 |
| Delegates at the April 2011 Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba |
By Phillip Brenner, Cuba Central News Blast, December 30, 2011
I returned two
weeks ago from my first trip to Cuba in one year. Though I had only a few
days there, what I saw convinced me that 2012 will be a watershed year on the
island. While predictions about Cuba are best made with crossed fingers, I'll
offer you here a brief glimpse of what may lie just over the horizon.
Hope Returns
One year ago, I
could almost taste the air of disappointment which was palpable everywhere.
More than four years after Raúl Castro had assumed the leadership of Cuba from
his brother, and after several promises of significant change, there seemed to
be very little movement. Fewer Cubans had applied for small business
licenses than government planners had anticipated. Generous grants of free land
had not led to an outpouring from the cities to the countryside, so that the
program was not solving problems of food supply. The Cubans' apathetic response
to these initiatives was one reason Raúl decided not to follow through with his
draconian plan to lay off one million people from the government payroll by
March 2011, because there were not enough jobs outside of the government to
absorb so many unemployed workers. As a result, the bureaucracy continued
to lay mired in inefficiency and corruption.
This December, I
found more food in the stores, and what could even be called an upbeat mood. To
be sure, tourism increased to over 2.5 million visitors with some improvement
in the world economy, and remittances from relatives abroad were up. Cuba's GDP
grew more in 2011 than it had in 2010. But something intangible also had
changed. For the first time in many years, I sensed that hope had returned -
even among young people. There will be a major Communist Party
"Conference" at the end of January - a follow-up to the 6th Party
Congress held in April 2011. There are few details about what will happen
at the Party Conference, but there was a nearly unanimous anticipation among
people with whom I spoke - from taxi drivers, to students, academics, retired
workers, and former and current government officials -- that the Party
Conference would speed up necessary change on the island.
Party Conference
Prior to the April
2011 Party Congress, Cubans engaged in months of debate over more than 200
proposed lineamientos or guidelines for economic and social policy that the
Congress would consider (see CDA's 2011 study, Cuba's New Resolve: Economic Reform and its
Implications for U.S. Policy,
written by Collin Laverty). While the countrywide discussions led to
modifications of nearly all the lineamientos, the guidelines remained fairly
general. The Congress apparently also left some key decisions unresolved. This
situation produced the need for a procedure that had not been used before, a
Party Conference.
Opening on January
28, 2012, the First Party Conference formally will take up 97 items listed in
its Basic Document. But during my recent visit, I was encouraged to
monitor how the Conference handles three issues listed in the introduction
which could be centrally important to the changes occurring in Cuba:
1.
"Assuring the
promotion of women, blacks, mestizos, and young people to positions of major
responsibility": This could result in the retirement of some elderly party
leaders and the elevation of a new generation to the Politburo and even the
Council of Ministers.
2.
"The current
challenges demand us...to open channels for legitimate individual and
collective aspirations; and to face prejudices and discrimination of all kinds
that persist within the bosom of the society": The context for this
objective is a surrounding list of criticisms about the party that suggest it
has become too bureaucratic, too concerned about upholding "obsolete
dogmas and perspectives," and too distant from the daily lives of Cubans.
The implied message: the Party is not currently able to play its appropriate
role as a vanguard which can guide the country in confronting its challenges.
One possible outcome, therefore, may be a significant reduction in the size of
the Party, so that only those who are the most ideologically well prepared and
psychologically fit can be members. This change would relate directly to a
third objective.
3.
Revising the
"Party's relationship to the Union of Young Communists and the mass
organizations": This would propel the process of restructuring begun
in 2009, to rationalize decision making by reducing the authority of the Party
over specific government operations, and increasing the responsibility and
accountability of government agencies. By attenuating close ties between
the Party and the mass organizations - the Women's Federation, the Committees
for the Defense of the Revolution, the Small Farmers Association, the
Federation of University Students, and the Labor Confederation - the apparent
hope is that these organizations will recover some useful function, and
actually represent various interests in a kind of pluralistic competition that
will also add to the legitimacy of government decisions.
The Conference also
is likely to endorse Raúl's campaign against corruption, which he declared on December 23 to be "one of the principal enemies of the
Revolution, much more harmful than the subversive and interventionist
activities of the U.S. government...".
