Stonewalling in a time of crisis made by the German Democratic Republic that the unified Germany
To reach the International Appeal, write "Appel Cuba", Robert
March, 24, rue de la Réunion, 75020 Paris, France — G. Villetin. *
CUBA Cuba's economic partners with sanctions should it come to power. In these conditions, the American Congress' adoption of the Torricelli amendment strengthening the embargo can only worsen the economic and social crisis.
In the period of one summer alone, two
THE strengthening of the embargo, while not bringing down the regime, has aggravated Cuba's social and economic difficulties. In a situation where the very future of the revolution is at stake, the leadership of the ruling
Cuban Communist Party (CCP) refuses to take its growing number of internal debates to the public. The recent expulsion of Carlos Aldana' from the CCP politbureau has not helped to make the state of affairs in the Party any more transparent.
JANETTE HABEL*
HE expulsion of Carlos Aldana,
T one of the central Cuban leaders, takes place at a time of great difficulties for the country. 1992 has been the most difficult year since the revolution, and it is ending with an increase in political pressures and a further tightening of the American embargo. At the same time, Cuba has lost 70% of its buying power: imports, which totalled $8.1bn in
1989, have only reached $2.2bn this year.
Faced with colossal tensions, the leadership of the CCP has not stimulated the necessary debates and the critical thinking required by the most conscious sectors of the population
- those who want to draw a balance sheet of the revolution and be involved in the drawing up of new perspectives as to how to weather the storm while preserving the gains of the revolution and what kind of society to build.
The country, which has to restructure the whole of its economy, is looking for new markets, credit and technology in the West; for factories paralyzed by a lack of spare parts and primary materials have a vital need for foreign investment and trade. The new economic policy - adopted at the 4th congress in 1991 and confirmed during the constitutional review in July -is designed to reassure potential entrepreneurs still hesitant to venture outside of the sphere of tourism.
This new NEP has yet to provoke the desired response. American pressures are sufficiently strong to dissuade investors; Western companies, even big ones have learned as much. Moreover, the Cuban "opposition" based in the city of Miami in Florida has not hesitated to threaten governments traditionally considered to be Cuba's allies have taken their distance. Indeed, the declaration of the HispanoLatin American July summit held in Madrid contains no condemnation of the blockade. Spain's president Felipe Gonzales has blamed "internal factors" for Cuba's problems.2 After meeting representatives of Cuban exile groups, the president of the Spanish Council called for the holding of democratic elections within one year. Spain's King Juan Carlos stated in an interview with a Florida newspaper that he had himself along with his wife Queen Sofia and the head of the government -asked the Cuban president to step down.
In Mexico, President Salinas de Gortari has not only received anti-Castro representatives for the first time in the history of relations between the two countries, but has gone so far as to host Jorge Mas Canosa - president of the Cuban-American Foundation, a far-right leader and superrich entrepreneur associate of President Bush's son.
The timing of these developments is not accidental for Cuba and points to new support for Washington's policy of strangling the regime.
Waiting for the fall
Since the collapse of the former Eastern Europe regimes, the United States has been waiting for similar developments in Cuba as a result of the deepening social and economic crisis aggravated by the
Solidarity efforts stepped up in Europe EFFORTS are being made to challenge the Unted States led attempt to strangle the Cuban revolution by an economic blockade.
In Germany, a united conference against the blockade brought together more than a thousand people before the summer holidays. In Italy, the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) has initiated a fundraising campaign to send oil to the island. On October 24, in Brussels, there will be a national meeting against the blockade, called by 40 Belgian organizations.
Among the many well-known figures in attendance will be the Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto, the European parliamentary deputy Dorothée Piermont, British Labour Party MP Ken Coates, LCR member Janette Habel and Abel Prieto, president of the Cuban Writers and Artists Union and member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party.
In France, various initiatives are being discussed. Signatories of the International Appeal against the blockade are planning a fundraising campaign to send milk to Cuba. This initiative will complement efforts by several European parlementarians opposed to the suspension of milk shipments to Cuba for political reasons - shipments formerly was supposed to continue.
embargo. The three-year long announcement of the impending end of the regime has saved Washington from having to resort to strong-arm tactics — which could be counter-productive given the reactions this would provoke across Latin America. With the end of the Cold War, a peaceful transition "along Spanish lines" would avoid the violent conflict which would send hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing towards Florida and seriously destabilize the southern United States. *This article originally appeared in the October 8, 1992 issue of Rouge, weekly paper of the Revolutionary Commuist League (LCR — French section of the Fourth International). 1. Carlos Aldana was a member of the Political Bureau, in charge of external relations, ideology and culture. He headed the Cuban delegation during the trilateral negotiations over the end of the war in Angola, and is considered to be in favour of opening up the economy. Politically, he has blown hot and cold - if sometimes tolerant with respect to intellectuals and artists, in December 1991, he severely
2. Intered inal eatsiritune, July 25 and 26, 3
denounced critical expression. 1992.
International Viewpoint # 237 • October 26, 1992
CUBA/500 YEARS
But the regime has yet to collapse and the population, while very discontented, has yet to show any signs of rebellion against the Castro regime. All commentators - particularly diplomats posted in Cuba - have made the same observation, which has been backed up by dissident groups, who recognize that they exert very
This popular resistance can be primarily explained by the strength of national feeling, but also by the lack of an alternative: the riots in Los Angeles have not made the "American way of life" particularly attractive for a people which is increasingly Afro-Cuban in its composition. Indeed, Cuban television covered the Rodney King events with great interest.
