On July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro’s staff secretary appeared on national television to read a statement in which the aging revolutionary leader announced that he was turning over provisional power in order to undergo surgery (for what most now believe was an acute attack of diverticulitis). In the months before the announcement, no public sign of illness had surfaced. Just five days earlier, Fidel had given two speeches (one at dawn in Bayamo that lasted two and a half hours and a slightly shorter one several hours later in the town of Holguin) to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of his attack on the Moncada army barracks, the event that launched the 26th of July Movement. The week before he had joined Hugo Chávez in Cordoba, Argentina, for a week-long MERCOSUR summit, also visiting Alta Gracia, Che Guevara’s birthplace. Indeed, Fidel’s only serious health concern in recent years (as far as the public is aware) had been the knee and arm injuries he suffered after a fall a few years earlier. On that occasion, Castro underwent knee surgery without general anesthesia; an epidural permitted him to stay conscious and remain in charge of the country. His illness during the summer of 2006, however, was much more serious and would eventually require several surgical interventions. As a result, Fidel elected to turn over provisional power to his brother Raul and to half a dozen members of his inner circle.
As his condition worsened and complications emerged in subsequent months, it became clear that Cuba was undergoing more than a temporary change in political leadership. The country had largely recovered from the external shock of the Soviet collapse and survived relentless though ineffectual efforts by the United States to end the revolutionary experiment, including, by Havana’s count, several hundred attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Yet throughout the government and its scholarly community, it was no secret that some revolutionary regeneration was overdue, lest the social and ideological values of the founders crumble under the weight of the general population’s frustration with scarcity and deprivation. A number of high-level officials made public their awareness that corruption in government agencies, youth disaffection, and continuing economic hardship could cause the revolution, as Fidel put it, “to destroy itself.” But beyond some uncharacteristically frank press exposés about corruption in state enterprises and some very quiet discussion in a handful of select venues, by the middle of 2006 there was still little public evidence of tangible plans for policies to redress the domestic malaise. Public exhortations to embrace revolutionary ideals seemed increasingly out of touch with the public mood.
Technically, Fidel’s decree transferring power was provisional, suggesting that he would return to power once his health improved. But Castro later acknowledged that at the time, he believed he had quite possibly taken his last trip abroad and given his final speech. Raul fully assumed his brother’s duties as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, head of the Politburo, president of the Council of State, and commander and chief of the armed forces—all while continuing as minister of defense. Responsibility for managing what Fidel described as the “strategic” sectors of health, education, energy, foreign affairs, and finance was transferred to a half-dozen national figures, a mix of younger and older cadre, some who fought in the Sierra Maestra, others who had cut their political and managerial teeth largely in the post-Soviet era. Aware that Fidel Castro’s sidelining from power could create a pretext for violent action against the island, whether at the hands of his enemies in Miami or Washington, Cuban defense and domestic security authorities put massive numbers of police and soldiers on alert.
The Cuban public’s reaction to the announcement was one of palpable concern, anticipation, and, notably, calm. For many, Fidel’s tenure in power had come to be viewed as both the continuing flame behind what remained of the Cuban Revolution’s initial zeal, as well as the Achilles heel of the Revolution’s sustainability. Cubans tend to have personal and complex relationships with Fidel Castro, often combining feelings of veneration, respect, or love with frustration or even hate. Thus, even for many of those long disaffected with the revolutionary process, and certainly among his still extensive fan base, Fidel’s physical wellbeing was a matter of personal concern and national consequence, but not a pretext for political agitation or unrest. The kind of civil upheaval that many abroad had expected and planned for with Fidel out of the picture simply did not transpire. There was no Ceausescu moment.
In September of 2006, Cuba assumed the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement for the first time since its tenure between 1979 and 1983. Heads of state from around the world descended on Havana amid speculation of a possible appearance by Fidel. Before his illness, the chance to return to a leading role among a host of states that shared his critique of American power and globalization could have been the perfect golden parachute as Fidel entered his 80 s. Yet Fidel’s health was still too precarious. By December of 2006, when Cubans and a host of Fidel’s friends from around the world gathered for a postponed 80th birthday celebration and ceremony honoring the Cuban Armed Forces, again Fidel defied anticipation he would make at least a pro forma appearance, remaining hospitalized and unable to digest whole foods. Periodically, Cuban state media released photos and video images of a bedridden Fidel with Hugo Chávez, who became a frequent visitor (beginning in August 2006, just several weeks after the initial transfer of power), or one of the few to be publicly acknowledged. As Cuba celebrated the 49th anniversary of the revolution, Cubans and the outside world had accepted the possibility that Fidel’s transfer of provisional power might turn out to be more than temporary.
It would be easy, but mistaken, to conclude that dynastic politics alone made Raul Castro the only choice to assume Cuba’s presidency, for Raul is much more than simply Fidel’s younger brother. He is and has been a key official in the Cuban Revolution, responsible for building Cuba’s revolutionary state from the ground up since his days commanding troops of the Rebel Army in the Sierra Cristal. In addition to his long-standing history of leadership, Raul also possesses an expansive institutional base from which to operate.
Raul Castro’s political trajectory has involved several phases, and his reputation as a leader has likewise evolved over time, in occasionally contradictory ways. In the Sierra and during the early years of the revolution, he became known for his rigor, discipline, and loyalty, as well as for a taste for draconian measures to keep those around him in line. After the revolution triumphed, he played a central role in building the institutions of state—both the repressive and defensive mechanisms necessary to consolidate and keep power internally as well as the military and intelligence capabilities geared toward defending the nation against external threats. From his early days leading Cuba’s military forces, Raul prioritized and, for the first time in Cuban history, succeeded in maintaining the state’s monopoly over the use of force, earning a reputation of brutality along the way. Defectors and critics as well as intelligence analysts in the CIA, meanwhile, have for years floated rumors of alcohol abuse and other personal foibles. Raul played a critical role in helping Cuba adjust to the end of the Cold War. After Cuban troops withdrew from southern Africa, he oversaw the transformation of the Cuban military into an institution largely devoted to national defense and the stewardship of large swaths of the state-dominated economy. During and after popular Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa’s fall from grace in 1989 (described on page 73, “Who was General Arnaldo Ochoa and why was he executed?”), Raul played a major role in purging the country’s security forces and consolidating the Ministry of Interior under the purview of the Ministry of Defense, which he led.
Raul is credited with inserting a voice of pragmatism into the Cuban leadership’s debates about economic issues during the 1990s, pushing Fidel to accept reforms that allowed Cubans to feed themselves more easily and employ themselves in limited trades and services. But during the same period, he also demonstrated an acute and abiding ideological impulse. At the 1995 congress of the Cuban Communist Party, Raul made the public case that a number of scholars in party-sanctioned think tanks who had advocated economic reforms had grown dangerously close to outside powers, specifically the United States. Calling them “fifth columnists,” his assault (conducted in collaboration with the current first vice president of the country) resulted in a wholesale purge of some of the most talented and creative thinkers in the country.
Today, Raul Castro seems to believe that his own legacy to Cuba will be less closely tied to the institution building or brutality of the 1960s if he is able to successfully reinvigorate the revolution’s long-term staying power. Known now as a family man who keeps regular work hours, gives concise speeches, and holds those around him to high but more human standards than his brother Fidel, Raul demonstrated a very different leadership style immediately following the transfer of power, with far less emphasis on mass mobilization and voluntarism and more of a focus on productivity and efficiency (two qualities he and all Cubans now openly observe are sorely needed). Even those who had suffered the effects of the purge in the 1990s saw him as the right person to manage the post-Fidel era. That he possesses the complete trust of his brother does not mean the two agree on all fronts.
Without the protection of Fidel’s legendary personal charisma, Raul Castro and the governing leadership moved quickly to signal their awareness that Cuban society was in need of some oxygen. Raul openly recognized that Cubans had grown bone weary of material deprivation and the absence of personal freedoms. This did not mean that the successor regime was ready for multiparty elections monitored by the OAS and Jimmy Carter. Nor did it mean inviting the IMF to Havana to orchestrate shock therapy to liberalize the state economy. Moreover, authorities remained unwilling to move beyond the low-intensity repression that had come to be so effective in maintaining domestic stability. Yet Raul’s early acknowledgement of significant problems did pave the way for an extensive national discussion within the framework of the revolution about what kinds of changes Cubans want for their country. More specifically, Raul began removing the lid Fidel had kept on discussions of markets, property, and productivity. In the pages of the notoriously timid and, until recently, vapid state-run press, as well as in schools, workplaces, and meetings convened throughout the country, Raul Castro effectively opened the national suggestion box, cajoling the country to vent, argue, disagree, and constructively offer ideas for reforms—again within the context of socialism. In a climate that many observers noted was the most free of fear and the most democratic in Cuban revolutionary memory, Cubans responded. In one notable incident that received global press attention, a leaked video to the BBC showed several university students asking a number of provocative questions to National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón at a government-sponsored forum regarding the injustice of the dual currency system, restrictions on travel abroad, and lack of contact between common citizens and their representatives in the Cuban legislature. Likewise, the national press, especially the daily Juventud Rebelde, published a series of investigative pieces on the state sector of the economy, exposing the corruption, inefficiency, and often sheer absurdity that plagued government social programs and state-run enterprises.
