Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence

by Philip Brenner

  Lage, Remírez, and Pérez Roque had been members of Fidel’s Grupo de Apoyo and were generally viewed as likely leaders among the generation that would take over when the historicos retired. The three had been caught on surveillance tapes sharing information with Conrado Hernández, a man who allegedly worked for Spain’s intelligence service and whom Cuban authorities had arrested in February 2009.14 But none of the three went to prison. Remírez, for example, was relegated to working as a doctor in a local neighborhood clinic (he had been trained as a physician).

  The purge was less an attempt by President Castro to put his own loyalists in place than it was to break down the competing lines of authority and establish the orderly administrative process he promised in his inaugural address. Fidel made clear he understood this rationale by justifying the dismissals in an article published in Granma. He wrote that the lure of power had “awakened ambitions that led them to disgrace.”15

  At the same time that Raúl removed officials, he combined four existing ministries into two: the Ministries of Foreign Trade and Investment and Food. He also promoted some younger PCC leaders whom he viewed as exemplary managers into key governmental positions. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who had been party chief in Holguín Province, became the new minister of higher education, though he was a civil engineer with no experience in education administration. Earlier, Raúl had returned some former party leaders who were governmental ministers to party leadership roles so that they wore two leadership hats. Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, minister of communication, for example, became a member of the Political Bureau. The president’s ultimate vision was to have the party function more as a board of directors than an operational branch.

  However, changes in the political structure were accompanied by only minor economic reforms. Economist Jorge Mario Sánchez aptly judged that they “pointed in the right direction but were insufficient to deal with the roots of dysfunctionality.”16 In 2007, the government began to issue licenses that allowed drivers to use private cars as taxis. In 2008, it lifted the ban on selling computers, DVD players, and cell phones and permitted Cubans to pay for services—such as hotel rooms, food in tourist hotels, or rental cars—with Cuban convertible currency. It also doled out land to individual farmers and raised the prices it paid to farmers for produce. But Cuba still had not found a way to generate enough hard currency to develop a sustainable and equitable economy. While its gross domestic product had reached $100 billion, hard currency earnings amounted to only 4 percent of the total. The country continued to spend too much on importing food that could have been grown domestically.17

  A Changing International Landscape

  Cuba bought a record $711 million worth of food, agricultural equipment, and medicine from the United States in 2008. Despite the embargo, the hovering giant was the island’s fifth largest trading partner.18 The hopes of some Cuban officials—that the purchases would encourage major US companies to lobby for a changed US policy—were reinforced when Americans elected Barack Obama as president in November 2008.

  During the campaign, Sen. Obama said he would be willing to meet with President Castro and he promised to end the Bush administration’s restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans. The new US president also took office with little obligation to Cuban-American hardliners. His margin of victory in Florida—204,600 votes—was large enough that he virtually did not need any Cuban-American votes to win the state, though approximately 35 percent of their ballots were cast for him.19 He also had political cover created by a flurry of proposals from several ad hoc groups made up of former US government officials and members of Congress, leading scholars, and prominent public intellectuals, several of whom had previously supported harsh measures against Cuba. They shared a view that the existing policy undermined US interests in the Western Hemisphere and that the stable succession in Cuba has “challenged the effectiveness of a half century of US economic sanctions,” as a Council on Foreign Relations task force report declared.20

  By 2009, all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere except the United States had established diplomatic relations with Cuba. In November 2008, Cuba became a full member of the Rio Group, an informal association of twenty-three regional countries that formalized itself in 2011 as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC in the Spanish acronym) and seemed to offer a potential challenge to the OAS as the main forum for handling hemispheric issues.

  President Obama seemed aware of the changing landscape as he announced just prior to an April 2009 Summit of the Americas that he had abolished all restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans and he would permit them to send unlimited funds to families. But the Latin Americans’ lackluster response—that his moves were little more than the fulfillment of a campaign promise—reflected Cuba’s own disappointment. To be sure, there was a marked change in tone coming from Washington, as the Obama administration restarted semiannual migration talks with Cuba and increased diplomatic contacts at a slightly higher level than before. But the administration advanced no effort to chip away at the US embargo, remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, or close down several programs that harmed or threatened Cuba.

  One project, the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) program created in 2006, was designed to encourage Cuban doctors serving abroad to give up their citizenship and emigrate to the United States. By the end of 2015, the United States had approved more than seven thousand applications by Cuban medical personnel.21 The CMPP was one reason a planned US-Cuban cooperative project to help Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake failed. Cuba was concerned that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) would use the project to recruit Cuban doctors, and USAID refused to provide assurances it would not do so.22

  USAID was the lead agency in spending funds on covert programs that Cuba considered to be subversive. In 2009, it spent $45 million on these projects.23 The one that created the greatest obstacle for improved relations involved Alan P. Gross, a subcontractor for Development Alternatives International. The Cuban government arrested Gross in December 2009 and asserted that his mission was “to establish illegal and covert communications systems . . . intended to destabilize the existing order.”24 The State Department claimed he was in Cuba merely to provide the small Jewish community with telecommunications equipment that would enable its members to access the Internet without Cuban government interference or surveillance. There are about 1,500 Jews in Cuba; none had requested such assistance.

