar precarious conditions in Havana. In general, the Castro regime's security apparatus appears to be rougher and more oppressive with women dissidents than it is with men.
Americans who think mistakenly that the Castro regime is opening up Cuba should study a recent speech by Carlos Lage, she said. "Lage told the national assembly that our only economic program is to save the revolution, and prevent problems and change in Cuba. Market socialism is not an economic program, but a political program intended to maintain the Cuban state's control over society at any price." However, Roque, an economist, doesn't want to talk about the Cuban economy. "The social question in Cuba is far more important than what is happening in the economic sphere," she said. "As recently as six years ago, workers would show up on time at their jobs, and they would work, but now nobody wants to work, because the linkage between the workers and the state is no longer rewarding for the workers. The state is no longer capable of supplying the people's needs, especially in the areas of food, health care, and transportation. Cuban families are breaking down emotionally, spiritually, and economically. Fathers are stressed because they don't earn enough. Mothers are depressed because their children aren't fed and clothed properly. Children are growing up psychologically and nutritionally deprived because they don't have toys and never eat enough. Practically every family living in Cuba today has suffered the imprisonment of a relative."
The Cuban people are ready for change, she said, but no one knows what to do, and the political opposition is unable to get its message out to the people. "Government propaganda has been very strong for thirty-seven years," she explained. State repression is very effective. The Cuban people are afraid of openly opposing Castro. and they fear that a post-Castro transition would cause them to lose their homes and their free education and health care benefits when the Nunquis return to Cuba.
Yladimiro Roca is amused by America's thirty-seven-year-old perception that Castro is a Marxist and socialist. "Fidel has always been a fascist.' Roca says. "He was influenced greatly by Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf when he has sixteen years old, and when he entered the university he brought with him the collected works of (Benito) Mussolini in twelve volumes. Castro's political conduct has always been very inspired by Hitler and Mussolini. Fidel's `history will absolve me' speech in 1953, after the failed assault on the Moncada barracks, was paraphrased from the speech Hitler made in court after the failure of his beer hall putsch. Castro knew the Moncada assault would fail, but like Hitler, he needed to make himself known to the public." After condemning Castro as a fascist and bogus Communist, Roca adds that he, on the other hand, has been "a Marxist practically since I was born, and both my father and mother were lifelong Marxists." Roca is also one of seven leading dissidents who last October created a new opposition group in Cuba called El Concilio. The other founding members of El Concilio are Gustavo Arcos, Rene Gomez Manzano, Marta Beatriz Roque, Elizardo Sanchez, Felix Bonne, and Oswaldo Paya Sardina.
In the wake of the short lived riots in Old Havana and the refugee crisis of August 1994, there has been a surge in the creation of democratic groups throughout Cuba that are united in their opposition of Castro. Broadly, these groups are demanding an end to political repression and the introduction of free-market and democratic reforms, including the legalization of opposition political parties and the celebration of free elections. In all, over 150 of these opposition groups currently exist in Havana and other major cities throughout Cuba, 107 of which had registered as formal members of El Concilio as of I January 1996. The emergence of a united opposition surprised the Castro regime and independent observers, but Cuba's repressive state security does not appear to have lost any of its effectiveness. One of the founders Of El Concilio said that some of the group's leaders "are certain that many opposition groups have been infiltrated by the state."
The Castro regime's response to El Concilio has been cautious, given its history of brutally repressing all internal opposition. The organization's leaders are under close electronic and human surveillance. Some have been assaulted in the street and others have received death threats. Strange visitors are noted, followed, and in many cases are detained and interrogated. The more people there are in a given Opposition group, the more likely it is that the group has been infiltrated by one or more state informers. Still, none Of El Concilio's founding leaders have been sentenced to lengthy periods in prison. The Castro regime appears to be treading more softly than it ordinarily would, because it doesn't want to do anything to spoil the false international image that Cuba is opening up at last. A harsh crackdown on the internal political opposition could spark strong international condemnation from governments whose support is vital in Castro's desperate efforts to force the U.S. government to lift the trade embargo against Cuba. Some of the new opposition groups are remarkably bold, however, and it may be only a matter of time before Castro's state security shuts down these groups. Nevertheless, some dissident leaders believe that heir safety is best assured by operating openly and relying on the public support of Radio Marti and the U.S. government.
"We believe that our safety lies in the fact that we function publicly, and that if any of us is arrested, the news of our arrest will be broadcast immediately by Radio Marti," said Raul Rivero, president of Cuba Press, one of several independent press agencies that have been created in less than a year. Others include Habana Press, the Independent Press Bureau (Burg de Prensa Independiente), and Agencia Patria in Camaguey. A fifth independent press group--the Independent Press Association of Cuba (Asociacion de Periodistas Independientes de Cuba)--has existed in Havana since 1989.
Since the birth of El Concilio and these independent press groups, "repression by the state has increased significantly. El Concilio's creation scared the Castro regime." The speaker's name is Julio Suarez, a.k.a. Yladimiro Restano, a lifelong Marxist and self-professed "devout Catholic" who runs the Independent Press Bureau. Suarez is a controversial individual who accompanied Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra during the mid-19SOs and later served in Matanzas as a prosecutor for the revolution. "I tried 205 war criminals of the Batista dictatorship, and seven were executed by firing squad," he tells me. "I kept recordings of all of the trials I prosecuted." However, another member of the bureau later takes me aside quietly to correct the record: "He prosecuted 208 cases, and all of them were executed by firing squad. That's why he uses a pseudonym."
Julio Suarez says he is "struggling to get Cubans to stay in Cuba and fight Castro. We're a hot potato for the state. The clamor for an independent press is coming from all sides in Cuba, including from inside the state itself. The state has controlled the media for thirty-seven years, and the Cuban people have become anaesthetized. Our goal is to provide the Cuban people an independent and truthful account Of what is transpiring in Cuba, and we are being open about it because our goal is not to oppose the Castro regime, but to tell the truth about what is happening in Cuba and promote peaceful change."
Suarez believes that a new civic resistance movement was born on I January 1996, in response to Castro's year-end announcement that self-employed Cubans would be taxed heavily. "When he returned from China and Japan," he said, "Castro gave a speech in the Cuban National Assembly in which he complained that self-employed Cubans were becoming too rich, threatened to shut down the paladares and open farmers markets, and imposed the new taxes. That was a tactical mistake on Fidel's part. Many se