Fidel’s presence just off stage helped contain expectations of dramatic or abrupt changes. Yet all in all, these public discussions served as an enormous pulse-taking exercise for the regime while giving the Cuban population a sense that their future might actually improve after Fidel. They also provided the backdrop for a series of institutional events, including municipal, provincial, and national elections for People’s Power representatives at the end of 2007, as well as a number of professional “congresses” of writers, artists, and journalists. Importantly, the government announced that it would hold the long-postponed sixth congress of the Cuban Communist Party in late 2009, likely to be a key event where significant reforms may be undertaken, as they have been at past party congresses. At the same time consensus building and personnel changes within the revolution’s leadership, and some experimentation with deregulation in the agricultural sector, helped Raul consolidate political support for further reform.
According to Cuba’s 1992 constitution, every five years in Cuba elections are held for the 609 seats in the National Assembly of People’s Power. National Assembly members then go on to elect members of the Council of State, which consists of 31 members, including one president, one first vice president, and five vice presidents. The president of the Council of State is also the president of the republic and the commander in chief of the armed forces. The Council of State then appoints the cabinet, known as the Council of Ministers. There is considerable overlap in the membership of the two bodies, as well as between the membership of the Council of State and the Politburo of the Cuban Communist Party.
At the end of 2007, Cubans voted in one-party, multiple candidate slates for the local and provincial People’s Power representatives. In January 2008, the whole country voted for the National Assembly’s membership. Following these elections, Fidel Castro issued a statement on February 19, announcing he would no longer “aspire to nor accept … the position of President of the Council of State and Commander-in-chief.” Under these circumstances, Raul Castro, who had served as first vice president, was elected president by members of the National Assembly on February 24, 2008.
In an inaugural speech of less than 40 minutes, Raul broadly outlined the agenda for his first and perhaps only five-year term. The speech made clear that in the 18 months following Fidel’s illness, public expressions of grievances had been paralleled by a behind-the-scenes policy discussion of considerable range and potential consequence. With Fidel’s health improved and stable, and with his legacy and views still very much part of Cuban public discourse, the first thing Raul made clear was that Fidel had been and would continue to be consulted on major decisions of state, both domestic and foreign. A resolution to this effect was approved unanimously by the National Assembly. Raul then went on to deliver a number of important messages. First, he indicated that in subsequent weeks and months a number of modest and moderately paced measures would be rolled out. Some would address a bloated and inefficient administrative bureaucracy; some would crack down on corruption in state enterprises. Others would help improve the lives of Cuban people. Second, he emphasized the importance of measures to enhance the productive and efficient use of resources, a clear indication that with the reduction in the size of the state would come the introduction of more market mechanisms. In particular, the speech highlighted agriculture as an area of special focus. Third, though Raul made clear that the United States was still very much in the business of seeking to derail the revolution, he also notably stressed that Cuba’s problems were largely homegrown and could only be solved by Cubans themselves.
As expected, a number of limited but significant reforms followed, focusing initially on consumer demands. Access to the Internet for now remains heavily controlled or off-limits entirely, but the government has liberalized the sale of computers (prices remain prohibitive for most). Already, however, the government understands that its ability to control Internet access is limited; with bootleg connections Cubans are increasingly plugging into YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, and even entering the blogosphere. There seems to be an ongoing debate within the government about the risks and rewards of further opening access to the Web, as Cuba’s exposure to all things global and technological is recognized as inevitable. Cell phones, though present in Cuba for well over a decade, are also now available to anyone who can afford them (previously their use had been restricted to authorized individuals), and remarkably high numbers have been sold. In addition, Raul tackled one of Cubans’ most common complaints by eliminating prohibitions on citizens’ access to hotels, specialized beaches, and other tourist facilities. Surprisingly, though prices for a one-night stay are several times the average monthly wage, summer bookings by local customers at Cuba’s beach resorts soared. Even for those who cannot afford such indulgences, by removing restrictions Raul eliminated what the Cuban population regarded as an unjust denial of their basic rights.
Though some in the Bush administration dismissed these changes as simply “cosmetic,” other reforms are far less susceptible to this charge. Long a man clear on the political as well as nutritional importance of food on the Cuban table, Raul lifted the ban on farmers buying their own supplies and equipment and initiated a process through which more unused state lands are being turned over and leased to independent farmers and cooperatives (a trend that first began to a limited degree in the 1990s as state-owned agricultural enterprises lost efficiency). As of February 2009, Cuban sources reported that more than 45,000 farmers had received such land grants. Deregulation of the production, distribution, and sale of milk saved the state millions, Raul reported. In order to boost food supply, additional agricultural sectors were expected to see similar measures. In what may be a small boost to private property, the state sped up the process through which some occupants are being granted title to their residential properties (freely selling these properties still remain prohibited, though practiced on the black market). Raul also reportedly probed the possibility of eliminating the tarjeta blanca, the onerous and widely reviled permission slip long required for all Cubans to leave the country and travel abroad (though some restrictions would likely remain for doctors, recent university graduates, and security officials). Also in the area of personal freedoms, and as a prelude to improving diplomatic ties with the European Union, Raul Castro oversaw Cuba’s signing of two important international human rights agreements, although the extent or pace of the government’s intended implementation of their provisions remains in question. In addition, Castro commuted the death sentences of all but a small handful of prisoners who had been sentenced to capital punishment, though he did not indicate that the death penalty would be eliminated from the penal code. With each modest measure, hope for greater reforms increased, but expectations, and the potential cost of not meeting them, did as well.
Another policy move actively discussed but yet to be implemented is the elimination of Cuba’s current dual currency (peso and CUC, or convertible peso) system in favor of conversion to a single convertible currency (for the origins of Cuba’s dual currency system, please see page 131, “What were the regime’s economic reforms and why were they so limited?” and page 134, “What kind of foreign investment began in Cuba, what consequences did this investment bring to the island, and how did authorities respond?”). Today, state-sector employees paid in traditional Cuban pesos earn salaries far less valuable than foreign-sector workers, informal-sector hustlers, and recipients of remittances who are able to convert their hard currency income into more valuable CUCs. CUCs, in turn, provide access to products and services simply not affordable for those whose income depends on traditional Cuban pesos. This fundamental inequality has been one of Cuban citizens’ strongest grievances. For now, currency reform appears to be on hold, likely because it requires the accumulation of foreign reserves that Cuba does not currently possess. In the meantime, by legalizing hard currency tips and bonuses made by foreign businesses, cleaning up corruption, cracking down on the black market, and streamlining state enterprises, the state intends to absorb a share of revenue from the substantial underground economy and to move more Cuban employment from the informal to the formal sector.
Still, to make any push toward formalization sustainable and raise the kinds of hard currency necessary to make currency conversion possible, job creation is urgently needed. Job creation will in turn require more foreign investment beyond the traditional sectors of tourism and commodity extraction. Indeed, some new foreign investment has materialized from major regional players such as Brazil, notably for agricultural, industrial, infrastructure, and energy projects. A freer labor market will also be necessary, as the government seems to recognize. Sounding more like Margaret Thatcher than Karl Marx, Raul cautioned that “socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income … equality is not egalitarianism.” Egalitarianism, he added, could be “a form of exploitation of the good workers by those who are less productive and lazy.” With that, Cuba’s Socialist government announced it would eliminate the cap on salaries and wages paid in state enterprises, indicating a measure of tolerance for inequality as a trade-off for productivity and fairness. Moreover, in the future, Raul hinted, Cubans may no longer be able to count on such extensive subsidies for a host of programs and products and should in fact expect to be taxed (a concept foreign to most Cubans) as the state gives citizens greater space to earn incomes independent of state enterprises. Indeed, pressure is building for an expansion of the 1990s reforms legalizing limited individual enterprise. Cuba recently announced it will issue new taxi licenses for the first time in many years, and the construction industry has also benefited from policies aimed at decentralization, perhaps paving the way for greater employment of the island’s thousands of licensed and unlicensed independent skilled tradesmen—an urgent priority given the need for massive rebuilding of housing and other buildings destroyed by hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Paloma.
Such market-based measures may be increasingly necessary as Cuba faces looming demographic challenges. According to Raul Castro, with a rapidly aging population, in the year 2025, there will be 770,000 fewer citizens in the workforce than today. Moreover, beginning in the year 2020, there will be more citizens leaving the workforce than entering it. Financial strains on the government’s social security and benefits systems will thus only increase, leading the government to take the preliminary step of increasing the retirement age for men from 60 to 65. The public revelation of such sobering statistics during the summer of 2008, coupled with global highs in the prices of imported food and oil at the time, seemed to dampen some of the initial optimism at the start of Raul’s presidency. Still, despite the economically and socially costly intrusion of hurricanes Gustav, Ike, and Paloma, other reforms and active debates continue, with Cuban economists purged by Raul Castro and Cuba’s First Vice President José Ramon Machado Ventura in the 1990s once again circulating proposals for far-reaching changes. Moreover, economic authorities are keenly eyeing the potential for Cuba to become a major oil producer (with government estimates of 20 billion barrels in offshore reserves).
