Updating Cuban Socialism

Abstract

A critical look at what is officially called the “updating of the Cuban economic model” and the “perfecting” of the Cuban political system from the viewpoint of the utopias of the Cuban Revolution calls attention to the importance of deepening participatory and socially representative democracy, strengthening popular and grassroots control over state management, addressing some of the causes of the deterioration of moral and civic values, and increasing the participation of the mass media in counteracting negative effects. This should help prepare citizens, especially the generations that will lead the country from 2018 on, to deal critically and in a utopian fashion with the challenges posed by the Cuban socialist transition.

Una mirada crítica a lo que se llama oficialmente la “actualización del modelo económico cubano” y el “perfeccionamiento” del sistema político cubano desde el punto de vista de las utopías de la Revolución Cubana llama la atención sobre la importancia de profundizar la democracia participativa y socialmente representativa, fortalecer al control popular y de base sobre la gestión del estado, abordar algunas de las causas del deterioro de los valores morales y cívicos, y aumentar a la participación de los medios de comunicación para contrarrestar los efectos negativos. Esto debería ayudar a preparar a los ciudadanos, especialmente las generaciones quienes liderarán al país desde 2018 en adelante, para hacer frente críticamente y de una manera utópica con los desafíos planteados por la transición socialista cubana.

Keywords

Cuban socialism Utopian critique Participatory democracy Moral values Mass media

Nations should live in an atmosphere of self-criticism because it is healthy, but always with one heart and one mind.

—José Martí, 1891

The essence of utopia is a critique of present conditions and the hope for a better world. . . . A critique of utopian reason cannot be anti-utopian. . . . Critique is always pointed toward an open future, although rightly searching for a better world.

—Franz J. Hinkelammert, 1993

Inspired by the epigraphs, this article is an initial critical-utopian approach to the main guidelines of what is officially called the “updating of the Cuban economic model” by the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party in mid-April 2011 and to the party’s actions as an “organized vanguard of the Cuban nation and a superior leading force of society and the State”¹ in its First National Conference on January 28 and 29, 2012. Unlike other critiques of these reforms, whether liberal or Marxist, this one is based on the belief that it is essential and, under certain internal and external conditions, possible to build a “socialist model” that is more self-reliant, effective, efficient, economically self-sustainable, environmentally sustainable, and democratic than the one utilized since 1959, which has allowed the citizens of Cuba’s “political generations” to participate in the revolutionary transformations that have taken place in the country—a socialist, Third World, Latin American and Caribbean state located only 90 miles from the world’s main imperial power.² The achievement of these purposes—intimately linked to what, on other occasions, I have called the utopias of the Cuban Revolution (Suárez, 2000; 2009; 2010)— depends heavily on the way in which the Republic of Cuba is integrated economically and politically into Latin America and the Caribbean and into the changes that are taking place in the world system controlled by what Porto-Gonçalves (2013) has called the “triad of world power”: the United States, Japan, and the European Union.

Space restrictions do not allow me to address the external projection of the Cuban Revolution³ or the multifaceted international policy adopted by its current political/state leadership⁴ or to provide a comprehensive analysis of the uneven results of the changes that, according to President of the Councils of State and Ministers and First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party Raúl Castro (2011), have been undertaken to update the Cuban economic model and refine its political system or the contradictory impacts of the two processes on socioeconomics, the level and quality of life, and ethical/political values and, consequently, on citizens’ participation in national political life. Only a few of these impacts—such as the reconcentration of income and the decrease in the purchasing power of wages and other income—will be briefly mentioned, along with the significant increase in abstentionism in the most recent elections for members of the National Assembly of People’s Power, which in my opinion requires critical analysis on the part of the leadership and should be given priority.

The Revolution Can Self-Destruct

In contrast to the situation in previous years, when external factors (the U.S. embargo, the collapse of European “real socialisms,” and “neoliberal globalization”) were almost always emphasized, it is now fairly commonplace in official Cuban discourse (while this concern has not disappeared) to acknowledge, implicitly or explicitly, that as a result of mistakes made in the past, along with problems that affected the society and its values, political systems, economy, and external interactions, the Cuban socialist transition has accumulated a series of endogenous weaknesses that may endanger its continuity in the more or less immediate future. These weaknesses were such that Fidel Castro, in a November 17, 2005, speech given on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of his entry into the University of Havana, said that, “among the many mistakes we have all made, the most important . . . was to believe that . . . anyone knew how to construct socialism.” After describing instances of social indiscipline, larceny, and corruption across various government, business, state, and union structures, he added: “This country can destroy itself; this Revolution can be destroyed, and today it is not they [our enemies] who can destroy it. We ourselves . . . can destroy it, and it would be our fault.”

