Its own children"/ Is this prediction of Fidel Castro's out of date? In July and August 1989, General Arnaldo Ochoa, a
International Vlewpoint #173 • November 13, 1989
CUBA
N
EVER have historic cadres of the regime hero of the republic, was executed along with three taken such a beating.
officers from the Ministry of the Interior, while four
This time most of
Ministers have been stripped of their functions Including those affected were not old Communist the interior minister and Communist Party Central officials accused of
Committee member, Jose Abrantes. The latter, despite a sectarianism or compublic reaffirmation of confidence by Castro in June, was plicity with Moscow but root and branch sentenced to 20 years in prison a few weeks after the
Fidelistas. That is execution of Ochoa. His arrest was followed by that of what makes this crisis other officials of his ministry, and many others were the most serious that demoted. The ministry has thus been more or less the Cuban leadership has yet experienced.
Dealings in currency and ivory in Angola by
"internationalist"
fighters, embezzlement by the Cuban chargés d'affaires in
Panama, fraud and drug trafficking.
These were the bases of the accusations of
"negligence in carrying out duties, corruption, improper use of resources and illegal appropriations of state funds for purposes outside the functions of the Ministry of the Interior,"
"weaknesses and and cronyism that led to serious problems in the ministry and to the creation of unauthorized enterprises involved in activities related to foreign trade."2
The cross-examinations of the accused?;
and that of Padron in particular;
the indictment by the prosecutor Escalona, the Justice Minister; and Castro's speech to the State Council show the extent of the corruption and the violation of regulations and laws by those who were responsible for applying them.
However, what is the meaning of the publicity given to the trial and the heavy punishments? These need to be looked at from both the legal and democratic points of view — the proof of the facts, the conditions under which the trial was held, the rights of the defence and so on. Many questions have to be asked, for example about responsibility at all levels, questions to which there are as yet no answers.
Analysis has to be focused on the political meaning and ramifications these events, coming three years after the start of the rectification process.
In 1985 Castro said: "Cuba has more than once been offered fabulous sums of money in return for our cooperation in drug trafficking, but, although we are blockaded by the Americans, we have
10 neith drugs For this reason i say that it isa never accepted any business connected dismantled.
### JANETTE HABEL shameless slander to try to implicate
Cuba in the drugs traffic. I state categorically that not a cent of drugs money has entered this country, and i know of no case in the 26 years of the revolution of any official being involved in the traffic.... We have the best record in the continent on this question."S
On July 4, 1987, the director of the Drug Enforcement declared: "Cuba is deeply implicated in the drug traffic in our hemisphere. The Cuban government, or certain persons belonging to the government of that country, are using Cuba to promote the narcotics traffic in this hemisphere." Two years later, the Ochoa scandal was to erupt in Havana.
Charges hit Cuba like earthquake
There seems to be no doubt about the existence of the drugs traffic. It is hard to see what possible benefit the Cuban leadership could derive from publicizing something so damaging and so contrary to the principles and ethical values espoused by the revolution. In Cuba the charges hit like an earthquake.
Even so, the course of the trial was not such as to eliminate a profound uneasiness. It neither clarified the extent of the responsibility, nor the final aim of the drug traffic nor the motivations of those condemned to death and the other accused. Ochoa, the La Guardia brothers and Abrantes were certainly part of the revolutionary elite. They belonged to the Fidelista "hard core" in the state apparatus, those to whom the most difficult and missions delicate could be entrusted.
For Ochoa, this was the responsibility for the military mission to Angola; for the La
Guardia brothers, it was the highly secret and perilous task of setting up an organization to circumvent the American blockade (department
MC of the Ministry of the Interior). Such backgrounds and such responsibilities merited more than a summary trial before a special court.
As is the custom, the defence limited itself to seeking for signs of repentance among the accused.?
These defence lawyers were appointed.
Given the Cuban tradition, it is not at all surprising. However, a short time after the trial of these Cuban officials, Elizardo
Sanchez, a well-known dissident and leader of a human rights organization who had been arrested on August 6 with two others for describing the executions as "assassinations" was permitted by the Ministry of
Justice to choose his own defence lawyer.8
Even given the charges of high treason, the difference in the treatment of an opponent of the regime and one of its heroes is astonishing.
Despite some displays of his customary humour, Ochoa did not cooperate with the court so as to clarify where the money had been going. Overall, he took responsibility for the operation - "I have said from the beginning that I am the person responsible for this business" — but he denied that he had been working for his own private benefit, justifying his activities by military requirements.