Consistent with his policies as provisional head of state, Raul Castro emphasized at his inauguration the importance of disagreement and dissent as key ingredients to obtaining policy outcomes that are seen as legitimate by the majority and beneficial to the public’s welfare. Dissent outside of the constraints and framework of state socialism, however, would still be largely proscribed, as the following direct quote indirectly suggests: “There is no reason to fear discrepancies in a society such as ours, where its very nature precludes the existence of antagonistic contradictions, since the social classes that make it up are not antagonistic themselves. The best solutions can come from a profound exchange of differing opinions, if such an exchange is guided by sensible purposes and the views are uttered with responsibility.”
Despite this caveat, the degree of public debate has, by all comparisons to the recent past, been remarkable. Shortly after assuming the presidency, Raul and the other Council of State members gave their blessing to the most forthcoming and wide-ranging series of publicly broadcast discussions about culture and society in decades: the April 2008 Congress of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC). UNEAC brings together Cuba’s most prominent and lesser-known artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, and poets. Against the backdrop of the recent reappearance of individuals associated with the cultural repression of the early 1970s on state television, participants in the 2008 congress frankly and forcefully discussed the need for greater openness, freedom of expression, self-criticism, and reflection, so long as all debate is constructive and respectful of the Socialist framework. Significantly, key national leaders were in attendance as well, including Raul Castro, Carlos Lage, and Abel Prieto (minister of culture). In the aftermath of the congress, artists continue to make their voices heard, with prominent cultural figures like writer Leonardo Padura and musician Pablo Milanés voicing, both at home and in the international press, very strong critiques of government policies and the need for change while still upholding their faith in the revolution itself.
Yet as if to reinforce Fidel’s own admonition made decades earlier at a similar forum—“within the revolution everything, outside of it nothing”—the regime continues to issue warnings, make arrests, and deny space to Cuban activists and artists seeking to express their dissent outside of formally sanctioned state channels, specifically those associated with or financed directly or indirectly by the USAID programs designed to promote democracy in Cuba. Indeed, more recently, such programs seem to have incorporated a new focus on mobilizing Cuban youth. Thus, in a series of incidents, Cuban police harassed young adults wearing bracelets printed with the word cambio (change), reportedly distributed in Cuba by the U.S. Interests Section and international NGOs. Later, state security stormed a church in Santiago de Cuba to arrest several young dissidents who had been advocating for university autonomy. The church protested and authorities apologized for the incident. More recently, Havana police briefly detained a quirky and irreverent punk musician, Gorki Aguila, front man of the band Porno Para Ricardo, for his frontally aggressive antiregime lyrics. On one hand, the episode demonstrated the state’s orthodox association between free speech and counterrevolution. Yet when artists in Cuba and the young man’s fans (abroad and at home) complained, authorities also demonstrated a certain flexibility, releasing him with only a small fine.
Repression has also continued against independent activists who in some cases promote causes that the state already supports. One example concerns the topic of gay rights. Under the leadership of Raul’s daughter, Mariela Castro, head of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), Cuba has undertaken a wholesale public education campaign against homophobia, heralding the importance of recognizing the decidedly liberal, even “neoliberal” concept of “diversity.” But plans for Cuba’s first ever Gay Pride Parade in 2008, a major step in and of itself, were interrupted because the march was organized by gay rights groups not sanctioned by the state. As the state permits freer expression concerning some sensitive social issues, its crackdowns continue, even where public expressions are perhaps critical of the state in some respects (particularly its past legacy of homophobia) but ultimately consistent with evolving definitions of necessary and permissible debate.
Another important critical phenomenon since Raul’s assumption of power has been the rise of an independent Cuban blogosphere based on the island and cultivated through illegal Internet connections, USB flash drives, and furtive entrances into hotel Internet cafés. Yoani Sánchez, a trained philologist who left the island in 2002 for Switzerland only to return for family reasons in 2004, has received the most international attention for her pithy writings assessing the daily hardships and realities of life in Cuba on her blog “Generation Y” (a reference to the many Cubans of her generation who were given nontraditional names beginning with that letter). Sánchez is critical of the Cuban government in many respects and writes about the need for a more open society with greater political freedoms. She seems to identify with some dissident voices, while also keeping her distance. She defines herself as a “citizen” describing her daily life, and she writes from a fundamentally humanistic rather than ideological or political perspective, earning her a global following. Her writings earned her the prestigious Ortega y Gasset prize (Spain) for digital journalism in 2008, but she was denied permission to leave the country to receive the award. Time magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people, a stretch, to be sure. In response to such publicity, censors have endeavored to block access to Generation Y within Internet cafés and more broadly across the island. A number of government-supported blogs expressing various perspectives about life in Cuba have emerged as well, a tacit recognition of the importance of this new medium. From the government’s perspective, Sánchez’s work points to the risks and rewards of allowing broader access to the Web. With greater Internet availability across the population, many more insightful bloggers critical of the government may emerge. On the other hand, a growing chorus of critical voices is less likely to draw the kind of exclusive international attention and personal scrutiny that Sánchez’s case has generated.
It is hard to imagine the kind of rapid political reform in Cuba that took place in the former Soviet bloc countries or in the democratic transitions in South America—at least, any time soon. There is no indication of any kind that the Communist Party and its leadership will give up power, nor that it feels pressured or compelled to do so. The pace and stability of the succession so far indicates as much. Raul has said repeatedly that the only replacement for Fidel Castro is the party itself. In other words, Cuban officials will only be able to sustain and regenerate the revolution in Fidel’s absence through more accountable institutions, not individuals. How they interpret the concept of accountability, however, will surely differ from liberal notions of multiparty electoral politics. We have already seen that within the framework of the Communist Party, the Cuban government has engaged itself and the population in a serious debate about exactly how to make the revolution last. It may well be that in the planning for the sixth party congress scheduled for the fall of 2009, Raul and others promote a far more open form of discourse and permit a much greater range of ideas to be publicly discussed and reported. But however distinct from Fidel’s approach, which was ever vigilant against revealing to outsiders the extent of internal debate, whatever emerges in Cuba in the short term is unlikely to look like multi-party political democracy in the liberal Western world. In the longer term, the major challenge the Cuban regime has set for itself is to convert the Communist Party into an instrument seen as the legitimate institutional umbrella for capturing, containing, and reflecting a range of views and debates while setting policies that reflect broad participation and buy-in from the Cuban public at large.
A constellation of forces—internal and external—appears to favor a stable succession in the short to midterm, one that will permit Raul, the party, the cabinet, and the military to gradually introduce economic reforms without political upheaval. To be sure, considerable state resources remain devoted to low-intensity repression, and the hurricanes, which may have cost the government up to 10% of its GDP, have presented an unprecedented economic and social challenge. But in his own way, Raul is undertaking real politics in an attempt to stably guide the country beyond the orthodoxy of the Fidel era. At home, he has begun to reinforce the legitimacy of the state by telling people what to expect—whether good or bad—and acting accordingly. Indeed, because expectations were so low for so long, especially among Cuban youth, measures designed to modestly enhance personal freedom (to travel and to consume, for example) can deliver concrete improvements to the Cuban population while increasing hope for greater change—an important psychological side effect. Of course, for those Cubans hit hardest by the hurricanes, material deprivation and exposure to the elements may well overtake the initial boost of hope provided by Raul’s early moves. Regardless, what can be said for certain is that the government fully understands the need to undertake reforms that help Cubans fulfill their deeply felt demands for greater economic and professional opportunities, but hopes to do so without dramatically undermining the authority, stability, and position of the state as a central arbiter in Cuban political and economic affairs. Though less exposed to the global financial crisis than other more open economies, Cuba too will face a credit squeeze and experience the effects of the global shortfall in investment capital.
In the nearly 19 months between the announcement of Fidel’s illness and his formal renunciation of power, Raul’s authority and credibility allowed him to build consensus support for the measures he has subsequently implemented as president. Going forward, if Raul can demonstrate that productivity, market-based incentives, decentralization, and a wider frame of permissible dissent are not recipes for political suicide or renewed American domination, the government is more likely to back further liberalization, primarily in economic areas. It is a tricky balancing act, to be sure, one that requires carefully managing the Cuban people’s often countervailing demands and expectations for change. On the one hand, the Cuban population is clamoring for the state to get out of its way. Many would love nothing more than to be able to bring their black market businesses into the open. On the other hand, after half a century of getting almost everything for free from cradle to grave, there remains a deeply ingrained expectation among Cubans (one embodied in the constitution, in fact) that they are entitled to an array of state benefits.
The balance only becomes more difficult with an eye toward the longer term, as Raul clearly recognizes. Any program of economic liberalization would not be undertaken in a way that fundamentally threatens the state’s ability to provide critical social services like health, education, and pensions—key legacies and tangible sources of the regime’s legitimacy. Yet, as described above, Cuba’s working-age population is now declining quickly in comparison to its growing cohort of retirees. Raul seems to recognize that unless the government can generate more productive economic activity and tax it, both involving political risk and benefits, demographics alone could jeopardize the sustainability of the revolution’s key social programs and most significant domestic legacies. The external environment presents Cuba with a complex set of waters to navigate in carrying out plans for a slowly paced series of reforms. On the one hand, the global credit crisis; the decline in the world price of one of Cuba’s key commodity exports, nickel; and the global food and fuel crises have all dramatically increased or, with the financial crisis, otherwise complicated the cost of putting food on the table. On the other hand, a diverse though modest trade and investment portfolio, aided substantially by Venezuela’s subsidized oil and, until recently, high global commodity prices, has helped the island emerge from the Special Period of extreme material deprivation. Now that Hugo Chávez has gained the constitutional authority to stand for reelection indefinitely, even with oil prices at well less than half their 2008 highs, Venezuela’s alliance with Cuba is likely to provide a source of stable material support for the foreseeable future. Brazil is positioning itself for a very active role in Cuba as well. Not only can greater involvement help the Lula government enhance its regional geopolitical status, but also Brazil’s leaders, old friends of Fidel’s, appear intent on seeing a soft landing on the island; in their view, greater economic engagement can further the trend toward liberalization. As an aspiring regional energy powerhouse, Brazil also has a keen interest in Cuba’s oil and ethanol potential. Led by Spain, the European Union has also renewed its dialogue, and offered millions in hurricane relief, to signal its support for a stable succession in Cuba, even as it places the issues of human rights and democracy squarely on the table.
