Published in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 225 February/March 2012

Reporting on the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (CCP) of April 2011 and the approval of the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution we said: ‘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 the sensationalist exclamations about the advent of capitalism from the enemies of Cuban socialism’ (FRFI 221). This has indeed been the case with the bourgeois (and social democratic) media focusing on legislation implemented or anticipated to:

a) Permit the direct purchase/sale of privately-owned houses.

b) Permit the direct purchase/sale of privately-owned cars.

c) Authorise agricultural producers to sell direct to state-owned tourist entities (regulated under the national plan).

d) Provide loans from the state to

non-state workers, farmers and people who need to repair their homes (previously only farming cooperatives had access to loans).

e) Permit trade between state enterprises and workers in the non-state sector (using bank transfers, not cash payments).

f) Allow those planning to leave Cuba to transfer their home ownership to relatives or co-habitants.

The significance of these measures in introducing a free market has been overstated. In some cases they mean a return to previous regulations, for example, the public sale of privately-owned homes and of agricultural products by farmers.

Home-ownership was among the goals of the Revolution from the outset (see Kapur and Smith, Housing Policy in Castro’s Cuba, 2002). The 1960 Urban Reform Law converted half of urban tenants into homeowners. All homes built or distributed by the government after 1961 were assigned leases at no more than 10% of household income and ownership was transferred to the resident in between five and 20 years. Cubans were permitted to own one primary residence and one vacation home. While the pre-Revolution shanty-towns were cleared, from the early 1960s the US blockade created perpetual shortages of construction materials. Alongside state-housing construction, the government has promoted ‘self-help and mutual aid’ programmes, ‘microbrigades’ and ‘social brigades’ through which the Cuban people have contributed to resolving the populations’ housing problems. The 1984 Housing Law converted more leaseholders into homeowners, so that by the early 2000s, 85% of Cubans owned their homes. The 1984 Law also allowed short-term private rentals, low-interest bank loans to individuals to cover building-costs, and the selling and leasing of land and housing direct to buyers at free-market prices (not mediated through the state or carried out as a form of barter). The free market in housing was ended quickly however, and most private sales had to be made directly to the state.

In the late 1990s, the estimated cost of rehabilitating housing in Havana alone was $14 billion. In 2005, the housing shortage was registered at 500,000. Three powerful hurricanes in 2008 destroyed and damaged thousands of homes. In 2010, only 33,000 new homes were built, around two-thirds of them by the state. The new legislation, along with credits provided to individuals to repair or construct housing (see below), is the latest step in the government’s policy to achieve decent housing for all Cubans. Within one month of the new legislation 300 purchases of houses had been approved and over 25,000 new housing titles had been registered. While direct sales are permitted, the accumulation of property remains prohibited: point 3 of the Guidelines approved in April 2011forbids the concentration of property.

The point is that these are measures of expediency aimed at cutting bureaucracy and improving efficiency in distribution and productivity. It is conceivable that, as previously, some elements will be reversed as political economy conditions (domestic and global) change. These adjustments do not fundamentally change social relations in Cuba.

On 15 January, the government began to grant subsidies of up to 80,000 peso ($3,300) to pay for construction materials and labour for repairing or rehabilitating homes. This measure conforms to CCP guidelines 299 (to provide partial or full subsidies to those in need, without exceeding plans) and 173 (to eliminate undue gratuities and excessive subsidiaries, under the principle of compensating people in need and not providing subsidised products in a general way). Previously, the government paid for home repairs without regard to the recipient’s economic situation. This was inefficient; contributing to the country’s housing shortage and the potential for waste and corruption. Now this support will be targeted and more controlled. The principal beneficiaries of the subsidies will be families affected by catastrophes or natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, landslides and fires. Subsidies will also be provided for those in ‘vulnerable conditions’ or who ‘lack sufficient funds’ to pay for construction materials or labour. Recipients must use the subsidy for the specified job and the cheque will be paid directly to the retail outlet or the named self-employed construction worker. These subsidies will be financed from the revenue collected by the local government from the retail-sales of construction materials in each province.

In September 2010, the Cuban Trade Union Confederation 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, usufruct (loaned rent-free from the state) farms and self-employment. Cuba’s enemies claimed these workers were being sacked and abandoned. In reality, the idea was to remove workers from posts where they were surplus to requirements into alternative employment, enabling them to contribute towards the social product.

At the time of the announcement, 3% (157,000 workers) of Cuba’s 5.2 million labour force was self-employed. By late December 2011 still fewer than 7% of Cuban workers were self-employed (357,000). This is not a significant proportion of workers and they are located in non-strategic sectors of the economy. Most of them were occupied in goods and people transportation, the making and sale of food, renting out rooms, selling agricultural products – including from roadside carts (carretilleros), producing and selling household items, messengers/couriers and carpenters, or as contract workers. The almost three-fold rise in the number of carretilleros, from 5,679 in May 2011 to 16,454 in November 2011, reflects both the move from informal to formal employment (individuals legalising their unofficial occupations) and the increase in agricultural production.

