Where is Cuba's Gorbachev?
BY BRIAN LATELL
afterfidell@aol.com
The top Cuban leadership today resembles nothing as much as the
doddering gerontocracy that governed the Soviet Union in the first half
of the 1980s, that is, until the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev's ascension
in March 1985. In quick succession the rheumy Leonid Brezhnev was
briefly succeeded by Yuri Andropov, and then Constantine Chernenko, all
three by then in their 70s, infirm and incapable of leading their fading
empire out of its terminal dysfunction.
Cuba's leadership today may be inherently even more unstable.
The Castro brothers' unpredictable tag-team performance this year has
created greater uncertainty in the nomenclatura than at any time since
the Ochoa de la Guardia purges 20 years ago. The announcement last week
of the indefinite postponement of the Sixth Communist Party Congress is
surely the result of tensions and deep policy disagreements between the
brothers and broadly across the nomenclatura.
What appeared for some time to have been an irrevocable succession, or
at least one in which Fidel Castro would play only a passive emeritus
role, has turned out to be anything but that. By all recent appearances
the renascent Fidel has laid down prohibitions in domestic and foreign
policy -- lines in the sand -- that no other leader dare cross. This
year, furthermore, he has been thoroughly engaged in the details of key
foreign-policy challenges, events in Honduras, the summit meetings of
regional leaders in Venezuela and Trinidad and, perhaps most of all,
relations with the United States.
He is again monitoring how scores of upper- and middle-ranking leaders
behave. For a while -- perhaps when he was critically infirm -- he
deferred to Raúl. But the wrath and paranoia that characterized his rule
in the past have been evident again in the recent humiliating dismissals
of leaders who crossed him. As a result, ranking Cuban officials can't
be sure who is in charge from day to day. They don't know whom to obey
or trust or how safely to maneuver around the Castro brothers, even as
demands on them to improve economic performance are intensifying.
Raúl, the nominal president, has performed inconsistently. That is not
surprising given his continuing refusal to countermand his brother on
any matter of transcending importance. After first raising popular
expectations for change, he has been beating a disorderly retreat that
has surely compromised his standing among civilian and military leaders
impatient for reform and decisive leadership.
Raúl's speech on July 26, Cuba's most important revolutionary holiday,
was an exercise in debility and obfuscation. Perhaps it also reflected a
profound fatigue. In his two previous July 26 performances he was
robust, presenting himself confidently as the country's newly found
chief problem solver. He raised expectations that economic conditions
would improve. He spoke at length and used the anniversary, as his
brother often did, to deliver sweeping ``state of the revolution''
addresses.
In 2007 he made the landmark promise to bring about ``structural and
conceptual change.'' In 2008, he promised to ``continue to care for,
prepare and listen to our youth.'' That reiterated in brief the seminal
theme of a speech he delivered at the University of Havana some months
earlier when he implored Cuban youth to debate the country's problems
fearlessly. With an eye on Cuba's generational crisis, he reassured the
students that, ``We must continue gradually opening the way for new
generations.''
This year he was gruff and demanding in his only reference to the
disenchanted youth. ``Are you listening, youth leaders?'' he demanded.
If they were, and if they are to take his injunction seriously, they
heard that they will be expected to work in the countryside planting
trees in places where the soil or conditions are too poor to produce
food crops. This change of priorities was already evident following the
recent dismissals of the only officials -- Felipe Pérez Roque, in his
mid-40s, and Carlos Lage, his mid-50s -- who stood a chance of appealing
to Cuba's apathetic youth and who seemed to rank high in the line of
succession.
Ranking Cuban officials don't know whom to obey or trust or how safely
to maneuver around the Castro brothers.
A photo at the dais where Raúl spoke in Holguin on July 26 portrayed the
stasis starkly. It showed the 78-year-old Raúl, seated next to the soon
to be 79-year-old Jose Ramón Machado Ventura, first in the line of
succession. Next to them was the irrepressible Ramiro Valdés, 77 and
apparently now the next most important figure in the leadership. If
there is a Cuban Gorbachev biding his time somewhere in the upper
reaches of the nomenclatura, he is wisely keeping a low profile.
Brian Latell is a senior research associate in Cuba studies at the
University of Miami and author of After Fidel: Raúl Castro and the
Future of Cuba's Revolution.
Where is Cuba's Gorbachev? - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (4 August 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1170091.html
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