Even before the hurricanes hit, high food and oil prices were making themselves felt on the island’s balance sheet, and the Cuban government had acknowledged that these difficulties would make certain “adjustments and restrictions inevitable.” Yet the more difficult external environment that characterized the end of Raul’s first year in office could cause the government to accelerate the kinds of reforms that will unleash the entrepreneurial energies of the population and take some of the burden to finance everything off the state. One key dimension of the external environment for 2009 will be whether the Obama administration, by executive order, or the U.S. Congress, undertakes a relaxation of travel and trade sanctions against the island.
Finally, Fidel, at this writing, is still alive. That fact alone tempers expectations of dramatic change, just as the cautious and conservative nature of Cuban society favors the go-slow approach that has unfolded since his illness.
Even while coping with an extremely debilitating illness, Fidel was able to orchestrate his own withdrawal from public life and, according to many close confidants, weigh in on a number of decisions that brought Cuba to the moment of his resignation in early 2008. On occasion, images and brief reports of a physically diminished Fidel receiving foreign visitors—Hugo Chávez, Luiz Inacio da Silva, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and Michelle Bachelet, for example—make it into Cuba’s press and circulate abroad. Hardly one to go quietly, he has taken up the pen, issuing “reflections” published in the state press, on Cuban government Web sites, and in leading European dailies on subjects ranging from climate change, biofuels, and the global food crisis to the role of U.S. Southern Command, the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the election of President Barack Obama (which Castro described as the fulfillment of the American dream), North and South Korea, his friendship with Gabriel García Márquez, Guantánamo, and Cuban history. Occasionally, he has weighed in—critically—about measures undertaken by his brother. Raul has even quipped that the two disagree not on fundamentals, but rather over degree and emphasis, likening their differences to those between the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States. Whether or not Fidel is actually writing these hundreds of essays himself or with help—a topic of constant speculation—is less important than their significance. Fidel Castro continues to have a huge base of popular support and respect in Cuba, and the essays allow him to continue shaping his legacy. Moreover, his presence as great sage in chief compels the new government to modulate its moves within a policy framework that will not excessively offend Fidel’s sensibilities, nor those of the individuals in the Council of State who remain his close ideological and political comrades. Notably, he has not appeared in public, other than through images broadcast on Cuban television, for over two years. To be sure, many in Cuba and among his fiercest critics abroad speculate that Castro could well be pulling many a string on the island, and it is hard to know exactly what he does and does not do and say in private. But his conscious choice to stay out of the limelight, save a couple of hundred words a week in the press, has laid the groundwork for Cuba and the world to look clearly toward life after Fidel.
Just weeks before the announcement, the Bush administration had released the second report of the President’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez (the rest of its membership—principally other government officials—remained unknown to the public for reasons more of cattiness than substance). As with its first report issued in 2004, the commission’s second 430-page assessment assumed that once Fidel and Raul were out of the picture, the Cuban people would automatically seek to move toward a top-to-bottom political transition. Accordingly, the United States would first focus on advancing that transition (through a significant expansion in funds dedicated to democracy promotion efforts) and second, with a transitional government in place, adopt a host of policies to “assist” that new government. The report also made explicit that U.S. policy should endeavor to ensure that the Castro regime’s “intrinsically unstable … succession strategy does not succeed.”
After the Cold War, the American intelligence community and State Department commissioned countless studies and simulations to spin out various scenarios for a post-Fidel Cuba. But the lion’s share of these scenarios started from the assumption of his death or, at a minimum, his complete absence from the island’s political stage. Even though a handful of free thinkers in the U.S. government pushed their colleagues to see the regime as more than a flimsy house of cards, doing so within the self-censoring and analytically constricted environment that colored most discussions of Cuba in Washington would have required acknowledging some degree of institutionalization and legitimacy. Of course, after a half century of cloudy political judgment and visceral anti-communism, this prospect was not only virtually unthinkable but also a possible professional risk. Thus, when news of Fidel’s illness broke, officials reiterated the common wisdom: Like a helicopter with a broken rotor, Cuban communism without el comandante at the helm would inevitably crash. With no concrete information about the nature of his illness and few analytical tools to anticipate how the regime could last without him, the Bush administration was left utterly flat-footed in subsequent weeks and months. Other than placing the Coast Guard on alert for a possible refugee crisis, there was little evidence to suggest Washington did anything other than keep U.S. policies in place and wait. Decades of attempting to isolate Havana had left Washington with few direct sources of information; its Interests Section on the island, with among the largest staffs of any U.S. diplomatic mission in Latin America, was largely cut off from contact other than with foreign embassies in town or the dissidents it supported.
Initially, there was one bright spot in the U.S. reaction, and it came from George Bush and Condoleezza Rice immediately following the announcement of Fidel’s illness and temporary transfer of power. Both clearly stated something that to most Cubans and Cuban Americans was obvious, but to some in Miami was not: The future leader of a democratic Cuba was in Cuba; change must come from within. This nod to reality, coming from a government that for nearly 50 years had tacitly and at times overtly supported the notion that Cuban exiles might have a political role in their island’s future, was a significant acknowledgement in and of itself. But it was also likely directed specifically at Cuban American Republican members of Congress, especially Fidel Castro’s nephew by marriage, Lincoln Díaz Balart, whom some still believe has ambitions to hold political office in Cuba one day. Nonetheless, several months later, the president took a notable step backward from this note of realism in a highly publicized speech at the State Department intended to help the United States regain moral authority on the Cuba issue lest the succession consolidate further. Though once again focusing on internal actors as the source of Cuba’s future leadership, and despite making a nod to the importance of reconciliation (“If Cuba is to enter a new era, it must find a way to reconcile and forgive those who have been part of the system but who do not have blood on their hands”), Bush described U.S. policy toward the island as favoring “freedom” over “stability.” Consistent with his 2004 inaugural speech heralding America’s support for freedom and democracy, Bush used these words to stress his endorsement of peaceful campaigns for fundamental change rather than accepting the stable succession and the status quo under Fidel’s brother. Yet such scarcely veiled bellicose language also carried the implication that violence might be an acceptable price to pay for freedom (the same logic used in Iraq), thus reinforcing Havana’s suspicions of Washington’s “democracy promotion” motives.
In the U.S. Congress, reactions ranged from a loud drumbeat of delight from hard-liners most committed to unseating Fidel to a far more sober recognition in both parties that by clinging to current policy the United States risked being completely sidelined from having an impact on developments within Cuba. Proposals dormant since 2002 for relaxing or entirely ending sanctions circulated once again. Public opinion in the United States had long favored new policy toward the island: Gallup polls found that 65% of Americans were ready for a different approach. Among the foreign policy cognoscenti, embargo fatigue had set in nearly a decade earlier with the pope’s visit and then the Elián fiasco. Fidel’s illness was widely seen as an opportunity to bury the hatchet and to make the case that a policy based on domestic politics simply did not suit American national interests.
In substance, no, but stylistically, yes. Within weeks of taking provisional power, Raul made clear in an interview Cuba’s disposition to talk to the United States regarding a host of bilateral issues with the understanding that his country would make no political concessions in the process. He has reiterated the offer on several occasions since, stressing themes of mutual respect and mutual interest, while also indicating that perhaps such talks might become more viable under Obama. In a sense, this is nothing new. Cuban officials such as Fidel Castro, Ricardo Alarcón, Felipe Pérez Roque, and a host of other spokespeople have made similar statements since Cuba began winding down its support for revolution in Central America. What distinguished Raul’s comments was their tone: Not only did they lack his brother’s stridency, but they also dropped the suggestion that the United States has something Cuba absolutely needs. Repairing relations with the United States (to gain access to the U.S. market, to move away from a fundamentally unnatural dynamic between families, and to reduce economic and security costs incurred by U.S. hostility) was more of a priority for Cuba in the earlier part of this century. By 2002, Cuba all but ended actively lobbying for the end of economic sanctions even as its spokespeople continued publicly and privately to assail virtually all features of U.S. policy toward the island. Under Raul, the prospect of dialogue with Washington has emerged as but one of many foreign policy issues Cuba is managing. Rapprochement is not by any means the government’s first priority. Havana’s posture toward the prospect of talks seems to be one of caution. Should the Obama administration do little or nothing to change the tone and begin to change policy toward the island, and allow the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to continue its distribution of cash to dissidents under the rubric of “democracy promotion,” Cuba’s continued rejection of Washington’s support for dissident activities on the island may crowd out all other issues that are ripe for positive movement on the bilateral agenda. Still, in what can only be regarded as an extremely serious step toward laying the groundwork for dialogue, Raul designated Cuba’s most senior career foreign service official, Jorge Bolaños (an individual who served as Cuba’s ambassador in London, Brasilia, and Mexico City and who is also deputy foreign minister and a highly decorated revolutionary), as his representative in Washington.