In spite of the discussions prompted by that speech, which, as usual, were carried out in the various leadership bodies and grassroots organizations of the Cuban Communist Party and the Young Communists’ Union, the problems affecting the functioning of these two political organizations did not lead to a deep critical-utopian analysis.⁵ Among the reasons for this were the following: (a) the increasing bureaucratization and growth of the main bodies of the central state administration, as well as inefficiency and lack of internal control over many of the enterprises subordinated to them; (b) shortcomings in the functioning of the representative and executive bodies of People’s Power, including its National Assembly; (c) deficits in the work of most of the mass, youth, and student organizations (the Workers’ Central of Cuba, the National Association of Small Farmers, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women, the Federation of University Students, the Federation of Secondary Education Students, the Pioneers’ Union of Cuba, and the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution), including failure to fulfill their missions, reduction in their appeal, and the erosion of their autonomy vis-à-vis the Cuban Communist Party and the Young Communists’ Union; (d) the multiple problems that undermined the role of the media, whether they belonged to the state (as is the case for radio and television stations) or to the popular grassroots organizations of political and civil society; (e) the strengthening of the economic, financial and commercial blockade and other aggression against Cuba under the two administrations of George W. Bush; and(f) the bulky international agenda of Fidel Castro across Latin America and the Caribbean and the gradual deterioration of his health.

Toward the end of July 2006, Castro was forced to undergo successive surgeries that, on more than one occasion, endangered his life. As a result, and pursuant to the constitution, Raúl Castro, then first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers and second secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, temporarily assumed the presidency of the republic. In a speech nearly a year later, he called for “a critical debate within socialism” of the various problems, structural and functional, objective and subjective, that were affecting society, the economy, and the Cuban political system (R. Castro, 2007).

Whatever the criticism of the way in which this debate was handled (e.g., that the interventions of individual participants were not discussed and their opinions, whatever they were, were assembled in the minutes of the meeting and later sent to the municipal party committees), the truth was that, in response to that and other calls of the political-state leadership (Valdés, 2007), the Cuban Communist Party and the Young Communists’ Union carried out 215,687 meetings nationwide that involved more than 5 million citizens. There were 3,255,344 interventions with 1,301,203 proposals, of which 48.8 percent highlighted various internal problems affecting the Cuban socialist transition (D. González, 2007).

Given this diagnosis and the repeated popular support for the active and multidimensional international policy deployed in previous years (e.g., efforts to revitalize the Non-Aligned Movement and the broadening and deepening of Cuban interactions with the various projects of political coordination, cooperation, and economic integration deployed across Latin America and the Caribbean), on February 24, 2008, Raúl Castro was elected president of the Councils of State and Ministers by the National Assembly of People’s Power, whose members had been elected at the beginning of that month by the citizens of all country’s municipalities.

In the speech he gave when he was sworn in, he reiterated his commitment to undertaking the necessary structural and functional changes while prioritizing “the satisfaction of the basic needs of the population, both material and spiritual, based on strengthening the national economy and its productive base,” without which “development would be impossible” (R. Castro, 2008). As a consequence, immediate actions were taken to correct the imbalances that were affecting the macroeconomics of the country (Alonso and Vidal, 2013), ⁶ and some changes were made regarding the organization and management of the country’s insufficient agricultural production, among them the granting in usufruct to private producers and cooperatives of large tracts of state land that for many years had been unused. One of the purposes of this was to reduce the need to purchase costly food imports, which had a negative impact on the balance of payments.

In addition, some “unreasonable bans” were eliminated, allowing access to facilities dedicated to foreign tourism and the sale of computers and mobile phones, as well as the purchase and sale of used cars and privately owned homes. At the same time, various agencies of the central state administration were restructured or merged (e.g., the Council of State stopped controlling the various institutions linked to the so-called Scientific Pole in western Havana, and the Ministry of Foreign Investment and Collaboration merged with the Ministry of Foreign Trade) and authorization for “self-employment” was expanded to an unprecedented degree. This last measure was meant, among other things, to cushion the effect on the then-low unemployment rate of the elimination of redundant positions in state agencies and enterprises. According to the initial estimate (not yet confirmed), about 1,500,000 workers were to be relocated in sectors of the state economy with large workforce deficits (e.g., agriculture and construction) or incorporated into various forms of nonstate employment and economic management.

