The War Against the Working Class

by Will Podmore

  In all three countries, low GDP per head meant low wages, so their governments could compete for foreign investment even with China.

  Chapter 11

  Cuba, to 1990

  Batista’s dictatorship

  Before the Revolution, Cuba was a dictatorship. In 1952, Batista cancelled elections that the progressive forces were about to win. The US government backed his coup. US embassy officials wrote, “every one is aware of the support which the Cuban armed forces have received from our own armed forces before and since the coup d’état.”1

  US Treasury Secretary George Humphrey said in 1954 that US officials should “stop talking so much about democracy, and make it clear that we are quite willing to support dictatorships of the right if their policies are pro-American.”2 Throughout the 1950s, US governments backed Batista’s dictatorship.3 They knew quite well what Batista was like. US Ambassador George Messersmith had said in 1940 that Batista’s ‘principal interest is to be in power for the material advantage which it gives him’. The next US Ambassador, Spruille Braden, agreed: “Batista and his gang would like to free themselves from such few shackles as the Cuban creole democracy imposes and which prevent their unbridled acquisition of even more complete power and personal wealth.”4

  President Kennedy stated, “Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years – a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars.”5 CIA director Allen Dulles later acknowledged that “in some cases, especially in South America, a dictator has later taken over an internal security service previously trained to combat Communism and has diverted it into a kind of Gestapo to hunt down his local political opponents. This happened in Cuba under Batista.”6 Kennedy also said, “there is no country in the world, including all the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime …”7

  In the 1950s, Cuba had just one rural hospital. The Batista government’s 1952 census called 75 per cent of rural dwellings ‘ruinoso’. Only 3 per cent of rural homes had inside toilets, more than half had no toilet at all. Two-thirds had only dirt floors, only 9 per cent had electricity, only 2 per cent had running water. Between 80 and 90 per cent of rural children were infested with intestinal parasites.8 In 1951, a World Bank team estimated that 30 per cent of urban dwellers and 60 per cent of rural dwellers suffered from malnutrition.

  Less than a quarter of rural children attended school, and less than a half of urban children. The World Bank commented, “The general trend in the school system as a whole has been one of retrogression. A smaller proportion of the school-age children are enrolled today than a quarter of a century ago; the number of hours of instruction has been cut; the quality and morale of the teaching and supervisory force have gone down.”9

  Income per head in constant prices averaged $200 a year in 1956-58, the same as in 1903-06. But, as the World Bank noted, “Any figure for average per capita income is rather fictitious, especially where – as in Cuba – there is a very wide gap between the incomes of a relatively few high-income receivers at the top and the mass of income receivers.”10

  A 1957 report by the Catholic University Association said, “rural areas, especially wage workers, are living in unbelievable stagnant, miserable, and desperate conditions … It is time our country cease being the private fiefdom of a few powerful interests. We firmly hope that, in a few years, Cuba will not be the property of a few, but the true homeland of all Cubans.”11 The US Embassy’s commercial attaché summed up, “Cuban farmers and their families with few exceptions are undernourished, inadequately clothed, illiterate or semi-literate, readily susceptible to a variety of diseases, and at the mercy of country merchants and middlemen whose prices are what the traffic will yield and whose interest rates are generally exorbitant.”12

  Before the revolution, 80 per cent of Cuba’s foreign exchange came from selling sugar, mostly to the USA. To get access to the US market, Cuba had to give ‘most favoured nation’ status to imports from the USA. By 1959, Cuba relied on the USA for 65 per cent of its exports and 73 per cent of its imports. US companies were often exempted from paying taxes and could repatriate all their profits: they took from, not gave to, the Cuban economy. Between 1950 and 1960, the balance of payments favoured the USA, by one billion dollars.13 When Batista and his cronies fled Cuba on 1 January 1959, they took $500 million stolen from Cuba’s treasury.14

  Revolution in 1959

  The Cuban working class led the revolution from the start. They created mass organisations, like the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba, the 800,000-strong Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, the Revolutionary National Militias, the Federation of Cuban Women and the Literacy Campaign.

  From the start, the US state fiercely opposed the Cuban revolution, because it threatened US economic interests. Philip W. Bonsal, the US Ambassador to Cuba, later wrote, “In appraisal of the prospects for Cuban-American relations under Castro the extensive private American interests in Cuba were of major significance.”15 Assistant Secretary of State Roy Rubottom said, “‘Real U.S. goals in Cuba’ included ‘receptivity to U.S. and free world capital and increasing trade’ and ‘access by the United States to essential Cuban resources’.”16

  As early as 24 June 1959, the US state began to consider imposing sanctions on Cuba. The State Department knew what this would do: “The sugar industry will suffer a rapid and abrupt decline that will entail general unemployment. Many persons will be without work and go hungry.”17 On 6 April 1960, Lester Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed ‘a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government’.18

  Yet the CIA claimed in 1961 that Fidel Castro ‘became convinced that the US would never understand and accept his revolution, that he could expect only implacable hostility from Washington. This was the conclusion of his own disordered mind, unrelated to any fact of US policy or action’.19

  The US government knew quite well that “there is no effective political opposition.”20 It early played the theme, “Castro betrayed Cuba.”21 In 1961, the Eisenhower administration started the blockade. On 3 February 1962, President Kennedy made the blockade total by banning the sale of drugs and food products, which was a breach of international humanitarian law.

