‘I asked Che, if you think there’s oil in the Gulf, why don’t we go and investigate? He told me that we can’t because the technology doesn’t exist.’ Juan Valdes Gravalosa*

Today, the technology to which Che aspired is steaming across the oceans towards the northern coast of Cuba in the form of Scarabeo 9; a $750 million investment by the Cuban government in one of the world’s largest semi-submersible oil drilling rigs. Drilling on exploratory wells in the Gulf of Mexico will begin before the end of 2011.

In mid-November 2011, Rafael Tenreiro, head of exploration for the state-owned oil company Cubapetroleo, stated: ‘It is not a matter of if we have oil, it is a matter of when we are going to start producing.’ JOSEPH ESKOVITCHL reports.

Economic and social benefits for Cuba

The October 2008 announcement that Cuba had discovered significant offshore oil reserves in its ‘exclusive economic zone’ (EEZ) around the Gulf of Mexico alarmed the US establishment. The US Geological Survey estimates reserves of around 5 billion barrels and 9.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, However, Cuban sources place reserves closer to 20 billion barrels. In 2009, Cuba consumed 169,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). With domestic production from existing oil wells at around 50,000 bpd, Cuba still relies on 120,000 bpd in imports.

Successful extraction of commercially-viable reserves, even at the lower end of the estimates, will make Cuba energy independent. If the higher estimates prove correct, Cuba will sit between China (20 billion barrels and 14th world ranking) and the US (19 billion, 15th world ranking) in terms of world reserves. In an era where oil and energy supplies become ever more crucial, the potential for the Cuban revolution to secure its future development and decisively break the crippling half-century blockade by US imperialism is increasingly realistic.

This does not mean, however, that a consumerist society, or the vast inequalities seen in many oil-exporting nations, will emerge in Cuba. The socialist process will ensure that future oil wealth is invested in social and economic development. Furthermore, Cuba’s welfare and developmentalist internationalism will extend these benefits throughout the oppressed world, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean through ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

A history of economic warfare

Depriving Cuba of access to oil has been a key tenet of the US blockade. In 1960, the US government pressured US and British oil refineries on the island to refuse to refine imported Soviet crude. The Cuban Revolution removed this obstacle by nationalising the refineries.

Click here for more:

 

 Rene Gonzalez in prison with his daughters, Irmita and Ivette during a visit

On Friday 7 October, Rene Gonzalez, one of the Cuban Five incarcerated in United States since 1998 for combating terrorism against Cuba, faces a ‘supervised release’ under life-threatening conditions. In 2001, Rene was sentenced to 15 years in prison charged with conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. He had already spent 33 months in ‘preventative custody’, including 17 months in isolation in ‘the hole’.

Rene’s real crime, like that of his co-defendants (Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerro, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez), was defending Cuba against acts of terrorism planned, financed and launched by Cuban exile groups in Miami; groups with well documented links to the US government agencies. The conditions imposed by Federal Court Judge Lenard on Friday 26 September 2011, force Rene to reside in Miami for three years, without returning to Cuba to be with his wife (who has been permitted to visit him just once by US authorities) and two children.

Rene was born in the United States in 1956, but returned to Cuba as a child just after the Cuban Revolution in 1961. He became a pilot and flight instructor. Between 1977 and 1979 he was among thousands of Cuban combatants who fought for the national liberation of Angola and against the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. In 1990, at the request of the Cuban government, Rene returned to the United States to gather information in order to prevent terrorist plots against Cuba.

The Cuban Five had no guns and no explosives. They were not after classified information or threatening US national security. They were gathering information and evidence from terrorist networks about actions planned and launched from US soil. In the 1990s more than 200 attacks were launched from Miami, many of them targeting Cuba’s expanding tourist industry. In 1998, Cuba handed the FBI a mountain of evidence compiled by the Cuban agents from the terrorist networks in Miami. That information made it possible to successfully prevent 170 attacks against Cuba, including a plan to blow up aeroplanes filled with Cuba-bound tourists from Europe and Canada. Instead of acting on the information to break the terror networks, the FBI arrested the Cuban agents.

The utter hypocrisy of the US judiciary is emphasised by the conditions established for Rene’s ‘supervised release’, which prohibit him ‘from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists, members of organizations advocating violence, organized crime figures are known to be or frequent.’ In other words, the court can identify where terrorists and criminals hang out in Miami, but rather than arrest and put them on trial, it warns Rene, a US-citizen who has actively opposed terrorism, not to disturb them. So much for the war on terrorism!

Perversely, while warning Rene to stay away from these groups and individuals, the court will not permit him to do the only thing which would secure his safety – return to Cuba. The conditions force him to remain in the same city as the terrorists he was monitoring, where the ‘show trial’ took place, during which journalists were paid by the US government to secure a conviction, and which has a powerful right-wing Cuban exile population. Among Miami’s Cuban exile residents is Luis Posada Carriles, an ex-CIA agent, responsible for bombing a Cuban civilian aeroplane in 1976, killing all 73 persons aboard, and the bombing of hotels and restaurants in Havana in 1997. Carriles recently reaffirmed his support for further violence against Cuba.

‘Why is the Court putting Mr Gonzalez’s safety at risk by forcing him to live for the next three years side by side with the very terrorists that he tailed as an unregistered Cuban agent?’ demands José Pertierra, an attorney representing the Venezuelan government’s extradition case against Carriles.

Terrorism against Cuba has cost the lives of 3,478 Cubans and permanently maimed another 2,099. Rene’s life is at risk if he is forced to remain in Miami. Judge Lenard, who issued the ‘supervised release’ has justified her decision by stating that if Rene returns to Cuba she won’t be able to assess whether the US public ‘will be protected from further crimes of the defendant’. But as Pertierra responds: ‘His only “crime” was failing to register as a foreign agent.’ Absurdly, Judge Lenard also claims more time is needed to ‘provide the defendant with needed educational or vocational training, medical care, or other correctional treatment in the most effective manner’.