At the same time, it was announced that the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, which had been postponed again and again since the end of 2002, would take place in October 2009. This was to be preceded by the First National Conference of that party. According to Raúl Castro (2009), the two events were meant to “define, with the broadest popular participation, the socialist society we want and can build in present and future Cuba, the economic model that will govern the life of the nation for the benefit of our compatriots and ensure the irreversibility of the country’s sociopolitical regime, the only guarantee of its true independence.” These and other claims reflected the decision to submit, once more, ⁷ to a theoretical and practical critique of the Cuban situation that I have called the utopia of building a native socialist model different from the collapsed USSR and European models as well as from those of the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The Sixth Congress and the First National Conference

After various postponements and changes in the sequence, the specific objectives, and the dates of the party event just mentioned, in November 2010 the Cuban population was convened to analyze the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines Project, which, after incorporating the views of the citizenry, was discussed and approved under another title at the Sixth Congress in April 2011. According to Raúl Castro’s (2011) report, which was approved by the 1,000 Congress delegates representing 800,000 party militants, between December 2010 and February 28, 2011, there had been more than 163,000 meetings of popular grassroots organizations of political and civil society (including the party and the Young Communists’ Union). Without taking into account that some people participated in more than one meeting, about 8,913,838 persons had attended discussions of that document, and there were more than 3 million interventions. Pointing to the quality of this “real and broad democratic exercise,” which he described as “a sort of popular referendum regarding the depth, scope, and pace of the changes” to be implemented in the country and the importance given to them by the political-state leadership, Castro added that 68 percent of the 291 guidelines had been reformulated and 36 had been added. From these amendments and additions arose the Guidelines of Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution approved by the Congress.

Despite due criticism of its content and form (e.g., the lack of theoretical clarification of some formulations and the absence of others linked to the internal and external economic and social policy that will be implemented in the next few years), this broad referendum, in which the overwhelming majority of the citizenry reaffirmed its support for socialism, was in itself a demonstration of the leadership’s will to persevere in the utopia of building a popular, comprehensive, participatory, and socially representative democracy radically different from both the bourgeois liberal democracies and the political systems that, in a different context, are currently operating in the above-mentioned Asian states (Suárez, 2013).

This was confirmed by other agreements of the Congress. In addition to criticizing “the counterproductive effects of old habits that have nothing to do with the vanguard role of [said] organization in society, including the superficiality and formalism with which political-ideological work develops and its involvement in various unrelated state and government tasks” (R. Castro, 2011), it approved the convocation of the party’s First National Conference and passed a resolution on “the improvement of the Organs of People’s Power, the electoral system, and the administrative political division” of the country (PCC, 2011b).

After an assessment of the experiments then under way in the new provinces of Mayabeque and Artemisa, the party’s Central Committee was charged with transferring the suggestions and guidelines to the National Assembly of People’s Power. A number of these suggestions were intended to “emphasize the authority of the local assemblies of people’s power” and overcome the “difficulties, functional and organizational, in both the representative bodies [the municipal and provincial assemblies] and the executive ones [the administrative councils] at the provincial and municipal levels.”⁸ And, even though the difficulties that affected the functioning of the representative bodies that operate at the national level (the National Assembly of People’s Power) were not mentioned,⁹ it was added that “the entirety of a process of this nature demands a variation in procedures, legal terms and adjustments to our electoral system on the basis of the essential principles that underpin it and prove its democratic and participatory character” (PCC, 2011a).

Because the experiments that were being developed in the two new provinces had not yet concluded, these problems were not addressed by the Central Committee or by the Cuban Communist Party’s National Conference. This, in my opinion, indicated that the leadership, concentrating on the solution of the difficult objective and subjective problems that had delayed the updating of the economic model (e.g., the complexity of the planned changes and social and political resistance), had not given them enough attention. In fact, the 100 Conference-approved goals for the party in the next five years focused on the need to overcome the various problems that had affected its “inner life,” its “ideological and political work,” the so-called cadre policy, and “relationships with the Young Communists’ Union and the social and mass organizations” (PCC, 2012).

Without denying the importance of finding the quickest possible solution and the need for social, mass, youth, and student organizations to perform an autonomous, in-depth critical analysis, the Conference only indicated the need to encourage the “real and effective participation of the population in decision making and the implementation of projects that stimulate initiative and lead to local development that improves the quality of life.” It was considered important to “consolidate the party’s attention” on the Organs of People’s Power and contribute “to the process of improvement under way with a view to strengthening the institutionalization of the country” (PCC, 2012).