It is important to note that 66% of those included in the total figure were officially unemployed prior to registering as self-employed; 16% are retirees and 18% were in the state sector. This demonstrates the policy’s success in bringing those in informal employment or unemployment into formal work where they are contributing to the social product, pay taxes and receive the protection afforded to all workers in Cuba. While this figure may rise as the surplus state sector workers are relocated, two-thirds of those workers are expected to transfer into cooperative employment, a process that is just beginning.

Cuba’s GDP growth in 2011 was 2.7%, short of the 3% predicted. Lower-than-planned food production forced Cuba to increase imports at high international prices. Total food imports cost $1.6 billion in 2011. The quantity of food imports are planned to decrease in 2012; however, given rising food prices, spending is not expected to fall. GDP growth for 2012 is planned at 3.4%. The Economic Plan and State Budget Law, which was approved during the National Assembly in late December, was analysed by workers in all workplaces in early 2012. Abel Yzquierdo Rodriguez, Minister of Economy and Planning explained the importance of that process: ‘so that workers know and share what’s relevant to their workplaces and so that they can play a decisive role in its implementation.’ 800 million peso ($33 million) has been earmarked for subsidies for low-income people, as part of the Budget Law for 2012.

Helen Yaffe

Infant mortality for 2011 was 4.9 infant deaths (up to one year old) per 1,000 live births, slightly up on last year (4.6), but the number of births was also up by 5,317. This marks the fourth year that Cuba’s infant mortality has been below 5 per 1,000 which, along with Canada, is the lowest in the Americas. Cuba is distinguished by the lack of disparity between regional results or between rural/urban results. In Cuba, this is achieved despite the criminal and genocidal US blockade.

This review was written for the New Left Project and published here:

Who Killed Che? How the CIA got away with murder, by Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith, OR Books, 2011

 

This book by two leading US civil rights lawyers provides both documentary evidence and a clear accessible narrative to clarify a number of disputed aspects about the life and death of Argentinian revolutionary, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, and the early years of the Cuban Revolution. The principal facts established are: 1) that Che did not leave Cuba in 1965 because of a split with Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban Revolution of 1959; 2) ‘that the US government, particularly its Central Intelligence Agency, had Che murdered, having secured the participation of its Bolivian client state’; and 3) that the Cuban’s foreign policy was independent of, and even antipathetic to the interests of the USSR.

These facts may not be controversial to supporters of the Cuban Revolution and those knowledgeable about US imperialism’s modus operandi in Latin America. However, as the authors point out, the idea that ‘the United States, and particularly the CIA, was not implicated in Che’s murder, has been accepted by almost every writer on the subject’. This includes the authors of the major biographies of Che published around the 30th anniversary of his execution in Bolivia in 1997; ‘none of these writers consider the CIA’s own admission that it had tried to assassinate Che, as well as Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, on various occasions when they were in Cuba’. Likewise, the notion of a split between Che and Fidel, and the crude caricature of Cuban internationalism as an instrument of USSR’s foreign policy, continue to be repeated by bourgeois and left commentators.

Applying their professional rigour, Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith have located, analysed and interpreted dozens of internal US government documentation, much of it previously unpublished, and used it to tell the story about how the CIA got away with Che’s murder. Most important, rather than expecting us to take their word for it, they have reprinted these documents so the reader can themselves access and evaluate their contents. This forms the most substantial section of the book, covering 110 pages, and the material is fascinating. The foreword of the book is written by Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba’s National Assembly of Peoples’ Power who affirms that ‘among the many ways that the American empire has used to preserve its dominance, suppression and manipulation of information stands out’, and praises the authors for their ‘determination to defend truth, adherence to the law, and freedom’.

In April 1965, Che Guevara left Cuba to join a secret mission of Cuban military assistance to the guerrilla struggle in the Congo. Even his closest collaborators in Cuba’s Ministry of Industries, where Che was Minister from 1961 until his departure, had no knowledge of his whereabouts. While they lamented his absence, none of them were surprised when he left; they were clear that he had conditioned his involvement with the revolutionary struggle in Cuba on an agreement that he would move on following victory. Ratner and Smith cite this agreement through Fidel’s recollections. During my own research in Cuba, Che’s closest compañeros testified that this remained his objective  after  January 1959. Tirso Saenz, a vice minister under Che told me: ‘Che set a personal example in everything – can you imagine him encouraging the guerrillas in Latin America but sitting back as a minister in Cuba smoking a cigar? He couldn’t do it. I personally heard Che several times saying “I will not die as a bureaucrat. I will die fighting on a mountain”.’  Guevara’s decision to renounce his position in the Cuban government and return to armed struggle, first in Africa and then in Latin America, is perhaps less striking than the fact that he stayed so long as part of the Revolution’s leadership in Cuba.