This is nonsense. Rene has declared his intention to renounce his US citizenship and return to live in Cuba with his family, he does not need to be ‘reintegrated’ into US society. Pertierra adds: ‘As for medical care, he will have access to the best medical care in Cuba and it will be available at no expense to the United States or to himself.’

Judge Lenard’s decision allows Rene to re-file his motion to return to Cuba at a later time ‘should circumstances warrant modification’. Pertierra asks: ‘What circumstances could she be waiting for? For a terrorist to take a potshot at Rene?’

However, for right-wing Cuban-exile community even this ‘supervised release’ is too generous. Miami Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman of the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned Rene’s release stating on 3 October that: ‘He has American blood on his hands and dedicated his life to harming our country on behalf of a regime that is a state sponsor of terrorism.’ This from a woman who just weeks ago called for Cuba to be attacked Libya-style; an attack which has so far cost the lives of 50,000 to 60,000 Libyans.

Guistino di Celmo, speaks at the 14^th anniversary of the bombing which killed his son, Fabio

In early September, RATB activists participated in two anti-terrorism events in Havana. The first, on Saturday 10 September, commemorated the 14th anniversary of the murder of Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo, killed in the 1997 explosion at the Copacubana hotel in Havana. Guistino di Celmo, Fabio’s elderly father thanked the Cuban people for remembering his son and complained that, years after the terrorist act which took his son’s life, the US press continues to report the lie that Cuba supports terrorism, while the Cuban Five remain in US prisons for combating terrorism. Magalys Llort, mother of one of the Five, presented Guistino with a plaque in homage to his son made by Gerardo Gonzalez, another one of the Cuban Five.

 Guistino di Celmo and families of the Cuban Five outside the Copacubana hotel on 14^th anniversary of the 1997 bombing which killed Fabio di Celmo

Two days later, RATB joined thousands of representatives of Cuba’s grassroots organisations, cultural organisations, military, foreign diplomats, foreign students and Cuban workers in a cultural event to honour the Cuban Five, whose poems and letters were put to music. President of Cuba’s National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, condemned the conditions imposed on Rene Gonzalez’s ‘supervised release’ and pointed out that the case of the Cuban Five proves the US government is complicit with terrorist groups in Miami.

Rock around the Blockade joins international condemnation of this cruel and unusual punishment meted out to Rene and the Cuban people who are waiting to welcome him home. We demand the full, immediate and unconditional release of the Cuban Five and the trial of those terrorist plotters and supporters in the United States, including all those in US government agencies.

Helen Yaffe

This interview appears in the October/November 2011 issue of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!

Ernesto Freire Cazañas

Since the mid-2000s, Cuba’s revolutionary government has introduced numerous measures to recover from the economic crisis of the 1990s and improve the efficiency of Cuban socialism. This process has intensified since 2008 to deal with economic and financial problems aggravated by the international crisis. Among these policies are changes to the employment structure. In September 2010, the Cuban Trade Union Confederation (CTC) announced plans to transfer one million unproductive state sector workers into alternative employment between 2011 and 2015; half of them by March 2011. Alternative employment includes understaffed areas of the state sector, cooperatives and self-employment. These changes were further detailed in the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, distributed and debated nationwide from November 2010, modified according to popular demand at the Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) (see FRFI 221) in April 2011 and approved in the National Assembly in July.

 

Cuba’s workforce is around 5.2 million. Prior to the employment changes, 800,000, or 15.4% of the workforce already worked in the non-state sector. Most of these are in agricultural cooperatives whose production features in the central plan; they sell a proportion to the state. Just 140,000 Cubans or 2.7% of the total workforce were self-employed. By the end of August 2011, self-employment licences had risen to 330,000, or 6.1% of workers. While this figure will rise, two-thirds of the ‘surplus’ state workers are expected to transfer into cooperative employment; a process that has barely yet begun. The following is an interview carried out by HELEN YAFFE for Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! in Havana in mid-September 2011, with ERNESTO FREIRE CAZAÑAS, member of the National Council of the CTC and head of the International Relations Department, about the changes to the employment structure and the CTC’s role. The interview demonstrates that Cuban trade unions, which are independent and financed through membership subscriptions, have a real and decisive influence on developments and policies in Cuba.

 

Helen Yaffe: The CTC announcement of September 2010 stated that 500,000 surplus workers in the state sector would be transferred to alternative employment by March 2011. However, this process was halted by the CTC. What were the principal reasons for this?

 

Ernesto Freire Cazañas: This is a gradual process that cannot be hurried. The objective of restructuring the workforce is the rational use of human and material resources. We have to ensure that no worker is left helpless through a policy of ‘shock therapy’. Rather, we want to use their work skills, knowledge and technical-professional training in the areas where we have a deficit in the country’s labour force. The CTC made that announcement to inform our people and the world that, along with the 18 national trade unions affiliated to the CTC and the National Association of Innovators and Rationalisers, we agreed with the policy approved by the leadership of the country; that the workers understand and support the measures taken to improve the economy of the country, which is the economy of the workers, the peoples’ economy, based on the socialist principle of distribution and of justice and social equity.

 

The CTC and the trade unions are the guarantors of this process; we guard against violations of the procedures established for the restructuring of the workforce. When the administration proposes that a person should stay or not stay in the work centre, they consult with a committee inside that organisation which advises the administrative director. The committee is composed of one administrative representative, one trade union representative and five other workers elected in the work-centre Assembly [by the whole workforce]. They are responsible for ensuring that the measures taken are fair.

 

Workers who feel that there has been a violation of the process have the right to complain against the decision. In the first instance they complain to another workplace organisation, the Grass Roots Labour Justice panels, which are also composed of an administrative representative, a trade union representative and three to five workers elected in the Assembly. They make a public analysis of whether or not the worker is right. Workers who reject their decision can make a claim at the labour courts at the municipal (borough) level and from then on the case is considered in the courts via legal channels.