No cause for enthusiasm
And the regional situation does not provide any cause for enthusiasm. American promises of aid for Nicaragua have evaporated into thin air and the big landowners are returning to take back their expropriated property. In nearby Santo Domingo, electricity cuts are more frequent and less organized than in Havana. And finally, images from Eastern Europe have hardly stimulated a desire for change. Even if such aspirations exist, the feeling is that the country has reached an impasse and the social discontent has not yet expressed itself politically.
This is the background to the call by an American working group for the partial lifting of the embargo.3 Faced with the survival of the regime, some diplomatic circles believe that its downfall can be better brought about by establishing contacts with Havana. The State Department has always alternated between the carrot and the stick, by nurturing the hope for a better
The idea is not a new one, but the new economic policy has enhanced its credibility. The hope is to stimulate political changes and bring about the fall of the regime by favoring the growth of contacts, trips, communication and exchanges through the partial lifting of the embargo. In any event, nothing will happen before the American elections, and it is very uncertain whether support for these proposals will be found in a new administration.
Such proposals correspond to hopes among certain circles of Cuban leaders who see no way out of the crisis outside the restoration of relations with Washington.
But under what conditions? This is the backdrop to the expulsion of Carlos Aldana.
According to the official version of events, Aldana was dismissed for corruption (it is claimed that the electronic 4 equipment in his office, provided free by the local Sony representative, with listening devices by the corporate officer, who was an agent) and abuse of
This interpretation, corroborated by Aldana himself in a public press conference, is double-edged: on one hand, it means that a high-ranking leader was involved in fraudulent dealings at the same time that sacrifice is being demanded of everyone - which in itself reveals a high degree of crisis in the leadership. On the other, it does not adequately explain why only Aldana was expelled.
Once again, the total lack of transparency in the leadership's debates and functioning give rise for all manner of speculation. The Central Committee, the only body which can dismiss a member of the Political Bureau, did not even meet, and nobody knows what are the political bases of the measures that have been taken. But it is hard to believe that there is no connection with current debates over the future of
What margin of manoeuvre does the leadership have for undertaking a policy of openness while the country is on a war footing? This is the big question. The example of Nicaragua haunts Cuba, and nobody can ignore the fact that the Sandinistas' electoral defeat of 1990 has precipitated a period of confusion and decline. But this is the perspective which unites both the "good" and the "bad" Americans as much as it does Salinas de Gortiari and Felipe Gonzales.
Another ghost haunts Cuba: that of Grenada, where divisions in the leadership provided an opening for American intervention. Should Cuba close ranks and oppose at all costs the age-old annexionist designs of the empire to the north, or should it negotiate a retreat imposed by the New World Order? In both cases, the very future of the revolution is at stake.
Whether Fidel Castro can continue to garner popular support while excluding the people from the process of making key decisions — and while substituting dismissals made in the name of virtue for needed debate — remains to be seen. What is clear is that this is not the right way to respond to the deep anti-bureaucratic sentiment of the Cuban people. * 3. Financial Times, September 23, 1992.
N OCTOBER 12, 1992, America discovered capitalism as Christopher Columbus, financed by the kings of Spain and the bankers of Genoa brought this novelty to the Caribbean islands. In his journal of the Discovery, the Admiral employs the word "gold" 139 times and the words "God" or "Our Lord" 51. These unspoilt beaches filled him with tireless enthusiasm and on November 27 he prophesied that "all Christendom will do business here". In that at least he was right. He may have believed that Haiti was Japan and that Cuba was China and that the inhabitants of China were the Indians of India, but about the business side of things he made no mistake.
After five centuries of business-like activity on the part of all Christendom a third of the American forests have been destroyed, a significant part of the previously fertile land is sterile and more than half the population eats only one meal a day. The Indians, victims of the biggest expropriation in world history continue to be pushed off their last remaining lands and their identity is still denied. They are forbidden to live in their own way. At the outset the pillage and "othercide" the name of God; now it is done in the name of Progress.
However the outlines of another possible America — invisible to the existing America blinded by racism - shine through this forbidden and despised identity.
On October 12, 1492, Columbus wrote in his journal that he wanted to take some Indians to Spain "so that they can learn to speak". Five centuries later, on October 12, 1989, a United States' court declared Ladislao Pastrana, a Mixtec Indian from Mexico's Oaxaca region and an illegal agricultural worker in California "mentally retarded" because he did not speak proper Castillan [Spanish] and recommended that he be held for life in an asylum. Pastrana had difficulty understanding his Spanishspeaking interpreter and the psychologist diagnosed "intellectual deficiency". Finally, the anthropologists sorted things out; Pastrana expressed himself perfectly in his own language Mixtec, spoken by Indians with a 2000 year old cultural inheritance.
Paraguay speaks Guarani; this is a unique case in world history where the common national language is that of the conquered Indians. However, opinion polls reveal that the majority of Paraguayans think that those who do not speak Spanish are "like animals".
One out of two Peruvians is Indian. According to the country's constitution, Quechua is a national language with the same status as Spanish. However reality does not conform to the constitution. Peru treats the Indians as South Africa treats Blacks. Spanish is the only language taught in the schools, the only one understood by
"It is the oppressed who discovers the oppressor."
October 26, 1992
500 YEARS cities and to learn to wear clothes and our
Subjugation of the body; robbery of the soul. In speaking of this operation the verb "reduce to" (the Spanish verb reducir) appears all the time. The Indian saved has been reduced. She will be reduced until