Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence

by Philip Brenner

  Notes

  1. Michael Voss, “Cuba Pushes Its ‘Medical Diplomacy,’” BBC News, May 20, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8059287.stm.

  2. The phrase and concept is from Abraham F. Lowenthal, “The United States and Latin America: Ending the Hegemonic Presumption,” Foreign Affairs 55, no. 1 (October 1976).

  3. Philip Brenner, “The Implications of Political and Socio-Economic Changes in Latin America,” in Political and Socio-Economic Change: Revolutions and Their Implications for the US Military, ed. John R. Deni (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Press, 2014), 46–50.

  4. Donna Rich, “Cuba’s Role as Mediator in International Conflicts: Formal and Informal Initiatives,” in Cuban Foreign Policy Confronts a New International Order, ed. H. Michael Erisman and John M. Kirk (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991).

  5. Virginia Bouvier, “Q&A: Colombia Cease-Fire Accord Marks Historic Turn,” United States Institute for Peace, June 24, 2016, http://www.usip.org/publications/2016/06/24/qa-colombia-cease-fire-accord-marks-historic-turn.

  6. Brian Ellsworth, “Despite Obama Charm, Americas Summit Boosts US Isolation,” Reuters, April 16, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-americas-summit-obama-idUSBRE83F0UD20120416.

  7. LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, 387–94.

  8. Pascal Fletcher, “Obama Wants ‘Real Change’ in Cuba before Normal Ties,” Reuters, May 13, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-obama-idUSTRE74C3P820110513.

  9. Raúl Castro Ruz, “Speech at the National Assembly of People’s Power,” December 23, 2011, Granma, December 26, 2011.

  10. US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, Cuba, April 19, 2013, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2012&dlid=204441.

  11. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at a DSCC Fundraising Reception,” November 8, 2013, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/08/remarks-president-dscc-fundraising-reception-0.

  12. LeoGrande and Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba, chapter 10.

  13. Fidel Castro Ruz, “Para mis compañeros de la Federación Estudiantil Universitaria,” Granma, January 26, 2015, authors’ translation. The Spanish version reads: “No confío en la política de Estados Unidos,” which could be translated as “I do not trust US politics.”

  14. Fidel Castro Ruz, “Brother Obama,” Granma, March 28, 2016, http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-03-28/brother-obama.

  15. Bradley Klapper and Michael Weissenstein, “US, Cuba Move toward Embassies, Disagree on Human Rights,” Associated Press, January 23, 2015.

  16. Joseph S. Nye Jr., “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, no. 80 (Autumn 1990); Joseph S. Nye Jr., The Future of Power: Its Changing Nature and Use in the Twenty-First Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 20–21.

  17. John M. Kirk, “Cuban Medical Internationalism under Raúl Castro,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2014), 251.

  18. Barack Obama, “Press Conference by the President in Trinidad and Tobago,” April 19, 2009, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/press-conference-president-trinidad-and-tobago-4192009.

  19. Sandra Levinson, “Nationhood and Identity in Contemporary Cuban Art,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 340.

  20. H. Michael Erisman, “Raúlista Foreign Policy: A Macroperspective,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

  21. Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, “2016 CELAC ACTION PLAN,” January 27, 2016, http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/images/ed_integracao/IV_CELAC_SUMMIT_2016ActionPlan_ENG.pdf.

  22. Tom Long, Latin America Confronts the United States: Asymmetry and Influence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 12–18; William M. LeoGrande, “The Danger of Dependence: Cuba’s Foreign Policy After Chavez,” World Politics Review, April 2, 2013, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12840/the-danger-of-dependence-cubas-foreign-policy-after-chavez.

  23. Michael J. Bustamante and Julia E. Sweig, “Cuban Public Diplomacy,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 268.

  24. Long, Latin America Confronts the United States, 224.

  25. Kirk, “Cuban Medical Internationalism under Raúl Castro,” 257.

  Chapter 26

  Change, Continuity, and the Future

  Apparently, some people used to embrace the illusion that revolutionary Cuba existed almost on another planet, and that in the ’60s and ’70s Cuba wasn’t as homophobic as the rest of the world. It would have been marvelous had that been the case. . . . Prevailing ideas still tend to devalue these [LGBT] individuals and deny them equal opportunities. . . . Homophobia in Cuba and throughout the world is manifested through acts of both physical and psychological violence. Nevertheless, the many years of the Revolution have succeeded in instilling a certain sense of the value of social solidarity and the necessity of a positive reaction when countering injustice. . . . [W]hen inaugurating the National Days Against Homophobia in 2008, Cuba was likewise signaling its desire to re-visit its history. . . . Previously, there was little discussion of these matters and when discussion did occur, it was only to dismiss, indeed, exclude LGBT people. But today Cuban society is engaged in discussing and exposing many points of view, doubts and contradictions. . . . The fact remains that the very experimentation that is Socialism cannot tolerate discrimination of any kind.