  On 1 November 1960, the US Ambassador to the UN called Cuba’s allegation of a planned US attack ‘monstrous distortions and downright falsehoods’.22 On 12 April 1961, Kennedy pledged at a press conference, “there will not be, under any conditions, any intervention in Cuba by United States armed forces. This government will do everything it possibly can, and I think it can meet its responsibilities, to make sure that there are no Americans involved in any actions inside Cuba.”23 Five days later, on 17 April, he ordered the Bay of Pigs attack, launched from US bases, with US mercenaries alongside Cuban exiles. The Cubans defeated the attack in four days.

  In March 1962, the Defense Department presented to the Joint Chiefs of Staff what it called ‘Pretexts to justify military intervention in Cuba’, including:

  “2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.”

  “3. a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba.”

  “4. We could develop a Commun
ist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.”

  “5. A ‘Cuban-based, Castro-supported’ filibuster could be simulated against a neighboring Caribbean nation.”

  “8. It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela.” “The passengers could be a group of college students.”

  And, “9. It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack.”

  By 1962, the CIA’s anti-Cuba Task Force W had grown to 400 US operatives running the sabotage and guerrilla operations of more than 50 front organisations, with its own fleet of fast boats, a rudimentary air force and 2,000 Cuban agents. By 1962, Miami housed the largest CIA station in the world, whose sole task was to overthrow the Cuban government.24 The CIA colluded with gangsters to try to kill Castro.25 Henry Kissinger admitted, “Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro.”26

  In October 1962, the US government came close to starting a nuclear war over Cuba. Kennedy’s reckless policy of aggression forced Cuba to install missiles on the island to safeguard itself from US assault. As Kennedy’s defense secretary Robert McNamara admitted years later, “I want to state quite frankly that with hindsight, if I had been a Cuban leader, I think I might have expected a U.S. invasion …”27 The US government responded by imposing a naval blockade, an act of war, and claimed that it was acting in self-defence.

  But many professors of international law agreed that Cuba, not the US government, acted in self-defence. As D. W. Greig commented, “it is difficult to accept the American contention that it was their naval quarantine which was necessitated on the grounds of self-defence … the plea of self-defence would justify Cuba’s acceptance of Russian missiles, rather than United States’ prevention of their being installed in Cuba.”28 The late Quincy Wright concluded, “It is difficult, therefore, to support the allegation that the Soviet Union violated international obligations in sending and installing missiles in Cuba.”29

  The US government continued to attack Cuba. In 1976, CIA paid asset Luis Posada Carriles bombed a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people. He said, “The CIA taught us everything. They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.” The US government also waged biological warfare against Cuba. As the US magazine Newsday reported on 8 January 1977, “with at least the tacit backing of US Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971” forcing the slaughter of 500,000 pigs. In 1981, the CIA created an epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue fever, which infected 340,000 people in a country which had never before experienced a single case of the disease. 116,000 were hospitalised; 158 people, including 101 children, died.

  Cuba grew slowly from 1959 to 1970, faster from 1970 to 1985. Between 1961 and 1965, gross social product rose 1.9 per cent a year, between 1966 and 1970 by 3.9 per cent a year and between 1971 and 1975 by 10 per cent a year. Real income growth per person from 1960 to 1985 was 3.1 per cent a year; Latin America’s average was 1.8 per cent. Between 1961 and 1965, industrial output rose by 2.3 per cent a year and between 1965 and 1984 by 6.3 per cent a year.30

  Between 1971 and 1975, industry received 21 per cent of all investment, agriculture 29 per cent. In 1976, Cuba introduced its System of Economic Management and Planning. Between 1976 and 1980, industry received 35 per cent of all investment, agriculture 19 per cent. Between 1970 and 1980, industrial production grew by 80 per cent, agriculture by 27 per cent. Cuba’s whole economy grew by 7.8 per cent a year between 1972 and 1981. In 1981, Cuba introduced production brigades (self-managing subunits of state farms) to promote worker participation in decision-making and to enhance work incentives through linking effort and reward more closely. Between 1981 and 1985, labour productivity grew 5.2 per cent a year.

  Between 1980 and 1985, Cuba’s gross social product grew by 7 per cent a year, as against Latin America’s average of a 1.7 per cent fall. Between 1975 and 1985, Cuba increased fourfold its production of non-electrical machinery (including transport equipment and agricultural machinery) and of electrical machinery threefold. It more than doubled its output of metal products. Cuba pursued both export promotion and import substitution in its development strategy.

