It is difficult to imagine a Cuban transition without the Cuban army playing a major role in the process. First, the army is, relatively speaking, the best organized institution on the island. Second, the Army, following the Soviet model, has not been involved in internal repression except for situations of armed rebellion and combat. The last of these took place well over forty years ago with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the armed rebellions in the Escambray mountains in central Cuba. Under the Soviet model operating in Cuba, it is the state security organs, organizationally distinct from the armed forces, which are in charge of carrying out the tasks of internal repression. Third, due to compulsory military service, the Cuban army has been a more inclusive institution than the more exclusive Communist Party. Fourth, the Cuban army has for some time been a major player in Cuban economic life. The army's economic role comprises its own businesses, such as the huge business conglomerate GAESA that includes the tourist enterprise Gaviota,7 as well as high army officers occupying leading positions in other key areas of the Cuban economy such as the sugar industry. In the process, the Cuban army has educated and developed an important group of technocrats who, together with a group of civilian technicians, have for some time played a major role in the Cuban economy and society. Fifth, there is evidence to suggest that Raúl Castro and the Cuban military that he heads, have tried, in the past, to build bridges with the United States, possibly in preparation for a transition in Cuba. On various occasions during 2001, Raúl Castro declared that the U.S. and Cuba should widen their areas of cooperation "in spite of political differences" on issues such as drugs, emigration, and the struggle against terrorism. In 2002, he pledged his cooperation with U.S. forces at the Guantánamo Naval Base, when it became a place of confinement for Taliban fighters and others captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere.8
Raúl Castro has acquired a reputation as an advocate and organizer of political repression, but also as an able administrator and economic pragmatist who, according to reports, advised and urged his brother Fidel to carry out the economic reforms, such as the legalization of dollars, that were implemented in the 1990s. In any case, and independently of who will end up occupying the Cuban presidency after Fidel Castro's demise, the Cuban armed forces have positioned themselves as the logical successors to Fidel Castro in real power terms. The army technocrats and managers are likely to ally themselves and seek the support of another important group with whom they share a common technocratic perspective: the civilian technicians and managers in other joint venture sectors of the economy.9
There are several indications that the army may eventually follow the Chinese model of development, although in the light of current trends, probably in a modified form to allow for relatively more government centralization of economic activity in the case of Cuba. These indications include the experience that the armed forces have already developed in economic enterprises combined with the current tendencies in Cuba favoring joint venture capitalism, the continuation of China's dramatic economic growth including its growing economic presence in Latin America, and the favorable coverage of China in Cuba's Communist press. In fact, when Raúl Castro visited China in April of 2005, at a time of growing Chinese investments in Cuba, particularly in the nickel industry, he told his Chinese hosts that "it was truly encouraging everything that you have done here…there are some people around who are preoccupied by China's development; however, we feel happy and reassured, because you have confirmed something that we say over there, and that is that a better world is possible."10 This model would combine, as in China, a much greater opening to the capitalist market, particularly foreign investment, with the continuation of strong political controls at home including the use of whatever degree of repression might be necessary to maintain such controls. Of course, if it turns out that the Chinese economy has "crashed" or at least suffered significant reverses at the time of a Cuban transition, this would naturally reduce the attractiveness of the Chinese model to Cuba's ruling circles.
