The Latell Report analyzes Cuba's contemporary domestic and foreign policy, and is published monthly except August and December. It is distributed by the electronic information service of the Cuba Transition Project (CTP) at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS).
Raul Gambles
Raul Castro’s performance of late has generated more doubts about the viability of the family dictatorship than at any time since he and Fidel won power more than fifty years ago. Raul is in no apparent danger from Cuba’s nomenclatura, but he, and many of his associates, are clearly worried about the unsettled mood in the streets.
His primacy over the military, the government, and the communist party is secure. New senior leadership teams entirely of Raul’s choosing are in place now in all of those sectors and the party congress in April will probably strengthen his position further. He is likely to be elevated to first secretary, replacing his brother, or possibly will instead anoint a trusted subordinate to serve as a figurehead.
But unlike the sure leadership Raul provided since assuming the presidency in July 2006, he now appears uncertain, hesitant, and deeply distressed. His reputation as a decisive and pragmatic problem-solver, earned during the decades he served as armed forces minister, is a waning political asset.
His modest, unspectacular leadership style --welcomed at first by the exhausted populace after so many command performances by his verbose brother-- is probably no longer working for him. During his four-and- a-half years in the presidency, Raul has not delivered a single inspirational speech. The need for one is greater now than at any time in years, but Raul --nearing his eightieth birthday-- is unlikely to rise to the occasion.
His two major speeches last year were hardly uplifting. On December 18, speaking to the national assembly, he volunteered darkly that he and the nation are embarking on a “journey into the unknown.” He meant that Cuba’s economic problems are so grave, and so resistant to the half-hearted remedies he has implemented thus far, that only new and draconian measures might work. Cutting consumer subsidies, laying off a half million workers this year, rejecting the “excess paternalism, idealism, and egalitarianism” of the fidelista past, Raul has pleaded with Cubans to adopt principles he attributed to the Inca civilization: “do not lie, steal, or be lazy.”
His broodings about the calamitous state of the economy, the revolution’s many failures, and what he has described as the “moral” deficiencies of the Cuban people surely have also aggravated popular perceptions of his leadership. Already low popular expectations for positive change have been dampened by his carping, pessimistic rhetoric.
Questions about Raul’s health have also intensified. He told the national assembly “the time we have left is short.” He was referring to himself and the few other elderly survivors of the revolution’s historical generation, the “historicos.” But in a motion to keep any hungry young wolves at bay, he added that he, and the other old timers, intend to lead Cuba into an admittedly dangerous new phase of development. “To this endeavor we will devote all the energy we have left, which fortunately is not just a little.” Many in the leadership must doubt that.
The measures the regime announced to absorb the half million layed-off workers from the state sector will not provide much of a boost for the economy, while possibly provoking significant unrest. Cubans can now apply for licenses to practice trades in exactly 178 capacities –mostly crafts, blue collar labor, and entertainment-- and to earn taxable profits as small entrepreneurs. But most of these concessions to state-sponsored neo-capitalism are reminiscent of nineteenth century economics.
Saddle, bridle, and harness repairs, shoe shining, watch and mattress repairing, imitation jewelry repair, and sixteen specific performance possibilities (including Benny More dance teams, Mambises musical groups, folkloric dancers) are now permitted for profit. Nowhere on the list is there the possibility for a young Cuban to work in computer repair, software development, publishing, or web site design. And none of the approved work categories will contribute to earning foreign exchange.
Raul’s reform is significant, nonetheless, because it reverses in a stroke two of Fidel’s most punitive campaigns against individual initiative in the past. His counter-revolutionary offensive of the late 1960’s and the so-called rectification campaign of the mid 1980’s closed down nearly every remnant of private enterprise. Raul’s initiative reverses years of fidelista doctrine. He insists too that the changes are irreversible and that additional fields for free enterprise will also be permitted in due course.
If so, the changes, however timid they seem now, are likely, over time, to prove truly transformational. A successor government --almost regardless of its ideological posture and composition-- will in all likelihood extend and intensify these raulista reforms, eventually giving rise to a more vigorous and free-wheeling private sector.
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Dr. Brian Latell, distinguished Cuba analyst and recent author of the book, After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader, is a Senior Research Associate at ICCAS. He has informed American and foreign presidents, cabinet members, and legislators about Cuba and Fidel Castro in a number of capacities. He served in the early 1990s as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America at the Central Intelligence Agency and taught at Georgetown University for a quarter century. Dr. Latell has written, lectured, and consulted extensively.
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The CTP can be contacted at P.O. Box 248174, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3010, Tel: 305-284-CUBA (2822), Fax: 305-284-4875, and by email at ctp.iccas@miami.edu.
The Latell Report, January 2011 You On Here » The Latell Report, January 2011
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