 

Workers can also complain through the trade unions, in the workplace, at the municipal level and at the provincial level. We are representing people who do not agree with the decisions made. Many workers come here [CTC national offices] for clarification or to complain about measures taken. Regarding the alternative employment, this is chosen by the workers themselves.

 

Before this process began, it was discussed in more than 80,000 Assemblies organised with all the work collectives to explain the necessity of these measures and that no-one would be left without employment. Anyone who does not agree with their proposed redeployment has a period of salary guaranteed and if they decide not to take the alternative work, they can be registered with the municipal work organisation to see what work comes up.

 

HY: How is the CTC ensuring that non-state sector workers join trade unions?

 

EFC: Many of these workers, especially in the new cooperatives, will continue as members of the trade union they were in as state employees. In Cuba, trade unions organise according to branch or sector. For example, the health trade union includes everyone from hospital porter, to emergency doctors and the minister of health. With the new laws approved for self-employment, those individuals will organise according to the trade union branch in which they are engaged; those who sell coffee or own ‘paladares’ (home-based restaurants) join the trade union for gastronomic trades, those who drive bicycle taxis, or private taxis, join the transport trade union, and so on. A percentage of those with licences for self-employment are also already affiliated to a trade union. It will be those who had no official employment that the CTC will work with to encourage them to join the trade unions.

 

HY: What can you say about the relationship within the trade unions between state-sector workers and non-state workers?

 

EFC: The CTC and the trade unions face a challenge, especially in terms of the form and method of representing and defending workers’ rights.  With workers in a social entity or in a closed centre we can call a meeting or an assembly for everyone to attend. But we cannot tell non-state workers to leave their business, or stop working, to come to the trade union. We are studying ways to address their problems and to represent them. These workers have many institutional relationships through the payment of taxes, work licences, public health for their sanitary licence, physical planning, People’s Power assemblies and so on. The trade unions’ role is to represent them in their problems and concerns in relation to those other institutions and the new mechanisms. This is a process of continuous improvement and, as you saw a few days ago, a set of modifications have already been made to bring more flexibility to self-employment.[1] Through our contact with non-state workers we are aware of their concerns; about taxes, inspections and fines. We have been transmitting these concerns to the government. Our experience and that of those other institutions has led to the decision to introduce greater flexibility in self-employment legislation.

 

Self-employment will not be introduced in the main branches of the Cuban economy, nor in health, education, the armed forces or domestic security. Self-employment will exist in secondary areas, to complement the national economy.

 

HY: How can you ensure that workers employed by those in self-employment have fair representation and protection when they are in the same trade unions as their employers?

 

EFC: This is not new in Cuba. In the state sector all workers are affiliated to the same trade unions. In order to prevent exploitation of man by man, one of the 181 activities [areas in which self-employment is now permitted] is ‘contracted worker’. That means that these workers have an employment licence, have the right to join a union, social security, and the right to a salary as a contracted worker that cannot be less than double the minimum state salary for this employment. They cannot be exploited or made to work 14 or 15 hours. The trade union is here to prevent violations of their rights. All Cuban workers are protected by collective bargaining agreements. This protection applies to workers who have a licence, not someone pulled off the street. We tell non-state workers that for us to represent them they have to be within the law. If they sell stolen goods or hide their income, we cannot represent them because this is a workers’ state and this damages the workers themselves. That is money that is used to provide the free education that their children receive. This society provides a set of free universal benefits and non-state workers receive all the same benefits as state workers.

 

HY: Is the promotion of self-employment and cooperatives considered to be a temporary measure to deal with the current economic difficulties, or is this considered as a model for socialist transition?

 

EFC: This is here to stay, not to be reversed, but to go forwards. Socialism is a process and our system is being improved every day. When the political leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and the Council of Ministers approves a set of agreements they express their political will, but for these to become policy they must be approved in the National Assembly. I am referring to the legislative character of the process. The political will for these measures was expressed in the spring. Now they are being applied; through laws and resolutions, published in the Gaceta Oficial [legislative publication]. Then they become constitutional and sustainable.

 

As stated in the introduction of the Guidelines [for economic and social policy], in Cuba state control of the main branches of the economy will co-exist with other models of production. There will be state enterprises, private capital, ‘usufructos’ [farmers on rent-free land loaned by the state], self-employment, people who rent rooms, artists and so on. It will be improved as the economy develops.

 

This process cannot be understood in isolation. Cuba has a huge dependence on foreign trade. What happens internationally in terms of economic crisis, financial crisis and so on, affects Cuba. We need to substitute imports, for which prices have risen. We are developing new capacity in the agricultural sector. If we can substitute imports we can use this money for social investments. The US blockade has been intensified. US President Obama has declared he wants to continue squeezing Cuba until the regime falls. The ‘ferocious wolf’, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman of the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Cuba should be attacked as Libya was. Look what they are doing to our five heroes, prisoners of imperialism. [2]

 

HY: In Britain most of the ‘socialist’ organisations claim that Cuban workers have no power and that there are no independent trade unions. What would you say to explain the role of the CTC and trade unions in Cuba?

 

EFC: I would like them to visit Cuba and speak to the workers. Cuban trade unions emerge, develop and strengthen in the workplace. Cuban trade unions do not exist in cafes or in the internet, nor are they virtual. We have the principle that every workplace organises a union branch. The vast majority of workers are in unions although there is no obligation to join one. Our statutes state that ten workers can set up a union branch. Where there are not ten workers a trade union committee or delegation can be set up.

 

Under socialism the trade union has two main functions. The first is universal for any trade union, the representation and defence of workers’ rights. In the case of socialist Cuba, we have another mission; to actively participate in the effort to develop the economy of the country, which is the economy of the people. We have trade unions of the workers, for the workers and by the workers.

---

[1] Announced on 12 September 2011, these modifications include permitting the hiring of workers in all 181 self-employment activities permitted, limited and specific tax exemptions and the exemption from social security payments for those of pension age.

