Fidel Castro

by Volker Skierka

  They descended upon the dissidents who reappeared on the scene in greater numbers during the período especial. In one such incident, the well-known poet, Maria Elena Cruz, and the former philosophy professor and chairman of the small “Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation,” Elizardo Sánchez, were set upon with cudgels. Released after nine years’ imprisonment, Sánchez was again beaten up for disturbing public order and slandering the head of the state and Party, and then sent back to prison.

  In order to keep some control over the growing discontent, boredom and lack of prospects, especially among young people, the leadership made some scanty attempts to increase the range of leisure options. At the same time, many were sent off to work in agriculture. As some compensation for the loss of more than 30,000 one-year scholarships to study in the former Eastern bloc, the age at which people were allowed to travel abroad was reduced from 45 (for men) and 40 (for women) to 20 for both sexes. Their favorite new destination was the United States, which at that time was issuing only a fraction of the agreed annual quota of 20,000 visas. This was not the only reason why the liberalization of travel was rather a cosmetic measure; young people also needed money which they did not have – with the exception of blackmarket dealers.

  The Party’s youth organization, the UJC, organized large openair rock festivals with popular groups, to take young people’s minds off the drabness of the “special period.” Hardly anyone was more popular among Cuban youth than the talented UJC chairman Roberto Robaina, who customarily behaved in a rebellious manner toward the fossilized veterans of the revolution. But not toward Castro. At the organization’s congress in 1992, Robaina and the UJC offered their loyalty and affection and paid him bombastic tribute “with all our hearts, as we would honor a beloved father.”

  Robaina was one of the stars among those younger Party leaders who would soon be called to high office, in a move designed to integrate the new generation and to assure it of a place in the post-revolutionary society. Already the next year, when he was still not yet 40, Robaina was appointed Cuba’s foreign minister. Another member of the youthful elite upon whom the Party pinned its hopes was Carlos Lage, the man responsible for the country’s economic program since the beginning of the período especial.

  Robaina was able to hold out for six years as foreign minister, before Castro decided that he was not sufficiently strong in character to withstand the ideological – and, to be sure, also material – temptations of capitalism. In the late spring of 1999, he suddenly fell into the void and ended up in a political “reformatory.” There were even rumors that, shortly before, he had been preparing to decamp with his family to Spain.

  9

  The Eternal Revolutionary

  Class struggle on a dollar basis

  Alone among the great hopes of the rectification and the special period, Carlos Lage managed to survive politically alongside Castro into the new millennium. There was no shortage of attempts by the old guard to lever out the slightly built family man, who looked rather inconspicuous in the shadow of the Great Chairman. Many of them saw as a betrayal the dollarization of the economy that he promoted after 1993, the intensification of foreign capitalist participation in Cuban enterprises, and the gradual, still very cautious opening to the market. But it obviously proved difficult to get rid of him. Unlike other fast-rising men in the Party, Lage did not expose himself to animosity because of any materialist inclinations. It was often heard that, despite his prominent position, he lived in modest accommodation in central Havana and still dropped his children off at school before riding into work by bicycle. So long as Castro gave him protection and he did not make any serious mistakes, his position seemed assured.

  Of course, Lage did not pursue “creeping privatization” or “denationalization” of the Cuban economy on his own initiative; he had Castro’s backing for it. The state and Party leader countered orthodox doubts with dialectical flexibility, as so often when his back has been against the wall: “We’re not dogmatic, no, we’re realistic,” he once said. “We do all this with a practical attitude, we’re not violating any principles of socialism.”1 Julio García Olivares, a member of the Central Committee and at that time chairman of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, expressed this ideological acrobatics as follows: “We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists.”2 One of the amendments to the Constitution adopted by the National Assembly in July 1992 specifically guaranteed the participation and ownership rights of foreign investors.

  Under the umbrella of socialism, a number of additional measures with a neoliberal ring succeeded in overcoming bureaucratic obstruction. In particular, labor law governing such matters as working hours and protection from dismissal was no longer regarded as sacrosanct in the case of joint ventures. To be sure, foreign participants could not choose employees themselves but had to accept those offered to them – and for years this remained an obstacle and a source of irritation. To attract investors to the tourist industry, for example, the government allowed amortization over a period of four years, as well as repatriation of profits for one to ten years. Although a ceiling of 49 percent was initially set on foreign participation, permission could be given for this to be raised in individual cases. A legal amendment in 1995 even introduced a provision whereby foreign capital could acquire a 100 percent stake, although in practice this was rarely followed up. Castro himself gave it to be understood: “There are no rigid prescriptions. We are ready to consider any kind of proposition.”3

  Although, for reasons that are difficult to comprehend, the issue of private farmers’ markets was still taboo in 1991, private pig-breeding had been allowed since the previous year. For, even if Cubans were willing to put up with more than one imagines possible in a modern industrial nation, they could not accept the idea that the national dish of pork with black beans and rice should no longer be available at certain public occasions or family parties. Shortly after the beginning of the “special period,” Castro made one exception among the numerous restrictions he proposed to the National Assembly: “We’ve declared a general amnesty for pigs.”4 Within days, private households bought up 15,000 pigs from state cooperatives or the surviving private farms, and soon many a piglet was seen prospering on balconies,in back yards,small gardens or bathtubs.