  In fact, what Gross provided was sophisticated satellite communications transmitters that included a subscriber identity module (SIM) card usually available only to the US military or intelligence community. The SIM card could prevent the detection of signals from the transmitters for a radius of 250 miles.25 The communications setup Gross established would allow a Cuban enemy to communicate with its operatives inside Cuba, or allow subversive groups to communicate across the island by tapping into the equipment that Gross had given to Jewish communities in three Cuban cities.

  Following Gross’s arrest, the State Department ended the renewed migration talks and refused to consider offers by Cuban representatives to discuss a variety of bilateral issues. Judging that the Obama administration was unlikely to make any major move to improve relations, the Cuban government cut back its purchases of US exports to $533 million in 2009.

  As US relations languished, Cuba strengthened ties with China and Russia. In 2007, China’s $2.3 billion in trade with Cuba made it the island’s second largest trading partner after Venezuela. (China’s trade with all of Latin America was $100 billion.) During a November 2008 trip to Cuba, Chinese president Hu Jintao cleared the way for the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation to invest $6 billion in the expansion of a Cienfuegos oil refinery, intended to produce 150,000 barrels per day, and the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant. He also agreed to continue buying Cuban sugar and nickel, and he “extended
the second $70 million phase of a $350 million credit package designed to repair and renovate Cuban hospitals.”26

  On the heels of President Hu’s visit, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev came to Cuba to celebrate the signing of several trade agreements involving automobiles, nickel, oil, and the sale of wheat to the island. Russia’s deputy prime minister Igor Sechin had made three trips to Cuba between August and November 2008.

  Brazil, Norway, Venezuela, and Spain also showed an interest in exploring Cuba’s oil fields at this time. Preliminary surveys showed that Cuba had significant reserves offshore in the Cuban Mexican Gulf, ranging between 4.6 billion barrels, according to the US Geological Survey, to perhaps as much as 20 billion barrels, according to Cuban estimates.27 But the possibility that oil would save the Cuban Revolution was, at best, many years in the future. Raúl Castro had to solve Cuba’s economic and political problems immediately.

  Notes

  1. Raúl Castro Ruz, “Speech at the Celebration of the Attack on Moncada,” Camaguey, July 26, 2007, http://www.granma.cu/granmad/2007/07/27/nacional/artic01.html.

  2. Yailin Orta Rivera y Norge Martínez Montero, “La vieja gran estafa,” Juventud Rebelde, October 1, 2006, http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/cuba/2006-10-01/la-vieja-gran-estafa.

  3. Yailin Orta Rivera, “Desenmascaran falsificación de productos en redes comerciales del país,” Juventud Rebelde, February 25, 2007, http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/cuba/2007-02-25/desenmascaran-falsificacion-de-productos-en-redes-comerciales-del-pais.

  4. Anita Snow, “Cuba’s Raul Castro Signals More Openness to Debate of Divergent Ideas Than Brother Fidel,” Associated Press International, December 21, 2006.

  5. Raúl Castro Ruz, “Speech,” July 26, 2007.

  6. Marc Frank, Cuban Revelations: Between the Scenes in Havana (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), 73–74.

  7. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2009 (New York: 2009), 167–68.

  8. Fidel Castro, “Speech Delivered at the Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of His Admission to University of Havana,” November 17, 2005.

  9. Oppenheimer, Castro’s Final Hour, 422.

  10. Kapcia, Cuba in Revolution, 177.

  11. Constitución de la República de Cuba (2002), http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/cuba.htm.

  12. Denise Blum, “Cuban Educational Reform during the ‘Special Period’: Dust, Ashes and Diamonds,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 424–27.

  13. Raúl Castro Ruz, “Speech,” February 24, 2008, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/rauldiscursos/2008/esp/r240208e.html.

  14. Erikson, The Cuba Wars, 319.

  15. Fidel Castro Ruz, “Cambios sanos en el Consejo de Ministros,” Granma, March 3, 2009, http://www.granma.cu/granmad/secciones/ref-fidel/art91.html.

  16. Sánchez Egozcue, “Challenges of Economic Restructuring in Cuba,” 129.

  17. Ricardo Torres Pérez, “Concluding Reflections of the Current Reform Process in Cuba,” in No More Free Lunch: Reflections on the Cuban Economic Reform Process and Challenges for Transformation, ed. Claes Brundenius and Ricardo Torres Pérez (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), 225.

  18. US Census Bureau, “Foreign Trade: Trade in Goods with Cuba,” 2016.

  19. Philip Brenner and Soraya M. Castro Mariño, “Untying the Knot: The Possibility of a Respectful Dialogue between Cuba and the United States,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 278.

  20. Charlene Barshefsky and James T. Hill, chairs, US-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality, Independent Task Force Report No. 60 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, May 2008), 72, http://www.cfr.org/mexico/us-latin-america-relations/p16279.

  21. Victoria Burnett and Frances Robles, “US and Cuba at Odds Over Exodus of the Island’s Doctors,” New York Times, December 19, 2015, http://nyti.ms/1S0CpLf.