[2] The Cuban Five: imprisoned in the US since 1998 for combating terrorism against Cuba. See FRFI 222.

 

 

Below is an extract from a review of Che Guevara: the economics of revolution by Helen Yaffe and Fidel & Che: A Revolutionary Friendship, by Simon Reid-Henry, written by Richard Gott for the London Review of Books. They did not publish Gott's review.

Fidel & Che: A Revolutionary Friendship, by Simon Reid-Henry, 467 pp., Sceptre, £20.

Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution, by Helen Yaffe, 368 pp., Palgrave, £17.99. 

 

Reviewed by Richard Gott

Revolutions always throw up intriguing leaders. Extraordinary figures emerged in France in the 1790s: Robespierre, Danton, St Just, Napoleon; a breathtaking array of talent. The Russian Revolution was dominated by a galaxy of originality and enterprise: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin. Democratic politics in any given decade, by contrast, have little comparable to offer. Leftist historians were once hostile to the idea that the past was peopled by “great men” (and they are usually men), yet in recent years the likes of David Starkey have revived this conservative notion with some commercial success. While it remains true that revolutions are lavish in their production of revolutionaries - when one falls there is always another to take their place - you have to be singularly unromantic not to acknowledge that history might have had a different flavour if, say, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had both died on a Cuban beach in December 1956 when they landed from the good ship Granma. Doubtless the downfall of Batista was made inevitable by the collapse in the sugar price, but Cuba as a global phenomenon would never have acquired its glamorous sparkle without the photogenic and charismatic characteristics of the early leaders of its revolution.

  Entering well-trodden paths, Simon Reid-Henry has had the bright idea of writing a dual biography of these two men during the decade that they spent together. It is such a clever and obvious thought that it is surprising that no one has tried it before. Bertram Wolfe did it with his “Three Who Made The Revolution”, published in 1948, a riveting account of the Russian Revolution seen through the activities of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, but no one had previously used the same technique with the more limited caste of Castro and Guevara. The result is a persuasive revisionist interpretation of the Cuban revolution, that is both scholarly and accessible. Based on his familiarity with the existing published sources in several languages, and a smattering of additional material from various archives, Reid-Henry enters boldly into the minds of his two protagonists with a high degree of probability…

  Castro grew uncertain whether he really understood or approved of Che’s economic strategy, conducted from the ministry of industries yet increasingly challenged by other government institutions with economic responsibilities. The problems that arose, sometimes referred to as “the great debate”, concerned several different issues: the relative importance accorded to industry over agriculture, the question of moral over material incentives, and the suitability of the imported Soviet economic model.

  A full account of this important but abstruse conflict is contained in a book by Helen Yaffe, Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). This hitherto unknown story, based on wide research in the archives and interviews with dozens of Guevara’s surviving collaborators, is a genuinely original contribution to our knowledge of the internal workings of the Cuban revolution. Guevara perceived the Soviet model of economic development, doubtless useful in the 1920s when it was first formulated, to be unsuitable for the 1960s. He was more interested in the organisation of contemporary American capitalist concerns, of which Cuba already had some experience, indeed rather more than the Soviet Union had had. If the future of socialism lay with state capitalism, Guevara argued, then maybe more could be learned from America than from Russia…

  Fidel and Che got on well together, they saw eye to eye on many important issues, their different talents complemented each other. Yet they were very different. Yaffe has a revealing anecdote about their relationship. In October 1961, Che noted Fidel’s “wonderful ability” to get close to people and to establish direct contact with the masses. In comparison, he told a meeting of his workforce at the ministry of industries, “I do not know a single cabaret, or a cinema, or a beach... practically never have I been in a family home in Havana, I don’t know how the Cuban people live, I only know statistics, numbers or summaries...” The bleak austerity of Che’s revolutionary outlook and practice places him rather closer to Robespierre than to Danton.

  Reid-Henry’s book tells its story more briefly than most of the mammoth biographies that have appeared of both Fidel and Che, and for that we should be grateful. But it has its weaknesses. It follows previous histories in concentrating on the early period of guerrilla warfare (it takes 200 pages, half the book, to get to 1959), and then is obliged to pass through the early years of the revolutionary project, both interesting and conflictive, at quite a gallop. He writes with the psychological insight of a novelist, yet some may cavil at the purple passages where he allows his imagination to run beyond the available documentation. He is often negligent with dates, and he can be cavalier when introducing and abandoning some crucial characters.

  From our present-day perspective he somewhat underplays the role of Fidel’s brother, now Cuba’s president. Raúl Castro, notably uncharismatic, was always a leading player, not least in his close military collaboration with the Soviet Union over thirty years. Yet he never sought or attracted the limelight, and he remains as shadowy in this book as in earlier biographies of his brother and of Guevara. Eventually he became the man in charge. For a book about Cuba, “Three who Made the Revolution” might also have been a good title.

On 6 May 2011, I had the privilege of speaking alongside the Cuban ambassador to London, Esther Armenteros, First Secretary of the Venezuelan embassy in London, Henry Suarez, Professor Tony Kapcia, director of the Cuban Research Forum and Alex Von Tunzelmann, author of Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean, at a Rock Around the Blockade event to celebrate the 50 anniversary of the victory at Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) and the declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution.

An edited video of the event appears below and a full report of the event can be seen here:

 

 

 

 

In April 2011, after an extensive national consultation process, the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) approved a set of ‘guidelines’ for updating the economic model in Cuba. This followed an announcement by the Cuban Trade Unions Confederation about planned changes to the employment structure in Cuba , including the transfer of a million surplus state-sector workers into new employment.

Click below to download a powerpoint presentation I gave at an RATB educational meeting on 22 May. Ali Erkaslan introduced a discussion about the CCP Congress and I presented the political economy context to these reforms.

