This debate intends to explore what we have so far learned about the Cuban approach to socialism and development through an analysis of its contradictions.

I N T R O D U C T I O N : T H E P R O B L E M W I T H ‘ F I D E L-C E N T R I S M ’

One fundamental problem that confronts anyone seeking to under- stand the complex processes and trajectory of the post-1959 Cuban Revolution is the conceptual fog created over the decades by what has been called ‘Fidel-centrism’ (Kapcia 1996), i.e. the overwhelm- ing tendency of so much of the writing on the Revolution to focus exclusively on the person and personality of Fidel Castro.

This is, of course, easily explained: while undoubtedly rooted in familiar traditions of ‘great men’ approaches to popular history, for which we must blame partly Victorian historians and partly the media’s sensationalising search for the human story or the ‘potted’ explanation, it also owes much to the effects of the February 1957 episode when the New York Daily Times reporter Herbert Matthews, having met the rebel leader, Fidel, in the Sierra, proceeded to report on, and talk up, both the guerrillas and their charismatic leader. Indeed, we should not ignore that supposed charisma, namely the impact that Fidel subsequently had on millions of Cubans of suc- cessive generations, and on many hundreds of thousands more non-Cubans, through his speeches and through the continuing re- porting on, and films of, his dynamic and mesmerising leadership. Quite simply, he has dominated so much newsprint and so much air time in documentaries and news broadcasts that we cannot ignore him, and thus we easily fall into the assumption that he, and he alone, created, engineered, determined and (according to many, on one side of the ‘for’ and ‘against’ dichotomy in judgements of the Revolution) perhaps distorted and destroyed the Revolution. In this, of course, it does not help that we have fallen into similar traps before and since – about Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, or any other supposedly despotic leader – therefore assuming that successful revolutions or long-lasting regimes are always attribu- table to the leader’s strength and personality. Equally, it does not

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 4 . Z e d B o o k s .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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help that, since 1961 (when relations between the United States and Cuba were broken), US governments and policy-makers alike have repeatedly stressed that there could be no healing that break, or ending economic sanctions, while Fidel remained in power. Indeed, the 1996 Helms–Burton Act (which gave the embargo the force of a treaty, requiring a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress to reverse it) actually prohibits the ending of sanctions while a Castro is in power. So, if legal documents and formal US policies, as well as serious historical studies, continue to focus on Fidel, then we are unlikely to find ourselves straying away from that tendency.

Nor, of course, is that focus totally unhelpful for understanding modern and contemporary Cuba. For it would be a foolish historian who blindly argued that Fidel has not had a fundamental role in the whole process: in decision-making, determining policy, commanding loyalty from those around him and from generations of Cubans, in direct person-to-person relations with foreign leaders, and so on. The evidence for that is clear. Moreover, the longer that the post-1959 system has lasted and the more complex it has become, the greater the likelihood that more and more Cubans would continue to see it in terms of the person who dominated it all from the outset, either seeing him as the more easily comprehensible personification of a system that had become too complex, and even too contradictory, to understand completely, or, alternatively, trusting in his record of finding a way out of difficulties and emerging unscathed from crises. Indeed, many Cubans continued to assume that, whatever problems the country might be facing, Cubans would have a greater chance of solving them with him at the helm – even though that very complexity meant precisely the opposite, namely his inability to be the sole source of power or decision-making. One only has to think of the contradictory emotions and motives that constituted the popular support for Margaret Thatcher in Britain after 1983, despite a general unease at her persona or even a considerable distaste for many of her policies, to realise that, even in a long-established and highly aware political culture, a dominant individual politician can command loyalty and admiration despite, as much as because of, positive feelings or even rational beliefs.

So the point is not to deny Fidel’s influence, power and popularity; it is to put these factors into perspective, going beyond stereotypical

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or superficial interpretations of the increasingly complex process as attributable mainly, or even solely, to one person – not least as the years since 2006 have demonstrated clearly that it did not depend on Fidel’s constant presence at the helm. In fact, as Domínguez observed long ago, Fidel was always aware of the need for an organisation beyond the leadership: ‘The politics of organization played a decisive role in the Cuban revolution from the very beginning’ (Domínguez 1978: 206). This was something that even a firm adherent of ‘Fidel- centrism’ such as Theodore Draper realised in the 1960s, when re- ferring to Fidel’s belief in the need for a united and ‘unbreakable body’, based on ‘ideology, discipline and leadership’ (Draper 1969: 8) – although, predictably, Draper focused more on the last element of that trio than on the underlying belief in a vanguard (i.e. more collective) leadership.