Over the years, and regardless of the political winds blowing in Miami, Washington, or Havana, Fidel Castro was known for cultivating close personal relationships with hundreds of Americans from every race, profession, and ideological background. He also eagerly entertained visiting American congressional, NGO, and business delegations from practically every state of the union, as well as artists, writers, and performers. By contrast, Raul has left the lion’s share of such activities to other senior officials. The message? When the time, conditions, and agenda are propitious, Cuba will welcome talks with the United States; until then, domestic issues are Raul’s priority. Cuban foreign policy will be largely managed by those designated to do so. Of course, as long as he is around and capable, Fidel Castro will continue to have a say as well.
The longer it became clear that a stable succession was indeed unfolding on the island, the more U.S. efforts to advocate regime change were exposed as complete failures. At the end of the day, none of the instruments of policy—whether economic sanctions, human rights condemnations, pleas to U.S. allies, funds to build an opposition movement, or broadcasts by Radio or TV Martí, all of which fed the domestic political demand for aggressive anti-Castro policies—had made much of a dent within Fidel’s or Raul’s Cuba.
The stability of Cuba’s succession, coupled with the ascendance of reality-based professionals within Bush’s Latin America team, generated a notable if uncomfortable willingness on the part of the administration to acknowledge and slightly adjust to the obvious: The Cuban regime had not imploded. Raul’s initial reforms came to be regarded as acts taken out of self-preservation and, among the less politicized in Washington, measures intended to demonstrate the government’s accountability to its population. Indeed, statements from top intelligence officials did acknowledge that Raul’s government possessed some awareness of and connection to its own constituents’ needs, beyond an eagerness to repress them. There was also a consciousness, even sensitivity, within the U.S. government that its partners in the hemisphere (especially Mexico, Brazil, and Canada) and the European Union wanted to see a soft landing in Cuba and regarded U.S. policy as an obstacle to this goal. Moreover, some Bush administration officials tacitly recognized that greater involvement from any of these countries in Cuban affairs could counterbalance Venezuela’s influence on the island. Thus, upon Raul’s formal ascension to the presidency, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statement was notably devoid of the kind of hardened ideological language long associated with U.S. policy toward Cuba. Subsequently, when Brazil stepped up its financial and economic role in Cuba, some Bush officials even described these steps as positive, a departure from the administration’s past tendency to criticize allies who dared defy the United States. In the case of the European Union, although some true believers lobbied for Brussels to keep diplomatic sanctions in place, others took care to not stand in Europe’s way. These mixed signals clearly reflected signs of disagreement within the administration about the U.S. approach to Cuba. They also signaled a broader recognition that it did not behoove U.S. interests to antagonize key allies on what ultimately is an issue of little strategic importance. Indeed, in light of the United States’ plummeting reputation globally and the necessity of collaborating with a variety of partners in Afghanistan and elsewhere, aggressively pushing other governments to toe the U.S. line would have created an unnecessary diplomatic thorn, likely without yielding any positive results.
Beyond these subtle changes in tone and language, changes in policy were nominal at best. The administration dismissed Raul Castro’s early reforms as “cosmetic” and continued to insist that Cuba quickly adopt a “path” toward democratic elections—something the nationalistic Cuban government rejects as code for regime change. Likewise, officials continued their activism on behalf of political prisoners, awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom in absentia to prisoner of conscience Oscar Biscet, and even organized a global Cuba solidarity day in an effort to raise awareness about the plight of dissidents and democratic activists. Not surprisingly, Cuban authorities responded with their own highly staged press conference reporting new allegations of dissident collaboration with officials of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
As the 2008 presidential election season kicked in, the prospect of major White House policy changes faded. Likewise, USAID officials contended with the challenge of trying to spend nearly $50 million for “democracy promotion” in Cuba, knowing full well that the majority of their funds would wind up feeding an anti-Castro cottage industry in Miami and Washington, rather than in the hands of activists on the island (whose activities were often infiltrated by Cuban security in any case). Still, amid growing suspicion of corruption, graft, and waste in these programs, the administration rolled out some small changes. Shortly after Raul’s government announced that Cubans would be able to purchase cell phones and phone cards freely, the administration announced it would allow Americans to donate cell phones to family members on the island. Licenses for sports teams and other American groups to travel to Cuba picked up pace. In Congress, a long dormant bill to allow family travel passed the first of many legislative hurdles, while the hurricane damage prompted bipartisan legislation calling for the end to restrictions on family travel, humanitarian aid, and remittances, as well as, significantly, a Senate measure to suspend the embargo for 180 days to permit Cuba to purchase reconstruction materials. For its part, the Bush administration offered $5 million in aid, which Cuba rejected, arguing that Washington could do more to help by lifting the embargo—even on a temporary basis—instead. Moreover, Cuban officials questioned whether the offer was genuine in light of one senior administration official’s comments suggesting that the hurricane damage could provide a lever to unseat the regime.
On balance, Fidel and Raul Castro did the Bush administration and the presidential candidates of both parties a favor by carrying out a stable succession in the middle of an election season. George W. Bush left the White House without achieving his promise of bringing down the revolution. Yet peeling back the layers of rhetoric, in the wake of Fidel’s illness, both countries recognized they had a stake in avoiding the humanitarian and security nightmare of a refugee crisis or the provocation of political violence long foreseen, even desired, by extremists in Washington and Miami. Indeed, with Fidel no longer the public face of the revolution, no longer mobilizing mass protests against this or that American infraction against Cuba’s sovereignty, it became considerably easier for many in the United States (including former senior officials in both parties, from Madeline Albright, Brent Scowcroft, and George Shultz to a host of retired military officers) to publicly call for a new chapter in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, including an end to the ban on travel and trade. Momentum continued under Obama.
Long before Fidel’s illness, Cuban Americans had ceased to speak with one voice. When news of Fidel’s transfer of power broke, Little Havana’s Calle Ocho was the scene of spontaneous (but ultimately brief and muted) celebration, and Miami’s radio programs filled with exhortations heralding the end of an era. With the announcement, community leaders broadly acknowledged that the island had reached a clear turning point, creating an opportunity, some hoped, to forge consensus behind commonly shared objectives for Cuba’s future. But unity, one of Fidel’s long-term strategic objectives on the island, has remained elusive in the diaspora. Indeed, by the time Fidel formally renounced the presidency a year and a half later, there were no street celebrations, no public expressions of exile angst—a clear recognition that the hopes so many had pinned on the departure of Cuba’s imposing leader had not materialized. Rather than present a united front, various exile actors continue to debate the merits of competing approaches, priorities, and visions. As a result, some members of the community fear that Cuba’s political evolution, at this moment of profound change, will bypass Miami altogether.
Divisions have been most palpable, however, in the wake of a series of inquiries into the efficacy of USAID democracy promotion programs for Cuba. A 2006 report of the General Accountability Office (GAO) showed that much of the funds disbursed to Cuban American NGOs finance overhead costs in Miami and frivolous spending on chocolates, sweaters, and Game Boys rather than providing concrete benefits to Cuban civil society activists. Several dissidents have said as much, demanding improvements in the programs and also criticizing, with increasing frequency, restrictions on travel and remittances. Accusations within and between organizations have sowed even greater divisions. Against the backdrop of a Raul Castro government, such infighting persistently frustrates those in the community who had hoped Fidel’s departure from power would unify Cuban American activist groups around a common agenda.
The hurricanes further dramatized the community’s differences while also creating an avenue for unity. For example, religious leaders in Miami, led by the Catholic Church, raised $400,000 (as of October 2008) for a Cuba hurricane relief fund, dedicated primarily to the efforts of Caritas Cubana, one of few U.S. NGOs authorized to provide relief aid. But the crisis also exposed anew divisions over U.S. policy, with some groups calling for a temporary suspension of restrictions on family travel and remittances and even the embargo itself, while some opposed any and all measures that would benefit the regime.
The intensity of such divisions only underscores the significant evolution under way in the Cuban American community, both as demographics change and individuals young and old are forced to come to terms with the fact that Cuba after Fidel—the individual so long the focus of a community’s enmity—might not by default transition to their vision of a democratic future. Polls since the year 2000 show a steady and growing recognition among Cuban Americans that current U.S. policy is ineffective. By 2007, a majority in the community favored the elimination of all travel restrictions, not only on Cuban American family travel but also all Americans. Strong majorities likewise recognize that the embargo has been a failure, although majorities still believe it should be kept in place. Shifting opinions reflect demographic changes as well. First-generation Cuban Americans long associated with the policy hard-liners in Miami and Washington are receding from the political stage, if for no other reason than age. Second-and third-generation Cuban Americans, meanwhile, have ceased to be single-issue voters; especially under the Bush administration, many among this predominantly Republican voter base have grown disillusioned with a range of domestic and foreign policy blunders of the era. They are also far more likely to be among the passengers on some 30 weekly charter flights between Miami and Havana to visit and support family members on the island. The end result may not be a clear consensus in favor of dramatic policy overhaul, but as the community undergoes a period of extensive reflection and diversification, the political climate in Miami today is the most contentious and open it has been in recent memory.