In addition, the
Cuban president may use the Conference to announce a change in travel
regulations - reducing or removing restrictions on access to passports and exit
visas - which Cubans were hoping he would have proclaimed on December 23.
However, it is
unlikely that the Conference itself will initiate further economic changes.
These were rolled out throughout 2011 and are likely to continue throughout
2012. This week, for example, the government announced that it would rent space
in state-owned workshops for the private practice of several categories of
professionals, including carpenters, locksmiths, and jewelers. In the last year
the number of Cubans who obtained licenses to start their own businesses nearly
doubled to 338,000, according to an AP story in the
Huffington Post.
Political Change
Even before the
Party Conference, there has been a significant rejuvenation in the Party
leadership. The Western press is fond of noting that the Cuban President is 80
years old, and that he selected as his first vice president a youthful José Ramón
Machado Ventura, who is 81. But the Council of Ministers, which has
gained significant power, is made up of 34 people whose median age is 56 and
average age is 60. Contrast that to President Barack Obama's Cabinet,
which has an average age of 55, or the U.S. Senate where the median age is 62.
Twenty-five percent
of the Council of Ministers are women, and nearly forty percent of the
Communist Party's Central Committee's membership is female. Consider one
example. The Ministry of Foreign Relations has only two members on the Central
Committee. One is the Minister of Foreign Relations; the other is Josefina
Vidal Ferreiro, the 50-year old chief of the North American desk.
Internationally respected as a savvy professional, she is a likely future
foreign policy leader.
Perhaps more
striking, as Temas Editor Rafael Hernández observed in a November lecture at
the Inter-American Dialogue, the average age of the provincial party heads is
44 years. One notable rising star is Mercedes López Acea, the General Secretary
of the Communist Party in Havana province. A 46-year old woman of
mixed descent, she was trained as a forest engineer, rose quickly through the
party ranks far away from Havana, and now is a member of the Political Bureau
of the Communist Party.
In 2012, political
change is likely to be spurred by the grassroots as well as from the center. As
the central government devolves more decision making authority and funds to municipal
governments, the election campaigns for the municipal assemblies may possibly
become more actively contested. Party membership is not a requirement for
election. At the same time, there will be wider use of email, and with a fiber
optic connection finally working, increased access to the Internet. The
operation of a broad band cable had been delayed by the installation of faulty
equipment, a rumored result of corruption in ETECSA, Cuba's telecommunications
company.
The political role
of the Catholic Church also has been growing, along with the government's tacit
approval of its activities, and it is likely to continue in 2012. Church
commentaries on Cuba's economic and social changes - published by Havana's
archdiocese in Espacio Laical - are often critical, invariably cogent, and widely available.
Notably, Raúl Castro linked the Council of State's announcement on December 23
- that the government would be granting amnesty to approximately 2,900 elderly
and sick prisoners - to Pope Benedict XVI's planned spring 2012 visit to Cuba.
(Similarly, the release of 52 political prisoners in July 2011 was facilitated
by meetings with church officials.)
U.S.-Cuban
Relations
Alan P. Gross was
not among the 2,900 prisoners released. The U.S. government refuses to take the
one step that would enable a discussion about Gross's release even to begin:
publicly acknowledging that the USAID sub-contractor violated Cuban laws. As
Fulton Armstrong, who recently resigned as a senior Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staffer, wrote in the Miami Herald on December 26, "When a covert action run by the CIA goes bad and
a clandestine officer gets arrested, the U.S. government works up a strategy
for negotiating his release. When a covert operator working for USAID
gets arrested, Washington turns up the rhetoric, throws more money at the
compromised program, and refuses to talk."
U.S. officials have
said repeatedly that there can be no movement on U.S. relations with Cuba until
Cuba frees Gross from prison. However, U.S. and Cuban officials have been
meeting quietly to discuss several issues, and they are likely to continue
doing so in 2012. These have included periodic migration talks, monthly
meetings to maintain peace and order at the Guantanamo Naval Base fence line,
and ongoing cooperation between the Cuban and U.S. coast guards and drug
enforcement agencies. Significantly, U.S. and Cuban officials met earlier this
month at multilateral sessions in the Bahamas, to discuss potential responses
to oil spills that might result from drilling in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico,
and Florida Straits. Repsol, a Spanish energy firm, is slated to begin
off-shore drilling in Cuban territorial waters in mid-February. (The Cuba Central News Blast reported on December 9, and I confirmed during my trip to Havana, that
Cuba did attend the Bahamas meeting, though a U.S. State Department press
release had omitted Cuba from the list of participating countries.)