Although this does not make the crime any less serious, it is striking that the law-
1. See Carlos Franqui, Life, adventures and disasters of one Fidel Castro, 1988, ed. Belfond p. 111. See also
Granma, July 23, 1989.
2. Le Monde, August 2, 1989.
3. Granma July 16, 1989.
4. Granma July 23, 1989.
5. Castro, Cuba Socialista, March/April 1988, quoted by Juan Marrero.
6. Ibid.
7. The understanding and self-criticism of the mistakes made were recognized as mitigating factors. See Jorge
Valls, Mon ennemi, mon frère, Gallimard, 1989.
8. Le Monde August 20, 1989.
November 13, 1989 • #173 International Viewpoint yer made no reference to the issue of motives. The prosecutor concentrated on Ochoa's treason, but the inner connec tions remain unclear. As Ochoa himself said, many of the witnesses questioned by the Tribunal of Honour were not produced during the summary trial conducted by the Special Court Martial and much information to which he referred was neither published in Granma nor mentioned by the
Ochoa did not fail to point out, referring to the swops of sugar for diamonds or ivory on the Angolan black marke: to get the money needed to build an airport, that this was in accordance with a business that has always existed in Angola....At the Tribunal of Honour the two things were mixed up, but this is not right; this was done on the side, under the control of the Finance Department. When Estupinas accused] went to Cuba to ask for 80 million kwanzas? and did not get it,
•We will have to sell some of these things....and get the airport built.'....That was how the whole thing started." That is, the various swops took place under the aegis of the Finance Ministry and of the Interior Minister (whose chief committed suicide last July), and such trading operations were, apart from the drug traffic, more or less business as usual. Preparations for Angolan
It is impossible to be sure about how things developed, given the disparate and fragmented character of the information. It is clear from Ochoa's statements that building airports at which Cuban planes could land in preparations for the battle of Cuito Carnavale was an urgent necessity. Fidel Castro said that at the time, and stressed the speed and efficiency with which their work was carried out.
From Ochoa's account, it seems that Havana did not come up with the necessary funds, and it was necessary to raise money by the means at hand. The context of these events should be recalled. The Angolan army was encircled, and the Cuban units were threatened by the South African army after military errors referred to by Castro, who implicitly put the blame on the Soviet Union. Tension was high, and Havana decided to send massive reinforcements in record time.
There is no whitewashing Ochoa. In Angola he himself ordered the execution of three young Cuban soldiers accused of raping Angolan women. Raul Castro recalled this in his statement to the State Councilo; Ochoa was probably crushed by his own hammer.
Nonetheless Ochoa enjoyed a definite Abrantes whose punishment - 20 years in prison - was felt by some to be too light, no doubt partly on account of his poor public image, as minister of the
The reason is that Ochoa appeared to have been guided by "professional" considerations. But also because statements he exposed the lack of restraint on the high ranking leaders, their almost unlimited powers and the personal degeneration of old revolutionary militants, who had turned into cynical power-holders, confirming the old saying that absolute power
When the prosecutor asked him if he was accustomed to taking these kinds of decision, Ochoa replied straightforwardly: "I did a lot of things without authorization. I think that in this particular case it was not illogical to do what I did."
The habits were established and the mechanisms were there. It is clear that in Angola, away from any control, Cuban military were not fussy about their means and that this provoked a lot of tension with the Angolans!2. In Panama, the agents of the Interior Ministry (MININT) strove to get round the US blockade by creating front businesses and using available financial and commercial means for undertaking "fraudulent" operations
Such operations were quite legitimate, given the 30 year long embargo, which has been in no way moderated by Bush, despite some optimistic predictions.13 There can be no question of casting doubt on Cuba's right to defend itself, whether economically or commercially. Even so, the dubious relationships involved in this type of business are not conducive to vir-
The MININT agents evolved in a gangster milieu. The virtually unlimited mate-
CUBA rial means, including hard currency, at the disposal of Department MC made them a state within the state. Nobody watched over the officials, and these latter exercised no control over those under their command. This special department had its own special logic. The boat owners who were employed to break the blockade, like served as gobetweens, made no distinction between carrying drugs and other activities. As the defendant Martinez explained: seen as someone involved in illegal business." And cocaine trafficking was only one more illegal business. You also have to consider pressure on these external businesses to bring in hard currency. In the beginning they ran at a loss when the need for hard currency in the Cuban economy was immense. Thus one thing led to another, from the tasks assigned to the department to the type of practices and contacts that these tasks involved. The slide was facilitated by the connections and the extent of the powers of the ministry, an absence of control and pervasive corruption. When the prosecutor asked him "was there a mechanism for controlling your officers?" La Guardia replied along the same lines as Ochoa: "I could not do that, I was alone....I could not control them.....The officers had become attendant parts...I could not manage the whole thing...only direct involvement would have permitted control of operations...I was sure that the officers would hand over the money to me."