Together, the backdrop of Fidel’s illness, evolving Cuban American opinion, and an influx of immigrants to South Florida from other Latin American countries (even Calle Ocho today is Cuban in name, but increasingly Mexican in population) have contributed to the development of a new political landscape in South Florida, one which for the first time in many years challenged, though unsuccessfully, the GOP’s lock on the three congressional seats representing traditionally Cuban American constituencies.
In a variety of ways, and occasionally at cross purposes, members of the Cuban American community will continue positioning themselves to stay relevant, to play a role in the future of a country they consider their own. For some, this sense of propriety comes with a sense of entitlement, anger, and a desire for revenge. But for most in the Cuban diaspora at this stage, whether in the United States, Spain, or sprinkled throughout Latin America, the cultural and historical predilection of believing that all Cubans have a stake in the island’s future is simply a natural part of being Cuban. Indeed, the Cuban diaspora may well play an important role in the island’s future, as a logical source of investment and know-how. The Cuban government, however, will naturally resist this prospect as long as it is accompanied by demands for political change, whether by the community or by their representatives in Congress or the White House.
American public opinion broadly favors a complete overhaul of U.S. policy toward Cuba—including ending the embargo and normalizing diplomatic ties. Likewise, cooperating with Cuba at a minimum on national security issues would bring clear benefits to U.S. national interests. Yet neither fact overrides the political importance of Florida to winning the White House. The state of Florida has 27 electoral votes. Cuban Americans comprise just over 7% of the total voting population there, but contribute millions of dollars to congressional and presidential campaign coffers. Thus, for many years, appealing, often pandering, to the Cuban American electorate has been an accepted part of the conventional wisdom guiding American electoral politics.
Although Florida can still determine an election, in 2008 two new developments changed circumstances somewhat. First, the new government in Cuba forced a broader discussion in Washington and even in Miami about what kind of policy might give the United States some influence on the island. Second, evolving demographics and public opinion in South Florida generated conditions for a serious Democratic challenge to the GOP’s South Florida congressional representatives, whose districts are no longer populated mainly by single-issue Cuban American voters.
During the primary season, Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul (a libertarian from Texas), endorsed more of the half-century same-old. In the 2000 election, John McCain, who with John Kerry had led the U.S. rapprochement process with Communist Vietnam, had voiced support for a change in policy toward Cuba along similar lines. But for the 2008 election, with Florida top on his mind, he amassed a host of hard-line Latin America advisors and gained the endorsement of Republican Cuban American Congressmen Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from South Florida. United States Senator Mel Martinez, as well as Florida’s highly popular Governor Charlie Christ, signed on to his campaign as well. Democrats, on the other hand, seeking to distinguish themselves from George W. Bush’s foreign policy across the board, conducted more of a debate on Cuba. Hillary Clinton, whose political viability in Florida was stronger than that of any other Democratic contender, supported increased family travel. But with Cuban American Senator Bob Menendez her campaign’s cochair, Clinton held tight to the status quo of no policy change without evidence of real democracy.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, came to the race with a history of bolder policy prescriptions. Before announcing his candidacy for president, the first-term senator from Illinois had voted against funding for Radio and TV Martí in the Senate and, in 2004, called for an end to the embargo, declaring U.S. policy toward Cuba a total failure. In a 2007 primary debate broadcast on YouTube, Senator Obama was asked: “Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” He replied, “I would.” Those two words eventually helped define the Obama campaign’s approach to diplomacy (though he would later qualify them by highlighting the need for extensive preparation before any talks), prompting accusations of naïveté from Hillary Clinton and from Republican candidates while distinguishing Obama from Bush and forcing a debate in the United States about the national security and foreign policy merits of speaking to, without necessarily endorsing, one’s enemies.
Like candidates and presidents before him, Obama chose the May 20 independence day festivities and a gathering of the Cuban American National Foundation to make his Cuba policy pitch. But unlike his predecessors, the presumptive nominee departed from the conventional Miami wisdom, outlining a hybrid position to polite, even generous applause. In a speech devoted to Latin America as well as Cuba, Obama described the two principle features of his approach to the island: (1) while keeping the embargo in place for “leverage” with Cuba, he would seek to open a dialogue with Raul Castro, which would include issues of democracy and human rights; and (2) he would eliminate all restrictions on family travel and remittances, an important gesture for support among more moderate Cuban American voters. The organization’s new sense of pragmatism and flexibility, its desire to remain politically relevant, and some of its board members’ active support of South Florida’s Democratic congressional challengers, were all clearly on display that day, a remarkable change from just 10 years ago.
On November 4, 2008, President Barack Obama won the state of Florida without the votes of Cuban American hard-liners. Because of massive voter registration drives across the state, registered Hispanic Democrats outnumbered Hispanic Republicans by 513,000 to 445,000. Obama won 57% of the Florida Hispanic vote, up from 44% for John Kerry in 2004. In Miami-Dade County, 55% of Cuban Americans under 29 years old voted for Obama, while 84% of Cuban Americans over 65 years old voted for McCain, following the national trend. And although only 35% of the total Cuban American voting population (a 10% increase over John Kerry’s 2004 showing,) voted for Obama, it was the non–Cuban Hispanic vote and other votes across Florida, especially in the African American community, that increased his margin enough to carry the state. These gains were less a result of the needle Obama threaded on American policy toward Cuba than on the strength of his overall platform and campaign. His triangulated position on Cuba perhaps prevented those Cuban American voters inclined to vote for him in any case from voting against him, but John McCain still carried most Cuban American votes. In the Miami congressional elections, where three Democrats supporting only family travel mounted competitive challenges for the three Cuban American Republican seats in South Florida, all three still lost to the incumbents by wide margins. Their races were less about Cuba than about the real issues working Americans face. Although the three Cuban American Republican hard-liners have been safely reelected, they are now in the opposition. And because Obama’s Florida victory was the result of a constellation of non–Cuban American votes, his Cuba policy need no longer defer to the Cuban American political and policy status quo of the last 50 years.
In the foreign policy realm, the new president will be preoccupied predominantly with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a host of issues, such as skyrocketing energy and food prices and climate change, all in the context of a global financial crisis and domestic recession. Latin America will likely fall somewhere toward the middle to the bottom of the priority list, with the exception of Mexico (because of its drug, security, and border challenges), Colombia (because the United States has a made huge investment in improving security there), and Brazil (which has become a major regional and global player on economic and climate change issues and as a source of food and energy). Stability under Raul, along with the potential political costs of major policy change, may actually limit the time any president is likely to devote to Cuba. But with the symbolism of Guantánamo (which Obama addressed on his first day in office by pledging to close the detention camps there), the opportunity presented by Fidel’s retreat from the scene, and the modest, ongoing steps Raul is taking to improve the material lives and personal freedoms of the Cuban people, the stars may align for Washington under a new administration to definitively bury the hatchet with Havana. This will not happen overnight, but a process could begin to unfold in 2009.
With a stronger Democratic majority in Congress and a Democrat in the White House, moves to loosen travel and economic sanctions and to talk to Havana may pick up steam, both in Congress and the executive branch. From the executive branch, the president might, as he campaigned, issue regulations allowing unlimited Cuban American travel and remittances. Yet such a measure might be challenged on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to deny one group a right that has been granted another. In that case, the White House might also issue regulations restoring the Clinton-era people-to-people “purposeful” options for more than just Cuban American travel to Cuba under license. By taking some or all of these steps, an Obama White House would signal to the U.S. Congress that, unlike its predecessor, it will not veto legislation passed to loosen or lift the embargo. A number of initiatives—whether to end the travel ban, end the embargo, or even perhaps repeal Helms-Burton—could pick up substantial Democratic and Republican support and may well make it to the White House for the president’s signature.
At the same time, consistent with Raul Castro’s and Barack Obama’s explicit statements in 2007 and 2008, direct bilateral talks could start. A full agenda could occupy teams from both countries, even eventually, the two men themselves. Discussions might cover a host of security issues Havana and Washington have a stake in dealing with together, such as migration, human smuggling, and drug trafficking. With the United States already pledging to close its prisons at Guantánamo and Cuba’s repeated demands for the United States to leave altogether, discussions about the base’s future might involve converting it into a regional research and development center on climate change, energy and food security, or public health. Additionally, as Cuba, in partnership with a number of foreign oil companies, begins deep-water exploration for potentially significant reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, talks might address prospects for environmentally sustainable resource management. There are a number of other thornier issues, such as the uncompensated claims by U.S. companies whose properties were nationalized by the revolution and, as Cuba will likely demand, compensation for the economic damage to the island inflicted by the U.S. embargo. Cuba will likely press the United States to extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Panama or to Venezuela and to release the “Cuban Five,” its spies currently serving sentences, some up to life, in U.S. federal jails. The United States may, in turn, press Cuba to return American fugitives to the United States. The merits of Cuba’s presence on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror is sure to come up as well. Matters of Cuba’s internal affairs, whether political prisoners, human rights, or the absence of political democracy, will surely be raised by the United States. Yet as long as the United States continues to promote the objective of democracy by clandestinely funneling aid and other supplies to dissidents while at the same time keeping in place its economic sanctions, it is unlikely that Raul Castro or anyone authorized to negotiate on Cuba’s behalf will allow the United States to put Cuba’s domestic issues on the bilateral agenda. Still, Cuban negotiators are flexible enough to see that if they really want to create political space for a new American president to substantially change U.S. policy without characterizing internal changes as concessions to imperialism, the regime may ultimately take steps that can be characterized as, and may actually be, genuine openings that advance a more democratic and open society on the island.
