Cuba`s Politics
While the isle of Cuba was initially discovered on October 27, 1492
during one
of Columbus’ first voyages, it wasn’t actually claimed by Spain
until the
sixteenth century. However, it’s tumultuous beginnings as a Spanish
sugar
colony provides an insightful backdrop into the very essence of the
country’s
political and economic unrest. From it’s early revolutionary days
to the
insurrectional challenge of the Marxist-Leninist theories emerged
the
totalitarian regime under Fidel Castro in present day Cuba. Cuban
colonial
society was distinguished by the characteristics of colonial
societies in
general, namely a stratified, inegalitarian class system; a
poorly
differentiated agricultural economy; a dominant political class made
up of
colonial officers, the clergy, and the military; an exclusionary and
elitist
education system controlled by the clergy; and a pervasive religious
system.1
Cuba’s agrarian monocultural character, economically dependant
upon sugar
cultivation, production and export severely restricted its
potential for growth
as a nation, thereby firmly implanting its newly
sprouted roots firmly in the
trenches of poverty from the very beginning of
the country’s existence. In
1868, Cuba entered in to The Ten Years’ War
against Spain in a struggle for
independence, but to no avail. Ten years of
bitter and destructive conflict
ensued, but the goal of independence was not
achieved. Political divisions among
patriot forces, personal quarrels among
rebel military leaders, and the failure
of the rebels to gain the backing of
the United States, coupled with stiff
resistance from Spain and the Cubans’
inability to carry the war in earnest to
the western provinces, produced a
military stalemate in the final stages.2 The
war had a devastating effect on
an already weak economic and political
infrastructure. The defeat, however,
did not hinder the resolution of the Cuban
proletariat for an independent
nation. In the words of one author, The Cubans’
ability to wage a costly,
protracted struggle against Spain demonstrated that
proindependence sentiment
was strong and could be manifested militarily. On the
other hand, before any
effort to terminate Spanish control could succeed,
differences over slavery,
political organization, leadership, and military
strategy had to be resolved.
In short, the very inconclusiveness of the war left
a feeling that the Cubans
could and would resume their struggle until their
legitimate political
objectives of independence and sovereignty were attained.3
The years
following the Ten Years’ War were harsh and austere. The
countryside, ravaged
and desolate, bankrupted Spanish sugar interests in Cuba,
virtually
destroying the industry. The Spanish owners sold out to North
American
interests, a process accelerated by the final abolition of slavery
in Cuba in
1886.4 The end of slavery, naturally, meant the end of free
labor. The sugar
growers, therefore, began to import machinery from the
United States.
Essentially, Cuba deferred its economic dependence from
Spain directly to the
U.S. What became known as the American Sugar
Refining Company supplied from
seventy to ninety percent of all sugar
consumed by the United States, thus
mandating the direction of the Cuban
agricultural industry and thereby
controlling its economy. Moreover, the
United States’ interventionism in the
Cuban-Spanish war in 1898,
motivated primarily by interests in the Cuban market,
led the surrender of
the Spanish army directly to the United States, not Cuba.
This war later
became known as the Spanish-American War. The leader and
organizer of the
Cuban Revolutionary Party, Jose Marti’s, goal of true
independence was buried
without honor in 1898.5 In the years from 1902 to 1959,
following the
institution of the Platt Amendment, which was an amendment to the
Cuban
constitution, that stated that the United States had the right to
intervene
in Cuba at any time, a period which came to be termed the
"Pseudo
Republic" ensued. In the words of General Wood: Of course, Cuba
has been left
with little or no independence by the Platt Amendment...The
Cuban Government
cannot enter into certain treaties without our consent, nor
secure loans above
certain limits, and it must maintain the sanitary
conditions that have been
indicated. With the control that we have over Cuba,
a control which, without
doubt, will soon turn her into our possession, soon
we will practically control
the sugar market in the world. I believe that it
is a very desirable acquisition
for the United States. The island will
gradually be "Americanized," and in
the due course we will have one of the
most rich and desirable possessions
existing in the entire world...6 The
Great Depression however, had a immense
impact on United States’ holdings of
the Cuban sugar industry. In the summer
and fall of 1920 when the price of
sugar fell from twenty-two cents a pound to
three cents a pound, Cubans were
left poverty stricken and starving, as their
sugar market was totally
dependent upon the United States. Additionally, America
began to disengage
itself from the strangling hold it had over the Cuban economy
by vastly
diminishing the amount of its imports from forty percent in previous
years to
eighteen percent. In the wake of this massive monetary pull-out, a
vacuum
formed in which a basically leaderless Cuba (its current
leader,
President Machado, had lost the ability to govern after his
promise of"tranquility of the government and the country" had not been
delivered)
became ripe for radical student uprisings and the introduction of
Marxist ideas.
