It is not a question of dreaming up miraculous solutions a posteriori. Cuba served as a sugar reserve for the whole of Comecon - all the more so because the cost of production of beet sugar is higher than that of cane sugar — and benefited in return from substantial quantities of oil supplied at an advantageous price.
The dramatic consequences of the halt in Soviet oil deliveries in 19912 and the uncertainties about 1992, in spite of the agreement announced with the Russian federation, are the proof of it.
Greater self-sufficiency possible
But the extension of the areas devoted to cane cultivation could have been limited to some degree to allow a diversified agricultural production assuring a greater self-sufficiency in food; the priority given today to food production goes exactly in this direction, but, as Aurelio Alonso, deputy director of the Centre of American Studies* in Cuba, stresses, it should have been implemented sooner to reduce the dependence on imported products. The more lucid Cubans ask why it was necessary to wait 32 years to do what is being done today, in the midst of crisis.
Neither Fidel Castro nor the Fourth Congress have given any reply to this question: to know when and why the "innocents" of October 1917 have collapsed, a balance sheet of Stalinism would have to be drawn.
The three others deal with economic orientation, the functioning of the Organs of Popular Power (OPP) and foreign policy.
The congress ratified the existence of the single party, henceforth defined as the "party of the Cuban nation, Martiist [from the name of José Marti, poet and hero of Cuban independence], Marxist and Leninist."
To overcome the contradiction between the two concepts — the party of the entire nation can only with difficulty be reconciled with the single party - two changes have been made to the former statutes: one concerns the henceforth accepted adhesion of religious believers, the other, more significant, changes the old monolithic conception and affirms the necessity of reconciling "conscious discipline with the internal democracy" "respecting the plurality of internal points of view" and accepting that minority opinions can be maintained and defended.
This relaxing of the rules was not however accompanied by rights of organization for minorities.
Concessions to believers made
The only concession to organized pluralism concerns religious believers of all confessions in the name of "the project of national unity of the revolution".
The non-institutional character of the santeria, the Afro-Cuban religious practices, cannot provoke conflicts: it is different with the Catholic church whose long discredited hierarchy has made a turn and enjoys a certain autonomy thanks to its international links with the Vatican. But the number of Catholics remains less than the followers of santeria.
The discussion of the statutes allowed some sensitive themes to be touched on: the "exemplary character" of the party members and the policy of cadres.
The "exemplary" nature of the party members was a recurrent theme in the discussions: It is obvious that privileges -even minimal ones — are strongly resented by the people given the difficulty of the current situation.
Many speakers insisted on the fact that the leading role accorded to the party was not compatible with personal emoluments; 1. Fidel Castro, speech on November 17, 1991, Granma International November 24, 1991. See also IV 205 and 214. 2. See article by Janette Habel in Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1991.
See Denise Douzant-Rosenfeld, Problèmes d Amerique latine, second quarter 1991, La Documentation francaise. 11 4. See Aurelio Alonso, ALAI, September 1991.
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
CUBA The CCP congress adopted six resolu- tions and elected a profoundly changed leadership. Of the six resolutions, three concern the party itself, dealing with the statutes, the programme and the excep- tional powers accorded to the central com- mittee.
International Viewpoint #221 • February 3, 1992
CUBA
CIP the sons of some leaders were criticized in this respect. Cadre policy, meanwhile, is the source of numerous tensions: inexplicable changes, arbitrary promotions and sudden dismissals are part of the bureaucratic methods inherent in a single monolithic party which is beginning, for the first time, to be timidly criticized in the light of the events in Eastern Europe.
In the same way, the necessary separation between the state and administrative organisms, on the one hand, and the political and mass organizations, on the other, is beginning to be applied. Implicit and timid discussion
In an implicit and very timid fashion, the discussion has started on the balance sheet of the functioning of the CCP since its first congress in 1975.
The drafting of the statutes, which should be worked out by the new central committee within a year, will allow an evaluation of the depth of the challenges to the dysfunctionings "copied" from the
The most aware cadres in the leadership are well aware of the need for more radical change, but they come up against the political and social interests of powerful sectors of the apparatus: taking account of the gravity of the situation of the country, it is illusory to think that big reforms will take place in the short term. It is because of this that the congress has mandated the central committee to decide what changes to implement later.