Download Understanding developments in Cuba May 2011

'If you understand Yaffe’s book in the context of another human attempt to advance caring as a motivation rather than greed, there is much to be learned from a fair reading.'

http://nationdiscussion.ning.com/group/socialistgroup/forum/topics/economics-of-revolution-a-book

By Brad Lorton

Here is my unprinted response to the whole-page article about recent developments in Cuba which appeared in the Financial Times, 25 April 2011: 

With typical journalistic hyperbole you claim that changes to the employment structure in Cuba amount to ‘a structural adjustment so harsh it would make even advocates of the “shock therapy” meted out in the former Soviet bloc wince’ (John Rathbone and Marc Frank, ‘Cuba Libre?’ 25 April 2011). You are mistaken.

Cuba’s workforce is 5.2 million. The one million workers identified as ‘surplus’ or unproductive will not be abandoned as prescribed by neoliberal ‘shock therapy’, but given the option to take up employment in agriculture (state, cooperative or private), construction or industry, join cooperatives or enter self-employment. State institutions must provide these alternatives. Their sluggishness in doing so prompted Cuban trade unions to demand (and achieve) a delay in restructuring.

Prior to the changes, 15.4% of Cubans worked in the non-state sector, most in agricultural cooperatives whose production features in the central plan. Just 140,000 Cubans or 2.7% of the total workforce were self-employed. Add the 200,000 new licenses issued since October 2010 and still less than 7% of Cubans will be self-employed, all in non strategic or marginal occupations, from pet-grooming to trades.

Cuba’s ‘bloated’ payrolls are the legacy of the crisis following the collapse of the Soviet bloc which exacerbated the US blockade. The loss of 80% of trade and investments saw GDP plummet 35%. It was politically and socially important for the government to maintain employment, even as production contracted and infrastructure ground-down. The correlation between salaries and productivity was lost. Then-President Fidel Castro began introducing measures to redress this in 2005, the year that Cuban GNP recovered its pre-crisis levels. He set Cuba on the path to achieving ‘the dream of everyone being able to live on their salary or on their adequate pension’ (Fidel, 17 November 2005), echoing Marx’s vision that under socialism ‘the individual producer receives back from society – after deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it.’

Fidel revealed the long-term plan of eliminating the ration book, undermining the parasitic layer in Cuban society, those who can work but won’t and announced that state subsidies would be reduced, while medical provision, education and so on would remain free and universal. Measures announced by Raul Castro consolidate that process. It is erroneous to assert that Raul has a ‘desire to assert his differences from Fidel’.

The introduction to the reform document approved by the Cuban Communist Party Congress, which you describe as introducing a ‘more market-orientated system’ states that ‘planning will be supreme, not the market.’ Following public debates about the proposed reforms in the three months prior to the Congress modifications were made most of the proposals.

Behind the current measures is a long-run improvement in the Cuban economy, coupled with the short-term balance of payment crisis since 2007/8, resulting from world food and fuel price rises, three devastating hurricanes and the fall in Cuba’s export earnings.

In the former USSR, once the profit motive becoming the determinant of production and distribution, state welfare disintegrated. In ten years, life expectancy fell by 15 years. Conversely, during Cuba’s crisis in the 1990s the proportion of GDP spent on social programs increased by 34%. The number of doctors increased 76% and day-care centres for older people by 107%; worth considering as we brace ourselves for the dismantling of welfare provision in Britain. Cuba resisted the neoliberal option during a far more severe crisis in the 1990s. It will continue to resist ‘shock therapy’ today.

By Helen Yaffe. Originally posted here on 22 April 2011
Photo: Ismael Francisco

The Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) took place in Havana between the 16 and 19 April 2011, marking the 50^th anniversary of two historic events: the declaration of the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution on 16 April 1961 and the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, within 72 hours, on the 19 April 1961.

The principal function of the Congress was to discuss, amend and approve the Draft Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution and then to oversee their implementation. Distributed nationally in early November 2010, these guidelines contained 291 proposals for consolidating or amending social and economic policy in twelve broad categories:

*economic management

*macroeconomic policies (including monetary, exchange, fiscal and pricing policies)

*external economic relations

*investment

*science, technology and innovation

*social policy (education, health, sports, culture, social security, employment and wages)

*agro-industry

*industry and energy

*tourism

*transport

*construction, housing and water resources

*commerce

The aim is to update and improve the efficiency of the socialist Revolution in meeting contemporary challenges.

The introduction of the guidelines affirm ‘the principle that only socialism is capable of overcoming the difficulties and preserving the conquests of the Revolution, and that in the updating of the economic model, planning will be supreme, not the market.’ Socialism, it states, means ‘equality of rights and opportunities for the citizens, not egalitarianism. Work is both a right and a duty; the personal responsibility of every citizen, and must be remunerated according to its quantity and quality.’

The short-term aim of economic policy is to eliminate the balance of payments deficit, increase national income, substitute imports with internal production, improve economic efficiency, work motivation and income distribution, ‘and create the necessary infrastructural and productive conditions to permit the transition to a higher stage of development’. The long-term aim is ‘food and energy self-sufficiency, an efficient use of human potential, a higher level of competitiveness in traditional production areas, and the development of new forms of the production of goods and services of higher added value.’

In an example of real democracy, every Cuban was given access to this document and then invited to participate in an open debate about its content. Between 1 December 2010 and the 28 February 2011, 163,000 meetings were organised by work or study centres, political and residential groups. Out of a total population of 11.2 million, almost nine million people participated in these meetings (it was possible to participate more than once), over three million comments were made about the draft guidelines. The CCP membership is around 800,000 but these meetings were open to every member of society, regardless of political or organisational affiliation.

This was no mere symbolism or public relations exercise. Every opinion stated was registered, analysed and organised into 780,000 distinct recommendations. The document was subsequently amended. In his inaugural speech to the CCP Congress, Raul Castro announced that 16 guidelines had been moved to other points, 94 remained unchanged, 181 were modified in content and 36 new guidelines were incorporated. 45 proposals advocating the concentration of property were not included because they ‘openly contradicted the essence of socialism’ (Raul, 17 April).