The temptations of personal fraud
It was not only necessary to increase income, however. The money had to be laundered and made to appear as income from regular commercial operations. Personal fraud was a temptation.
The acceptance of drug trafficking has other explanations. Ochoa mentioned "countries that live on that, forced by the nature of their economies." But the political risks these operations involved for Cuba were considerable, and it is difficult 9. In June 1989, the official exchange rate for the kwanza was 30 to the dollar, but 500 to the dollar on the black market. 10. Granma July 23, 1989. 11. This popularity was officially recognized in an editorial in Granma September 10, 1989, which mentioned the "goodwill of the public towards the principal accused." 12. El Pais, September 15, 1989. 13. The blockade is so strict that the US Treasury Department forbade the ABC television channel from buying exclusive rights for transmission of the PanAmerican games which are to take place in Havana in 1991 and for which it had offered $9m. The pot olidaried for giami io Cubans who left from 1 1 the port of Mariel for Miami in 1980.
International Viewpoint #173 • November 13, 1989
CUBA to imagine that Ochoa undertook the whole business solely on his own.
For example, six tonnes of Cocaine were transported on Cuban territory and in Cuban seaspace by Colombian pilots and who exchanged dollars black market rates for pesos for their families in Cuba. But some of these people were evidently connected to the CIA. The meeting between Ochoa's aide-de-camp and Pablo Escobar was , besides other considerations, extremely compromising and risky for the Cuban state.
This is one of the facts that seem to support a belief that Castro is telling the truth when he says that did not know what was going on. Escobar is one of the top people in the Medellín cartel, and was responsible in March 1985 for the massacre of several dozen Colombian peasants and the murder by death squads, in collusion with certain sectors of the armed forces, of agricultural workers suspected of being guerilla sympathizers. 15 Speculation about Ministry's
Were irresponsibility, cynicism and personal corruption the basic motives in this affair? There have been other theories, including much speculation about the purchases of arms by MININT which Castro mentioned in his speech to the State Council. Some have found here indications of an attempted plot. The available information does not support such a conclusion. It was part of the ministry's remit to buy arms for other countries (Nicaragua and Angola were mentioned in the trial) even if purely speculative arms deals were also carried out. In any case, large grey areas
How did things get so far? The accused, particular Ochoa, gave certain hints: "In the first place, I believe that there was a moment when I went off the track, departed from the objectives of the revolution. I think that this came about in the following way. What right did I have to deal in money, something that I had never in my life had. I was never someone who yearned after money, I have never had money and have had absolutely no need of it. Far from it. But I must also say that a moment came in my military life when I felt tired. That is to say that I am not, objectively, the same person that the prosecutor talked about, the person who fought here and led over there. The light went out. In Angola I several times found myself in difficult, very difficult and very complex situations. Add this to the fact that...how shall I put it... have spent many years acting alone, I took a bad road and a little bit lost my sense of reality.
"Furthermore, people have often tried to claim that I was not working. That is not true. I have made an enormous effort to carry out my duty, although perhaps not my whole duty. Many people think that I i concentrated for the most part on my business deals. That isn't true either. I sent other people to do deals, but personally I did not devote myself to them....I think that we could spend a long time searching and reflecting. I cannot explain it to myself. I don't know why I did that. There is no reason."l6 Or these remarks: "You grumble when you get an order, and the moment comes when you end thinking that every order coming from a superior officer is bad. Once started on this slope, one acquires an independent way of thinking and you begin to think that you are right."
Saverio Tutino, the ex-correspondent in Cuba of the Italian Communist Party daily, L'Unità, asked himself: Ochoa, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? Probably neither. The factors at work here are fatigue, solitude, demoralization and skepticism. Ochoa's statements have the merit at least of throwing light on the way that the functioning of the leading group can grind down even the best people, which is what really happened in this case. In the infernal mechanism of the Castroist headquarters, there is no room for failure: the chiefs are alone, as in war, heroes or traitors, paragons of virtue or scapegoats.
