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As food and business groups are pressing Congress to allow unfettered food and medicine sales to Cuba, a first step, they hope, to end the trade embargo imposed on the Fidel Castro regime four decades ago, Cuba’s foreign trade minister Raul de la Nuez recently told U.S. business executives meeting in Havana that U.S. sanctions were robbing them of trade and investment opportunities on the island, and that Cuba would be open to receiving any trade and investment from the United States. However, political considerations could outrank practical economics for Castro—and even for those who will come after him.
While trade with the U.S. could help to drag Cuba out of its disastrous economic situation, it could also jeopardize the regime’s control of the country. Indeed, after a recent visit to Cuba, Paula Stern, an economist with the liberal think tank Inter-American Dialogue, that favors ending the embargo, said Cuba lacks a plan for coping with U.S. imports. “I was testing the practical depth of commitment and speed of Cuban reform,” she said. But in interviews with Cuban officials including Castro she found “little thinking or preparation has been done if and when the U.S. trade restrictions are lifted.”
In addition to concerns about the effect that the lifting of the embargo might have on the regime’s grip on Cuban society, the members of the ruling elite are worried by the prospect of Castro’s death. He is apparently in good health for a man of his age—he is going to be 74 years old in August—but his disappearance from the scene would raise the issue of succession. Theoretically, his anointed successor is his brother Raul, the armed forces chief, but few believes that he will actually become the next Cuban leader. Rather, most observers believe that an army junta would run the country, while looking for ways of nursing a transition to some kind of more orderly—although not necessarily democratic—government.
Right now, in their own way the Armed Forces of the Revolution are preparing themselves for that. During the years it received Soviet aid, the Cuban military was a large, capable force that sought to promote communism abroad by contributing troops to conflicts in Africa and Latin America. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Cubans lost $5 billion a year in subsidies. This triggered profound economic problems that forced dramatic cutbacks in every sector, including the military. A recent Pentagon study concluded that today the Cuban military poses no threat to the United States.
“Instead of internationalism, its activity is now focussed primarily in terms of domestic activities,” says Dr. Phyllis Greene Walker, who has studied the Cuban military for 15 years and authored a report called “Challenges Facing the Cuban Military.”
The Ernesto Che Guevara Military Industrial Enterprise is just one of 20 factory complexes around the country managed by the military. It served as the laboratory for the new business practices. It makes ammunition—not just for military purposes, but for sporting uses as well. Shotgun shells made there are exported around the world. And while it makes a variety of military weapons, it also produces plastic food containers and other commercial items.
The Che Guevara facility employs 3000 civilians, overseen by 30 military officers. Much of the workforce community is housed on the base. While these apartments may be stark by American standards, the Che Guevara Enterprise has become profitable enough to build new housing, a rarity in Cuba.
Tourism has become Cuba’s answer to the critical need for foreign capital, drawing 20 percent more tourists every year. Two million foreign visitors are expected to arrive in the year 2000. Foreign enterprises are invited to invest in joint ventures with the Cuban government to keep up with the growing demand for luxury tourist accommodations. Gaviota, one of Cuba’s largest and most profitable tourism agencies, is a joint venture operated by the military. It oversees the construction of new hotels, runs restaurants, and manages subsidiary businesses.
Even as its budget and size have decreased, the Cuban military has maintained close professional ties with its Russian counterpart (the old Soviet electronic listening post at Lourdes still operates manned by Russians). Now, in line with Russian president Vladimir Putin attempts to show his people that their country is regaining a role in the world scene, it wouldn’t be surprising if help for Cuba’s most pressing needs came from Moscow through the Cuban armed forces, such as oil and energy-generating equipment, which Russia could provide with relatively low expenditure. This would follow in China’s footsteps, which has already pledged financing and technology to modernize Cuba’s telecommunications and electronics industry, including supply of technology and parts and joint assembly ventures looking at potential future exports to the rest of Latin America, as well as $200 million financing for the purchase by Cuba of Chinese technology and equipment.
In effect, the armed forces are the only institution in Cuba that could fill the vacuum created by Castro’s death. And they would be much more ideologically comfortable doing it with the help of Russia and China than by depending on the United States.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com