Trump, The Military And The Division Of Powers In Cuba

Trump, The Military And The Division Of Powers In Cuba

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 20 June 2017 — The recent decision
by the president of the United States to limit commercial relations with
Cuban companies controlled by the military highlights a rarely explored
corner of the national reality.

Anyone who knows the Island minimally knows that there is nothing like
what can be called a "division of powers" here. It was demonstrated
recently when the deputies to the National Assembly of People's Power
unanimously raised their hands to "back" some program documents from the
Communist Party, documents that the deputies had no legal capacity to
approve but politically could not disapprove.

In other countries, it is to be expected that Congress will oppose what
the Executive has proposed or that the Judiciary will rule
unconstitutional what a Parliament has approved. In most nations, when
some measure, new policy, or any law is applied, analysts wonder how the
unions will react or what the students are going to do. In Cuba it is
not like that. Those who rule give the orders and the rest obey or go to
jail.

The ostensible presence of individuals from the military sector in power
structures, especially in economic management, may lead one to think
that the army enriches itself this way and that having so many resources
in its hands makes it easier for it to repress the people. This
reasoning thus forms part of the belief that there is some kind of
division of powers and that introduces a huge error in the analysis.

The presence of colonels and generals (retired or active) in charge of
tourism companies such as Gaviota, or powerful consortiums such as
Gaesa, Cimex and TRD among others, may not mean the militarization of
the economy as much as it means the conversion, the metamorphosis, of
soldiers into managers.

Devoid of or "healed" of an authentic "working-class spirit," they
handle with the iron fists of ruthless foremen – loyal to the boss – any
dispute with the workers. Their habits of discipline lead them to do
what they are ordered to do without asking if it is viable or
absurd. They do not demand anything for themselves and anything that
improves their standard of living or working conditions (modern cars,
comfortable homes, trips abroad, food and beverage baskets…) will be
considered as a favor from the boss, a privilege which can be paid for
only with loyalty.

Although difficult to believe, they are not backed by their cannons or
their tanks, their influence is not determined by the numbers of their
troops or the firepower of the armaments they control, but by the
confidence that Raúl Castro has in them. It is as simple as that.

When we review the extensive documentation issued by the different
spheres of the outlawed political opposition, or by the officially
unrecognized civil society, we can barely observe any protest against
the dominance that the military has gained over the economy in the last
decade.

Civil society's priorities are different. The liberation of political
prisoners, the cessation of repression, freedom of expression and
association, the right to choose leaders in plural elections… In the
area of ​​economics, what is being questioned are the difficulties faced
by private entrepreneurs in starting a business, limitations on access
to the international market, excessive taxes, and the plunder to which
the self-employed are subjected to by the inspectors.

The most perceptible concern in this sense is that placing these
soldiers in key points of the economy is engineering the future economic
empowerment of the ruling clans in a virtual piñata, which implies
self-annihilation of the system by the heirs of power.

If it were not so dramatic it would be laughable to imagine the infinite
solutions that the Cuban rulers have to circumvent "the new measures"
announced by the president of the United States. All they have to do is
change the name of the current monopolies and place civilian leaders in
charge of supposed "second level cooperatives," already foreseen in
Guideline 15 from the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.

This magic trick or, to use a Cubanism, "shuffling of the dominoes"
would force the mammoth American bureaucracy to make a new inventory of
entities with which trading is forbidden. "As the stick comes and goes,"
they reorganize their forces while remaining at the helm of the country
and watching Donald Trump's term expire.

To perform this trick it will not be necessary to gather the Party
together in a congress, nor to consult the constitutionalist lawyers,
they would not even have to inform the Parliament. To make matters
worse, in the streets there will be no protest against the chameleon
gesture of the military exchanging their uniforms and their weapons for
guayaberas or business cocktails.

Source: Trump, The Military And The Division Of Powers In Cuba –
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