Cuba

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6

Dissent and Economic Decline

Despite increased national debate as a result of the political reforms of 1976, the government of Cuba did not tolerate criticism of its programs. Officials and experts who could have predicted policy failures were censored and even punished. With no outlet for frustration and no legally permitted dissent, tensions increased at the end of the late 1970s despite improved economic conditions.

In 1980 a small number of Cubans broke into the Peruvian Embassy in Havana asking for asylum. Several thousand more followed until they overflowed the embassy grounds. When U.S. president Jimmy Carter offered to take the people who wanted to leave, Castro opened the doors. Both presidents were shocked when over 120,000 people spontaneously left homes and families to seek political asylum in the United States in an incident dubbed the Mariel boat lift.

The exodus demonstrated that Cuba had serious problems deriving from the lack of personal freedom and chronic economic austerity. Castro moved quickly to ease the difficulties of daily life. Between 1980 and 1985, the government allowed farmers’ markets to provide food to urban areas where rationed products had been inadequate.

But in 1986 Castro reversed this process, declaring that farmers were earning unreasonably large sums in the open markets. A new policy known as the Rectification Process gave priority to the production of exportable goods over goods made for consumption within Cuba. The government also tried to replace imported goods with domestically produced goods to prevent cash from flowing out of the country. Increasing efficient production and bureaucracy downsizing became paramount. Finally, the government increased the amount of “voluntary work” that it required from Cuban citizens and preached against the evils of a material world.

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7

Post-Cold War Era

In 1989 two events shook the foundations of Cuban society. The first involved a political scandal. The government charged General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, a decorated hero and the architect of Cuban victories in Angola, with drug smuggling. Ochoa had been an advocate for Cuban troops returning from overseas, helping them find employment. His efforts had made him popular among Cuban troops and the second most important person in Cuba. Many Cubans suspected that Ochoa’s crime was his popularity and his potential to challenge Castro for power. After a brief trial, Ochoa was executed.

The second event was more far-reaching. It began in the USSR when political and economic reforms were implemented in the late 1980s. These reforms decreased centralized control of the Soviet economy and increased citizens’ ability to participate in government. The idea that socialism could exist with a less regulated economy and a more participatory government appealed to younger Cubans. In 1989 the USSR disintegrated into a number of smaller republics. Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in early 1990 to warn the government that economic reforms were forthcoming and not to count on the $5.5 billion yearly subsidies that the USSR had previously provided Cuba. The news was devastating in Cuba, since 86 percent of foreign financial and economic relations were with the USSR and its allies.

The Cuban economy faltered during the mid-1980s and declined precipitously into 1993. Beginning in 1991, Cuba had to import sugar from Brazil and other Caribbean countries to fulfill its foreign trade commitments with the Eastern European countries. As a result, Cuba borrowed money from capitalist countries and amassed a significant debt, which it has not yet repaid. Like other debtor nations, Cuba has imposed severe austerity programs on the populace and diverted money from social programs to pay for the debt. In addition, the price of Cuba’s imports rose from 16 to 40 percent from 1989 to 1992, while the price of Cuba’s exports, namely sugar and nickel, dropped by 20 and 28 percent, respectively.

As U.S. president Bill Clinton took office in 1992, Castro sent word to Clinton through diplomatic channels that there was a potential to improve relations. Cuba, however, was not a high priority for Clinton, who announced that the United States would not normalize relations with any country that had abandoned democracy. In 1992 U.S. senator Robert Torricelli authored the Cuba Democracy Act, which extended the trade embargo beyond U.S. companies. The act penalized foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies trading with Cuba, as well as other nations that engaged in commerce with the island. His intention was to topple Castro in a matter of months by extending the 30-year-old embargo to cut off all trade with the island.

The economic situation in Cuba became grave. Inflation spiraled as the Cuban peso lost ground against foreign currency. The even distribution of wealth, so fundamental to the revolution’s ideology, was dismantled when Castro allowed Cubans to possess and spend dollars in 1993. People employed in the tourism industry and those who received money from relatives living abroad greatly increased their buying power compared with those with Cuban pesos.

Social unrest rumbled under the surface of daily life. Blackouts caused by deficient oil supplies left families without electricity, sometimes for days at a time. Food shortages were common. Transportation difficulties added hours to short trips. Cuba’s public health system, which had been the best in Latin America for decades following the revolution, ran short of medicine, sheets for hospital beds, and food for patients.

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8

“Special Period in a Time of Peace”

The government instituted economic austerity measures, which Castro characterized as the “special period in a time of peace.” In September 1993 the government announced that large state-farms would be broken into workers’ cooperatives. A year later the government again allowed free agricultural markets in order to supply food for a malnourished population. The government also invited industrialists from foreign countries, principally Mexico, France, Canada, Britain, and Spain, to establish businesses in partnership with the government in tourism, medicine, and exports of food.