  —Mariela Castro Espín1

  A visitor to Cuba in 2016 would have witnessed a historic process unfolding and seen a far different Cuba than when Raúl Castro became president—more open, vibrant, bustling. Some Cubans complained that they were only running in place, that the changes they wanted had not materialized. Still, Cubans are inventive, creative, and entrepreneurial, and these characteristics were flourishing in a myriad of ways that touched their daily lives. Consider the old US Chevrolets, Plymouths, and Lincolns that became a postcard hallmark of the country. Typically, the engine in one of these “American” cars originally propelled a Russian Lada; its brakes were from a Japanese Sentra; and the transmission relied on gears jerry-rigged from a Czech tractor. Urban farms and organic food producers were teaming up with master chefs at new paladares to create novel restaurant experiences. Scientists at the Centro Ingenieria Genetica y Biotechnologia (Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology) had developed a drug that can prevent diabetes sufferers from losing their limbs (figure 26.1 shows the center). Without access to this medicine because of the embargo, an estimated seventy-three thousand Americans with diabetes have had amputations every year.2 In 2016, the US Food and Drug began tests to evaluate a vaccine the genetic engineering center had developed to prevent lung cancer.

  Figure 26.1. The Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology has been a source of several life-saving pharmaceuticals. Photo by Peter Eisner.

  However, Cubans do not like taking orders or falling in line. Before 1959, Cuban Catholics had the lowest church attendance in the hemisphere—below 5 percent.3 Communist leaders have been similarly chagrined by the lackadaisical participation of party members. “The Cuban says no, and means it, to all authority; to bosses, kings, generals, presidents, colonels, commanders, doctors,” Carlos Franqui, the propaganda chief of the July 26th Movement and editor of Revolución who left the country permanently in 1968, observed. “Cuba is an island of immigrants and émigrés,” he added. “In constant movement and danger. Coveted by the great powers. Invaded by buccaneers and pirates. Occupied by Spaniards, Britons, North Americans. An island of . . . rebellion itself.”4

  Imagine corralling this whirling dervish of a people onto one boat to travel along a single river. Add to the scenario the social changes that occurred from 2010 to 2016. Then imagine Raúl Castro’s frust
ration in trying to bring an orderly updating to the Revolution.

  Social Change from 2010 to 2016

  Greater Open Expression

  In 2012, Cuba’s Ministry of Culture and the National Book Institute awarded the National Literature Prize to Leonardo Padura for The Man Who Loved Dogs. The significance of the decision to give Padura the country’s most prestigious award for writing was not lost on anyone: it was an open acceptance of dissent. All of Padura’s detective novels had a political edge, exposing some form of corruption beneath the official façade of normalcy. The Man Who Loved Dogs, from which we quoted a brief passage in chapter 9, is an epic work that weaves three stories into one. Each challenges an aspect of Cuba’s politics, ideological rigidity, or seemingly blind adherence to Soviet dogmas. The central story concerns the assassination of Leon Trotsky, an early Soviet leader. Padura portrays Trotsky as the Soviet leader whose values and goals most closely reflected the ideals of the Cuban revolution. In contrast, his depiction of Ramón Mercader, Trotsky’s assassin, reveals Stalin’s perniciousness and the callousness of his devotees. Even though Soviet governments after Stalin discredited some of the dictator’s actions, they had not resurrected Trotsky from the ignominy Stalin bestowed on him. Cuba had officially followed the Soviet lead in this regard, which made the novel a biting critique of the alleged hypocrisy and opportunism of Cuba’s leaders.

  Padura’s award was just one of many ways Cubans found the heavy hand of the government easing off under Raúl’s leadership, giving them a sense that they could express themselves more freely. Peter Eisner, for example, met numerous Cubans willing to speak with him openly about their economic hardships in television interviews for the PBS program World Focus. A woman dentist in her twenties whom he stopped while she was strolling one evening on the Avenida de los Presidentes—which was crowded with young people hanging out, listening to music, singing, and dancing spontaneously—said that she saw health as a growing problem. She felt too many Cuban doctors were going overseas, degrading medical care at home. A young man said that he felt his university training had thus far in his life gone to waste. “We shouldn’t have spent five years in college in vain,” he remarked. “Someday this is going to have to change.”5

  The US media often has presented an exaggerated image of Cuba as a closed society where everyone is afraid to express a critical opinion lest a “Rapid Response Brigade” swarm the critic’s home and trash it.6 To be sure, the government has repressed dissent, imprisoned Cubans for what they have written or produced artistically, and attempted to control information. This behavior can be partly explained by Cuban leaders’ tendency to perceive that their context is akin to the kind of extreme threat US leaders perceived after September 11, 2001, which also led to the denial of some civil liberties. After all, the goal of US policy—to overthrow the Cuban government—is explicit in the law governing the embargo. What becomes significant, therefore, is the relaxation of some controls and the reduction in fear we found when someone criticizes the government or PCC, not the continuation of some repression, which will take time to overcome.