  At the beginning of the 1990s, more than 70,000 private farmers still operated on the island,5 having successfully resisted decades of collectivization by insisting on the ownership rights given them for life during and after the revolution. Altogether, they owned roughly 650,000 hectares – that is, as much as 22 percent of land available for agriculture, and 34 percent of uncultivated land. They produced more than a half of all beans, tobacco, and vegetables, as well as just under 20 percent of citrus fruit. The state remained their only official customer, however, even if, with the worsening of the crisis, a growing share of their produce was illegally diverted to the black market.

  The ending of Soviet oil deliveries caused the Cuban leadership ever greater concern, as the shortage of foreign currency meant that even desperate attempts to pay over the odds on the world market, bypassing the open US intervention, had become more and more difficult to sustain. Total imports had had to be reduced from a value of $8 billion to $2 billion in the three years since 1989. And the compulsory regression to earlier periods of agriculture and stock-breeding eventually led to a fall in the sugarcane harvest from 7 million tons to just over 4 million tons in 1993; the resulting loss of $500 million in foreign income was equivalent to all the receipts from tourism in the preceding year.

  “We face the necessity … to search for foreign currency,” Castro declared with an evident trace of despair.6 The 26th of July 1993 of all days – the fortieth anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks – witnessed a crucial capitulation, when the US currency (whose very possession had been a criminal offence) was permitted as a parallel currency. “Free circulation of the US dollar was simply an unavoidable necessity and not the resu
lt of an economic program,” Castro maintained six years later. At the same time, he vaguely hinted at possible restrictions: “For the future, I think it will never again be necessary to prohibit possession of the US dollar or other foreign currencies, but free circulation of the US dollar in payment for many goods and services will exist only for the period in which the interests of the Revolution make this seem appropriate.”7

  One of the chief motives for legalization of the dollar was to bring secret hoards out from private pillows into the state’s coffers, so that it could meet its external economic obligations. At that time, the size of the foreign-currency parallel economy was thought to be around 200 million dollars. The government went so far as to undermine its own official exchange-rate, by offering up to 25 pesos for a dollar. But, even so, the unofficial rate at first was 150 pesos to the dollar – roughly two-thirds of a worker’s monthly income. A doctor or engineer might get as much as 2 dollars a month for their salary. Even if this served to divide society into two classes, those with dollars and those without, it still seemed the lesser evil. In any event, it was of more than symbolic significance that the enemy neighbor’s “greenback” was driving out the banknotes with the iconic figure of Che Guevara, guerrilla leader and former president of the National Bank. It also marked the supreme leader’s farewell to Guevara’s dream of building a new man.

  The lifting of controls on the dollar should also be seen – although that was not the official view – as a response to political pressure from the population inside the country. The measure was not sufficient, however, to prevent discontent from growing; people continued losing weight, because there was less and less to eat. Shortages were everywhere, and they were no longer bearable. After the National Assembly had convened on August 3 and 4, 1994, and adopted a new tax system, again failing to meet expectations of further market reforms or to make other concessions, a number of acts of violence broke out in Havana the following day. Several thousand people, most of them young, moved through the city throwing stones at the windows of hotels, dollar shops, and government buildings. For the first time anti-Castro slogans could be heard: “We’ve had enough! We want freedom! Down with Fidel!”8 Some 300 policemen fired warning shots in the air and used their truncheons, until suddenly the Máximo Líder himself appeared on the scene with a large entourage and launched into discussion with the young people. The crowd immediately calmed down, listened to him, and dispersed. It is true that a sudden downpour helped him out.

  This time, however, the leader’s charisma did not for long take the edge off the hunger and the desire for greater permissiveness. When its effect subsided, the effervescence continued beneath the surface. The government increased the police presence on the streets and squares, and suspected ringleaders were arrested. Meanwhile, in Miami, Radio Martí increased its number of frequencies to seven, doubled the power of its receivers, and beamed a daily total of 71 hours to Cuba to fan the flames of revolt 71 programs a day.

  Soon afterwards, without asking the authorities, determined and desperate people once more chose the tried-and-tested Cuban path of civil disobedience: they opened the outlet to Florida. In their dozens, hundreds and thousands, they again marched to the seashore and set off in almost anything that floated – boats, rafts, or rubber tyres – mostly from the fishing village of Cojimar, near the capital. It was overwhelmingly young people who exposed themselves to the dangers of the crossing, although quite a few of them used violence to seize ferries or other ships in Havana Harbor. Within a month, the numbers leaving in this way had soared to around 35,000.