Yet the problem remains that even relatively sophisticated and serious works – as opposed to either the hagiographic or demonising studies that have bedevilled the study of Cuba – have both created and perpetuated this mesmerising ‘Fidel-centrism’. Several early commen- tators, for example, were enchanted by, or suspicious of, his evident ‘charisma’, usually seeing it as evidence of either megalomania or collective gullibility. This fascination with charisma continued well into the later decades, as the Revolution’s survival continued to be attributed to such qualities. Generally, however, Fidel’s ‘charismatic authority’ (to take Weber’s phrase: Weber 1947) was seen as ephem- eral or time-limited and limiting (González 1979), although Valdés (arguing that charisma also depended on the legit imacy bestowed by benefits that Cubans associated with Fidel) observed later that such interpretations of charisma owed more to Machiavelli than to a correct reading of Weber (Valdés 2008). Early on, others wrote glow- ingly of the ‘direct democracy’ that they beheld in the relationship between Fidel and Cuban crowds (Sartre 1961). Political scientists then attempted to fit ‘fidelismo’ (or ‘Castroism’) into wider paradigms of either populist political culture or, more frequently, a new variant of what was seen as traditional Latin American caudillismo. While Draper argued that Fidel was ‘a new type of caudillo with a need to justify his power ideologically’ (Draper 1969: 49), he nonetheless, by using the term, saw a generic connection between Fidel and a Latin American stereotype. Thomas later took up this same stereotype

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(Thomas 1971: 1292), and Horowitz saw Fidel’s leadership as ‘rooted in the Latin American tradition’ of caudillismo (Horowitz 2008: 36), although he also elsewhere wrote that that same leadership was akin to Stalin’s (ibid.: 3).

Indeed, what Draper actually argued in the end was that ‘Castro- ism’ (a term that he was happy to use at first but that he then steadily discarded in the same study, seeing it simply as ‘the crea- tion of Fidel Castro’: Draper 1969: 16) should be seen as a variant of global ‘Communism’, seeing Fidel’s apparent fixation on power and his ideological commitment to Communism as part of the same totalitarian phenomenon: ‘Castroism gave Communism total power, and Communism gave Castroism an ideology of total power’ (ibid.: 50). Indeed, this totalitarian reading of what was increasingly called ‘Fidelism’ became a commonplace throughout the following half century. There were also some who argued that we should read Fidel as being akin to Franco and fascism, often seeing his Spanish Jesuit education as inculcating corporatist or fascist ideas (Pardo Llada 1988: 30; Thomas 1971: 1490); even Draper thought his ‘leadership principle’ related to fascism or Peronism, suggesting that, although it had become associated with Communism, at a different time it might have gone in other (presumably fascist) directions (Draper 1969: 9).

The problem here was that, once this array of studies (mixing thoughtful political science analyses, serious historical works, pas- sionately partisan accounts and sensationalist journalism) had estab- lished the pattern, the die was cast. By the time scholarly attention turned to examining the system or the political culture analytically (Domínguez 1978; Fagen 1969), the literature on Cuba was already dominated by ‘Fidel-centrism’, and it proved difficult to ignore it or not be influenced by it. Moreover, once the endless series of bio- graphies began to be written, this tendency increased, and ‘Castro’s’ became the standard epithet applied to Cuba, as in ‘Castro’s Cuba’ or ‘Fidel Castro’s Personal Revolution’ (Goodsell 1975), to the extent that Horowitz saw the 1965 creation of the Cuban Communist Party as a ‘direct reflection of Castro’s personal will and charismatic authority’ (Horowitz 2008: 7) – although Jorge Domínguez came to precisely the opposite conclusion about that moment, seeing it as a ‘shift to a slightly more collective style of public leadership’ (Domínguez 1978: 197).

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So what exactly is the problem with this? Most obviously, unless one believes in the power of regimes to indoctrinate whole societies for half a century (something which, given Cubans’ evident contact with outside ideas, relatives and societies for sustained periods since 1959, seems unlikely in this case), it seems difficult to attribute the remarkable survival of the Cuban system – beyond its repeated crises (1963, 1968–70), the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, fifty years of sus- tained sanctions, and periods of active US hostility, and also beyond Fidel’s retirement through ill health in 2006–08 – to the persuasive or coercive power of one man alone. Since most outside observers attest to Cuba’s high educational levels, and while most historians see pre-1959 Cuba as a highly politicised society, it seems unlikely that millions of Cubans would easily give up their power of reason to allow themselves to be swamped by all that they are told by el Jefe Máximo (the Commander-in-Chief ). For all that the Cuban media might be controlled by the party, and for all the restrictions on what can be published, such a perspective seems clumsy, belonging to the depths of the Cold War.

There is, however, something of an obligation to look beyond the obvious, not taking the easy option of echoing popular, partisan and journalistic interpretations of a complex subject, not least because to treat Cuba as a Caribbean version of what we assume North Korea to be – isolated, indoctrinated, dominated by a personality cult, coercive and monolithic – does not correspond to the reality of an island only 150 miles or so from the US mainland, open to over 2 million tourists a year, trading in the world economy (to the extent that US sanctions allow) and receiving inward investment since the late 1980s, with a vast diaspora that, since 1977, has increasingly been able to bring news of the outside world, and with greater access to external television, radio and the internet. So, apart from the period between 1962 and the mid-1970s (when the regional ‘embargo’ began to disintegrate) and the early 1990s (when economic isolation resulted from the collapse of COMECON and the Soviet Union), isolation has not been anywhere near total, and, in fact, has been decreasing since about 1994.