The National Assembly Election Results

In my opinion, the need to undertake changes in the Organs of People’s Power and in the electoral system as quickly as possible was demonstrated by the results of the general elections for municipal, provincial, and national representatives of 2012–2013. Here I will examine the election of members of the National Assembly of People’s Power of February 3, 2013, compared with the elections of a number of previous years (Table 1). In 2012–2013, 90.0 percent of registered voters participated. Of these, 69.6 percent voted for the whole ticket and 16 percent (compared with 8.4 percent in 2007–2008) voted only for particular candidates. Thus, while 85 percent of the voters acknowledged the democratic legitimacy of the system,¹⁰ the increase in voting for particular candidates could mean dissatisfaction with other candidates who were included in the closed but not blocked ballots issued by the National Nominating Commission (made up of representative of social and mass organizations) and approved by members of the municipal assemblies of People’s Power.¹¹ Additionally, 14.4 percent abstained, cast blank ballots, or filled their ballots out in such a way that, according to the provisions of the Electoral Act, they were annulled. This contrasts with the 7.73 percent recorded in 2007–2008. The reasons for these increases and the increase in voting for particular candidates require critical analysis that, to my knowledge, has not been undertaken by the authorities and, in particular, by the top leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, since these figures seem to indicate citizen discontent regarding the updating of the economic model implemented between 2008 and late 2012 and/or with the operation of the electoral system and People’s Power.

Table 1

Election Results for the National Assembly of People’s Power, 2012–2013 and Earlier

	February 4, 2013	2012–2013	2007–2008	2002–2003	1997–1998	1992–1993
	Number	%	%	%	%	%
Potential votes	8,688,455
Votes cast	7,877,906	90.9	96.89	97.63	98.35	99.73
Valid votes	7,418,522	85.6	92.27	93.87	93.41	93.26
United votes^a	6,031,215	69.6	83.87	85.75	88.22	88.15
Selective votes^b	1,387,307	16.0	8.40	8.12	5.19	4.58
Abstentions	790,549	9.1	3.11	2.36	1.65	0.27
Blank ballots	364,576	4.2	3.61	2.93	3.30	3.03
Null ballots	94,808	1.1	1.00	0.84	1.63	3.97
Total abstentions, blank and null ballots	1,249,933	14.4	7.73	6.13	6.58	7.27

Sources: Official data published in Granma and, for 2013, Granma (2013).

Note: Since all the percentages are calculated on the basis of potential votes, some modifications have been made in the data released by the authorities, which were calculated on the basis of cast or of valid votes. The potential votes for the elections of previous years were 8,495,917, 8,313,770, 8,064,205, and 7,872,806.

Favoring all of the candidates proposed by the Nominating Commission.

Favoring particular candidates on the list.

Some of the causes of this discontent were evident in the preliminary results of the experiments in Artemisa and Mayabeque. According to information released by Granma, “The model implemented in these provinces is appropriate, rational, and inclusive and has the potential to achieve higher levels of efficiency” (Martínez and Puig, 2013). The BBC correspondent Fernando Ravsberg (2013) reported that in Artemisa the number of bureaucrats had been reduced by half, the administrative budget had been significantly lowered, dozens of government offices had been turned into housing, and “all legal formalities were centralized in one building” (Ravsberg, 2013). At the same time, the provincial assembly of People’s Power had turned its board into “a true provincial government with the power and budget to operate according to the priorities and needs of the population.” Ravsberg added: “Such decentralization clashes with the rest of the provinces, where the local parliament has no executive power and merely supports what agencies of the central government and enterprises [national or provincial and belonging to the state] decide to do in the territory.” This observation could be applied to the assemblies and administrative councils in most municipalities of the country. In the immediate future we will need to consider which of these measures can be implemented in the remaining 14 provinces and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud.

The implementation of these measures in other provinces will entail a change of mind-set on the part of the delegates of the provincial assemblies of People’s Power elected in early 2013. This will require, among other things, that the leading political and state authorities undertake proactive action to overcome the problems affecting the functioning of People’s Power and the Cuban Communist Party, at least on a provincial and municipal level, and leave administrative functions in the hands of the local assemblies and boards. It will also require the use of democratic and decentralized methods in the mechanisms for state planning that, in the course of the implementation of the economic model, are being reestablished and, in accordance with these, in the reorganization of state enterprises, it be established that they are required to pay taxes on their profits to the municipalities and provinces in which they are located. This must also be valid for existing and future mixed enterprises. Only in this way will municipal and provincial governments have the financial resources necessary to operate in accordance with the priorities and needs of their populations. It will also be necessary to create mechanisms that will allow the authorities of provinces and municipalities that cannot guarantee fiscal equilibrium and sufficient investment to make decisions with regard to funds that they receive from the central budget of the state. Otherwise, unequal levels of economic and social development among them will remain and deepen.