  22. H. Michael Erisman, “Brain Drain Politics: The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Programme,” International Journal of Cuban Studies 4, nos. 3/4 (Autumn/Winter 2012): 277–79, 284–85.

  23. Fulton Armstrong, “Time to Clean Up US Regime-Change Programs in Cuba,” Miami Herald, December 26, 2011.

  24. Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, “Press Conference,” December 5, 2012, http://www.minrex.gob.cu/en/press-conference-josefina-vidal-ferreiro-head-united-states-division-cuban-chancery-international.

  25. Desmond Butler, “USAID Contractor Work in Cuba Detailed,” Associated Press, February 12, 2012.

  26. “China Signs Trade Deals with Cuba,” BBC News, November 19, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7733811.stm.

  27. “Cuba Claims Massive Oil Reserves,” BBC News, October 17, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7675234.stm.

  Chapter 24

  Securing Cuba’s Independence through Economic Change, 2010–2016

  I have to take a day off a week because there is no other way to get my father to and from the specialty medical center he needs to take care of his illness. Meanwhile someone where I work has to back me up. And sometimes I have to back him up. So it is true that we have an extra radiologist under normal circumstances who theoretically we don’t need. But because of other inefficiencies in the society, we do need that. I don’t know what they’ll do to force us to reduce the number, because it looks like we have too many radiologists for the number of patients, but we don’t really.

  —Radiologist at a Havana hospital, 20111

  The impatience for change was conspicuous everywhere after Raúl’s first full year as Cuba’s president. As he moved cautiously, the new president frustrated widespread initial hopes that he would make significant reforms immediately. He eschewed describing the process as “change” or “reform.” Instead, Cuban officials said they were “perfecting” or “updating” the Cuban model.

  “Updating” the Cuban Economic Model

  Downsizing and Decentralization

  Despite his proclaimed intention to bring about comprehensive adjustments in Cuba’s economy in order to secure Cuba’s independence, Raúl still had not proposed a plan to rejuvenate economic affairs by the start of 2010. And time was running out. Before he could implement any plan, the Congress of the PCC had to approve it. The Congress met every five years and the next meeting was scheduled for that very year. So he postponed the Congress and doubled down on developing a program that could gain acceptance.

  The first major move came as a shock on April 4, 2010. Raúl announced a plan to reduce the size of the state’s workforce by one million employees—a cut of nearly 20 percent.2 Several problems had combined to lead to this one solution. The government was strapped for cash to pay workers. If state workers were laid off, officials reasoned, some might accept the government’s offer of up to forty hectares (about one hundred acres) of free land on which they could increase domestic food production. Cuba had spent 20 percent of its hard currency imports in 2010 on food, especially rice, wheat, and animal proteins such as chicken and meat.3

  The Guarantors of National Sovereignty and Independence*

  Without a sound and dynamic economy . . . it will neither be possible to improve the living standard of the population nor to preserve and improve the high levels of education and healthcare ensured to every citizen free of charge. Without an efficient and robust agriculture . . . we can’t expect to sustain and raise the amount of food provided to the population, that largely depends on the import of products that can be grown in Cuba. If the people do not feel the need to work for a living because they are covered by extremely paternalistic and irrational state regulations, we will never be able to stimulate love for work or resolve the chronic lack of construction, farming and industrial workers; teachers, police agents and other indispensable trades that have steadily been disappearing. If we do not build a firm and system
atic social rejection . . . of corruption, more than a few will continue to make fortunes . . . while disseminating attitudes that crash into the essence of socialism. . . . We are convinced that we need to break away from dogma and assume firmly and confidently the ongoing upgrading of our economic model in order to set the foundations of the irreversibility of Cuban socialism and its development, which we know are the guarantors of our national sovereignty and independence.

  * * *

  * Raúl Castro Ruz, “Speech at the Ninth Congress of the Young Communist League,” April 4, 2010, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/rauldiscursos/2010/ing/r030410i.html.

  Raúl also believed that government workers treated their jobs as sinecures—guaranteed regardless of what they did—which encouraged sloth that led to inefficiency and low productivity. “We know that the budgeted and entrepreneurial sectors have hundreds of thousands of workers in excess,” he charged. “Some analysts estimate that the surplus of people in work positions exceeds one million.”4

  As one might readily guess, popular reaction to the speech was negative. Apart from the shock, the president was ignoring the reality of daily life that Cubans endured, an example of which the radiologist at the opening of this chapter described. From the radiologist’s perspective, redundancy in personnel was essential, because “other inefficiencies” forced everyone to spend time waiting on lines at bus stops, markets, and government offices. As a result, few people whom we encountered believed the government would enforce the announced layoffs. In fact, resistance to the plan emerged as well from within the government.

  In August, the president revised his numbers. He said that the reduction would be more moderate—five hundred thousand would be dropped from the state’s payroll, and much of the decrease would occur through retirement and attrition. Nevertheless, he was adamant that change had to come. “We must erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working,” he told the National Assembly. Yet at the same time, he said, the state would not abandon people “to their fate” and “will provide the necessary support for a dignified life . . . to those who really are not able to work and are the sole support of their families.”5