Over half of all proposals, Raul reported, related to the chapters on social and macroeconomic policies: ‘the highest number of proposals pertained to guidelines number 162, dealing with the removal of the ration book; 61 and 62, on the pricing policy; 262, on passengers’ transportation; 133, on education; 54, related to the establishment of a single currency; and, 143, on the quality of health care services.’ The essence of these details is not the numbers involved, but what they reveal about a revolutionary leadership which has its finger on the pulse of the people. 68% of the guidelines were modified following consultation with the Cuban masses.

The CCP Congress was attended by almost 1,000 delegates who worked in five commissions to discuss the guidelines and the populations’ recommendations. As a result, a further 86 guidelines were modified and two added. The now 313 guidelines will be submitted to the National Assembly of Peoples’ Power for legislative ratification. A Standing Committee will be set up to monitor the implementation and adjustments of the guidelines over a period of five years and as objective circumstances change. The Central Committee will analyse progress in its plenary meetings at least twice a year. Raul warned that the process must be undertaken: ‘without haste or improvisation’ and always maintaining the support and understanding of the Cuban masses.

Delegates voted on membership of the Party’s Central Committee, Politburo and Secretariat. The Central Committee was reduced in size from 150 to 115 members and the Politburo from 24 to 15. The Secretariat retains seven members pending the Party’s National Conference on 28 January 2012 (birthday in 1853 of Cuban independence hero José Martí), which will ‘objectively and critically’ analyse the CCP’s work with a view to improving its political performance and the training of cadre. Elected as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CCP, Raul described his ‘principal mission and purpose in life’ as defending, preserving and continuing to improve socialism and never allowing the return of the capitalist regime (19 April).

Another resolution passed at the Congress was presented by head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon to strengthen the institutions of the Peoples’ Power system of participatory democracy, giving more control to the local assemblies. This implies further changes in the political and administrative divisions of the country – a process which began on 1 January 2011 when the Havana Province was divided into two new provinces: Artemisa and Mayabeque.

Raul confirmed that legislation is being formulated for the ‘purchase and sale of housing and cars…expanding the limits of fallow land to be awarded in usufruct [rent-free short term loan] to those agricultural producers with outstanding results and the granting of credits to self-employed workers and to the population at large.’ This should be understood in the context of his comment that ‘the concentration of property’ cannot be permitted because it ‘openly contradicts the essence of socialism’. Raul also reassured the population that the ration book would not be removed ‘by decree, all at once, before creating the proper conditions to do so, which means undertaking other transformations of the economic model with a view to increasing labour efficiency and productivity in order to guarantee stable levels of production and supplies of basic goods and services accessible to all citizens but no longer subsidised.’ Socialism would never use the ‘shock therapy’ of neo-liberalism, he said. ‘The social welfare system is being reorganised to ensure a rational and deferential support to those who really need it. Instead of massively subsidising products as we do now, we shall gradually provide for those people lacking other support.’ (17 April).

Other key proposals contained in Raul’s report and approved by Congress were:

1. Limit leadership roles to two terms of five years. This will open access for younger Cubans to leadership positions and strengthen the institutions of the Revolution.

Fidel Castro supported this proposal with his reflection on 18 April which stated: ‘The Party leadership should be the sum of the best political talents of our people, capable of confronting the policy of the empire that jeopardises the human species…The duty of this new generation of revolutionary men and women is becoming an example of modest leaders, studious and tireless fighters for socialism. In the barbaric era of consumer societies, to overcome the capitalist production system that fosters and promotes selfish interests among human beings is, no doubt, a difficult challenge.’

2. Increasing the proportion of women, black and mixed-race people in leadership positions. 48 of the newly-elected Central Committee are women who now make up 42%, three times the previous figure. Black and mixed race people are up to 36 – increasing the proportion by 10%  to 30% (NB: around 35% of Cuban population are black or mixed race). Raul reported that:

‘The Party has been working for months toward this end with the objective of submitting a list of candidates that takes into account the necessity to have a fair representation of gender and race in the Central Committee membership…These are the children of the working class; they belong to the poorest segments of the population and have had a politically active life in students’ organizations, the Union of Young Communists and the Party. Most of these youths accumulate 10, 15 or 20 years of experience working at the grassroots level without abandoning their jobs in the professions they studied, and the majority were proposed by their respective Party cells during the process leading up to the Congress.’ (19 April)

3. Greater separation between the CCP (political and ideological leadership) and the government (management, administrative and legislative functions)

‘The fortitude of the Party basically lies in its moral authority, its influence on the masses and the trust of the people…The fortitude of the State lies in its material authority, which consists of the strength of the institutions responsible for demanding from everyone to comply with the legal regulations it enacts. The damage caused by the confusion of these two concepts is manifested, firstly, in the deterioration of the Party’s political work and, secondly, in the decline of the authority of the state and the government as officials cease feeling responsible for their decisions’ (Raul, 17 April).

4. The Cuban media has the role of clarifying debates and producing ‘objective, continuous and critical reports on the progress of the updating of the economic model’, breaking ‘the habit of describing the national reality in pretentious high-flown language or with excessive formality’ and ‘boring, improvised or superficial reports’. The media’s role is to stimulate public debate.

In his closing speech to the Congress Raul pointed out that:

‘Cuba is one of the few countries in the world in which conditions exist to transform its economic model and leave the crisis behind while avoiding social trauma. First of all because our patriotic people know that their force stems from their monolithic unity, the justice of their cause and military training as well as from their high level of education and pride in their history and revolutionary roots. We shall advance resolutely despite the US blockade and the adverse conditions prevailing in the international market, which among other things, limit Cuba’s access to financial sources and expose it to the oil prices spiral that impinges on the prices of the rest of the raw materials and food.’

The annual plan finalised in December 2010 must be adjusted because the cost of imports for 2011 has risen by $800 million as a result of rising international prices.