Classic assumptions: personality cults, coercion and the military As for the notion of a personality cult, one simply has to compare

the visible Cuban signs with what was all too clear in Stalin’s Soviet

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Union, in North Korea since 1952 or in Mao’s China. The Cuban authorities have studiously avoided any hint of a cult of any living person: no naming of places, airports, streets or squares, no statues and few portraits (apart from those in public offices and people’s homes). Instead, the ubiquitous ‘cult’ is to the 1895 independence hero José Martí (in his multiple representations in busts, paintings, place names, and so on), with lesser homages paid to other historic leaders of the independence struggles (Antonio Maceo, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Máximo Gómez) or activists of twentieth-century poli- tical struggles (Julio Antonio Mella, Antonio Guiteras). In fact, since 1968, the only cult-like reverence to anyone associated with the Revo- lution has been reserved for Che Guevara, with the massive stylised portrait in Plaza de la Revolución (now accompanied by a similar one of Camilo Cienfuegos) and the huge mausoleum in Santa Clara, much larger than that of Martí in Santiago. There is certainly no shortage of books by Fidel in bookshops, and, while he was leader, the agenda of most party meetings would include the need to analyse one of his recent speeches. Even so, however ‘Fidel-centric’ it may seem to be, Cuba has clearly not had a cult to match those others referred to.

But what about coercion, a familiar accusation levelled at the Cuban system? There is little doubt that the Revolution took power with a ruthless determination to try, sentence and execute large numbers of active participants in Batista’s repression before 1959; Guevara oversaw many such executions at the Cabaña fortress in the first few days, and Fidel himself admitted that about 550 people had been executed at that time (Szulc 1986: 386). Thereafter, at times of external pressure and hostility (notably 1962–68, when the ‘siege’ was at its height and Soviet support was tentative and unreliable, and in the early 1980s, when Reagan began to re-heat the Cold War, identify- ing Cuba as the source of the Central American conflicts and as his Secretary of State, Haig, commissioned the first of many Pentagon reports to assess the feasibility of military action against Cuba: Habel 1991: 138), tolerance of internal dissent or even non-conformity has been seriously restricted. The mid-1960s certainly saw the notorious UMAP (Military Unit for Assisting Production) ‘work camps’, designed, clumsily and vindictively, to ‘re-educate’ those whose religious beliefs, sexuality or lifestyle were deemed unacceptable, until pressure from intellectuals led in 1968 to their closure as re-education camps for

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intellectuals (they remained in existence into the 1970s as bases for normal youth military service: Mesa-Lago 1974: 104). That same period also witnessed the height of the systematic demonisation of those leaving the island (by labelling them gusanos or ‘worms’) and the start of what would become a growing pressure on some ‘aberrant’ artists and writers. The early 1980s saw the now shameful episode of the exodus at Mariel of some 125,000 Cubans (Olson and Olson 1995: 81), who were allowed to leave in a boatlift but excoriated publicly for their ‘lumpen’ and anti-social tendencies; this included many prisoners released for the purpose and a handful of ‘problem’ intel- lectuals, notably those offending the system’s assumed sexual mores. In addition, 1971–76 (and almost certainly beyond) saw the contentious quinquenio gris – the ‘grey five years’ – when certain writers and theatre people were marginalised and unable to find outlets for their work (Kumaraswami and Kapcia 2012: 101–7).

That said, however, it is perhaps significant that, firstly, the UMAP episode ended after three years, following pressure from UNEAC (the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists), showing that body’s surprising level of autonomy (for what was assumed to be a Soviet-style state-run mechanism of control) and the leadership’s surprising willingness to listen. Also, the few days of the Mariel exodus saw a change in official thinking, as excoriation gave way to a new awareness that many refugees were no longer the old ‘political’ émigrés but simply economic migrants. Finally, what ended the ‘grey years’, in 1976, was the creation of a comprehensive and nationally regulating Ministry of Culture, of the kind that, in the Soviet Union, would have led to expectations of rigid cultural control.

This issue is, of course, closely related to the notion that Cuba is a military-run system. This idea dates from the earliest days, as the ex-guerrillas continued to dominate political life, moving smoothly between ‘military’ and overtly civilian posts as what have been called ‘civic soldiers’ (Domínguez 1978: 341–78). Some later saw this attribute as fundamental to the Cuban system (Horowitz 2008: 104–41, 175–90), describing that system as a ‘highly militarized revolution and regime’ (Domínguez 1990: 47). However, the reality is inevitably more complex, as Klepak has shown eloquently (Klepak 2005): for all their profes- sionalism, technical development and Soviet-linked modernisation in the 1970s, the Cuban armed forces – the FAR (Revolutionary Armed

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Forces) – actually resemble more of a hybrid between the historic liberation army (the Rebel Army of 1956–58) and a popular militia, enjoying considerable public legitimacy and constituting not an elite group with separate corporate identity (which would describe most Latin American armed forces) but rather an institution that, born in a guerrilla war, remained committed to a guerrilla defence of Cuba. Moreover, with compulsory military service, a large military reserve and two periods of popular militias, most Cubans have had some close contact with, or service in, the military, which contributes to the greater fusion between the FAR and society than might otherwise be the case. Indeed, Domínguez argues that the FAR so accurately reflects Cuban society that its legendary efficiency is very much a myth (Domínguez 1990). Finally, we should remember that the FAR has its own party cells and structure, belonging firmly and loyally to the party-led system. Returning to the issue of coercion, it is worth noting that the very point when coercion might have been expected (1991–95) actually saw drastic cuts in troop numbers (by around 50 per cent), thereby weakening any capacity to coerce (Klepak 2005: 61).