The Deterioration of Moral and Civic Values

Simultaneous decentralization of ownership and government and the restructuring of the state (García, 2012), with a clear delineation of its duties and those of the Cuban Communist Party, will allow a focus on one of the most serious problems that affect the Cuban socialist transition: the deterioration of moral and civic values in various sectors of the population and various structures of the national political-state apparatus. Drawing on all the available evidence (including that compiled by the comptroller general’s office, which in 2008 was subordinated to the National Assembly of People’s Power), Raúl Castro acknowledged this at the end of the most recent plenary session of the party’s Central Committee and during the ordinary session of July 2013. He denounced the indiscipline, lack of control, theft of state resources, and corruption that “have been revealed in recent years in various national and mixed companies, as well as several government agencies” (R. Castro, 2013a). Recalling Fidel Castro’s 2005 warning about the potential self-destruction of the Revolution, he said that Cuban society demanded the establishment “of a permanent climate of order, discipline, and thoroughness” as an “essential premise” for updating the economic model and avoiding “counterproductive setbacks” in the construction of what the leadership, without offering a clear definition of it, has been calling “a prosperous and sustainable socialism.” He considered this all the more important because “a portion of society now sees stealing from the state as normal”:

Illegal construction in improper places has sprouted with relative impunity, along with unauthorized occupation of dwellings, illicit marketing of goods and services, failure to comply with workplace schedules, theft and illegal slaughter of cattle, the capture of endangered marine species, the use of massive fishing nets, [unauthorized] logging in forests, including the magnificent Botanical Garden of Havana, the hoarding of scarce products and their resale at higher prices, participation in illegal games, price violations, the acceptance of bribes and patronage, the harassment of tourists, and breaches of information security.

He added that “the common denominator of all these phenomena has been a lack of enforcement, the absence of a systematic approach to work, and lack of respect—primarily on the part of state agencies—that undermines their ability to demand that the population comply with existing regulations” (R. Castro, 2013a).

Without denying the importance of this call to fight all of the negative tendencies in the Cuban political system and society, a utopian critique of these must necessarily call attention to, among other things, the deterioration of the education system, declining incomes, the social vulnerability of the residents of urban areas, and the continuous decline since the 1990s of indices of human development in most of the country’s provinces (Espina, 2008; Méndez, 2012). According to Méndez, only one province in 2009, the City of Havana, was ranked “high,” while five were ranked “medium” and the remaining eight “low.” Except in 2007, “low” was the average ranking for the country as a whole between 1995 and 2009.

Therefore, a utopian critique of the deterioration of moral and civic values must also call attention to an unwanted accumulation of wealth in some parts of Cuban society. The Gini coefficient (which measures income inequality) has increased by 0.15 percent since 1990 (Rodríguez, 2013). The new updating measures, which include a reduction in state subsidies involving food and other basic necessities such as personal hygiene and household products, have had a negative impact in this regard. Without overlooking the fact that, as the Guidelines indicate, these universal subsidies should be replaced with compensation provided by the state to people and families in need, the fact remains that these subsidies, along with regulated distribution, low food prices, and the distribution of other basic necessities through the so-called supply book, have served to make up for the reduced purchasing power of wages and other nonwage income such as pensions and social assistance funds and for the negative impact of the high prices of items sold in Cuban-convertible-peso shops and the increase in the proportion of family expenditures devoted to food (approximately 75 percent of wages), along with the transport, education, and health services that the state offers free or at affordable prices. As was recently pointed out by the Cuban psychologist María del Carmen Zabala (2013), “Because of income loss given the decline in the purchasing power of wages, a significant number of Cuban families are close to poverty, or at least vulnerable. . . . They are forced to deploy strategies of all kinds, and this has implications ranging from the loss of values that is now being intensely discussed to disconnection from society as a whole.”

If the current political/state leadership does not comprehensively address the objective and subjective causes of the increased deterioration of moral and civic values in Cuban society, it will be very difficult to eradicate them. This will surely have a negative impact on the fulfillment of one of the main Guidelines: “to ensure the continuity and irreversibility of socialism, the economic development of the country, and the increase in the standard of living of the population, combined with the necessary shaping of the ethical and political values of our citizens” (PCC, 2011a).

