CUBA LIBRE?

CUBA LIBRE?

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Barring an unexpected comeback on the part of Fidel Castro, the
fundamental question in Cuba now is whether Raúl Castro is in a position
to perpetuate the communist regime, or whether the politicians (in the
Council of State), the ideologues (in the Communist Party) and the
soldiers (in the armed forces)—and factions within each group—will begin
a power struggle.

In the communiqué through which he handed power over to his brother,
Fidel Castro specifically put three institutions under the control of
Raúl while leaving other responsibilities to various cronies. Those
three institutions—the Communist Party, the Council of State and the
armed forces—are the ones that, in the vacuum likely to follow the
demise of Castro's five-decade-old messianic leadership, could come into
open conflict.

Recent signs were already pointing to a power struggle. The most telling
is a law passed by the National Assembly on June 9 and largely missed by
foreign analysts. It gives subordinates authorization to impugn the
decisions of their leaders if they "contravene" communist law. A few
weeks later, Raúl Castro gave a speech in which he said that, should his
brother be unable to continue, it would fall upon the "Communist Party"
to take the lead—a way of reaffirming the subordination of the generals
to the ideologues. Considering that Raúl was the minister of the Armed
Forces, it is particularly interesting that he needed to remind his
generals in public that they are under communist rule.

Many experts expect Raúl Castro to follow the Chinese model. They point
to the fact that he has traveled to Beijing on a number of occasions and
that he expressed, as early as 1997, admiration for the combination of
ruthless political control and market economics. They also think the
signals he sent in 2001, hinting at some form of "normalization" of
relations with the U.S., betray a closet pragmatist. Carlos Alberto
Montaner, leader of the Cuban Liberal Union, an exile group, believes
"Raúl has no choice but to start to move in the direction of a
transition." William Ratliff, a scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution
who has closely followed Cuba and China and conducted extensive
interviews with top leaders in both countries, told me "the survival
strategy will come into play"—meaning that Raúl and his cronies,
conscious of the fact that Cubans will not be easy to control with Fidel
out of the picture, will play the Chinese card and try to generate a
measure of prosperity in order to survive. "I wouldn't bet my pension on
what Raúl does, but I would consider putting up maybe half of it."

This perspective carries much weight, and many elements would seem to
point in that direction. However, I tend to think the more likely
scenario is a power struggle in which Raúl Castro will try to prevent
change. The outcome of that struggle is uncertain, but it will make even
a partial opening up of the system too risky for Raúl and others. The
struggle will probably pit traditionalists against a faction clever
enough to see that only a transition to democracy and a market economy
makes any sense for them and everybody else.

Fidel Castro flirted with the Chinese model between 1992 and 1997, when,
anxious to survive the collapse of the Soviet empire that had subsidized
him to the tune of $6 billion a year for three decades, he welcomed cash
remittances from Cuban exiles, tourists, joint ventures between state
companies and foreign investors, and home restaurants known as paladares.

It was the third phase of the revolution's economic history. First had
come the debacle of the early 1960s, when the Che Guevara model of
industrialization through central planning destroyed the economy. Then
came the colonial era: Castro sent sugar to the Soviets, in return for
oil, some industrial plants and military equipment. The collapse of the
Soviet Union put an end to that. The third phase—a mild version of the
Chinese model—gradually ended at the end of the 1990s. The fourth and
current phase of total dependence on Hugo Chávez, who sends to Cuba
100,000 barrels of refined crude per day, food, and some construction
material in exchange for a few thousand doctors and assistance in
building a police state, was Castro's bet for the next few years.

The reason Castro put a stop to reform in the '90s was perfectly
sensible: He realized power centers beyond his control would soon
emerge, subverting the whole premise of his one-man rule.

Under the Cuban system, only one man could possibly reverse course right
now and play, once again, the role of an ideological transvestite while
maintaining the loyalty of the entire regime: Fidel Castro himself. Raúl
has expressed occasional admiration for China and said one or two things
about coming to terms with Washington, but he is also one of the most
ruthless revolutionary leaders. He is associated with many of the
executions that have taken place in Cuba and played a key role in the
various purges that have periodically shaken the armed forces, including
the purge that sent Gens. Arnaldo Ochoa and Antonio de la Guardia to
face the death squad in 1989. He knows that any attempt to reverse
course and question Fidel Castro's legacy would make him vulnerable to
factions that could claim to be acting in the name of the authentic
principles of the revolution—perhaps under the law passed in June of
this year.

The other possible scenario—the perpetuation of the revolution without
Fidel Castro—is also unlikely. This is a regime that has sent thousands
of people to their deaths either by executing them, by causing them to
flee on rafts that disappeared in the shark-infested waters of the
Florida straits, or by dispatching them to fight wars in Africa. It has
caused one-fifth of its population to go into exile and turned what in
1959 was one of the three most successful economies of Latin America
into a beggar country. Only the fierce loyalty to Fidel Castro on the
part of the communist structure and the crushing machinery of repression
personally subordinated to him have been able to preserve the unity of
the government in the face of such excruciating suffering on the part of
the people. Raúl, an ailing septuagenarian with a reputation for heavy
drinking, does not command anything like his brother's legitimacy. His
close subordinates in the army, Gens. Julio Casas and Abelardo Colomé,
and his son-in-law, Lt. Luis Alberto Rodríguez, are not enough to
guarantee him a smooth run for years to come.

A power struggle, therefore, is in order, perhaps relatively soon. There
is no way of knowing whether this will be a peaceful struggle and
whether a faction tired of this colossal revolutionary charade will
eventually prevail and begin a transition period. But at least we know,
to judge by the experience of the last two decades around the world,
that one of the last five communist tyrannies left in the world is in
its death throes. Viva Cuba libre!

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