Cuban military controls weapons, economy

Monday 7th August, 2006

Cuban military controls weapons, economy
Big News Network.com Sunday 6th August, 2006 (UPI)

The Cuban military is not a repressive apparatus, it's a money machine
that runs the tourism sector, sugar, naval and retail industries, a
report says.

As Fidel Castro recuperates from gastrointestinal surgery and his
brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, takes over, the role of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FAR in its Spanish acronym, has never
been more critical, the Miami Herald said Sunday. The pressure to
deliver will be on the armed forces that Raul created and transformed.

Cubans who have suffered years of shortages will be looking to Raul
Castro and his military -- highly respected in Cuba -- to address
crucial deficiencies in housing, transportation, food and medicine, the
newspaper reported.

Experts say the younger class of rising military stars who run Cuba's
commercial enterprises using economic models they learned in European
business schools just might be able to do it, the Herald said.

The government appears to be feeling the pressure. Just three days after
Castro's shocking announcement that he had turned power over to his
brother, the state newspaper Granma featured an article about the
military sprucing up and modernizing its equipment, the newspaper said.

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