Thus was formed the Cuban Communist Party, led by Julio
Mella and Carlos Balino,
the former an eighteen year old university
basketball player and the latter, a
veteran socialist and comrade of Jose
Marti. In 1933, President Roosevelt sent
Cuban ambassador, Sumner Wells,
to Havana in an attempt to stop the "political
whirlpool in which an
estimated $1,500,000,000 in U.S. investments was likely to
drown".7 Welles
proposed the appointment of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, former
Cuban
ambassador to Washington, as president. Shortly thereafter, leaders of
a
radical student organization "transformed their rebellion into a
revolt",
and informed President Cespedes that he had been deposed. Cespedes
abandoned the
presidential palace as inconspicuously as he had arrived.8 From
1930 to 1935,
Antonio Guiteras led the island on a "revolutionary path"
and formed a
government that was "for the people, but not by the people or of
the
people"9, which the U.S. refused to recognize. In 1935 Guiteras
was
assassinated by Fulgencio Batista who proceeded to run Cuban affairs for
the
next decade. It was a government that the United States recognized as
the"only legitimate authority on the island".10 Then in 1944, Batista,
the
"American darling", lost the presidential election to Grau San
Martin, who
had recently returned from exile. The Grau presidency has been
described as
such: The Autentico administrations of Grau (1944-1948) and Prio
(1948-52) had
failed to curb the political corruption and the associated
gangster violence;
more importantly they had failed to satisfy popular
aspirations for independence
and social progress. here were still disruptive
protests against U.S. control
and exploitation of the Cuban economy; and when
Prio agreed to send Cuban troops
to support the U.S. invasion of Korea in
1950, the offer was backed by a
successful campaign around the slogan, ‘No
cannon fodder for Yankee
imperialists’. The general political instability,
the growing unpopularity of
the Autenticos, the rampant corruption and
violence - all were again setting the
scene for political upheaval.11 On
January 1, 1959 unable to withstand the
burden of both a politically and
economically failing nation, and under pressure
from the Cuban Communist
Party led by Fidel Castro and his Marxist-Leninist
revolutionary followers,
Batista fled Cuba. Paradoxically, the breakdown of the
authoritarian regime
in Cuba illustrates the fragility of presumably reliable
clientelistic
arrangements, insofar as these cannot substitute for strong
central
authority.12 Foreign investment in the economy was substantial once
again in
the late 1950s, with U.S. capital dominant in the agricultural
sectors.13
Having gained a substantial amount of support from the Cuban
people,
Fidel Castro was quick to move into power as the country’s most
prominent
leader. Shortly thereafter, Castro allied his nation with the
Soviet Union and
denounced the United States as an imperialistic and
capitalist aggression. In
essence, the U.S.S.R. became Cuba’s new "lifeline".
Naturally, the Cuban
relationship with the Soviet Union made for inevitable
tensions with its
neighbor.14 The United States’ belief that the "Cuban
leader had allowed his
country to become a Soviet satellite, and that
Castro’s regime might produce a
spate of revolutions throughout Latin
America"15 led directly to the Bay of
Pigs invasion of 1961, a failed
attempt to overthrow Castro. The Bay of Pigs
invasion combined with the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962 sufficiently set the
stage for the present day
political tensions between the United States and Cuba.