The buck passing typical of the leading circles is thus hardly surprising. Who can stand up to such tests, apart from the commander in chief? Paradoxically, the trial leads inevitably to a questioning of Fidel Castro's own role, something that he certainly did not expect.
Crushing condemnation of type of leadership
If what the accused said is true, if the commander in chief knew nothing in a regime that is so centralized, so hierarchical, so vertically structured, then the condemnation of this type of leadership is crushing and it needs changing. Such insulation is intolerable and can only, as experience shows, have very serious con-
Moreover, it is perhaps because some people had begun to pose precisely these questions that the whole business erupted Officially the "national prophylaxis" posed by Raul Castro is justified by the extent of the corruption and the need to fight it, starting from the top. This assertion can hardly be doubted, and certain measures have already been taken to back it up. But why now? As Fidel Castro rightly pointed out, the problems are not of recent vintage, and there was no lack of warnings, especially as far as MININT is
In his opening address to the second Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 1980, the First Secretary declared that : "As regards the Ministry of the Interior, it has been noted that in some sectors there has been a falling off in efficiency and in the exemplary attitude that its cadres had always shown in the years of extraordinary and heroic struggles....There have been signs of bureaucracy and of a relaxation of demands and discipline."
Prophetically, he added: "We will continue to be able to see the wood despite the trees, but we would prefer the Ministry of the Interior to remain a wood where trees don't have to be cut down."7 Nine years later and three years after the start of the rectification process, not only has it been necessary to cut down trees, but, as Granma sellers shouted: "The Ministry of the Interior has been cleaned out. "18
Abuses of power, embezzlement, all sorts of perks, clinics, restaurants, private places of entertainment, televisions, video-cassettes, tape-recorders, to say nothing of cars and even yachts: this is the description that Fidel Castro gave of some of the most notorious privileges of the Cuban nomenklatura. This cannot be taken lightly in a country where reaction against corruption is one of the main reasons for the breadth of the revolution's social base. Corruption was rampant not only under Batista's dictatorship but also under the parliamentary regime of Prio Socarras, overthrown by Batista in 1952. It should not be forgotten that Chibas, the president of the Orthodox Party from which Castro came, was a champion of "honest administration". He killed himself in the middle of a radio broadcast to protest against the corruption of the regime. During the revolutionary struggle, corruption was one of the fundamental themes taken up by the July 26 Movement.
The Castroist leadership could not sit back in the face of the growing moral degeneration of the leading layers, and at the same time go on demanding daily sacrifices from the people. The rectification process was a further warning. But the current crisis is on a wholly new scale.
Granma indicts the bureaucratic enemy within
As an editorial in Granma on September 10, 1989 put it: "the problems which the country has confronted this summer go far beyond a handful of corrupt and disloyal
Underlining that what was at stake was a step of far greater importance than the rectification process, the editorial writer (often Castro himself) continued: "It is necessary to say clearly; in what has happened there have been a whole series of errors which have engulfed, in one way or another, all the institutions of the revolution....One of the essential characteristics of the situation..is that what is involved is not the work of enemy agents but of people from our own ranks. We have not had to deal with a confrontation between 15. See /V no.170, October 2 1989. 16. Granma July 16, 1989. 17. Main Report to the Second Congress of the CCP, Edicciones Politicas, Havana, 1981. 18. El Pais, August 1, 1989.
EN MARCHA
HACIA NUEVAS
CUBA 400,000 party members have been interviewed by members of higher bodies and by their cell comrades. More than 6,000 have received disciplinary punishments, and
VICTORIAS revolution and counter-revolution; the hard and heavy lesson to be drawn from these facts is that, without going over to the enemy, people who have fought for our cause can do more harm than any counter-revolutionary, and serve, in practice, the aims of imperialism, which has not given up the hope of destroying us."
"In this sense, the first and prime lesson of this trial....is that respect for the law is the duty of citizens, whatever ranks they hold in the political hierarchy or the state....The greater the responsibility that has been entrusted to a citizen, the more he or she is obliged to act in a dignified and honest fashion, in the public domain, as well as in private life."
From the political point of view, the most important part of the editorial is the following: "What sort of revolutionary is it that has respect neither for law, nor for morality, and acts as if he or she belonged to a caste elevated above everybody and everything?
"What kind of socialism and revolution can we talk about when people do not have the sensitivity to grasp that privileges, arbitrariness, abuses, and distance from the masses are the main reasons for the difficulties and crises that today afflict the socialist system, whose mission was precisely to eliminate such capitalist calamities."
