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

 

On 16 February 2012, the Spanish edition of my book was launched at the International Book Fair in Havana, published by the Cuban Editorial José Martí. Unfortunately I was unable to attend. The presentation was made by Orlando Borrego, Che Guevara's closest collaborator in Cuba, and my speech was delivered in my absence.

Below is a Spanish report about the presentation of the book and its contents which has appeared on the official website of the Book Fair and has been reproduced on several websites:

El Che y la economía - por: Wilber Gómez

Como dijera en 1987 el líder de la Revolución Cubana Fidel Castro Ruz, en ocasión del  aniversario veinte de la caída del Guerrillero Heroico en Bolivia, "lo que pido, modestamente… es que el pensamiento económico del Che se conozca aquí, se conozca en América Latina, se conozca en el mundo: en el mundo capitalista desarrollado, en el Tercer Mundo y en el mundo socialista". 

Ese es el objetivo primordial del volumen Che Guevara: economía en revolución, de la británica Helen Yaffe, publicado por la Editorial José Martí, y presentado este 16 de febrero, en la Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, como parte de las actividades de la Feria del Libro.

El texto trata de las principales dificultades que enfrentó, en el plano económico, nuestro naciente proceso revolucionario a partir de 1959. Aquí se presentan y analizan problemáticas cruciales de entonces, como la capacidad productiva y la productividad del trabajo en condiciones de subdesarrollo, y en la transición hacia el socialismo sin depender de mecanismos capitalistas que debilitaban la formación de una nueva conciencia en nuestro pueblo. El Che se dispuso a enfrentar esos retos. En la etapa actual, la historia de este empeño es importante y relevante, dado que son similares los desafíos a que enfrenta la Cuba de hoy.

La obra Che Guevara: economía en revolución, revela las significativas contribuciones del Guerrillero Heroico en diversos campos de la economía, sus conceptos acerca del trabajo como deber social, y la necesidad de la eficiencia y el control financiero y administrativo, temas que forman parte del debate contemporáneo cubano.

Entre los méritos de la investigación llevada a cabo por la autora, está el rescate de los principales elementos puestos en práctica por el Che para consolidar un proceso económico realmente auténtico, entre ellos, promover la capacitación de los cuadros a todos los niveles, y el fomento de la participación de los trabajadores en la dirección de las empresas, entre otros. Sus experiencias en el plano militar, político y económico, contribuyeron a la creación del Sistema presupuestario de Financiamiento desarrollado por el Ministerio de Industrias y el Banco Nacional, entidades en las que ocupó la máxima dirección.

Con este estudio se reafirma el importante papel que desempeñó el Che en la conducción de los cambios estructurales que llevaron a nuestro país de nación subdesarrollada y semicolonial a convertirse en un faro independiente e integrado a América Latina y el campo socialista.

‘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.

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 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