A key element of the question of coercion is the vexed issue of political prisoners. Here we enter a minefield of partisanship, not least because the Cuban authorities and the US administration define that category differently: in Cuba it has long been an offence either to actively support the US embargo (since US sanctions were imposed under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the embargo became formally a declaration of war, as far as Havana was concerned), or, in com- mon with many other countries, to receive political funding from a foreign government. Hence anyone sentenced for such offences is officially simply ‘a prisoner’, while the US administration and entities such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International all define such people as political prisoners. In fact, the peak of such imprisonments for crimes deemed political outside Cuba was probably reached in the first six years or so; Fidel admitted in 1965 that there were some 20,000 such prisoners, a category ranging from those taking up arms against the Revolution to those organising illegal protests. In 1969, the scarcely neutral Spanish ambassador Jaime Capdevilla gave a total of over 55,000 (Suchlicki 1988: 227). However, in 1987, the Cuban authorities themselves admitted that around 400 were serving sentences for ‘crimes against the state’, with

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Amnesty International confirming 455, including sixty-eight who had taken up arms in the 1960s (Habel 1991: 97).

The state and the monolith? What, finally, of the notion of a monolithic Cuban state? At first

sight, that notion seems accurate, given the tendency to centralisa- tion from 1960, domination by one single ruling party since 1961, and our knowledge of post-1945 Communist systems. However, on examination, a somewhat different picture emerges, creating a quite different set of problems to analyse.

For, in the 1960s, a combination of processes worked against the creation of the powerful state which many Cubans felt that they needed after decades of neo-colonial rule and economic dependence. Firstly, within weeks, a process began to weed out unacceptable or batistiano (pro-Batista) office-holders in the civil service; by March 1959, some 50,000 out of 160,000 state employees had been expelled or replaced (Domínguez 1978: 234). This inevitably weakened an in- herited structure, already weakened by nepotism and low morale.

Then the very process of revolution after 1 January 1959, transform- ing society totally within a few years, inevitably militated against such a state; whenever a state body seemed to be forming, the process of constant change proceeded to undermine that stability. Even if that had not been the case, the plethora of new institutions (including new ministries) that was set up in the wake of victory complicated the state structure at a time of profound change, each institution having its own, inevitably growing, bureaucracy.

However, the rebel leadership itself encouraged a tendency against ‘institutionalism’; this was partly because of a growing and rad- icalised commitment, by January 1959, to making a real revolution rather than a revolution like the rhetorical ones of previous radical generations. However, it was mostly because, after 1961–62, when some in the pre-1959 Communist Party (the People’s Socialist Party, or PSP) sought to take advantage of the post-victory chaos and inex- perience to move the process in an orthodox communist direction (see later), many of the ex-guerrillas were determined to prevent a recurrence of that attempted takeover by encouraging a ‘revolu- tion in the revolution’, adopting guerrilla-style tactics of constant movement in the face of what were seen as bureaucratic obstacles

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to that ‘real’ revolution. In 1966, Fidel argued that there was no rush to institutionalise, since eventual institutionalisation should reflect the changed social reality rather than precede it (Azicri 1988: 39). Thus, although the Revolution might have needed stability and structure in the mid-1960s (not least to distribute goods and services to all efficiently, and to allow for proper channels of communication on decision-making), the anti-bureaucracy campaign of that period (largely a political drive from 1964 to 1970 against the ‘dangerous’ elements who had threatened to take over) was also an anti-state campaign, weakening the morale of those loyal bureaucrats who were now often the target of committed activists and angry citizens (Domínguez 1978: 240).

A further factor preventing the growth of a strong state, however, was the effect of the mass exodus from 1960, largely draining Cuba of its middle class. While this had political benefits (making real opposition external rather than dangerously internal), it also drained a post-1959 state of its human resources; the middle class’s education levels, experience and professional qualifications had made it the raw material for a national civil service to execute the government’s constant flow of policies. Instead, therefore, new funcionarios (civil servants) and professionals had to be created expensively, either laboriously (despite the urgency) or too quickly to generate the necessary confidence and experience. Hence, for several years the ‘new’ Cuba lacked the human infrastructure necessary for a new and powerful state.

Meanwhile, the supposedly powerful single party refused to emerge. Plans were hatched early on, with the PSP’s Aníbal Escal- ante given the task, as organisation secretary, of merging the three leading rebel groups of 1959 – the guerrillas’ 26 July Movement, the communist PSP and the small student-based guerrilla group, the DR (Revolutionary Directorate – 13 March) – into one umbrella organisa- tion, the ORI (Integrated Revolutionary Organisations). However, the 1962 ‘Escalante affair’ so startled the rebels that its planned sequel, the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution (PURSC), emerged without fanfare or inauguration, keeping a somewhat shadowy exist- ence for three years. However, the PURSC was not, as is sometimes suggested (Anderson 1997: 759), a response to the ORI crisis, since it was always planned as the next stage after the ORI; in fact, in 1961,

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it was repeatedly mentioned as such in the press. The Escalante affair simply accelerated its appearance.

Then when, in 1965, the planned Cuban Communist Party (PCC) emerged, while it might have looked like its partner parties in Eastern Europe, it never had a founding congress and only really existed at the top (among the ex-guerrillas) and the bottom (among grass-roots activists). In between, there was no linking structure or national infrastructure of political involvement.