This did not stop the CIA from exploiting Che’s lack of public appearance by launching a campaign of misinformation; fostering speculation that Che had been imprisoned or even killed by Fidel Castro or the Soviets due to political differences or rivalry. ‘The truth is that there was no split’ assert Ratner and Smith. They back up their claim with reference to a CIA Intelligence Information Cable, ‘a document of historic significance’, summarising the content of discussions between Fidel Castro and the Soviet leadership in which the latter made clear the USSR’s strong objection to the Cuban support for guerrilla movements in Latin America and to not being informed of Che’s mission in Bolivia. Castro’s response was to affirm the right of every Latin American to contribute to the liberation of the continent and to accuse the USSR of:

‘having turned its back upon its own revolutionary tradition and of having moved to a point where it would refuse to support any revolutionary movement unless the actions of the latter contributed to the achievement of Soviet objectives, as contrasted to international communist objectives… Castro concluded by stating that regardless of the attitudes of the Soviet Union, Cuba would support any revolutionary movement which it considered as contributing to this objective [the liberation of mankind throughout the world]’.

As Ratner and Smith conclude on this issue ‘This document effectively puts to rest any questions regarding a split with Fidel or claims that Fidel did not support Che in Bolivia’.

The main focus of the book is Che’s guerrilla activity in Bolivia and the reaction of the Bolivian military and the US establishment, especially the CIA, to the guerrilla presence. The detailed narrative establishes the facts which led up to Che’s execution and confront the question of responsibility. ‘The history of who is responsible for his murder has heretofore not been understood accurately, especially in America, where it is commonly believed that the Bolivian military dictatorship had him killed. Documents which have recently been obtained from the US government lead to a different conclusion’. The authors attest to the US establishment’s moral and legal responsibility, despite the smokescreen of ‘plausible deniability’ provided by the CIA for Che’s murder.

Usefully, the book contextualises the assassination of Che within the framework of US ‘national security interets’ and the emergence of counterinsurgency as ‘a wholly new kind of strategy’ (President Kennedy, 1962) by US imperialism. President Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, adviser Walt Rostow and Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor, understood the threat implied by Che’s call to create ‘two, three, many Vietnams’, which would stretch US manpower and resources beyond its capabilities. Shifting from a policy of ‘massive retaliation’, they developed a strategy of ‘flexible response’ and ‘rapid deployment’ to destroy guerrilla groups before they were able to establish themselves. One year before Che arrived in Bolivia, McNamara testified before the US Senate that ‘the ability to concentrate our military power in a matter of days rather than weeks can make an enormous difference in the total force ultimately required and in some cases serves to halt aggression before it really gets started’.

The emergence of counterinsurgency strategy was the flip side of Alliance for Progress, a programme set up by the US government in 1961 officially to improve the economic and social conditions in Latin America. Recognising the poverty, exploitation and oppression which created the conditions for rebellion in Latin America, as in Cuba, the idea was to undermine the root causes of the emerging guerrilla movements. However: ‘Within ten years the US began reducing the loans, relying instead on overt military repression. The escalating violence included covert CIA activity, attempted assassinations, and the training of Latin American police and military for counterinsurgency. The murder of Che, who was the embodiment of revolutionary change, was a critical part of this’. US officials stated at that time ‘Che Guevara’s death was a crippling – perhaps fatal – blow to the Bolivian guerrilla movement and may prove a serious setback for Fidel Castro’s hopes to foment violent revolution in all or almost all Latin American countries’. The culmination of this policy was Operation Condor and active support for military dictatorships throughout the Americas which decimated the left and opposition of any kind and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans who were detained, tortured, killed and disappeared.

The implications of the evidence provided by Ratner and Smith are important and should be politically pursued. ‘Under the laws that govern warfare, including guerrilla war, the killing of a prisoner is murder and constitutes a war crime. It is not the actual shooter who is guilty of a war crime. Those higher up that ordered, acquiesced or failed to prevent the murder are guilty of a war crime as well’. The CIA got away with Che’s murder and continues to pursue a policy of assassinating political opponents. Today the US government has invented the status of ‘enemy combatants’ to avoid international obligations in the treatment of prisoners and President Obama utilises US special forces and unmanned drones to assassinate enemies in foreign territories, violating domestic and international laws and trampling on the sovereignty of other nations. It is the responsibility of us all to make use of the evidence provided by Ratner and Smith and demand from the US establishment accountability for the murder of Che and other war crimes past and present.

Helen Yaffe is the author of "Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution". She is a Research Associate in the Department of Georgraphy at the University of Leicester