The most spectacular measure concerns 12 the full powers accorded to the leadership, sanctioned by a specific resolution which gives "exceptional powers to the central committee so that it can in certain cases adopt the necessary political and economic decisions in relation to situations the which may confront the country, and in other cases legislapromote tion and state inito tiatives
SO as attain the supreme objective of saving the country, the and revolution socialism."
This resolution is immediately applicable and changes the competence of the national conference of the CCP, an authority which can be convoked between two con-
"to deal gresses with important affairs of Party policy".
Indeed, henceforth,
"will have the power to make changes in the composition of the central committee, incorporating new members onto this body as well as freeing others according to necessity. The number of participants, the manner of their election, the rules of preparation and of the holding of the national conference will be established by the central committee."5
These arrangements are all the more significant if one takes into account the fact that over 50% of the leadership of the party was renewed during the congress. It is difficult to evaluate exactly the real significance of this inasmuch as the debates and internal divergences in the leadership
One thing is certain: given the gravity of the crisis the country is going through, the central committee has full powers: if its use of them is not satisfactory - and who can decide that if not Fidel Castro himself - its composition can if necessary be changed without the holding of a
The changes introduced on the organizational plane contrast with the poverty of the resolution on programme presented by Roberto Robaina (secretary of the
Young Communists and a new member of the Political Bureau).
Since the central committee has been mandated to draw up the future programme, the text approved by the congress has only limited interest.
It renders the text adopted in 1986, during the third congress, absolutely obsolete
"because so far as the concrete conditions of the transition to socialism in Cuba are concerned, [that] programme does not correspond to the concepts developed in the context of the process of rectification of errors and negative tendencies starting from April 19, 1986."
The is a somewhat surprising remark inasmuch as the announcement of the process of rectification had been made - in typical Castroite manner - outside of the congress to be ratified during the second session of the third congress.
Among the baroque criticisms made of the former programme, the most significant concern "the strategic danger to the revolution that would be represented by... the conception and the application of certain economic mechanisms... of a technocratic character which rendered purely formal the political work and action of the revolutionary vanguard. In other words, the role of the party was minimized.
The resolution reiterates its condemnation of the system of economic leadership followed since 1976, because "it appealed in an excessive manner to personal incomes and money"; however these "capitalist mechanisms" condemned by Castro are being reintroduced today in the context of the new economic policy.
But the rectification process is given credit for "the break with the mediocre practices of bureaucratic planning, the waste of resources, the gigantism of projects, the waste, the importer mentality" and the former system of economic leadership is blamed for "the delay in the construction of housing and of crèches, the underestimation of voluntary labour" which would be typical of a technocratic conception.
A veritable pot-pourri
All these ambiguities make the resolution a veritable pot-pourri of contradictory and short-term recipes. One of the issues at stake in the debates on economic orientation is the repartition of prerogatives between the party and the managers (the "technocrats) who demand less interference from the apparatus and the first secretary and more powers.
Defeated at the third congress, the partisans of reform now see their abilities recognized thanks to the adoption of the new economic orientation.
It is true that, as an ultimate precaution, the four last lines of the resolution on programme recall the will of the people "to be implacable with those who capitulate and those who betray, to annihilate the pretensions of the enemy to reestablish capitalism in Cuba".
On the economic plane the definitions adopted by the congress are clearer: the new economic policy, imposed by international circumstances and by the resulting internal disruption, breaks implicitly with the premisses of the rectification process adopted by the preceding congress.
The development of mixed enterprises, the acceptance of privatization of artisanal
February 3, 1991 • #221 International Viewpoint activities with the notable exception of the free peasant markets, the appeal to foreign capital for the relaunching of production in factories paralyzed by lack of raw materials or fuel and the commercialization agreements are to gradually fill the immense vacuum left by the collapse of exchanges with Comecon, reorientate foreign trade and reorganize a country confronted with a dilemma analogous to that of the 1960s: how to reconvert an economy suddenly deprived of energy sources.
This question is not only economic but social and political. Supposing that the new economic policy has a certain success, in other words supposing that Latin American (whose status is privileged) or European capital really develop; this could only increase social differentiations and inequalities: already, the development of tourism has revived foreign currency trafficking and the black market.