  Social progress

  A 1972 report for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress said, “The genuine socio-economic and political accomplishments of the Cuban revolution have attracted international attention. These accomplishments include: A highly egalitarian redistribution of income that has eliminated almost all malnutrition, particularly among children; Establishment of a national health care program that is superior in the Third World and rivals that of numerous developed countries; Near total elimination of illiteracy and a highly developed multi-level educational system; and Development of a relatively well-disciplined and motivated population with a strong sense of national identification.”31

  Cuba’s constitution guaranteed the right to work, equal pay for equal work, health and safety protection at work, an eight-hour day, paid annual leave and social security. The law guaranteed local collective bargaining with unions. Cuba continually worked to raise the wages of lower-paid workers. The salary scale limited the highest basic salaries, 650 Cuban pesos (CUP) a month, to 2.89 times the national minimum salary of 225 CUP.

  Cuba did more than most developing countries to achieve equality.32 Most Latin American countries instead embraced the IMF’s ‘austerity’ - poverty - policies, which only deepened their slumps, cutting jobs and wages, worsening class and gender inequities.33 As Steve Ludlam concluded, “the Revolution has maintained a level of social equality that puts to shame the achievements of most social democrats and socialists elsewhere.”34 American economist James K. Galbraith commented, “the efforts made by the Cuban authorities to slow down the rising trend in wage inequality in the nineties are remarkable …”35

  The constitution guaranteed access to health care as a human right for all citizens, regardless of wealth, status, race or geographical origin. Cuba provided low-cost, sustainable primary health care, using prevention, health education, dietary advice, vaccination and low-tech options, involving the community. Women had free access to high-quality prenatal and postnatal services. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria and polio were eradicated.36

  Cuba invested hugely in health care. It had 59 hospitals in 1959, 257 in 1969. In the 1950s, it had just one rural hospital, by 1983 it had 55, plus 218 medical posts built in rural areas. By 2007, it had one doctor for every 170 people, more per head than any other country; the USA had one to 188 and the UK one to 250. The World Bank reported that the USA had 2.4 doctors per 1,000 people in 2009. Cuba had 6.7 doctors per 1,000 in 2010. The proportion of women doctors rose from 6 per cent in 1953 to 48 per cent in 1990 and of dentists from 18 per cent to 69 per cent. Between 1953 and 1992, the number of nurses increased fifteen-fold to 70,000.

  In the 1980s, Cuba was the first of 113 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America for life expectancy, health and education. It had the most equal income distribution in Latin America, the lowest unemployment, the lowest infant mortality and the highest literacy rate. In Latin America in the 1980s, only Cuba and Nicaragua improved their infant mortality rates. Between 1975 and 1984, Cuba’s was reduced from 27/1,000 to 15. By 2003, Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America and the Caribbean, 6/1,000: the average was 27/1,000.

  Cuba also invested heavily in education. There were four times more teachers in 1970 than in 1959. By 2007, there were eleven primary school students per teacher – the best ratio in the continent.37 The UN reported in 2007 that only Cuba in Latin America and the Caribbean met the U
N’s Millennium Goal for universal education. A 2008 UNESCO survey of 196,000 primary school students in sixteen Latin American countries put Cuba first in mathematics, language and sciences. Erwin Epstein, president of the Comparative and International Education Society, praised Cubans’ “heroic efforts to raise their standard of education and make learning a natural part of their everyday lives. … Few, if any other nations can claim the use of schools to achieve such a pervasive transformation of social, political and economic life.”38

  Medea Benjamin, Joseph Collins and Michael Scott of the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy wrote in 1986, “the Cuban revolution declared, from the outset, that no one should go malnourished. No disappointment in food production, no failed economic take-off, no shock wave from world economic crisis has deterred Cuba from freeing itself from the suffering and shame of a single wasted child or an elderly person ignominiously subsisting on pet food.

  “No other country in this hemisphere, including the United States, can make this claim. Ending hunger is not the revolution’s only accomplishment. The streets of old Havana are no longer lined with prostitutes. A former slave society with many blacks and a history of discrimination, Cuba is now the most racially harmonious society we have ever experienced ... Illiteracy has been virtually eradicated and the current campaign is to ensure everyone, even the oldest small farmer, at least a ninth-grade education. Health care is free, and Cuba’s health indicators are perhaps the best in Latin America. Every effort is made to guarantee full employment. All this makes for a society with a pervasive sense of dignity and confidence in the future.”39

  Internationalism

  Cuba backed the peoples of Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola in their struggles for independence from Portuguese colonial rule. In 1966 Cuba sent military instructors and doctors to Guinea-Bissau, where they stayed until the people won independence in 1974. This liberation war brought down the Portuguese empire and Portuguese fascism and won independence for Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.