Conclusions

Obviously, the changes that are occurring in Cuba have encountered resistance, “especially among those sectors that think they may lose their relative positions in society” (Alonso and Vidal, 2013), including important cadres of the state, the government, and the party, attached to what the Sixth Congress called “old habits that have nothing to do with the vanguard role of [this] organization in society.” In theory, a decline in opposition should result in a revitalization of the party and the state that, according to Raúl Castro (2013b), has been taking place in a “gradual and orderly manner” in recent years.

Without denying the strategic importance of this “changing of the guard for the generation that led the Revolution” (I. González, 2013), the decrease in the average age of Cuban Communist Party’s Central Committee members, leaders, cadres, and municipal, provincial, and national citizen representatives of People’s Power will not be enough to guarantee changes that will broaden and deepen the functioning of the Cuban political system. This applies particularly to those components that allow active participation by citizens and their immediate representatives (municipal assembly delegates) in decision making and the evaluation of results and their impact on local populations, including the actions taken in the coming months by the party and the state to address the most complex problems of the economic updating (e.g., the elimination of the dual currency and the establishment of new wage and price policies) in order to “perfect” People’s Power and confront the deterioration of moral and civic values that Raúl Castro has denounced.

If, as he pointed out, we do not stop and, as far as possible, reverse this damage (much of it already established in the social consciousness of various sectors of the population), it will be very difficult to build what I have called the utopia of economic, political, social, ethical, and cultural development that, in addition to ensuring the country’s sovereignty and resolving deep regional imbalances and the major ecological and environmental problems that affect the Cuban archipelago, will transform the majority of its population, without any discrimination, into protagonists and the main beneficiaries (Suárez, 2013). This will require a substantial increase in all of the popular-control mechanisms that exist in Cuban society and the political system; in particular those exercised for the social and mass organizations that involve the majority of workers, peasants, intellectuals, and youth and students.

Changes involving the state and nonstate media (including better and more diverse information on the national reality and critical approaches to national problems and some of the actions being taken to solve them) will have to take place. These will involve both the media belonging to the Cuban Communist Party and the Young Communists’ Union and grassroots publications such as Trabajadores, issued by the Workers’ Central of Cuba. As was stated at the Ninth Congress of the Union of Cuban Journalists in 2013, all of the media will have to play their important social role without the “external interference” of various organs of the political system. The complex conditions generated by the ending of the “exclusive monopoly of the media” and the consequent emergence of new social media (e.g., digital social networks), as well as the context “of an increasingly polyphonic society with a high political culture” (Garcés, 2013), “complicate the relationship between the traditional media, broadcasters, and the increasingly heterogeneous audiences involved in national issues” (Elizalde, 2013).

This diagnosis was endorsed by the current First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers and member of the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party, Miguel Díaz-Canel (2013), who, in his closing speech at the Congress, having called on all the political and social stakeholders who will participate in the implementation of the agreements to coordinate their actions, commented,

We can have the best of all economies, but if we do not work on [the] motivations, aspirations, feelings [of the population] we will not build the prosperous and sustainable society we want. The media play a fundamental role in that, the way in which they present our truths, our reality. They need to be able to express what we feel, what we need; they must be able to attract, captivate, and engage.

All of the above and many other topics will need to be addressed to prepare Cuban society and, in particular, its new generations to confront the internal and external problems that affect them in a critical-utopian way. However accurate our current criticism of the Cuban socialist transition, future problems cannot be foreseen, nor can the changes that will be needed to solve them.

Even if all of the economic, social, political, ideological, and cultural actions undertaken in the forthcoming years have optimal results, they will surely lead to changes in the current Cuban social and class structure—a result of the still insufficiently analyzed economic policies identified in the Guidelines, especially with regard to the hiring of self-employed workers by other self-employed workers, cooperatives, companies, or other forms of nonstate management. Of the 429,000 officially registered self-employed workers, 80,000 are employed by other self-employed workers (Rodríguez, 2013). In the next three years, subcontracting is sure to increase exponentially given that, according to official projections, 40 percent of jobs in 2016 will be outside the state system.

As Zabala (2013) has suggested, important sectors of the population (among them but not exclusively women, blacks, and mestizos) do not have the income (wage-based or not) or family wealth needed to initiate projects outside the state sector and will be forced to seek well-paying state jobs, work two jobs, or work for small or mid-level owners of means of production, cooperatives, or other managers of the means of production outside the state. As some delegates to the party’s First National Conference pointed out, this will create unprecedented tension with regard to the interpretation and application of the constitutional precepts that guarantee ownership of the means and instruments of personal or family work and establish that “these cannot be used to obtain income from the exploitation of others’ labor” (Dirección de Legislación y Asesoría del Ministerio de Justicia, 2004: 3).