An army-led "Chinese" turn in Cuba, lacking the Putin-style cosmetic appearance of democracy, would make it more difficult to get rid of the Helms-Burton Act but would not entirely preclude the possibility of reaching certain understandings with U.S. business circles and with the U.S. government, perhaps even with the aid of the Chinese themselves. This would restore, although not necessarily in the same form, a great deal of the power that the United States lost in Cuba almost fifty years ago. In turn, the death of Fidel Castro and the collapse of the U.S. blockade of Cuba as a result of U.S. business pressures and deals made between the U.S. and the new Cuban government, may leave few options to the Cuban-American right wing in South Florida. These Cuban-Americans may not have any other alternative but to come to terms with the new army-controlled Cuban regime, perhaps in exchange for substantial economic concessions. It is worth noting that in the past the Cuban American National Foundation has called on the Cuban army to overthrow Fidel Castro.11 Moreover, a more pragmatic wing of the Cuban hard Right has developed in the recent past, to the dismay of other sections of the Cuban hard Right such as South Florida Republican members of Congress Diaz-Balart and Ross Lehtinen. Spokespeople for this more pragmatic wing have cautioned that the passing of Fidel Castro will not be followed by any instant or automatic "democratization," and that the regime will endure in some form beyond Fidel Castro's death.12 Analysts close to these more pragmatic right-wing circles, such as the former CIA functionary in charge of Cuban affairs Brian Latell, have developed a more realistic and not entirely hostile view of Raúl Castro as the kind of successor the U.S. could possibly deal with.13
In any case, a complete right-wing Cuban-American takeover of Cuba could only happen on the basis of an unlikely U.S. military occupation of the island, which would probably require several hundred thousand troops (an option that was seriously considered only once, during the October 1962 missile crisis).14 The fact that Cuban-American capital can be an important source of needed foreign investment in Cuba is not likely to be sufficient for them to take over the island. A more likely scenario is that the heads of the Cuban army will welcome the investments of the Cuban-American capitalists with the clear understanding that the army will politically run the show. Of course, over the longer term, these two forces would tend to merge with each other. These army leaders will be in a position, as we indicated above, to make deals directly with the even bigger U.S. capitalists, without having to depend or need the Cuban-American capitalists as intermediaries, although many of the latter may feel encouraged to play that role. Ideology and Politics of the Transition
Any degree of political opening in Cuban society will result in an explosion of previously suppressed political and cultural expressions. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have long resented the inability to speak up and the "double-morality" (doble moral) that they have been forced to practice in their daily existence. This explosion is likely to prominently include demands for the historical truth that have long been suppressed or at least tightly controlled by the Castro regime. These demands will include opening of government archives to establish the truth of critical historical events such as the large-scale imprisonments, executions and even the forced relocation of whole communities in the 1970s and earlier,15 and more recently, the full story surrounding the execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa and his associates in 1989.
The transition to a form of state-controlled or sponsored form of capitalism in Cuba will be led, as suggested above, by the army, joint venture technocrats, and other elements currently in the ruling apparatus. It is doubtful that the leaders of the small and rather marginal dissident groups will play a major role in the transition, although the majority of these not only favor the so-called market economy, but seem to assume that it is practically a law of nature. The main political thrust of the transition will be to disregard any social or human considerations that may stand in the way of the new state-controlled capitalist road. State policies will thus be likely to promote the "winners": tourism and the industries supplying it, biotechnology, tobacco, extractive industries such as nickel and oil, and possibly a newly developed maquiladora industry.
The "losers" will be neglected: a good part of "non-competitive" manufacturing, the sugar industry and, with some exceptions such as citrus, agriculture in general. The Cuban welfare state, already under severe strain after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, will probably decay even further (the deterioration of health and other social services in China is very instructive in this regard16). This will likely include the privatization of medical care, with a U.S.-style Medicaid type service provided for the poor Cuban majority.17 Private education is likely to grow substantially; sponsored to a great extent by Catholic religious orders who will "cream" the best teachers and facilities, to educate the children of the successful owners, administrators, and technicians of the "winning" sectors of the economy. Black Cubans will continue to suffer more than others as they already have in the "special period" that began in the 1990s, except that it will get even worse for them, at least in relative terms.18 Regions of the country with a "losing" economy such as Oriente in eastern Cuba will continue to suffer disproportionately except for those relatively small areas where the nickel industry and some tourist sites are located. Oriente will continue to export people to Havana (including the displaced and virtually homeless "Palestinos") except in greater numbers once the internal migration restrictions imposed by Fidel Castro's government in the 1990s collapse. Inequality is likely to grow even within the metropolitan area of Havana itself as tourist and real estate investment become concentrated in the neighborhoods near the Gulf of Mexico shoreline and the Havana metropolitan hinterland will continue to deteriorate. The Right
A hard Right will develop based on native conservative elements in addition to Cuban-American rightists who return to the island. It goes without saying that this hard Right will support and defend a capitalist shock therapy of privatization and attacks on workers' rights and social legislation. However, the Right is likely to splinter for a number of reasons, including the fact that a transitional government will coopt some of its leadership, particularly by granting its members a variety of business concessions. The right might further splinter over the issue of religion as the Catholic Church hierarchy is likely to assert its influence. Given the Cuban Catholic hierarchy's recent history of political moderation, it is more likely to have an effect on the relatively moderate Right. In turn, the moderate Right will probably cluster around more than one party. One, which already exists in exile, the Christian Democratic Party, is a peculiar political entity that combines a politically moderate, pro-market position on Cuban issues with support for foreign right-wing figures such as former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a strongly conservative and authoritarian politician. This exile group is likely to join forces with a group of professed Christian Democrats inside Cuba led by the prominent dissident Oswaldo Payá. Payá initiated the Varela Project that proposes to amend the Cuban Constitution. This project defends civil and political liberties and also leaves the door open for any kind of business investment in the island, and not just small business. Again, Payá and other dissident leaders, including those unjustly imprisoned by Fidel Castro's government, constitute a small and marginal group that are unlikely, just as in the USSR and most of Eastern Europe, to play a major role in any transition.