Not dramatically. As in previous periods, Cuba continues to pursue a global foreign policy meant to promote the country’s national interest. Fidel Castro has always served as Cuba’s top foreign policy strategist and followed global events assiduously—reading piles of cables from around the world every day and allegedly becoming a devoted surfer of the Web. But well before his illness, he had distributed the foreign policy portfolio among a number of confidants and protégés who travel the world to attend international events, represent Cuba at inaugurations, renegotiate debt, develop cooperation agreements, open embassies, and explore business deals.
Under Raul Castro, this pattern has largely continued, albeit with several changes in style, substance, and personnel. Although Raul seems not to spend as much time as Fidel receiving foreign dignitaries or traveling abroad, the scope and pace of Cuban diplomacy under his and now deposed Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque’s leadership has intensified, with presidential visits, cooperation agreements, ministerial dialogues, and summit participation. In late 2008 and early 2009, Raul Castro visited Brazil, Venezuela, China, Russia, and Algeria. Brazil’s president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and Chinese President Hu Jintao all visited Havana in 2008, while Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner both paid visits in early 2009. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero has announced his intention to visit Cuba in 2009, and a visit from Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón is likely as well. In a break with a near-two-decade pattern of exclusion, Latin America’s Rio Group, composed of 22 Latin American states as well as CARICOM, or the Caribbean Community, made Cuba a member, part of a pattern of increased Cuban participation in regional summits and institutions, including new entities convened by Brazil. Indeed, Raul Castro received a rousing welcome from Latin American heads of state at the first Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean on Integration and Development hosted by the Lula government in the northern Brazilian state of Bahia. More important, although planned well in advance, just days after Raul formally took office as Cuba’s president, Cuba signed two covenants under the purview of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Cuba had long refused to sign these documents, claiming that the United States would cynically exploit the occasion to unfairly attack Cuba at the UN Commission on Human Rights. Yet once the commission was dissolved and replaced by a Human Rights Council populated by Cuba’s allies (and where the United States declined participation), Cuba likely judged it could now ascribe to the agreements without risking U.S. interference (or, as critics of the Human Rights Council would argue with some reason, without risking an extensive degree of scrutiny). But Cuba was not only responding to the United States or to the geopolitics of the Human Rights Council. Since Raul’s tenure as provisional president, Cuba has moved closer to Brazil, one of the hemisphere’s most important democracies. The island has also renewed its dialogue with the European Union, where friendly countries, led by Spain under the Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero, are gingerly moving to create the space for Cuba to pry open its closed society without losing face to the Americans. Cuba has indicated that it will interpret the agreements in its own way and on its own time. No one expects immediate or dramatic reforms in the arena of political rights, and during the February 2009 review of Cuba’s human rights record by the UN Human Rights Council, Havana’s representatives continued to vigorously reject Western calls for the release of political prisoners (while maintaining the support of the majority of the Council’s members). Nonetheless, for the first time in 50 years, Cuba has signed an agreement that in theory guarantees its citizens the rights to self-determination, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, privacy, freedom to leave their country, equal protection, fair wages, social security, education, and health. While it is by no means certain how quickly or to what extent Cuban authorities intend to implement the spirit of these provisions, Cuba’s decision to sign the two covenants signals an awareness among the island’s foreign policy establishment that Havana must begin accommodating its traditionally rigid defense of national sovereignty to a world in which the nature of a country’s society, especially as Cuba deepens its ties to democracies, is increasingly relevant to its foreign relations. Perhaps as a sign of this reckoning, in a major departure from the past, Cuba invited the UN’s special investigator on torture to visit the island.
Cuba has also moved to sustain ties with the Vatican and with Pope Benedict. The week Raul took power, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone visited Havana with a large delegation to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to the island. A statue of the late pontiff traveled throughout the island, and most of Cuba’s senior leadership joined Cardinal Bertone for a televised evening mass at the Cathedral of Havana in the heart of Old Havana. Over the course of the visit, Bertone spoke out against the U.S. embargo and discussed a variety of issues with Cuban authorities, including religious freedom and the fate of political prisoners. Despite the revolution’s early anticlericalism, the church today is in the process of constructing a new seminary in Havana, and Catholic social service programs have been given greater freedom to operate alongside those of the state, reinforcing a trend toward more space for the Catholic Church in Cuban public life.
Cuba maintains active and extensive relations with a diverse array of Latin American countries, encompassing significant trade, investment, scholarly, and cultural links. As in the past, Cuba continues to provide significant humanitarian assistance to the region, especially in the aftermath of natural disasters and for basic public health needs and education. Cuba’s revolutionary model may no longer be seen by many in the hemisphere as a practical example to follow as it once was. Still, as a result of Cuba’s extensive efforts cultivating ties through public diplomacy and foreign aid, today Cuba finds itself with many friends in Latin America at every level of society, from social activists to the highest officials in government and business—and not just on the Left.
In Central America, Cuba maintains proper diplomatic ties with every government, including Costa Rica and El Salvador. Havana also continues close relations with the Left political parties it once supported when they were conducting armed insurgencies, but takes great pains not to be perceived as interfering in their domestic affairs. In Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega was reelected in 2006, Cuba has discovered a much-changed old friend, while in Panama, Havana has rebuilt ties after a long period of dormancy. While simultaneously maintaining close ties to Washington, the Panamanian government could request the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban exile terrorist, after the country’s Supreme Court found that Posada’s pardon in 2004 by then-president Mireya Moscoso was unconstitutional.
After Fidel’s fallout with Vicente Fox and the near-total rupture in relations, Cuba’s ties with Mexico have undergone a significant turnaround. Indeed, Raul Castro and current Mexican President Felipe Calderón have gone to considerable lengths to put the nastiness behind them. In addition to reviving trade and diplomatic ties across the board, the two countries negotiated a migration agreement to deal with the sharp surge in Cuban migrants being smuggled illegally through Mexico en route to the United States.
Together, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, more recently joined by Nicaragua and the island of Dominica, have formed the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an attempt to create an alternative trade bloc of sorts to the free trade agreements the United States has negotiated with a number of Latin American countries. Yet despite ambitious plans for cooperation in energy cooperation, education, development financing, and telecommunications, currently the agreement is not much more than barter and rhetoric, with Venezuela footing the bill. In the Andean region, Cuba has proper ties with Peru’s Alan García, who has left behind his Populist presidency of the 1980s and now leads a center-right government in Lima. In Bolivia, indigenous President Evo Morales’s ties with Fidel and Cuba go back nearly two decades. Not surprisingly, Cuba has provided significant public health aid, educational support, and other technical assistance to his government. In the case of Colombia, where Fidel as a student in 1948 first experienced Latin America’s violent politics, Cuba maintains cordial and professional relations with the government of Alvaro Uribe, despite clear ideological differences. In part as an outgrowth of Castro’s abiding and close personal friendship with Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Havana continues to host peace talks between the government and the ELN rebels (a guerilla movement inspired, at least initially, by Cuba’s own) while pushing privately and publicly for the FARC (a more powerful leftist insurgency) to get out of the business of drugs, kidnapping, and terrorism.
In the Southern Cone, the governments of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil are each led by individuals or political parties with deep ties to Cuba and, in some cases, to Fidel Castro personally. Most notably, and as referenced at various points earlier in this section, under Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil significantly expanded its engagement with Cuba at the same time that it developed what Brazilian diplomats describe as its best relationship ever with the United States under George W. Bush. Fidel and Lula have known one another for over two decades (Fidel helped Lula and a handful of his comrades from the Worker’s Party [PT] as Brazil was beginning its transition from years of military rule and repression to democracy). In 2008, Lula made one of the few publicly announced visits with Fidel since the illness, offering Havana $1 billion in credits to finance food purchases, housing, oil and mineral exploration, and a number of other ventures. A few months later, Brazil’s foreign minister arrived in Havana with a planeload of businesspeople and announced his country’s desire to become Cuba’s number one commercial partner, moving beyond current trade in food, agricultural machinery, transportation equipment, tobacco, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. Cuba and Brazil signed 10 bilateral cooperation agreements in science, technology, development, and social programs. As they open offices around the country, Brazilian companies are likely to soon step up investments in petroleum exploration, mining, infrastructure, and agriculture. Significantly, and despite Fidel Castro’s public critiques of the ethanol industry as a threat to food security (made public after Brazil and the United States signed an alternative energy cooperation deal), Lula and Raul Castro may be moving to revive Cuba’s sugar industry with an eye toward eventual ethanol production. Moreover, given recent oil discoveries of as much as 1 billion barrels off its coast, Brazil may become a potential source of imported oil for Cuba in the long term, helping to relieve some measure of the island’s dependence on Venezuela.