Raul concluded that: ‘Our brothers and sisters in the Third World, especially those from Latin America and the Caribbean, who are making great efforts to transform the legacy of centuries of colonial domination, should know that they can always count on our solidarity and support… [F]raternal greetings also go to the communist parties and other progressive forces all over the planet fighting restlessly with the deep conviction that a better world is possible.’

New measures and legislation will be announced in Cuba in the coming months as the guidelines are implemented. Although there will be no surprises, we can expect these to be met by sensationalist exclamations about the advent of capitalism from the enemies of Cuban socialism. Cuba’s revolutionary people, lead by the CCP, will progress with patience and resolution to improve the efficiency of their system; maintaining the principles of socialism, while adapting, with creativity and innovation, to the challenging context of the global capitalist crisis.

Helen Yaffe

First published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! April/May 2011, No. 220

‘The majority of Cubans support Castro…There is no effective opposition…The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support [from the government] is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.’ Lester D Mallory, US government official, 6 April 1960.

‘Our objective is to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba’ Livingston Merchant, US government official, 14 January 1960.

‘[W]e see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans…Despite claims that they represent "thousands of Cubans”, we see little evidence of such support.’ Jonathan Farrar, Head of the US Interest Section in Havana, 15 April 2009.

Posada Carriles marches in support of the Ladies in White, 25 March 2011, Miami

During a state visit to Chile on 21 March 2011, US President Obama announced: ‘we’ll continue to seek ways to increase the independence of the Cuban people, who I believe are entitled to the same freedom and liberty as everyone else in this hemisphere.’ The ways sought by the US administration have been amply exposed since January 2011 through two court cases and by four Cuban agents. US policy has evolved, adapted and expanded, but the objective has remained unchanged since 1960 - the destruction of Cuba’s socialist revolution. Helen Yaffe reports.

While the US blockade has attempted ‘to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government’ (Lester D Mallory, US government official, 6 April 1960),[1] the programme of fostering internal dissent was kept secret from 1959 to 1990. However: ‘In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the financial and logistical support to Cuban dissidents became public and was integrated into US law’ (Salim Lamrani, Znet, 15 March 2011).

Programmes were run by the CIA until 1987 when Cuban authorities used evidence from 27 undercover agents to expose illegal activities and the use of diplomatic status as a cover for CIA operations. Subsequently, government-funded organisations have been used to promote internal opposition: the US Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Freedom House. US imperialism’s ‘unwavering support for human rights, democracy, and the open market system’ (Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba website) is backed by serious money. US President Bush’s administration of 2001 to 2008 ‘invested’ $166 million in pursuing capitalist restoration. The Obama administration has allocated $60 million to this end from 2009 to 2011.

The innovation since 2008 has been the use of private contractors commissioned to carry out destabilisation programmes in Cuba. Projects and funds have been filtered through European NGOs which, under the guise of defending ‘human rights’ and promoting ‘democracy’, serve the imperialist war against socialist Cuba.

Recent European funding recipients include:[2]

Polish Lech Walesa Institute - provides access to technological resources and training to Cuban counter-revolutionaries and shares experience of the collapse of the socialist bloc and the so-called ‘colour revolutions’.

Serbian OTNOP – youth opposition movement set up with funds from NED in 1998, it also receives funds from USAID and promotes ‘peaceful marches’ among Cuban youth and artists.

Czech People in Need and Slovakian People in Peril – provide technology and training, organise oppositional seminars and international support for the tiny Cuban opposition. People in Need received $200,000 from USAID in 2010.

Slovakian Pontis Foundation – provides access to technology and communications apparatus, prepares ‘leaders’ for transition and gives money to the families of opposition prisoners. Pontis had received $108,000 from the IRI leading up to September 2008.

Spanish Solidarity with Cuba – Sends telecoms equipment to the island for subversive activities, provides personnel and technical advice and cultivates counter-revolutionaries as bloggers, journalists and ‘independent’ trade unionists. Between September 2008 and December 2009 they received $615,000 from IRI.

Imperialist hypocrisy is astonishing! First, for 50 years the US has tried to economically suffocate Cuba through the illegal blockade, which has cost Cuba $236 billion. Then it invests millions of dollars in creating an internal opposition to the revolutionary government. Second, having obstructed Cuban telecommunications through the US blockade, prohibiting Cuba from connecting to the Caribbean optic fibre cable circuit, the imperialists turn internet access into a tool for creating the impression of an internal opposition in Cuba and to encourage such an opposition to emerge.

Two court cases

Luis Posada Carriles – the CIA’s own terrorist

On 10 January the trial of CIA-trained terrorist Luis Posada Carriles began in El Paso, Texas.  He is being prosecuted by the US government on 11 charges of perjury, obstructing justice and false testimony, accused of lying to immigration officials about his entry into the US in March 2005.

Carriles has been on the CIA payroll on and off since 1959. He was imprisoned in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cuban civilian aeroplane in 1976 which killed 73 people, and in Panama for the plan to blow up a university auditorium during the visit and speech by Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000. He escaped from prison in Venezuela and was pardoned by the outgoing President of Panama. In 1998, New York Times journalist Ana Bardach cited Carriles as boasting about his responsibility for the bombing campaign against Cuban hotels in 1997 which claimed the life of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo. ‘We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come any more’, Carriles told Bardach. ‘The Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby.’ He also said: ‘The CIA taught us everything. They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb trained us in acts of sabotage.’ In El Paso, however, Carriles is not on trial for terrorism, but for lying to immigration officials.

The prosecution case ended in late March after calling 23 witnesses. Almost daily updates are provided by Cuban-born, Washington-based lawyer Jose Pertierra (see http://en.cubadebate.cu). Pertierra represents Venezuela’s extradition order against Carriles who became a Venezuelan citizen while working as a ‘paid asset’ of the CIA in Venezuela from 1968 to 1976. The US has refused to extradite Carriles to Venezuela or Cuba for trial, claiming he would face torture in those countries. Pertierra responded: ‘The only evidence I have seen of torture in Cuba comes from the US military base at Guantanamo Bay.’ The real issue is the information which Carriles could reveal about his work for the CIA which, in addition to terrorism against Cuba, includes the dirty war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Carriles has threatened to release his memoirs if anything happens to him.