Due to the
isolationist mood in the United States in the years following the
failed
Cuban Missile Crisis and then the Vietnam War, Fidel Castro was free to
rise
to power and create the communist island he so desperately endeavored
to
achieve. Without the U.S. to interfere, Castro could be likened to a "kid
in a
candy store". Because Cuba had historically always been in political
turmoil,
it was not difficult for Castro, for all his charm and charisma, to
win the
popular vote of the people. Traditionally, in a nation as oppressed
as Cuba had
been, citizens tend to fall easy prey to totalitarian or
authoritarian rule due
to their need to be led by a government, any
government, that may possibly
facilitate any kind of economic growth. The end
of the Cold War, however, left
Cuba isolated when it lost its Soviet
Patron.16 It has been argued that there
are two schools of thought on how to
deal with Castro in the post Cold War era:
One school, championed
primarily by the exiled Cuban community and Senate
Foreign Relations
Chairman Jesse Helms, wanted a full court press to bring
Castro down.
They assumed further economic deprivation would push the Cuban
people to rise
up and rid themselves of the Castro dictatorship at last. The
United
States, with new laws penalizing countries, corporations, or persons
doing
business with Cuba, would compel the international community to join in
the
strangulation. This strategy received no international support. The
second
school wanted to coax Cuba out of its shell without trying to
overthrow Castro.
For all his brutality and repression, Castro provided
education, jobs, health
care, and equality for Cuban’s large lower class,
many of whom are of African
descent. They appreciated it then, and some still
support Castro now. With the
sudden end of Soviet subsidies (estimated at $5
billion a year), Cuban living
conditions went from bad to worse. From 1990 to
1993, Cuba’s GDP declined by
forty percent. Many Cubans went hungry. Castro,
reading the desperate mood of
the masses, discovered his approaching
obsolescence and gave indications that he
might reform. The Cuban people,
yearning for reform, began to hope for a new
day.17 It is evident that the
political disposition of the country, as in most
countries, has been
influenced by its economic status which, for Cuba, dates
back to the
sixteenth century. Cuba’s plight as a third world nation is
directly akin to
its historical inability to break away from its dependence on a
single export
economy. This fact, confounded by that of other, larger nations
serving only
their own national interests by encouraging this type of economy,
has held
Cuba in chains of indigence for decades. Cuba does, however, despite
its low
domestic living standards, have extensive overseas commitments. The
question
has been raised then, as to why Cuba, with such a limited domestic
resource
base, would expand its overseas civilian and military commitments.18
A
particularly viable explanation could be viewed as the following: The
Cuban
government asserts that it aids other Third World countries because it
is
committed to internationalist solidarity. While official views may
conceal
underlying motives, if the island primarily supports overseas
activities for
moral and ideological reasons, Cuban should receive no regular
quid pro for its
assistance, and it should limit its aid to ideologically
sympathetic countries.
If Cuba gains materially from its involvement, the
benefits should be minor and
they should have been unanticipated at the time
the aid was extended. The island
should risk receiving no economic
pay-offs... The Castro regime has a long
history of assisting revolutionary
and national liberation movements, and the
governments to which they have
given rise, possibly because its own social
transformation depended on the
assistance of other socialist countries. yet its
identity with progressive,
anti-imperialist states has not been contingent on
the adoption of a
Marxist-Leninist model or membership in the socialist camp.19
Why would
Castro go to all the trouble then, when his own people were starving
in the
streets? Perhaps it was simply due to the fact that Third World
countries
viewed Cuba as helpful and influential and that overseas activities
have
enhanced the island’s stature in the less developed world. Seemingly,
this
theory would lend support to the hackneyed images of "strength in
numbers"
or the "big fish in a little pond" cliches. This is, of course,
theory
however, and not fact. Despite these and many other questions which
could be
asked of Castro’s governing style, there are, in fact, many
positive
transformations that the socialist leader has brought about for his
country.
