Changes In Cuba?
The AP is reporting that some changes may be slowly starting to happen in Cuba under Raul Castro. It is still awfully hard to tell exactly what is happening and there still is no sign of Fidel. (After a month, it would seem highly improbable that he will ever be seen alive in public again).
Raul Castro is beginning to show his leadership as acting president while his brother rests from intestinal surgery, and Carlos Lage, another member of the collective, is being featured more prominently in state media. Both have been more inclined than Fidel to open up Cuba's communist economy.
And in a statement much analyzed by Cuba watchers, Raul Castro said he supports normalizing relations with the United States — but only if the Americans stop trying to determine how Cuba is governed.
The U.S. government's latest "transition" plan assumes "a more active civil society" and a "growing sense of frustration among ordinary Cubans" on the island will help hasten change, especially after Fidel Castro, now 80, is gone.
But while pressure to alleviate daily economic struggles is increasing — a reality Raul Castro will have to face — calm has reigned under the 75-year-old defense minister's leadership. And with the Cuban government running smoothly, attention is shifting to whether the U.S. might change its long-standing focus on pushing out the Castro government.
"If Raul Castro decides to make some serious changes in Cuba, that would immediately knock the props from under the existing policy of the United States," said Mark Falcoff, resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.
Some Cuban dissidents, from the moderate Oscar Espinosa Chepe to the more strident Martha Beatriz Roque, say Raul may listen to younger government leaders and allow more private enterprise. Even modest economic openings could lead to increased political freedoms, they say.
While Raul strongly embraces the primacy of the communist party, he has shown a willingness to experiment with a freer economy.
Raul expressed interest in China's model of capitalist reform with one-party political control during a November 1997 visit. And it was Raul who announced in 1994 that farmers markets were being set up to allow the island's growers to sell crops for whatever price they could get, introducing more Cubans to private enterprise.
Lage, in turn, was involved in other reforms that helped Cuba survive economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off substantial subsidies. The changes allowed trade in U.S. dollars and foreign investment, spun off state farms into cooperatives and legalized hundreds of small private businesses.
Fidel Castro later retreated from many of those popular reforms, limiting self-employment licenses, imposing restrictions on farmers markets and removing the U.S. dollar from circulation. But despite unhappiness among many Cubans about the pullback, dramatic and rapid change here seems unlikely.
While the US appears to be now playing it very cautiously, most communist states that have been led by a cult of personality have not had successful, peaceful transitions when the strongman dies. It is, of course, not impossible, but there is a lot of precedent out there where violence or collapse have occurred. I would rather not see any violent changes, of course.
World news | Gaius Friday, 1 September , 2006
By Matthew, Friday, 1 September , 2006 @ 12:50 pm
I am always extremely skeptical when the AP or any other mainstream news source tries to shine a good light on a dictator like the AP seems to be doing in this story.
By Gaius, Friday, 1 September , 2006 @ 12:55 pm
Yeah - the press has been much too soft on Cuba for years.