This declaration is surprising from more than one point of view. In the first place, the difficulties of the "socialist system" are attributed to the existence of a privileged and corrupt bureaucracy. Usually, emphasis has been put on the subjective mistakes of leaders, on the bad effects of market reforms, while oppositionists have been considered counter-revolutionaries in the pay of imperialism. This time, the enemy is within.
The declaration is unambiguous. The Ochoa trial was not the result of the work of "enemy agents", and it was not a question of dealing with "a confrontation between revolution and counterrevolution." And this is even more serious, because these people "coming from our own ranks" are capable of doing more harm to the revolution than any counter-revolutionary. The diagnosis is quite clear and the target identified: in the midst of the rectification, unscrupulous people profiting from their positions and responsibilities have been carried away by infatuation with power and have committed crimes against the morality of the revolution and its standards.19
Cuban communist party purged
Punishments must be exemplary, and the party itself should not escape. It must be not only the subject but also the "the object of the rectification, "2 inasmuch as the negative tendencies "have generally not been exposed through the party." The first measures were soon to strike the CCP. A purge has been carried out through a check of party cards. More than some 2,000 expelled. The most common reason why these punishments have been inflicted is for violating the
Statutes
(about 40%) and then for carelessness and lack of discipline work at
(31%). 21
The Cuban leadership has related the Ochoa trial and its aftermath to the rectification process.
The latter has therefore been accelerated at the political level, at a time when at the economic level it is marked by ambiguities.
numerous
This acceleration can only be understood in the light of the worsening of disputes within the state apparatus. These can be described schematically as a conflict between the
Castroist leading nucleus and its supporters and the new generation of technocrats and officials, often influenced by Moscow, who
"outare increasingly challenging the dated and "voluntarist" (as one top official put it) leadership style of the Fidelista team.
Of course, under these tensions lie social and economic problems that have been aggravated by Gorbachev's policies. But they are also the specific product of the
Cuban power structure and of the duality of powers that exists at the top of the state as a result of the historic development and the revolutionary process.
Any analysis that doesn't start from this history, or equates the Cuban leadership with the bureaucratic dictatorships of the
East European countries, cannot explain the current evolution. The Castroist group
(evidently Castro himself but also including the faithful veterans of the Sierra
Maestra) has not come out of a bureaucratic apparatus, even if, through their method of functioning, they have produced one. In its origins, its preoccupations and its methods, the Castro leadership is different.
Although the political and infrastructural institutions have been directly copied from the USSR, the Cuban political system has no counterparts in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. The charismatic lead-
19. Pedro Miret, statement to the State Council, Granma July 23, 1989.
20. Granma, August 10, 1989.
13
21. NRI, September 1989.
22. See IV 167.
International Viewpoint #173 • November 13, 1989
CUBA ership of Castro, supported by a relatively small group (only three of the Politburo's 16 members are not former fighters from the Sierra Maestra) justifies the politicomilitary preeminence of an elite at the centre of the system. This leadership has traditionally relied on organizing mobilizing the masses, in distinction from the Soviet bloc, on the basis of anti-imperialism and defending the social gains of the revolution.
But, as Hugh Thomas has emphasized, the power of this leading elite was eroded by the effects of institutionalization in the 1970s and by the fact that "a new generation of Cubans has arrived since 1959. A generation of administrators, of bureaucrats and of technocrats who enjoy significant authority. This new generation differs in many ways from the little elite of guerillas who have ruled for 25 years. It has different priorities from those of the veterans of the revolution."23
While the differences should not be reduced to a division between economic officials on the one hand and the political apparatus on the other (this latter is also divided), it is clear that the market reforms have meant a definite weakening in central control. Insofar as the extreme centralization of the Cuban economy is the corollary of the centralization of political power, it was predictable that Fidel Castro could not observe this evolution without
Unprecedented banning of
Soviet publications
The banning in August 1989 of Moscow News and Sputnik - something without precedent in the history of CubanSoviet relations — is explained as much by such internal problems as by differences with Moscow. It was a warning addressed to all those who might be tempted to break the Castroist credo of "one chief (himself, one discipline (his)", and "unlimited confidence in his deeds and his words."24
The statement by the party leadership25 justifies the severity of this step by ideological and political considerations. The two journals supposedly were apologizing for bourgeois democracy as the highest form of popular participation; they were fascinated by the American way of life; they denied the existence of imperialism; they praised foreign investment and private property; they called internationalism into question.