Though unlike most other socialist countries, Cuba has been
noted for its
far-reaching social and economic equality that has resulted
from the Cuban
Revolution. Additionally, Cuba, by no means a wealthy
nation, has achieved a
certain amount of significant success in the areas of
education, health care and
its economy in comparison to the Cuba of years
past. However, even a very
favorable interpretation of these structures would
have to point out their
limitations (and one should not ignore the
significance of their formal
similarity to Soviet structures). Organized
opposition is not allowed....the
Cuban government would not tolerate
efforts to establish an independent union
movement, and there is no question
of compromise on the political hegemony of
the Cuban Communist Party.20
Presently, tensions between Cuba and the United
States, however, are
still high as the U.S. continues to maintain its policy of
diplomatic and
economic isolation. It has been noted that: ....years after the
breakup of
the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Cuba continues to
command the
attention of U.S. policymakers. Although Russia and the former
eastern bloc
countries have undergone widespread democratic and free-market
economic
reform, Cuba remains one of the only communist dictatorships in the
world.
Removing Castro from power and implementing reform in Cuba are top
U.S.
foreign policy priorities, but lawmakers disagree on the best course of
action.
While some argue that the U.S. trade embargo has proved
ineffective and
inhumane, others respond that the United States should
continue to apply
pressure on Castro until he is toppled from power. As the
lawmakers debate, the
misery in Cuba is worsening, and some countries are now
beginning to blame U.S.
policy. Time will tell whether the United States
continues its present course or
revises a policy that is increasingly
unpopular with even its most loyal
allies.21 Every now and again Castro
allows a thaw in relations, but when the
United States gets overly
friendly he arranges a provocation, such as the
drowning of two small planes
piloted by Cuban exiles in 1996, which led to the
passage by the United
States congress of the Helms-Burton Act a month later.22
Presently, Cuba
is in the process of developing an advanced telecommunications
system with
the help of communist ally China. Cuba was visited recently by
Chinese
delegate Wu Jichuan and Fidel Castro claims that relations between Cuba
and
China have never been better. Additionally, Cuba is seeking to end
the
40-year United States trade embargo against the island. Should this
occur, it
would greatly enhance the country’s currently sagging economy.
There is
increasing pressure from United States business and agricultural
communities to
begin brisk trade with Cuba and take advantage of a new and
potentially highly
profitable market.23 If Cuba is successful at expanding
its monocultural economy
the country should experience remarkably auspicious
results in the event of a
lifting of the U.S. embargo. More importantly,
Castro would no longer have an
excuse for the deficiencies in the Cuban
economy. Additionally, housing for
Cubans, which is guaranteed in the
constitution, or the recent lack thereof, has
reached epidemic proportions in
Havana, the island’s capital. Reportedly, the
government admits the country
does not have nearly enough building materials or
manpower to give everyone
the home they have been promised.24 For a socialist
society dedicated to
taking care of its people, the country seems to have fallen
short in this
arena, as well. Another recent political Cuban event overshadowing
most other
important Cuban political events, if only due to the extensive media
coverage
than the actual quality of newsworthy content, is the "tragicomedy"
of the
custody battle of near Cuban defector, Elian Gonzalez. In what should
have
been nothing more than an international custody battle over the six year
old
Cuban child, an all out political battle between the United States and
Cuba
ensued. In my opinion, the incident had been seemingly spawned mainly
from
harbored resentment by Cuban-Americans over the failed Bay of Pigs
event, in
addition to their hatred of the authoritarian leader. Again, they
fought and
lost to Castro. This time, however, Fidel Castro was legitimate in
his reproach
and used the situation to portray the United States in an
extremely unfavorable
light. He succeeded, as the rest of the world looked on
wondering what all the
hype was about. What is extraordinary about Fidel
Castro, however, is that he is
still here at all. More than 40 years after
coming to power, he survives. He
survives in the face of the unremitting
hostility of a superpower only 90 miles
away. He survives in spite of the
fact that his main patron, the Soviet Union,
has disappeared, his ideology,
Marxist-Leninism, is discredited, and his economy
is less than perfect.
Despite the fact that an inordinate number of common
citizens prefer to
chance death at sea rather than remain in his nation,
Fidel
survives.25
Bibliography
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CubaNet News, Inc., (www.cubanetnews.com, 2000). 23
World Wide Web, China Helps
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(www.cubapolidata.com,
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