A Christian Democratic Party could potentially become the home of the moderate Right, including many supporters of the market economy visible in such venues as the influential exile journal Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana based in Madrid. This party will be subject to pressures from its right: first, from their current right-wing neoliberal partners in the exile political coalition called Plataforma Democrática Cubana (Cuban Democratic Platform), and second, and perhaps most important of all, from the Cuban Catholic hierarchy. Most of the leading elements of this hierarchy have behaved in a peculiar manner, combining a moderate, cautious, and even timid political opposition to Fidel Castro's government, with a markedly conservative position on social and cultural matters. The pastoral letter of Cuba's principal Catholic leader, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, issued on February 25, 2003, clearly expressed this social and cultural attitude, making remarkable pronouncements to the effect that "experience demonstrates that sex, alcohol, and drugs are dangerously intertwined."19 The Cuban Catholic hierarchy's agenda on birth control, abortion, and the teaching of religion in the public schools will make it difficult for the Christian Democrats to function as the all-inclusive moderate right or center-right party. Most likely, then, there will be more than one moderate right or center-right parties, one Catholic and the other(s) secular. None of these will be large, mass parties since they will principally base themselves on the educated middle-classes including many former Communist functionaries and ambitious young technocrats and professionals.
Regardless of their possible splintering into different political formations, the moderate and hard right wings will share some common ideological features: they will praise and exaggerate the supposed achievements of the pre-revolutionary Republic,20 will claim that a radical social revolution was neither necessary nor justified in the Cuba of the late 1950s, and will play down the imperialist nature of U.S. policy. While critical of the oppressive and undemocratic nature of Cuban Fidelista Communism, they will systematically fail to make the fundamental analytical distinction between radical social revolution in general terms and the particular Communist Fidelista revolution that took place in Cuba. The neo-Fidelistas (see below) will also fail to make the same distinction. Resisting the rightward trend
While important sections of the Communist Party bureaucracy and the armed forces are likely to opt for the neoliberal capitalist road, other elements of these institutions, especially those who have not benefited from the joint-venture sector of the economy, will resist and oppose that option. This is a major reason why Communist Fidelismo is likely to remain an important political force in the Cuba of the transition. The complexion of this political force will be affected by whether it participates, even if reluctantly, in the transition government, perhaps in coalition with army and civilian economic technocrats, or whether it goes into open opposition from the very beginning. In any case, neo-Fidelismo will increasingly draw on Cuban nationalism and gradually dispose of Marxism while maintaining some form of "socialist" ideology, a trend already begun in the 1990s.
The logical social base of the emerging neo-Fidelismo will be sections of Castro's armed forces and especially the state bureaucracy, many of whose members will have either lost or would be about to lose their jobs. These people will attempt to defend the welfare state and mythologize the past glossing over the serious deterioration of the welfare state and the economy as a whole that Cuba began to experience even before the 1990s. Neo-Fidelismo will appeal to people employed or connected with the "losing" sectors of the economy and possibly to strongly nationalist sections of the armed forces, particularly those not benefiting from the army's economic activities. If neo-Fidelismo is somehow enticed into becoming part of a government coalition, its practice will increasingly diverge from its rhetoric and will thus run the serious danger of political disintegration. Fidel Castro would then become like Mao Zedong, whose picture and sayings currently preside over an increasingly capitalist China that Mao would hardly recognize.
As revelations about the human rights violations and abuses of the Fidelista past inevitably emerge, neo-Fidelismo will try to deflect responsibility by conveniently blaming it all on the Soviet and East European influence on "Cuban socialism," thereby distorting the role of the Soviet bloc in the Cuban revolutionary process. It will also continue to defend the historic Fidelista interpretation of the Cuban Revolution. This will include a new nationalist and anti-imperialist emphasis, a repudiation once again of the Soviet and East European influence, and the claim that Fidel Castro was the practical translator of José Marti's political vision in the second half of the twentieth century. This political current will represent a form of strongly authoritarian welfare nationalism combining traits similar to those found in ruling and Communist parties in the Russia and Belarus of the 1990s. <snip>
-- Michael Pugliese