The effects of this weakness of the state were twofold. Firstly, the inchoate groupings that emerged, some organically and others haphazardly, often lacked control by an overarching state structure; instead, individuals or groups often exercised unrestricted local con- trol, unless they offended openly or conflicted with other groups or individuals. For example, until 1965 there were two major national newspapers, the PSP’s Noticias de Hoy (always abbreviated to Hoy) and the 26 July Movement’s Revolución, which finally merged to become Granma. Equally, the lack of a single national cultural policy arose from a ‘cultural state’ that consisted of discrete organisations, often working separately from, or against, each other; thus, the National Cultural Council (CNC) from 1961, run by PSP members (often with orthodox Communist views about socialist art), had no control over the powerful cinema industry (ICAIC), which, under Alfredo Guevara, had free rein to create a ‘Cuban’ revolutionary cinema, or over the new Casa de las Américas cultural centre (under the ex-guerrilla Haydée Santamaría). Therefore, while arguments about culture and the state raged throughout the period from 1959 to 1968, that ‘state’ actually consisted of several ‘islands’, uncoordinated and rarely pur- suing a single monolithic policy (Kumaraswami and Kapcia 2012: 77). Therefore, while the CNC could restrict literary production, for example (as in the notorious ‘grey five years’ of 1971–76), other cultural ‘islands’ were tolerant and imaginative. Indeed, as already observed, it was the new Ministry of Culture in 1976 that ended the CNC, and, by establishing an accountable single set of policies for people to pursue and execute, created a greater tolerance.

The second effect of state weakness was seminal: the absence of a state capable of effecting all the desired reforms meant that, to realise rapid change (guaranteeing immediate popular support), a series of ‘mass organisations’ (created in 1960–62) took over the state’s tasks,

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not only enacting many of the reforms but also mobilising hundreds of thousands in ‘the Revolution’. These bodies were foreshadowed by the volunteer National Revolutionary Militias, which, created on 26 October 1959 (to enrol ordinary Cubans in the defence of ‘their’ Revolution against external threat), numbered around 300,000 mem- bers by 1961 (Domínguez 1978: 208; Ruega Jomarrón 2009), showing the depth of active popular support and the possibilities of large-scale volunteering. Out of that came the mass organisations.

Hence, the CDRs (Committees for the Defence of the Revolu- tion, 1960), the FMC (Federation of Cuban Women, 1960), the FEU (University Students’ Federation), the CTC (Confederation of Cuban Workers) and ANAP (National Association of Small Farmers) all effec- tively substituted for the state, taking over the day-to-day running of the new Cuba and involving Cubans in the Revolution’s processes, campaigns and emerging structures. However, most commentators argue that, of these, the CTC was the weakest (Azicri 1988: 44): given an inherent problem, familiar in the Socialist Bloc (of accommodat- ing the idea of trade unions, designed to protect workers against employers, within a defined workers’ state), the CTC went through a damaging period of internal conflict over control of the new CTC-R (i.e. the Revolutionary CTC), and then adopted the ‘transmission belt’ role that Lenin had described, executing decisions and focusing on production (Lenin 1920). That weakness was partly corrected in the 1970s, but, until then, the CTC played a less fundamental socialising role than the FMC or CDRs. Interestingly, however, it was in the 1980s, in the growing debates about corruption, that the CTC began to flex its muscles and depart from its previously problematic role in the Cuban system; it did so by putting constraints on managers’ errors and malpractice (Habel 1991: 83).

Overall, the mass organisations became fundamental to the Cuban system; for many years there were seven – the CDR, CTC, ANAP, FMC and the three youth organisations for children: the Pioneers, established as a mass organisation in 1966, schoolchildren (FEEM) and students (FEU) – but a potential eighth was created in 1993, the ACRC (Association of Veterans of the Cuban Revolution). Crucially, these organisations almost all pre-dated, and then ran alongside, the state that eventually emerged, complicating later arguments about the ‘state and civil society’ (Gray and Kapcia 2008). At this point,

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incidentally, it should be said that neither the various formations of the single party (ORI, PURSC, PCC) nor their youth wing (the Union of Communist Youth, or UJC) were ever considered ‘mass’ organisa- tions, since they have always remained selective, with membership achieved by invitation rather than application. The UJC was created in 1962, merging the 26 July Movement’s AJR (Association of Rebel Youth), created in December 1959, and the PSP’s pre-1959 Socialist Youth (JS) (Rodríguez Rodríguez 1989).

Later on, after the 1990–91 disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Bloc, the economy’s 35 per cent collapse (by 1994) im- mediately weakened the state, which, with oil shortages handicapping transportation and energy, could not deliver goods, move people or guarantee the normal requisites of daily life. That ‘Special Period’ (‘in Peacetime’, declared as such in August 1990), therefore threatened the state’s existence, which, in turn, threatened the Revolution’s survival. While it did of course survive, the effects of the means used to guarantee that survival (notably the legalisation, and thus influx, of the US dollar, the opening up to tourism, and the legalisation of self-employment) were often serious. While outside media attention focused on the rise in petty criminality (although this was never on the scale of post-1991 Russia) and the return of prostitution, several studies observed the decline of collective solidarity and its replace- ment by a greater individualism (Eckstein 1994).