To the inevitable and contradictory socioeconomic, political, axiological, ideological, and cultural consequences of these and other events must be added those of the demographic and generational changes that are under way, among them the aging of the population and the gradual withdrawal of the historical and guevarista generations from political life. At the very latest by 2018, the representatives of the generation of the institutionalized revolution and the generation of the Special Period will have to lead the nation. In doing so they will have to take into account that, if current trends continue, Cuban society will be increasingly affected by the structural crises (economic, financial, energetic, alimentary, environmental, ethical) affecting the capitalist world economy and the socio-environmental problems that have long been occurring in the Cuban archipelago—increasingly destructive and increasingly common hurricanes, damaged infrastructure in coastal areas, rising sea levels, and the consequent salinization of water sources and agricultural land.

They will also have to take into consideration that, even if official relations between the two countries are normalized, there is no indication that the United States and its main international allies will cease being hostile toward the Cuban socialist transition; hence the importance of undertaking strategies for achieving the economic and political integration of Cuba into Latin America and the Caribbean and building a more impartial, multipolar, and democratic international system of states. The development and defense of this new economic, political, and cultural order, future Cuban interaction with the “emerging powers” of the so-called BRICSA Group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and projects of political coordination, cooperation, or economic integration that are autonomous or independent of the powers that currently control the world system and are expanding in South America will be essential to counteract the power asymmetry that will always exist between Cuba and the United States.

In these and other facets of the external projection of the Cuban socialist transition, its leadership and grassroots organizations should keep in mind the issues raised 122 years ago by José Martí (1891): “Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stone”:

Newspapers, universities, and schools should encourage the study of the country’s pertinent components. To know them is sufficient, without mincing words; for whoever brushes aside even a part of the truth, whether through intention or oversight, is doomed to fail. . . . Knowing is what counts. To know one’s country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny. . . . Let the world be grafted onto our republics, but the trunk must be our own. And let the vanquished pedant hold his tongue, for there are no lands in which a man may take greater pride than our long-suffering American republics.

Footnotes

Notes

[The distinguished Cuban scholar Luis Suárez Salazar was the fourth Latin American Perspectives fellow at the University of California, Riverside. His residency in May and June 2013 facilitated a close look at the research materials in the university library’s Special Collections. During his stay he presented an early draft of his paper to a university seminar and carried his ideas to the LAP meeting at the Latin American Studies Association Congress in Washington, DC. His contribution to this issue is a product of that experience, which also included a presentation and fruitful exchanges at a meeting of the LAP collective in Riverside. The collective is pleased to begin this issue’s examination of Cuba in transition with his perceptive analysis of the current conjuncture.]

References

Alonso

José Antonio

Vidal

Pavel

2013 “¿Quo vadis, Cuba?” Espacio Laical, Suplemento Digital no. 234, July. http://catarata.org/libro/mostrar/id/863 (accessed July 28, 2013).

Castro

Fidel

2005 “Discurso pronunciado el 17 de noviembre en el 60 aniversario de su ingreso a la Universidad de La Habana.” http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed October 20, 2011).

Castro

Raúl

2007 “Discurso pronunciado el 26 de julio en el acto central con motivo del aniversario 54 del asalto a los cuarteles Moncada y Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.” http://www.granma.co.cu. (accessed July 30, 2007).

Castro

Raúl

2008 “Discurso pronunciado el 24 de febrero en las conclusiones de la sesión constitutiva de la VII Legislatura de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular.” http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed March 1, 2011).

Castro

Raúl

2009 “Discurso pronunciado el 1ro de agosto en la clausura del Tercer Período Ordinario de Sesiones de la VII Legislatura de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular.” http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed November 5, 2012).

Castro

Raúl

2011 “Informe Central al VI Congreso del PCC,” in Documentos del VI Congreso del PCC. Havana: Cubadebate. http://www.cubadebate.cu (accessed May 25, 2012).

Castro

Raúl

2013a “Intervención en la Primera Sesión Ordinaria de la VIII Legislatura de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular.” http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed August 8, 2013).

Castro

Raúl

2013b “Discurso pronunciado en el acto central en conmemoración del 60 Aniversario del asalto a los cuarteles Moncada y Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.” July 26. http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed July 28, 2013).

Díaz-Canel

Miguel

2013 “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del IX Congreso de la UPEC.” July 14. http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed August 18, 2013).

10.

Dirección de Legislación y Asesoría del Ministerio de Justicia 2004 Constitución de la República de Cuba. Havana: Editora del Ministerio de Justicia.

11.