Meanwhile, the
Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Controls has continued to issue
licenses for educational and humanitarian travel, and the State Department has
steadily approved visas for visits by Cuban scholars. Earlier this month,
President Obama held fast in threatening to veto the $1 trillion omnibus
appropriations bill for FY 2012 (which began on October 1, 2011) if it
contained an amendment sponsored by Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (Republican-Florida)
that would have reinstated severe restrictions on Cuban-Americans' travel to
the island and their remittances to family members. One test of the Obama's
resolve will come in May, when the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)
holds its International Congress in San Francisco. LASA has been convening
outside of the United States since 2004, because the Bush Administration denied
visas to all the Cubans scheduled to participate in the 2003 meeting. More than
30 Cuban scholars will be seeking visas for San Francisco.
In any case, the
calm in the relationship is unlikely to last much past the New Year's hiatus,
as Cuba could well be an issue in the 2012 presidential election. In late
November, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney gleefully accepted
endorsements from Representatives Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
(Republican-Florida). No quid pro quo was revealed publicly, but I cannot
imagine that they gave their support to Romney without receiving assurances he
would take a hard-line position on Cuba. Also in November, former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich weighed in on Cuba, baldly declaring in an interview that he was
working on a plan "to get the Cuban people to freedom by 2014."
Indeed, the calm is
balanced precariously on a razor thin edge. Any number of events in 2012 could
bring on new tension. Consider that one year ago Cuba and the United States
were well advanced in discussions over a potential joint program to aid Haiti
after the devastating Port-au-Prince earthquake. The United States would have
supplied equipment and medicine, and Cuba would have supplied medical personnel
for the project. But planning collapsed, according to U.S. officials, when
former Cuban President Fidel Castro took umbrage at remarks by former U.S. President Bill Clinton ignoring the
contribution of Cuban and Latin American doctors in providing relief to Haiti.
Cuban officials counter that the project stalled because the United States
refused to suspend its covert program to recruit Cuban doctors who are sent
abroad.
Since 2006, the
U.S. agents have brought more than 1,600 Cuban doctors to the United States
with offers of immediate citizenship and support for obtaining a U.S. medical
license. "How could we possibly expose our doctors in Haiti to this
subversive campaign?" a Cuban official exclaimed to me in an interview.
"Why can't the State Department understand how their programs undermine
possibilities for cooperation?" he asked rhetorically. The State
Department and USAID have nearly $50 million in funding for various programs
aimed at provoking the Cuban government in 2012.
International
events might also affect the U.S.-Cuban relationship. Turmoil in Venezuela, or
an Israeli attack against Iran could well place the United States and Cuba on
opposing sides. President Obama may feel pressure to "punish"
Cuba by cutting back on Cuban visas, imposing new restrictions on educational
travel, and reinstalling obstacles that increase the difficulty for U.S.
suppliers to sell food and medicine to Cuba.
Yet if Respol or
other international energy giants strike oil in Cuban waters, the United States
may find it has a new calculus in defining its interests vis-à-vis Cuba, and
U.S. oil firms may decide it is worth their while to lobby for changes in Cuba
policy. Discovering oil "would be a game changer," National Security
Archive senior researcher Peter Kornbluh aptly remarked in an interview on December
26.
There is a bravado
in Cuba now, as several people told me they no longer pay much attention to the
United States. That's not true. I found as much interest as ever in the U.S.
election, the U.S. economy, and U.S. baseball. But it is true that as
Cuba moves ahead in 2012, officials will not count on improved relations with
the United States in planning their next steps. In September President Obama
remarked in a White House interview that "Hopefully, over the next five years, we will see Cuba
looking around the world and saying, we need to catch up with history." I
can readily believe that President Castro might wish the same awakening for the
United States in 2012.
Phillip Brenner is professor of International Relations at the American University.
No comments:
Post a Comment