However, the issue is actually a little more complex, and there may even be an element of wishful thinking or exaggeration in some accounts of this problem. Certainly, the post-1993 economic reforms allowed much greater freedom than before for individuals to operate in the cuenta propia (self-employed) sector, and reforms since 2008 have extended this further; nevertheless, to a great extent what these reforms have done is legalise what was already happen- ing illegally. In other words, the previous collectivism was more of a formal ethos, flouted considerably in the informal economy; hence, individualism already flourished under the radar, and was often tolerated by the authorities, and therefore rather than one ‘ism’ being replaced by another, such practices and patterns were now simply authorised.

In fact, most Cubans’ material survival in the 1990s was, on exam- ination, the result less of the perceived rampant individualism within

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14 | introduction

a ‘survivalist’ culture than of the government’s rapid restoration and protection of the ration book (libreta), which undoubtedly saved basic living standards, and also of the lower-level networks to which most Cubans had recourse. These included two especially: the family networks that had always operated (i.e. neither individualistic nor collectivist in the normal sense of the terms, but actually somewhere in between) and the government-led encouragement to local activists (in the mass organisations, People’s Power local government, People’s Councils, and local Communist Party branches) to mobilise locally and de facto stand in for the financially and organisationally ham- strung state structure. Hence, a ‘localism’ quickly emerged from the chaos, with local comunitario structures, workshops and campaigns to address localities’ immediate problems until the national state might eventually be able to step in. Therefore, rather than being individualistic in ethos, this was actually a redefining of the state and therefore of the collective.

The basic point here is that the only period when the new Cuban state was strong, organised and potentially monolithic was 1975–89, i.e. only fourteen years out of the Revolution’s fifty-five. This, of course, partly depends on one’s definition of ‘monolithic’. For a Hayekian Thatcherite, for example, any state intervention by defini- tion tends towards the monolithic, and, according to this perspec- tive, the term itself has always been associated with the notion of totalitarianism. From this point of view, Cuba’s visible patterns of ‘bureaucracy’ are ample proof of a kind of monolith, with a structure seemingly inert, immovable and unresponsive.

But is all bureaucracy necessarily monolithic or bad, and is that what is meant by the term anyway? That question is valid, for it goes to the heart of the Cuban system and of our expectations, taking us back to Cold War terminology and, specifically, to stand- ard interpretations of the Socialist Bloc. There, ‘bureaucracy’ could mean any one of a range of things, either negative or neutral. The former included the banal but annoying: the ‘paper-pusher’ whose job was due to nepotism or over-staffing (to prevent unemployment); the ‘time-server’ occupying a post for job security, determined to cling to it by making himself or herself indispensable, or creating a complex set of overlapping procedures; the ‘jobsworth’ exercising the power to deny access or permission; or simply the poorly educated

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introduction | 15

or inexperienced clerk who, conscripted into a burgeoning civil ser- vice to replace those who had left but unable to cope, either acted ineffi ciently or declined to act at all. However, negative meanings also arose from a wider critique, as in the Trotskyist use of the term ‘the bureaucracy’ and ‘bureaucratisation’ to refer to the emerging class of apparatchiks, seen to be controlling the system for their own interests, a class of party members rather than of civil servants, using their power to subvert collective authority or workers’ power (Harman 1974). As for the neutral use of the term, that was simply the reality that centralisation and a drive towards full employment created a vastly expanded civil service, at all levels. Hence, funcionario often meant any clerical worker, since most were employed by the state; this even included those in the cultural world who were freed of the need to sell in order to survive by occupying a notional post in a state-run cultural or educational institution.

This inevitably brings us to the complexity of the Cuban system, which, since 1959, has created more and more bodies and layers of operation, either to improve efficiency or to ensure delivery of material goods or opportunities. For example, the spread of the mass organisations meant a need for national and provincial coordination structures, and, as employment expanded, the party (always based on workplace branches) added more local branches and intervening levels of authority and operation; the People’s Power electoral system from 1976 created fourteen new provinces out of the previous six (and 169 municipios), adding new layers of representation, accountability and authority, and each national body and ministry had its provincial and often municipal branches.

Given this complexity, the potential for bureaucratic and insti- tutional confusion and inertia has always been immense. Inertia is especially likely given the extent of constant negotiation preceding and following any decision, nationally or locally: since the ruling party plays a constitutionally defined ‘guiding role’, any signifi- cant proposal is debated there first, but in several sub-stages. Any leader ship proposal (from the Political Bureau, Central Committee or five-yearly Congress) is then filtered down for debate, each lower level (provincial and municipal) adding its own interpretation and guidance, before it is debated at the branch (núcleo) level; then the outcome is returned upwards, being again interpreted and filtered

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16 | introduction

until it reaches its source. Meanwhile, all mass organisations are invariably involved in national consultations (before a Party Congress or National Assembly meeting, for example), so the party process is repeated within each organisation and also throughout the People’s Power structures. Hence, every level and stage involves negotiation, give and take and amendment. This is also true of ministerial deci- sions; they are not simply handed down for local execution, but rather negotiated in every province, and even (although less likely) in every municipio, with the local party, People’s Power delegates and mass organisations. Therefore, rather than decisions being handed down hierarchically within a rigidly centralised system, decision- making and debate are more of a constant, painstaking and inevitably dilatory process of negotiation. Of course, this reflects the daily reality for every Cuban, who must always negotiate their way along the individual–collective continuum within which the whole system operates (Kumaraswami and Kapcia 2012: 52–6).