As Aurelio Alonso puts it: "There is not just a black market in currency in Cuba, but a trade fed by everything which is lacking, in particular the rationed products... Most of the imported products which circulate are not bought in foreign currency but resold in Cuban pesos after having been bought in a diplomatic or tourist shop. The trade in foreign currency is inserted in this informal market which is very much more significant"
How is such a situation, which generates significant social tensions, going to be understood by a people used to a very egalitarian tradition? How are the inevitable antagonisms going to be resolved?
The question of the funcioning and above all the powers of the OPP, their articulation with the CCP and the independence of the mass organizations were at the centre of the debates at the congress, but nothing essential has changed.
### Election of deputies
The decisions taken concerning the forms of election of deputies to the Popular National Assembly should in principle be concretized in the course of 1992: they imply constitutional changes which are to be decided by the national assembly.
But this latter, which met in December 1991, has still adopted nothing: the difficulties are indeed considerable. Pluralist electoral forms, in the framework of the OPP and resting on the support of the masses, could have been introduced in better conditions and were not. Now the Castroite leadership is obliged, in the worst conditions, to introduce reforms whose parliamentary logic could, in the absence of a real popular power, be the means for imperialism to tighten the "democratic noose" in the Nicaraguan
Certainly, the direct election of deputies to the National Assembly envisaged for the end of 1992 will take place within the framework of the single party: but what will be the attitude of the government towards certain dissident candidates that it is — perhaps - ready to tolerate locally but certainly not nationally?
Such is the fundamental demand of Washington, the Latin American bourgeoisies and
Madrid coincide land ho wish to whose use the current crisis to impose the end of Castroism and the revolution.
Already the dissident organizations, which everybody agrees have as yet no social base, are intensifying their activities thanks to increased aid supplied by the United
States. The launching of armed provocations by the emigré sectors is no longer ruled out, for economic blockade and provocations are complementary tools. Already, the Cuban leadership has responded by repression, condemning the leader of a group of dissidents to two years in for distributing prison leaflets and clandestine
While it is understandable that isolated and menaced Cuba, which is virtually at war, should organize its own defence, this cannot justify repression for crimes of opinion. The revolution is being attacked from outside, but it could also die of bureaucratic asphyxiation from inside.
It is necessary "to be reassembled as a single family, following a single line, a single flag, a clear road for all" said Fidel
Castro on November 26, 1991, but the cohesion and unity of the country henceforth needs something other than voluntarism or attempts to debureaucratize the bureaucracy of which the rectification process was the most recent manifesta-
The defence of the revolution supposes that the people have the ability to debate and to settle such important questions as the peasant markets, the shortage of labour in agriculture, the nature of information and of press organs, the designaof tion of candidates posts to the functioning of the responsibility,
OPP, the forms of election to the national assembly, and so on.
An old Cuban sociologist has said: "It appears to me obvious that we have become experts on socialism. We have experienced 30 years of Cuban socialism and we know what works and what does not, and thus we all have important opinions to express. With this crisis, there exists a great controversy inside the revolution, because the immense majority of the people support the revolution and the
CUBA
SALVAR
LA PATRIA, LA REVOLUCION D
4 EL SOCIALISMO socialist choice, but starting from there all must be healthily debated". The rectification process is dead under the weight of its contradictions and the effects of the crisis. As an attempt at anti-bureaucratic struggle launched from above, it was a prisoner of its ambiguities.
### Cultural symbolism
Perhaps it is on the cultural plane that the symbolism has been most clear. Daniel Diaz Torres, CCP member, is the author of the film "Alice in the village of wonders", which, in his words, "is born from the process of rectification, made in the revolurevolution" and which denounces the misdeeds of the bureaucracy and double standards'°. Rarely has a work unleashed so much violent polemic, provoking an open crisis inside the Institute of Cinema and the party which is only beginning to be resolved, proof that, as Diaz Torres says, "the questions posed by the rectification process have not been resolved""!
And if they stay unresolved, the "innocents" will finally collapse. * 5. Este es el congreso mas democratico, p. 13. Editora Politica, Havana, 1991. 6. Ibid., p. 38. 7. Aurelio Alonso, op. cit. 8. Sergio Berrocal, AFP, Madrid, November 27, 1991. 9. Envio, December 1991, Managua.
10. SecE: Humanite Decembe 27, 1991. ARter four 1 3
days, the showing of the film was stopped.