Discontent continued, however, as evidenced by the number of people trying to escape Cuba on the high seas. In 1993 and 1994 record numbers of people left Cuba on rafts and asked for asylum in the United States. On August 5, 1994, a crowd in Havana’s old city rioted. Castro made a personal appearance and convinced the crowd to disband. He then publicly announced that anyone wishing to leave Cuba could. Almost immediately the beaches of Havana province were full of people in makeshift boats setting out for Miami. More than 6,000 rafters reached the United States by mid-August and an unknown number perished at sea.

The United States found the exodus impossible to control, and on August 18, 1994, ended a 28-year-old policy of automatically granting asylum to Cubans. Efforts to negotiate an orderly exodus failed when the United States denied a Cuban request to end the trade embargo. When negotiations failed, the Cuban government closed its borders.

Conservative U.S. legislators stepped up efforts to tighten the trade embargo by passing the Helms-Burton law, which penalized any nation or individual that traded with Cuba and leveled sanctions against U.S. citizens who traveled to the island. Under the law, U.S. citizens caught traveling to Cuba without government permission can be fined $200,000 and sentenced to up to six months in jail. At first Clinton delayed signing the bill. On February 24, 1996, the Cuban air force shot down two airplanes owned by the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro Cuban exile organization. Controversy arose about whether the aircraft were in Cuban airspace when the shooting occurred. Following the incident, Clinton signed the Helms-Burton bill into law.

As 1997 drew to a close, the greatest hope for Cubans seemed to be a spiritual one. Pope John Paul II had planned a visit to Cuba, and the aging Castro permitted him to come. Interest in the visit grew, even though most Cubans did not practice a religion. Of 11 million Cubans, only about 1 million were practicing Catholics, and about 4.5 million participated in Santería, a blending of African and Catholic rituals. For the first time in decades, churches filled with worshipers, and people openly wore crucifixes and religious medals. Castro invited the pope to demonstrate that his revolution shared much in common with Christian teachings of charity and community love. He also hoped that the pope’s strong condemnation of the U.S. embargo would add weight to world pressure against U.S. policy.

In 1999 a five-year-old Cuban boy, Elián González, was rescued by American fishermen after surviving a shipwreck while trying to reach the United States with his mother. Backed by some U.S. lawmakers, relatives of the boy in Miami sought to keep Elián in the United States, despite calls from his father to return him to Cuba. Castro called the incident a “kidnapping.” The incident energized support for Castro in Cuba, with thousands of people participating in anti-U.S. rallies in Havana. In June 2000 Elián returned to Cuba with his father, after the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal from his relatives to keep Elián in the country.

In 2003 Cuba again made international news when it cracked down on political dissidents. The Cuban government arrested about 80 journalists, activists, and opposition party leaders for supposedly plotting to undermine the government and threaten national security. During closed trials, the dissidents were sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths up to 28 years. This incident represented Cuba’s largest crackdown in many years, and the international community reacted strongly. Many people called on Castro to free the dissidents, who wanted to foster democracy in Cuba and pressure Cuba to open its society and improve its human rights record.

In 2006 Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raúl Castro as he underwent and then recovered from intestinal surgery. In February 2008 Fidel announced his permanent resignation as president, saying that he could no longer perform the duties of the office. However, he remained the head of the Cuban Communist Party. The National Assembly selected Raúl as the new president of Cuba. Raúl turned over his duties as defense minister to General Julio Casas Reguiero.

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9

The Beginnings of a Thaw?

During the first decade of the 21st century, Cuba’s isolation within Latin America appeared to be drawing to a close. Democratic elections brought to power left and left-of-center governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela, all of which embraced close diplomatic relations with Cuba and opposed the U.S. embargo. Venezuela, headed by the socialist Hugo Chávez, advocated for Cuba to become part of the Organization of American States (OAS) and supplied Cuba with badly needed petroleum. Cuba, in return, sent medical personnel to help staff health clinics in poor and working-class areas of Venezuela.

Although the administration of U.S. president George W. Bush remained hostile to Cuba for the first eight years of the decade, the election of Democrat Barack Obama seemed likely to bring changes in U.S.-Cuban relations. One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration on the ability of Cuban Americans living in the United States to send remittances back to family members in Cuba. The Obama administration also lifted restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans living in the United States. At an April 2009 Summit of the Americas, which drew the heads of state of North and South American nations, Obama called for a “new beginning with Cuba.” In return, Cuba’s Raúl Castro indicated that Cuba was willing to discuss any issue, a position that had reportedly never been offered prior to previous negotiations between Cuba and the United States. However, many observers believed it was unlikely that the United States would soon end its embargo due to political opposition from key U.S. senators.

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