  Prior to the 2011 PCC Congress, the government itself encouraged active debate about the Lineamientos, and “there were calls for a change of mentality among leaders and administrators . . . to listen to the population,” economist Jorge Mario Sánchez noted. Meanwhile, he added, “the press began to publish letters and articles exposing wrong or arbitrary decisions in state enterprises and ministries to public scrutiny.”7

  The shift toward greater freedom of expression actually began before Raúl became president. Temas magazine, for example, celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2015.8 By publishing articles on topics rarely covered in the official media and with views well outside the mainstream, the magazine has helped to expand the borders of what is acceptable. Its January/March 2002 issue, for example, focused on the sensitive subject of “Identity and Multiculturalism” and as usual included both Cuban and foreign authors. In a similar way, its July/September 2012 issue examined the subject of “Social Development,” which included an article about the lack of social mobility and the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next.

  Temas was protected initially by Abel Prieto Jiménez, a journalist and novelist who became minister of culture in 1997. By 2012, we were told, when Prieto stepped down from the post, even usually doctrinaire officials such as Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly and a former Political Bureau member, backed the magazine.

  Prieto returned as culture minister in 2016. While his role in championing the free expression of artists and writers had been essential, he was not alone. The Catholic Church also made an important contribution. As early as 1968, when the Cuban bishops’ conference issued pastoral letters in support of the Revolution’s social justice goals, the Church began efforts to reduce the breach that had occurred with the government. Nearly thirty years later, in 1994, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, the archbishop of Havana, asserted that “the Catholic Church had a duty to help preserve the achievements of the revolution.”9

  After 1992, the government permitted the church to disseminate its publications to a larger audience. Cardinal Ortega used this opportunity to create Palabra Nueva (New Word), a magazine that became a pioneer in the movement for greater openness.10 Under Orlando Márquez Hidalgo, the inspiring editor who founded and directed the magazine from 1992 to 2016, Palabra Nueva provided both information and challenging ideas that linked church teachings to a range of nonreligious subjects. Márquez told a Washington, DC, audience in 2013 that in his view, “talking about religion is not good enough . . . we must include also other topics which are in the interest of the population.” For this reason, he said, “we can write about the economy, we can write about the society, we can write about sports, science, life, the everyday life of the Cubans—the hopes, the expectations, their frustrations.”11 Several of the subjects on which the magazine has focused—the way that the current development strategy has encouraged consumption and increased imports, contributed to underemployment, and weakened Cubans’ identification with their country’s destiny—were subsequently “recognized by the highest figures in the Cuban government.12

  In addition to editing Palabra Nueva, Márquez served as spokesperson for the cardinal and the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops. From this position, he worked with Cardinal Ortega to find common ground between church and government officials, who had previously regarded each other as fundamental antagonists. Their success was evident in the trust Raúl seems to have accorded to the Church as “a valid, internal interlocutor for the first time in almost 50 years.”13 In 2010, the Church was involved in the prison release of fifty-two members of the group of seventy-five dissidents arrested in March 2003. In January 2015, following up on the Cuban-US accord that led to diplomatic relations, the Church again served as an intermediary when the government commuted the sentences of fifty-three people the United States had identified as political prisoners. (Current estimates of the number of political prisoners by various organizations range from nineteen to fifty-one. The government claims all these people were incarcerated for acts other than speech, such as injuring people, damaging property, or espionage.14)

  The Church also spawned Espacio Laical [Lay Space] in 2005. While it devoted less attention to Church doctrine than Palabra Nueva, it also concentrated critically on economic and political issues and often broached topics that had not been discussed in other Cuban publications. In October 2011, Espacio Laical examined how the diaspora community could constructively become involved in developing the Cuban economy. In January 2013, it published a symposium that considered the need for a fundamental restructuring of the media in Cuba to broaden and democratize participation in decision-making.15 In part, producing that issue stimulated the editors, Roberto Veiga González and Lenier González Mederos, to leave the magazine in 2014 in order to create Cuba Posible—an ambitious project that is independen
t of the Church. Cuba Posible organizes public forums, publishes a range of blogs online, and tries to facilitate cooperative research among its growing network of members.16 It already has acquired an international audience, and the founders’ aspiration is that it will become a broad platform for the discussion of Cuba’s problems and alternate solutions.17

  Greater Artistic License

  In highlighting some films made during the Revolution’s early years (chapters 9 and 10), we suggested that Cuban film directors may have had more creative space for their talents and for criticism than other artists. Considerable credit for that artistic license should go to Alfredo Guevara, the founder of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), who died in 2013.18

  Until the Special Period, ICAIC was the only distributor of Cuban films and provided most of the support for production. But as film making with limited resources grew ever more difficult, the government permitted filmmakers to search for funding outside the country. Coproduction gave them the opportunity to explore subjects previously taboo in Cuba.19 This was ever more apparent in the 2010 to 2016 period, with films such as Habanastation (2011) on inequality, Revolución (2010) on underground culture, and Melaza (2012) on the necessity to engage in petty corruption in order to survive.

  Guevara himself did not shrink from confrontation in defending critical filmmakers. In a memorable 1995 episode, Fidel denounced Guantanamera as it began showing in Havana theaters. Directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío, the film tells the story of the uncompromising, bureaucratically oriented chief undertaker of Guantánamo Province who must transport a deceased person across the country to be buried. The six-hundred-mile trip reveals to the audience, with humor, the multitude of nonapproved ways that Cubans were engaged in resolviendo during the Special Period.