One of the most thankless and complicated exercises required of Cuba specialists is having to divine what lies behind — or beneath — developments in the country.
The most recent developments in Cuba — let’s say, since the announcement of the liberation of 52 prisoners, counterrevolutionaries to one side, conscientious resisters to the other — has set off a veritable avalanche of speculation intensified by unexpected factors like the reappearance of Fidel Castro after a four-year absence due to illness; the decision by president Raul Castro to not make a major speech for the July 26 anniversary, considered until now the most important public event of the year in Cuba; or the presidential announcement during the last meeting of the legislature of a broadening of the forms of freelance work permitted as a way to ease the economic troubles and absorb a portion of state workers that need to be ‘rationalised’ (more than a million, or a staggering 20 per cent of the country’s labour force).
Struggle for power
The questions most frequently asked by reporters and specialists — and put to anyone that might have an interesting hunch — relate to the possibility that at the upper reaches of Cuban politics there is a struggle for power or at least for a different economic orientation (including tensions between Raul and Fidel); to the new economic model that Cuba might be inching towards; and to the possibility that economic change might trigger political change.
The most prominent element of Cuban reality is without a doubt the critical economic and financial situation, caused not only by the US embargo/blockade and the global crisis but also, and especially, by the exhaustion or unsuitability of its current economic and trade structures, which will have to be changed sooner or later.
Thus the decision of the government to broaden the possibilities for private enterprise (though it is not yet known in which sectors or with what conditions) is doubtless a response to the current calls for change. President Raul Castro himself admitted in his last pronouncement that it was no longer possible to maintain the image (or reality) of Cuba as a country where one could live without working and yet, as the president also recognised, not be able to live on what one makes from working (even for the most highly-trained professionals). This demonstrates the existence of serious deformations in the economic system of a country which granted itself the luxury of maintaining full employment at the cost of inefficiency, unproductivity, the creation of unnecessary jobs, and, as a consequence, the payment of salaries that are more virtual than real. This saps workers’ motivation and forces many to support themselves in the most twisted ways, which, in general, derive from and lead to corruption, stealing from the government, or the black market.
Paternalism
It is also clear that Cuban social policy, while retaining certain standards of social security, has ceased its ‘paternalism’ (a creation of the state) in response not to political will but rather to economic necessity. The effects of this change are felt in the educational sector (cuts in scholarships and dropping university enrolment, for example) in pensions (the retirement age has been raised by five years), and in the taxes will be imposed on land that is not cultivated or barely so.
Finally, though equally important, there is the fact that the form of governance has not changed in Cuba and will not in the short term. The government has warned that the single-party political system and socialist economic planning will not be effected by the changes that are being made or by the introduction of specific measures, like the liberation of the 52 prisoners.
What is undeniable in the mix of predictions and the lack of information is that the Cuban government is seeking economic alternatives that could shore up its political position. There is no other way to interpret the encouragement of freelance work (reestablished and at the same time denigrated in the 1990s), or plans for opening up tourism, including not only the 16 new golf courses and the construction of marinas for yachts but also the sale of homes to foreigners (another practice from the 90s that had virtually disappeared). And, to not seem out of place, we might also ask the oracles, “What foreigners will the houses be sold to?” “Might some surprise be brewing in US-Cuban relations?”
IPS