Before leaving this issue, however, a major caveat has to be con- sidered: while the case for the post-1959 Cuban state being much weaker institutionally than has often been alleged is convincing, that does not necessarily mean that it has not been effective. Not only has the state – mostly by enlisting one or more of the mass organisations – proved repeatedly able to cope with normally devas- tating hurricanes, it has also been spectacularly successful in the task of defending the Revolution. Most obviously this was seen in the April 1961 invasion, which was repulsed with considerable losses on the Cuban side but, nonetheless, with a revealing and (for the US government) embarrassing effectiveness. Then again, between 1961 and 1966, the suppression of counter-revolutionary rebels in the Sierra Escambray (substantially backed by the United States’ Operation Mongoose programme) was prolonged but successful.

However, below the radar, at a less visible and spectacular level, the fifty-five years of the Revolution have seen the state maintain a highly effective continuous defensive operation of state security that has kept active dissent to a minimum and deterred or defeated active sabotage. Although, as one might expect from the known characteristics of the Cuban system, the whole operation has been achieved through a mixture of state and mass organisations, the latter most obviously consisting of the highly effective CDRs (both

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introduction | 17

in April 1961 and since), it has always essentially been the state itself that has borne the brunt of the burden of defence.

That state defensive operation has consisted of the FAR (and its reserve force) and the intelligence and security services (most clearly the well-known G2 organisation, but also the different levels and corps of the police service and the militias). Although the militias were disbanded once the biggest threats of invasion had disap- peared, a new version (the Militia of Territorial Troops) was created in 1981, in the face of the perceived threat from a rampant Reagan administration. The FAR, as already seen, was not only fundamental from the outset in cementing unity, enrolling Cubans (literally and metaphorically) in the tasks of defending the new Revolution and repelling invasion, but it also grew into one of Latin America’s largest and most successful military forces, its achievement in Angola being its best known and most widely admired deployment. That said, however, it has mostly been the deterrent effect of such a formidable force, rather than its actual deployment, that has, since April 1961, been the cornerstone of the FAR’s contribution to defence.

Alongside the FAR, the CDRs and the militia have stood the sys- tem’s intelligence and security forces. Constructed from the earliest days (out of the most reliable elements of the Rebel Army) and then, from the early 1960s, trained or advised by both the KGB and the East German intelligence services, the two arms – the DGI (General Intelligence Office), dealing with overseas intelligence, and the DSE (Depart ment of State Security), for domestic intelligence – soon be- came renowned for their efficiency and effectiveness. Abroad, prob- ably the most notable achievements have been through constant and often highly successful infiltration of the Cuban-American com- munity (and specifically of its most active and significant political groupings), thereby working to prevent externally based subversion. Indeed, it was in that role that the famous case of the ‘Cuban Five’ came to prominence. At home, however, the DSE’s capacity to invigi- late and infiltrate dissident groups (most spectacularly in the case of several of the groupings that were unmasked in the 2003 arrests of seventy-five dissident activists, many of whom were exposed by DSE agents and some of whom belonged to groups set up by the DSE itself ) and to respond to active and open organised dissent has gained the organisation respect on the one hand, and opprobrium

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18 | introduction

on the other. For supporters of the Revolution, the DSE’s work has been vital to protecting a system whose very existence has, since 1961, been openly threatened by the United States and covertly undermined by externally funded opposition; for those opposing the Revolution, or even simply not supporting it, the DSE has been a much-feared source of repression and an arm of ‘Big Brother’, the sole reason why the Revolution has managed to survive. The latter especially see the DSE’s hand in the so-called Rapid Response Brigades that have periodically harassed dissident activists.

The point of this is that, however weak the Cuban state may have been in its institutional structure and effectiveness in some respects, it has always demonstrated a remarkable degree of effectiveness in its various mechanisms of defence, however widely or narrowly defined that term may be.

Debate Finally, this discussion raises a further crucial aspect of the system:

the idea of ‘debate’ itself, which might seem fanciful, given our expectations of a system with one single party, controlling the daily newspapers, radio and television, and with non-competitive elections. However, once again, Cuba is more complex than our expectations, and close examination reveals several instances where debate has been open, public and encouraged, and many more where, while not necessarily recognisable to those outside the parameters of the debate in question, real differences of opinion have been evident. The key issue is recognising such debates, for, as explained above, each process of party or National Assembly decision-making is ritually subjected to extensive consultation; consultation, of course, is not necessarily real discussion, and, since the parameters and guidelines are defined from above, and each discussion chaired by a suitably prepared party member, there are clear limits to its effectiveness.