However, the statement admitted that such material had got a response amongst some ill-informed youth, including some people who were impelled to justify their copying of Soviet models. Such an attraction is undeniable. Moscow News had been disappearing from the news-stands instead of mouldering there as in the past. But in order to combat these ideas, the 14 CP leadership resorted to censorship, and even admitted that they had had to cadres and specialists polemicize with this or that Soviet article and thus enter into a confrontation." This is an explicit recognition of the fact that the CCP monopolizes the right of expression and prefers to have no debate to a discussion, even one that it controls.
If there is something in common to the Ochoa trial and the banning of Moscow News, it is that of a warning to all those who might be tempted to believe, along with the American administration 26, that at 64 Fidel's time is coming to an end. It is clear that a power struggle is in the making, and that there are those who think that they can take advantage of the present international climate to prepare for the succession. The official nomination of Raul Castro as second secretary of the CCP at the party's third congress was aimed precisely at putting a "lid" on the leadership problems.
Even if there is no evidence that Ochoa and Abrantes were engaged in a political struggle, their condemnation has had the effect of making it clear to everyone that any chiefs can very quickly find themselves reduced to the ranks or even imprisoned. The conflicts are not between two ideologically identifiable factions, but rather involve all those who, rightly or wrongly, question the way that revolutionary legitimacy has become embodied
Fidel now faces some hard choices. The fact that they go against his history and tradition leaves little hope that he will change. And his recent international alignments - however conjunctural they may be and despite his pragmatism, which allows him to change from one day to the next — does not make for opti-
Is Castro counting on Gorbachev's fall?
How can one explain his joining — even provisionally - in Gorbachev campaign alongside of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), even if the latter is a special commercial ally? Castro is usually more prudent, whatever his disagreements. He is counting, presumably, on Gorbachev's fall, or at least on a defeat for his present policy that will make him change course.
Fidel probably believes that he has an interest, on the international level, in reinforcing the camp of Gorbachev's opponents in order to counter attacks that Cuba has suffered. His attacks on Poland and Hungary are not gratuitous.
The polemic with the latter country became openly envenomed after Hungarian enterprises unilaterally altered the conditions of their commercial exchanges with Cuba and increased prices by 20% in the space of one year.? Such things make the Cuban leadership fear that agreements made with other Comecon countries will
Cuba's openly acknowledging the delivery of arms to Nicaragua 2 , after Moscow's promise to suspend them, is a direct challenge to Soviet diplomacy. Gorbachev cannot ignore Cuba's weight and influence not only in the Third World but also in the other Communist parties. But the Castroist leadership does not have the necessary maneuvering room to repeat such gestures too often.
The events of October 1989 in East Germany, one of his most faithful allies, should make Castro reflect on the irreversible evolution of bureaucratized societies. All the more in that the Cubans can have no reason to suspect the East German leadership of heterodoxy. The flight of a youth can be explained by the depressing quality of life in a society that is politically immobile and culturally anesthetized. It is no use the Cubans blaming the surrogates for revolt such as rock or blue jeans or "anti-social" elements, if the regime is not ready to offer other perspectives. If the youth, who make up more than a half of the population, are to be mobilized, there will have to be something better on offer than voluntary work in micro-brigades.
Old schemas have to be got
In a country like Cuba, which has proclaimed its determination to build socialism and resist and hold out in a hostile environment at least for several years, the old ways, the old schemas, both political and material privileges of the caste denounced by the CCP have to be got rid of, in order for new generations to fulfill themselves and for their potential for revolt to be harnessed to the service of the revolution. Before it is too late, the old leader must, if he does not want to be swept away, take advantage of the rectification to rectify his own regime, which is
Sooner or later, as elsewhere, thousands of young people will speak out against the rule of the old guard. They will affirm their own collective strength. The young people who, in East Germany, as in China, sang the Internationale and waved red flags, embody the only alternative to the crisis of socialism denounced by Castro, which is a crisis of more than just bureaucratic management. At their sides, Cuba can regain the revolutionary energy that is the condition for its survival. › 23. See La revolución cubana 25 años despues, Hugh Thomas, Georges A. Fauriol, Juan Carlos Weiss; Playor, Madrid 1985. 24. Carlos Franqui op. cit. 25. Granma (International edition), august 13, 1989.
See P. Brenner Cuba after Fidel in NACLA, March/ April 1989. 27. Granma, September 1, 1989. 28. Le Monde, October 5, 1989. 29. Le Monde, October 6, 1989.