  Those who wanted to leave could hardly be stopped. Many disappeared beneath the waves, and the scale of family tragedies was truly frightful. The worst had already happened in the middle of July, when a Cuban patrol boat rammed and (apparently after opening fire) sank a stolen vessel. The number who drowned was put at 41 by exile sources, and at 32 by Cuban officials. The incident caused revulsion around the world.

  After a while, the United States resisted taking any more refugees; only those who made it to the US coast and set foot on shore would be allowed in. On August 11 President Bill Clinton declared that Cuban refugees would not be permitted to enter the United States. Thirteen ships from Cuba were immediately seized by the US coastguard, and those on board were held in a detention camp prior to being sent back. Castro let it be known that he could not guarantee protection of the US borders, and was evidently considering a second “Mariel.” The White House chief then threatened a military blockade of Cuba, but his foreign minister, Warren Christopher, soon corrected him and pleaded for a peaceful solution. Former president Jimmy Carter recalls that, at the height of the conflict, Fidel Castro suddenly rang and asked him to intercede with President Clinton. In a televized speech, the Cuban leader gave assurances that he did not wish to offend Clinton or to cause electoral difficulties for him or the Democratic Party; in fact, he was prepared to put a stop to the exodus of the balseros, the “raft people.”

  At the end of August, the first talks took place between US government representatives, the Cuban parliamentary speaker, and Cuba’s former foreign minister and UN ambassador, Ricardo Alarcón, and on October 12 an agreement came into effect whereby Cubans would again be allowed to travel to the United States. During the following year 26,000 entry visas were supposed to be issued, after which the annual total would be reduced to 20,000. The next few months saw a veritable run on the immigration permits. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported in the middle of 1998 that 435,000 people had applied for a visa at the office representing US interests in Havana – which would mean that one in 25 Cubans wanted to leave at that time.9 As no rational selection could be made under these circumstances, the fate of the applicants was decided by a kind of computer lottery run by the US authorities, although the only ones with a chance of getting an entry visa were those who either had relatives in the USA, had suffered political or religious persecution in Cuba, or had at least a basic school-leaving certificate and several years of work experience.

  The many thousands of boat refugees who had already been brought in, or fished out, by the US coastguard now had to reckon on being sent back to Cuba. At first they were held in camps at Guantánamo naval base or in Florida, Texas, military bases in Honduras, St Lucia, Dominica, and other islands, as well as in Panama. The US authorities obviously hoped that the often degrading conditions of their detention would be a powerful inducement for them to return to Cuba of their own free will. Yet fewer than a thousand actually made that decision, and instead there were revolts at the camps in Panama and Guantánamo. In the end, they were gradually allowed to enter the United States, after Cuban exile organizations had made representations on their behalf.

  In the mid-nineties Cuban socialism seemed to have hit rock bottom, more or less finished but not dead as the whole world had expected. In retrospect, one can see that the balsero crisis marked the turning point. A few weeks later, Decree 191 and Resolution No. 423/91 gave the green light again for private farmers’ markets, and on October 1, 1994, the first 120 of these long-awaited mercados libres agropecuarios opened for business around the country. By December there were already 200, and by May 1995 the figure had reached 250. According to Granma, the official paper of the Cuban Revolution, in its edition of October 2, 1994, the goals were “to stimulate agricultural production; to neutralize the negative effects of the black market; to make more accessible those products that cannot at present be distributed through state channels; and to strengthen the national currency.”10

  In September 1993, two months after legalization of the dollar and a year before the reintroduction of farmers’ markets, private individuals were again authorized to provide services “on their own account.” Cuentapropistas became the name for these small craftsmen, private family restaurants with a maximum of twelve places, private letters of rooms, and other private operators such as the rickshaw-owners offering a service for dollars in the old part of Havana. Altogether, there were some 130 pe
rmitted categories.

  Soon the official figure for the number of “small businesses” had reached 208,000, although unofficially it was estimated to be closer to 600,000. From January 1, 1996, however, a cuentapropista licence was issued only to people who had a tax identification number and paid their taxes in due order. This was supposed to prune exorbitant profits and hence to keep the unavoidable social fall-out as low as possible.

  The tax system was elaborated with considerable help from the former director of finances in Hamburg, Horst Gobrecht, who became a Cuban government adviser in 1995. On the basis of the tax reform law of 1994, this German Social Democrat and his team of initially 12 and later 60 young Cuban economists created the framework for a 30 to 35 percent tax on corporate profits, a graduated turnover tax for the self-employed, and a peso or dollar income tax for employees. In the case of dollar income, the tax rate was 10 percent up to a maximum of $2,400 a year, rising thereafter by stages to 50 percent on anything above $60,000. The turnover tax for produce sold on the farmers’ markets was set at 5 percent in Havana, 10 percent in other towns, and 15 percent in the countryside. A newly created revenue service, with a staff of 2,000, was responsible for processing tax declarations. Standards were considered high, as 95 percent of persons with a fiscal liability filed their declarations and paid up on time.11