Alan Gross – mercenaries’ mercenary

On 12 March, after a court case involving ten witnesses, nine experts and material and documentary evidence, Cuban judges found US citizen Alan Gross guilty of subversion against the state and the revolution and sentenced him to 15 years in gaol. Entrepreneur and mercenary Alan Gross was contracted by the US company Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), which in 2008 had won a $6 million contract with USAID to ‘advance democracy’ in Cuba. This involved taking communications equipment, satellite phones and laptops with internet access into Cuba to promote subversion whilst posing as tourists. At the time of Gross’s arrest in Havana on 4 December 2009 he had travelled to Cuba as a tourist five times in nine months. Gross had received similar previous contracts with USAID to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq. His employer, DAI, has won more than $2.7 billion in USAID contacts from 2000 to the third quarter of 2009.

Cuba’s Reasons – four agents reveal their work

On the evening of Saturday 26 February, Cuban television broadcast ‘Pawns of Imperialism’, an episode in the series Razones de Cuba (Cuba’s Reasons),[3] detailing close links between the internal counterrevolution, the right-wing exile community and the US government. Evidence of these links was provided by two Cuban state agents who had infiltrated the ranks of the so-called ‘dissident’ movement. The first was Moises Rodriguez, who spent 20 years posing as a counter-revolutionary, working closely with the US Interest Section (USIS) in Havana. The second was Carlos Serpa, who spent ten years posing as an ‘independent journalist’ for Radio Martí and numerous blogs and websites. As President of the Union of Free Journalists in Cuba, an organisation without members, Serpa worked closely with the Ladies in White (relatives of the US-paid opposition imprisoned in 2003), accompanying their processions through Havana.

Rodriguez received instructions directly from functionaries of the USIS, who sent him to the US to meet Carriles and informed him of plans to destabilise Cuba. Both agents explain how the USIS supervises the counterrevolution and had evidence that the Ladies in White receive payment for their activities from another known terrorist Santiago Alvarez, a subordinate of Carriles (see Cuban agents prove US finances dissidents 28 february 2011.html). On the programme Serpa demonstrates how easy it is to launch a media campaign against Cuba. He rings CIA-founded Radio Marti and tells them that he was arrested and detained by Cuban police who confiscated his camera and memory stick. One hour and a half later the ‘news’ is broadcast on Radio Marti with no attempt to verify the claim. The lie becomes fact.

In the second episode, ‘Truths and Principles’, broadcast on 7 March, Dalexi Gonzalez, a Cuban engineer in computer sciences explains how in 2007 he was contacted by a internet security specialist, who visited the island as a tourist and trained him in encrypted communication. In 2008 he was given four satellite antennas camouflaged as surfing boards to enable coded information to be transmitted, to facilitate the installation of clandestine networks serving as a parallel communications system to be used in attempts to fabricate a Cuban ‘uprising’. This is a strategy we have seen in Eastern Europe and more recently in Iran and North Africa.

In ‘Well Paid Lies’, broadcast on 14 March, Frank Carlos Vazquez, explains how soon after setting up the Independent Cultural Centre in 1998 to promote the work of young Cuban artists overseas, he was recruited by CIA officials working under diplomatic cover in Havana. They hoped to foster the emergence of a critical intelligentsia to oppose the government. Twice they organised and paid for him to travel to the US. ‘I met and had work sessions with the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley…we also met with different Latin American and Afro-American Congress people’, Vazquez said. For ten years Vazquez was informing the Cuban state about all their moves and proposals.

The programme ‘Cyberwars’, broadcast on 21 March, describes cyber-war as ‘waged using information, communications, algorithms and bytes. It’s the new form of invasion originated in the developed world.’ In 2009 ‘irregular warfare’ became official Pentagon doctrine and in 2010 the Pentagon approved a $90 billion budget for the US cyber-command. Cuba is a key target of these operations – along with Venezuela, China and Iran. 90,000 people are believed to be employed under the US cyber-war strategy, which includes obstructing the abilities of those countries to defend themselves through the internet. For example, in January 2011, Google removed the CubaDebate’s channel on YouTube, which it owns, eliminating more than 400 videos which had received 1.7 million hits over three years (see FRFI 219).

The documentary revealed the innovative way in which counter-revolutionaries ‘bloggers’ are paid - not via the USIS payroll or cash sent by Cuban exile groups. Instead their payment is awarded via international prizes from corporate agencies. Opposition blogger Yoanni Sanchez has received a total of $500,000 in this way. Film footage showed Yoanni Sanchez entering the US, Polish and Dutch embassies and chatting to a German diplomat and the CIA’s representative in Havana. There were also interviews with some of the hundreds of young Cuban bloggers who, supportive of the Revolution, do not receive prize money nor enjoy internet access in foreign embassies.

In broadcasting these documentaries the Cuban government has shown irrefutable photographic and documentary evidence that imperialist plans to destroy the socialist revolution continue. What also continues is the commitment from young Cubans who, in defence of the socialist Revolution, prefer to serve as agents of the revolutionary government than lackeys of imperialism – regardless of the material awards on offer. Cuba’s response to the counterrevolution is patient and intelligent. Aware of the opposition’s immense resources and its insidious plots, the government maintains direct communication with the Cuban people so that they are capable of knowing their enemies and defending their revolution.

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[1] 1960s quotes cited by Salim Lamrani, Znet, 15 March 2011.

[2] See ‘Los Caballos de Troya de la CIA’ in YouTube.

[3] These documentaries are available with English subtitles at http://www.youtube.com/user/razonesdecuba#p/a or via Rock around the Blockades website www.ratb.org.uk