Revolution/Reform and Other Cuban Dilemmas

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Notes

1. Here, I use the concept of revolution to signify transformation of the social order, that is, of the social relations (hierarchies) and political culture (attitudes and behaviors) of the citizens. I do not reduce it to insurgency, taking power, great nationalizations, or collectivizations, civil wars, mass mobilizations; nor do I understand by it the leadership bodies of party or state, which we find in such phrases as “the Revolution has been generous” or “has never been unjust” or “has committed errors.” I sometimes use the term Revolution to refer to a sector of the political arena (or a bloc of social forces) that is opposed to reaction, to the exploiting class, and to the US government. I use the phrase revolutionary power to designate institutions and organizations of the political system that emerged from and were legitimized in the revolutionary process, including those that were created in civil society, not simply synonymous with the State or government. I take the concept of reform to mean a political instrument that may be – and has been, in the case of Cuba – at the service of the revolutionary transformation of the economic, political and social order, and that has permitted the profound restructuring of the system on behalf of majorities and minorities; not merely in the antirevolutionary sense of Latin American reformism which consists of “changing things so that they will stay as they are.”

2. The Partido Revolucionario Cubano Auténtico governed Cuba between 1944 and 1948 (Ramón Grau San Martín) and 1948–1952 (Carlos Prío Socarrás).

3.  Partido del Pueblo Cubano Ortodoxo was founded by Eduardo Chibás in the 1940s as a left-wing faction of the Auténticos. From its youth section would come Fidel Castro and a good portion of his early followers.

4.  This expression, recurrent in the current of Marxism that analyzes history as a linear process, remains a metaphor. Cuban capitalism went as far as was possible in Latin America and the Caribbean. To suppose that it left “unfinished business” would imply that the social individual, the “industrial” or “national bourgeoisie,” lacked the “capacity,” “courage,” “decision” or “will” to control the State, as did their counterparts in the Mexico of Cárdenas or the Argentina of Perón. The hypothesis that this model was capable of self-reform turned out to be contrary not only to Cuban historical experience, but also to the logic of the hegemonic interests that controlled their State. This model underwent considerable modernization, a historical consequence of the revolution of 1930–1935, which was legally expressed in the Constitution of 1940. In the structure of domination of Cuban capitalism, intimate ties with the United States were already an exceptional modernizing force, and at the same time, a barrier to the alternative of a “national” or “popular” capitalism. The nature of this dependent modern capitalist model and of its dominant class (Zanetti 1997–98; del Toro 2003) is key to understanding the social logic and meaning of reforms within the revolutionary process, as well as the controversial question of its stages – although to explain it would go beyond the scope of this work.

5.  The idea that policy responds to “the rational decisions of the elites in power” (Rojas 2005: 126) is, curiously, shared among the recent interpreters of Cuban history, trained in the dogmatic Marxism that was taught in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, and the believers in conspiracy theory. Although various experts on revolution (Marx 1852; Skocpol 1985) have shown the complexity of socio-political interactions in the midst of these processes, the “rationalist” focus replaces the mediations and complexities with a linear, teleological perspective: “the Cuban revolution was able to triumph … because the revolutionary process was oriented in conformity with the interests and ideology of the proletariat, which was reflected and expressed by the revolutionary vanguard lead by Fidel Castro” (Darushenkov 1986: 27f).

6.  Ed. note: In the late 1960s, Cuban leaders postulated that the island could leap over the socialist stage and go directly communism.

7.  The social revolution is not just about property relations or control of the State apparatus; it also modifies the relations of leader to follower and of educator to educated, insofar as it transforms people as social individuals, that is, in their social relations and their political cultures (Marx 1852). It is not my purpose in this essay, especially when I use terms such as revolutions, revolutionary power, socialist society and culture, to take a position in relation to such questions as, “How long did the revolution really last?” “Has true socialism ever existed in Cuba?” etc. – questions which, in the way certain authors present them, are divorced from historical analysis of the real process, besides being foreign to the concept of revolution developed here.

8.  Some authors think that the plastic arts of the 1990s retreated from the inquisitive and questioning stance and direct discourse that had predominated in the 1980s, in favor of new, more symbolic and impenetrable language (Caballero 2008). Even if this is the case, however, it does not apply in the areas of literature, theater, film, novísima trova (new song), or lyrics to dance music, which since the 1990s have shown a polemical and rebellious spirit (Valiño 1998; García Borrero 2001; Borges-Triana 2004; Garcia Meralla 2004; Arango 2001).

9.  The measures implemented in 2008 – allowing Cuban citizens resident on the island to rent rooms in tourist hotels and to buy cell phones or computers – are popular to the degree that they restore the equality of rights to all citizens, although they do not directly benefit the majority in terms of effective access.

10.  Paradoxically, what is advocated outside Cuba as the “Cuban transition” does not mean just a change of government, or even a restructuring of the single-party system. Rather, it implies a profound transformation of the economy and society that would move Cuba, in terms of a “model,” closer to the Dominican Republic than to Norway. The canon of “free elections” that is proposed for Cuba is not one whereby parties that have as their premise the preservation of socialism compete electorally for citizens' votes, but rather one in which capitalism would be represented by “two, three, many parties.” The presence of other parties capable of really competing for power yet representing another social system does not exist in any of the great western democracies. What is proposed for Cuba is not a simple transition – a series of reforms – but a complete revolution in reverse.

11.  The speech, conversational in tone, was given to a group of students at the University of Havana – scene of some of his most dramatic and memorable declarations – and was directed mainly toward youth, presenting ideas that were upsetting to many, especially the warning about the reversibility of the Revolution and of socialism.