Cuba's military men loyal to Raul Castro

Aug. 8, 2006, 8:47PM
Cuba's military men loyal to Raul Castro

By ANITA SNOW Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

HAVANA — Raul Castro, CEO.

With the military controlling a good share of Cuba's tourism,
electronics imports and foreign currency reserves, the defense minister
is as much entrepreneur as soldier.

Now that he's filling in as president for his ailing brother, Fidel,
Raul Castro can count on a network of similarly positioned uniformed and
retired officers who are as loyal to him from behind their desks as they
were on the battlefields of Angola and Ethiopia.

The loyalty of those generals and colonels has helped them move into the
highest echelons of the government and the economy.

Even dissident Vladimiro Roca, a former fighter pilot under Castro's
command before breaking with the government, believes Castro has the
military leadership's support. But more than either Castro, they are
"committed to the system," Roca said of the generals. "What they are
interested in is maintaining their status."

That status is significant. Five active generals sit on the Communist
Party's powerful 19-member Politburo, which also includes the Castro
brothers.

So does a retired military man: Juan Almeida Bosque, who played a
historic military role in the revolution's early years. Another retired
officer sits on the governing Council of State, Vice President Jose
Ramon Fernandez, who helped lead Cuba's victorious troops at the
U.S.-backed invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

Two of those active generals also run key ministries. Lt. Gen. Abelardo
Colome Ibarra, 66, oversees the island's vast domestic security and
intelligence apparatus as interior minister. As sugar minister, Maj.
Gen. Ulises Rosales del Toro, 64, controls Cuba's economically important
production of cane for export.

Generals and colonels in the past have also headed the fishing and
transportation ministries, as well as Habanos S.A., which works with a
European firm to market the island's world-famous cigars abroad. Another
former commander, Ramiro Valdes, operates Grupo de Electronica de Cuba,
which imports computers and other electronics.

The Armed Forces also operates the TRD Caribe chain, which has hundreds
of small stores selling consumer goods across the country, and Gaviota
S.A., a tourism company that runs more than 30 hotels and has
subsidiaries that provide tourist travel.

The military's economic enterprises are run by the Defense Ministry's
Business Administration Group, overseen by Raul Castro's
second-in-command and confidant, Lt. Gen. Julio Casas Regueiro.

By all accounts, the defense minister is a highly capable manager, and
many believe his pragmatism and sharp business sense could prompt him to
open Cuba's economy should he ever be placed in power permanently.
Former Sandinista rebel commander Tomas Borge said Fidel Castro once
told him Raul was the best organizer he knew.

"The ministry with the greatest efficiency, in all senses and aspects,
has always been the Armed Forces," said dissident Roca, whose late
father Blas Roca was a top Communist Party leader.

Known as a warm and jocular man who dotes on friends and family, Raul
Castro also has proven to be capable of extreme toughness. In 1959, in
the first months after the revolution, he and Ernesto "Che" Guevara
oversaw the executions of officials from the deposed government of
dictator Fulgencio Batista.

"My hand didn't tremble then and it doesn't tremble now," Castro told
state news media in 1989 when he voted to uphold the death penalty for a
highly decorated Maj. Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa _ who reportedly had been one
of his closest friends _ and three officers convicted of drug trafficking.

Ochoa and most of the top generals who Castro now counts on for support
spent years on the battlefields of Angola and Ethiopia in the 1970s and
1980s, leading troops in African struggles for independence from
colonial rulers.

The defense minister directed those wars from Havana, deferring always
to his brother, Fidel, who is commander in chief and took a keen
interest in the most minute details of military movements and battles.

The military reached its zenith of power in those years, and the
decorated generals returning home were treated as conquering heroes. But
when the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its primary benefactor,
the military's role changed drastically.

Fidel Castro announced that Cuba would no longer fight in independence
movements abroad, and the military developed a new focus on defense and
the economy. The military today is probably Cuba's most powerful and
respected institution.

The military has an estimated 37,000 troops and 700,000 reservists,
according to "Jane's World Armies." It can also call on more than 1
million militia members, as well as paramilitary and civilian groups.

But Raul Castro made sure that was only a part of the armed forces'
role. It now uses its stores and tourism business to capture hard
currency to pay for imports, and the 100,000-member Youth Labor Army
produces basic foodstuffs to be sold at extremely low cost at government
markets.

"Raul was the lead architect of these adaptations in military missions,"
former CIA analyst Brian Latell wrote in his book "After Fidel."

"Like the concessions Fidel made to allow foreign tourism and
dollarization, Raul had no illusions about the risks of giving selected
officers access to substantial financial flows," Latell wrote. "But as
the economy collapsed, he concluded there was no alternative if the
military was to survive and the revolution was to endure."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4103708.html