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Cuba: The Reality and the Future
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19208 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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7 / 1991 |
1,933 Words |
| Author
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Luis Aguilar
Luis Aguilar is professor of history at Georgetown University
and has just published Reflecciones Sobre Cuba y Su Futuro. |
A little over a year ago, there was widespread expectation that Fidel Castro's long dictatorship was about to end.
The democratization of Eastern Europe and Latin America, the Soviet Union's critical situation (and reduced aid to Cuba), the precarious price of sugar (Cuba's chief export), Castro's evident incapacity to gain a semblance of economic efficiency--all suggested imminent collapse.
The picture is even bleaker today. Food and electricity will be further rationed, bicycles replace many cars, and city dwellers are forcibly moved to the country. Every week, dozens of Cubans die trying to reach Florida on makeshift rafts--a "boat people" saga that has been sadly underreported.
Castro's latest speeches sound increasingly apocalyptic. The situation is tough, he says, and getting worse. But he offers no solution, only the need for more sacrifices to save "the last bastion of socialism."
In spite of everything, the Maximum Leader's hold on power remains as strong as ever. The reasons are as unique to him as they are to Cuba. First of all, Castro did not come to power behind Soviet bayonets, like the Eastern European communist leaders, but by heroic struggle. It was he who brought communism (and the Soviets) to Cuba, not the reverse.
This image of a victorious guerrilla fighter and his early stand against "American imperialism" gave Castro an international spotlight that conveniently upstaged his growing dependence on Moscow's economic support. He had the talent and the time to transform his enormous early popularity into a strong dictatorial machine. Every group that aided his rise to power--the 26th July Movement, the Rebel Army, the Students Federation--was forcibly integrated into a "new" Communist Party. Just a few weeks after the victory of the revolution (January 1959), the single voice and authority was Castro's.
Thirty-one years later, his authority remains unchallenged, although its power base has changed. After decades of dictatorship and failure, it is no longer his revolutionary image or charisma that maintains him but an instrument older than Caesar: fear. A new generation of Cubans, indifferent to the "glories of the revolution" (more than 50 percent of the Cuban population is under 40 years old) and eager to find its own destiny, must contend with one of the most efficient repressive apparatuses in the
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