Elizalde

Rosa Miriam

2013 “El consenso de lo posible: diagnóstico y proyección del sistema de comunicación en Cuba, una mirada desde las Asambleas de la UPEC.” Paper presented at the Ninth Congress of the Unión de Periodistas de Cuba, July 13.

12.

Espina Prieto

Mayra

2008 “Mirar a Cuba hoy: cuatro supuestos para la observación y seis problemas-nudos.” Temas, no. 56, 132–141.

13.

Garcés

Raúl

2013 “Siete tesis sobre la prensa cubana.” Paper presented at the Ninth Congress of the Unión de Periodistas de Cuba, July 13.

14.

García Lorenzo

Tania

2012 “Actualización y producción cultural: algunas hipótesis.” Temas, no. 72, 11–19.

15.

González

Ivet

2013 “Se consolida recambio generacional en gobierno cubano.” Visiones de IPS, July 27.

16.

González Díaz

Leonel

2007 “Victoria de la vergüenza: el pueblo demandó más revolución y mejor socialismo.” Kaos en la Red. http://www.kaosenlared.net (accessed January 4, 2008).

17.

Granma 2013 “Final results of elections.” February 8. http://www.juventudrebelde.cu (accessed March 18, 2013).

18.

IIDH (Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos) 1989 Diccionario electoral. San José, Costa Rica: Centro Interamericano de Asesoría y Promoción Electoral.

19.

Martí

José

1891 “Our America.” La Revista Ilustrada, January 1.

20.

Martínez Hernández

Leticia

Meneses

Yaíma Puig

2013 “Raúl: continuamos avanzando y los resultados se notan.” http://www.granma.co.cu (accessed July 1, 2013).

21.

Méndez

Elier

2012 “Índice de desarrollo humano territorial,” Chapter 4 in Alejandro

Pavel Vidal

Villanueva

Omar Everleny Pérez

(eds.), Miradas a la economía cubana: El proceso de actualización. Havana: Editorial Caminos.

22.

PCC (Partido Comunista de Cuba) 2011a Lineamientos de la política económica y social del Partido y la Revolución. Havana: PCC.

23.

PCC (Partido Comunista de Cuba) 2011b “Resolución sobre el perfeccionamiento de los órganos del Poder Popular, el sistema electoral y la división político administrativa,” in Documentos del VI Congreso del PCC. Havana: PCC. http://www.cubadebate.cu (accessed May 25, 2012).

24.

PCC (Partido Comunista de Cuba) 2012 “Objetivos de trabajo del PCC aprobados en la Conferencia Nacional del PCC.” Havana: Cubadebate. http://www.cubadebate.cu (accessed May 25, 2012).

25.

Porto Gonçalves

Carlos Walter

2013 “Presentación,” in Zibechi

Raúl

, Brasil potencia: Entre la integración regional y un nuevo imperialismo. Lima: Programa Democracia y Transformación Global y Fórum Solidaridad Perú.

26.

Ravsberg

Fernando

2013 “Permuto casa 1x1 para Artemisa.” Cartas desde Cuba, April 18. http://www.bbc.co.uk (accessed August 10, 2013).

27.

Rodríguez

José Luis

2013 “Intervención en el panel de Jueves de Temas efectuado el 18 de julio del 2013,” in Tania Chappi Docurro, “La pregunta de cada día.” Catalejo, July 24. http://www.temas.cult.cu (accessed August l6, 2013).

28.

Suárez Salazar

Luis

2000 El siglo XXI: Posibilidades y desafíos para la Revolución Cubana. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

29.

Suárez Salazar

Luis

2009 “Las utopías Nuestramericanas de la Revolución Cubana: una aproximación histórica,” in Rajland

Beatriz

Cotarelo

María Celia

(eds.), La revolución en el bicentenario: Reflexiones sobre la emancipación, clases y grupos subalternos. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

30.

Suárez Salazar

Luis

2010 “Las cuatro utopías fundacionales de la Revolución Cubana.” Por Cuba 8.

31.

Suárez Salazar

Luis

2013 “La actualización del socialismo cubano: una mirada desde sus utopías.” Lecture, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales e Históricas de San Salvador, April 26.

32.

Valdés Menéndez

Ramiro

2007 “Seguir el ejemplo del Che, significa hoy mirar hacia delante.” Granma, October 9.

33.

Zabala

María del Carmen

2013 “Intervención en el panel de Jueves de Temas efectuado el 18 de julio,” in Tania Chappi Docurro, “La pregunta de cada día.” Catalejo, July 24. http://www.temas.cult.cu (accessed August 6, 2013).