Nonetheless, debates do clearly happen, sometimes formally but mostly in less structured ways, with the system depending on them. Indeed, one way of reading the Revolution’s trajectory since 1959 is through a repeated series of cycles of crisis–debate–certainty (Kapcia 2008: 25–45). Although these debates are discussed in a later chapter, it is worth commenting that the Revolution’s inherent tendency to crisis (often attributed to a whimsical leadership or the predominance

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introduction | 19

of ‘idealistic’ political criteria over ‘pragmatic’ economic judgements: Mesa-Lago 1974) emanates from two causes: Cuba’s dependency (as a sugar-exporting island) and the inevitable effects of a revolutionary process (after all, a revolution without crisis may not be revolutionis- ing anything). Moreover, although the periods of ‘certainty’ are well documented by historians (such as the ambitious industrialisation drive of 1960–63, the late 1960s’ ‘moral economy’, the campaign to liberate Latin America, and the institutionalisation of the 1970s), the intervening periods of debate often go unnoticed. However, there are usually tell-tale signs: when the required five-yearly cycle of Party Congresses is delayed (as in 1965–75, 1985–86, 1996–97, or 2002–11) – indicating a lack of consensus – when the press addresses controversial issues in letters’ pages or in-depth examinations, or, as in the 1990s, when magazines are created precisely to address hitherto unquestionable issues.

The relationship between Party Congresses and debate is inter- esting: expectations (based on the Soviet experience) are that these events are ritually unanimous claques for leadership decisions, and so many ignore them as meaningful. However, if that were true, delay (in four of the Revolution’s six Congresses) would make no sense; in fact, Congresses tend to meet in order to ratify not so much the leaders’ decisions but rather the outcomes of the preceding debates, and, if there is no outcome as yet, there is nothing to legitimise. In 1986, that prior debate was clearly unsettled when the Congress met in February (its delegates failing to approve the 1986–90 plan and party programme: Habel 1991: 90), leading to the suspension of the Assembly until there was consensus; the reconvened Decem- ber Congress thereupon confirmed ‘Rectification’ as a policy (this having been already announced between the two sittings: ibid.: 91). Therefore, the Congresses’ behaviour and treatment demonstrate the opposite of our expectations, and, once debate is ratified, the Congress usually sets in train both the resulting period of certainty and the parameters for the next debate.

Debate has thus been central to the Revolution’s trajectory, char- acter and even survival over the decades; but to what other factors can the post-1991 survival be attributed? The most pragmatic was Cubans’ fear of the alternatives that they saw facing them; many returned from the Socialist Bloc after 1989 with horror stories about

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20 | introduction

the social effects of a ‘transition’ (to capitalism): mass unemployment (with privatisation), the collapse of social provision, a rampant crim- inality and high-powered corruption. As a neoliberal International Monetary Fund proceeded to apply the same conditions to the new post-Communist states (cuts in welfare and state subsidies, and rapid privatisation) that had been visited on Latin America in the 1980s – about which Cubans were well informed – many clung to the certainty of a state-backed provision of welfare and employment. Once the Cuban government protected expenditure on health and education, guaranteed the newly unemployed 60 per cent of their wages, and strengthened the libreta, the die was cast. No one wanted to risk a social implosion on the Eastern European or Latin American scale, a view shared even by a critical Catholic Church, which, like the Cuban leadership, was uneasy about the social effects of the post-1993 reform programme.

The second key factor was evident: the continuing (if damaged) effec tiveness of the system’s means of participation. These mechan- isms (organisations, rallies, voluntary labour mobilisations and meet- ings) had long acted as either safety valves – at times of stress and discontent, creating a forum for complaints – or sounding boards, informing the authorities of grass-roots rumours, sentiments and complaints. But they also served another purpose: to provide a means of continuous involvement (which some saw as empowerment).

Historically, that had taken two forms, rarely running simultane- ously. The first was the most characteristic: participation and involve- ment through mass mobilisation, often accompanied by ‘politics of passion’ (Fernández 2000). This has taken the form of repeated campaigns for labour, culture, defence, protest (against the United States), or whatever was deemed necessary at the time. It especially characterised the 1963–68 period (including the moral economy, volunteer labour, the Revolutionary Offensive of March 1968 and the campaign against bureaucracy), but it returned after 1986 (until interrupted by the 1989–91 crisis) and again after 2000 in the Batalla de Ideas (Battle of Ideas).

The second form of involvement has been more mundane and consolidated: the system of structures of accountability and commu- nication, through the party, People’s Power and mass organ isations, usually involving a desire to satisfy materially. In other words, while

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introduction | 21

‘passionate mobilisation’ feeds ‘the soul’ but perhaps neglects the body, the latter feeds ‘the body’ but may well neglect ‘the soul’ (Kapcia 2009).

The final factor in the Revolution’s survival has been equally evid- ent: the enduring power of nationalism. Not only did the Revolution grow out of a powerful radical tradition of nationalist dissent, but it also built on that, emphasising ‘nation’, patria, and a history of struggle. Hence, by the 1990s, when Cubans referred to la Revolución they often meant la patria (Kapcia 2000); indeed, the campaign to rally support for the beleaguered system was increasingly defined as ‘saving the nation’, to which Cubans rallied willingly, especially when the United States responded clumsily to Cuba’s plight by intensifying the embargo (in 1992 and 1997) and increasing hostility.

This, therefore, leads us naturally into a discussion of precisely why this happened and what it meant. What role did ‘nation’ really play in the process and what role should it play in our interpreta- tion of the whole trajectory? Moreover, given the opening focus and underlying purpose of this book, how does it take us ‘beyond Fidel’?

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