Brazil’s multidimensional approach to Cuba balances that of Venezuela. In late 2007, Hugo Chávez lost a referendum on measures extending executive authority. But in early 2009, he won passage of a referendum amending the constitution to allow him to be reelected in 2013 when his current term ends. Although oil prices had by then declined to their 2004 levels, and Venezuelans braced themselves for some domestic spending cuts, there is no evidence that Cuba’s ties to Venezuela are in jeopardy. On the contrary, Cuba’s ties to Venezuela have boomed since 2006, with some 300 cooperation projects and 30 joint venture operations currently on the books, including a $5 billion petrochemical complex currently under construction in Cienfuegos near the refurbished oil refinery (also brought online with Venezuela’s help), as well as ample assistance for hurricane relief and reconstruction.
Until nearly the end of the 1990s, most Latin American governments were inclined to publicly endorse, if not always privately embrace, the United States’ emphasis on the need to promote democracy and human rights in Cuba. Indeed, with many Latin American countries struggling throughout that decade to overcome the legacies of human rights abuse at the hands of a repressive state and by state-sponsored death squads (some of which still operate in the region), there was and still is a measure of hope among some in the region that Cuba can one day become a more open and democratic society as well. Yet by and large, Latin Americans do not see the Cuban case as directly parallel to the military dictatorships they themselves endured. Moreover, they are loath to support a democratization campaign guided by an interventionist ethos whose principle cheerleader is the United States. Indeed, the United States can hardly claim to have been a consistent champion of democracy or human rights in the hemisphere, having tolerated for most of the 20th century the suppression of both in the name of national security. Today, Latin America’s democratic consolidation has advanced to a point where the United States can no longer say or do much to fundamentally shape the region’s political landscape. The loss of American hegemony in Latin America, let alone the Bush administration’s disastrous experiments with democracy promotion by force in the Middle East, have clearly signaled that there are limits to imposing one brand or another of democracy on a neighboring country. And whatever the island’s faults, Cuba’s symbolic and tangible commitment to social justice (even within a framework of low-intensity repression) remains a potent reminder of Cuban exceptionalism that resonates with public opinion in the region as a whole. As a result, whether or not they share deep historic ties to Fidel’s revolution, and regardless of the extent to which they admire Cuba’s closed domestic political model (most do not), Latin American governments today generally see gradual reform under Raul as the path most likely to bring about a more plural, open society on the island but also maintain the stability necessary to keep the United States at arm’s length. And they have begun to call directly—in private and public—for Washington to find a new, sanctions-free modus vivendi with Havana.
As part of its efforts to diversify its diplomatic and trade portfolio, Cuba has increased cooperation with Russia, China, and Iran in recent years. Under Vladimir Putin, diplomacy between Moscow and Havana has yielded debt forgiveness, modest trade ties, financing for Cuba to purchase Russian commercial airplanes, weekly Havana-Moscow flights, some common positions against the United States, hurricane assistance by the planeload, a modest level of family and cultural ties that continue from the Soviet era, and high-level, high-profile diplomatic visits. For China, Cuba is a small piece of a much larger Latin American strategy of investment, commodity, energy, and natural resource accumulation. China has become Cuba’s second largest trading partner, exporting electronics, buses, trains, light manufactured goods, and now tourists as well. Joint ventures in nickel extraction, onshore oil exploration, and biotechnology are under way. Renovations of China’s embassy in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood are expanding the complex to occupy an entire city block. Historical ties bind the two countries as well: Chinese laborers settled in Cuba beginning in 1847, working predominantly on sugar plantations, and today 1% of Cubans on the island have Chinese family roots. Ties between Cuba and Iran picked up following a visit to Havana by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in 2000 and a visit by Fidel to Tehran the next year. Cooperation in science and biotech expanded, prompting the Bush administration to unsuccessfully argue that Cuba had the intention of exporting bioweapons to a rogue regime. Joint ventures and cooperation have expanded, with Cuba selling vaccines, medical services, and medical training to Iran, while Iran in exchange has provided Cuba with a modest line of credit for trade. The two countries have found common cause in their fight against American imperialism and aggression at the UN and most recently in 2006, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended the Non-Aligned Movement’s summit in Havana.
Since the end of the Cold War, Cuba has made some modest investments in its domestic petroleum industry and today produces and refines approximately 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day. A handful of foreign oil companies entered into joint ventures with Cuba in the 1990s but yielded no dramatic black gold booms. Geological findings indicating the potential for vast deep-water petroleum stores sparked a new wave of interest in offshore exploration and drilling beginning in 2002. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates reserves of up to 9 billion barrels of petroleum, while Cuba’s state oil company, CUPET, announced its conservative estimate at approximately 20 billion barrels in reserves. In 2005, bidding for exclusive rights to 22 separate exploration blocks in the Gulf of Mexico north and northwest of Cuba and in the Caribbean Sea to the south yielded a number of contracts with private and state-run energy companies from countries such as Canada, Spain, Norway, India, Malaysia, Venezuela, Brazil, and Vietnam. For now, China’s exploration and refining ventures are on land, not offshore. American law currently prohibits U.S. companies from the deals, but the potential for drilling within miles of the Florida coast has put some in that state on alert while also piquing the interest of others (in the Texas energy industry, for example) eager to get in on the action in the future. Should current exploration produce a major find, given the energy crisis in the United States and globally, the attractiveness and convenience of Cuban oil could well produce a rapid push to open U.S. investment in Cuban petroleum.
In 2003, the European Union imposed diplomatic sanctions on Cuba after the arrests in Havana of 75 dissidents, human rights activists, and independent journalists. Until that time, EU member countries had made a practice of inviting such activists to their embassies and visiting them in their homes. Moreover, several member countries, often in concert with the United States or U.S.-based NGOs, had also helped provide resources and promotional support to nascent opposition movements. The arrests were intended to signal, primarily to the United States, but also to the EU, that Cuba would not tolerate outsiders paying for what it considered the illegitimate activities of counterrevolutionaries. For the majority of the international community, such a rationale was either rejected out of hand or viewed as an entirely insufficient justification for the arrests. The United States already had sanctions in place, of course, and its principal response to the arrests was condemnation, although the incident perhaps also provided a further impetus and rationale for the increasingly hard-line policies from the Bush administration. The EU, which since 1996 maintained a “common position” toward Cuba that favored “constructive engagement” with Havana as a way to encourage increased freedoms and an eventual transition to pluralist democracy in Cuba, voted for diplomatic, not economic, sanctions, which banned high-level Cuban officials from visiting EU countries. The Cuban government also simultaneously froze relations with some EU countries that had been more active in their contacts with the dissident community.
In many ways, the EU’s sanctions had a mostly symbolic effect, and were in fact “suspended” (though not technically eliminated) in 2005. By 2008, Cuba had released over 20 of the 75 arrested and jailed five years earlier, and the European diplomats had ratcheted down contacts with dissident and opposition groups, leaving the EU poised to essentially return to the approach of its previous common position favoring engagement. With Raul Castro taking a number of preliminary but important steps toward reform, most EU members concurred with Spain, which argued that contact and dialogue were the only hope for promoting a democratic future on the island. The holdouts were primarily Poland and the Czech Republic, two countries that had not only received substantial U.S. support for their own democratic transitions but also become key American allies in the campaign to build a viable opposition in Cuba. As a result of their pressure, in voting to lift the 2003 sanctions, the EU imposed a set of reservations or modest conditions rather than simply reverting to the old common position. In short, members stipulated that the decision to definitively remove sanctions would be reviewed after one year in light of whether Cuba had complied with two demands: access for all citizens to the Internet and permission for visiting EU diplomats to meet with both Cuban officials and dissidents. Nonetheless, regardless of Cuba’s degree of compliance, continuing rapprochement seems fairly certain. Although the succession under Raul has included a continued pattern of crackdowns on dissident activity, it has proven overwhelmingly stable, leading Europeans to the same conclusion that most Latin Americans have reached—namely, that Cuba’s path is Cuba’s alone: Countries can either attempt to be present and engage, and in that context discuss human rights and democracy with Cuba, or confine themselves to the sidelines. With trade, investment, culture, and tourism tying many parts of the continent to the island, European diplomats have opted for the former, cognizant of the regime’s redlines against outside meddling but also of its inability to go it entirely alone. With these dynamics in mind, the European Union has launched a new high-level dialogue on social, civil, and political rights and resumed development assistance—all with an eye toward the full normalization of relations and the creation of a new framework to govern political, economic, and trade cooperation.
Whether in film, literature, or contemporary art, Cuban culture continues to grow in its influence around the globe. Arguably, Cuban music is the most easily recognized cultural product from the island today, in all of its diversity and distinctive character. Beyond the lasting appeal of more traditional salsa, rumba, and son, paragons of the Nueva Trova movement such as Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés continue to pack concert halls across Europe and the Americas, while more recently Cuban rap and reggaetón stars have gained popularity—the product of Cuba’s intensified encounters with western culture during the Special Period and beyond. Cuba is also well known for popularizing the style of timba, a subset of salsa, pioneered by such groups as Los Van Van and Irakere and continued today by groups like Charanga Habanera. Cuban film, meanwhile, has carved out a distinctive niche on the world market, with the work of notable directors like Fernando Pérez making the rounds on international film festival circuits.
Much of Cuba’s artistic production—music, plastic arts, and film—has undergone a notable depoliticization in recent times, as artists and the state-run cultural agencies that support them continue to accommodate the demands of the international market and international media partners. In this way, even artists explicitly linked to revolutionary political values in the past—such as the founders of Nueva Trova—have broadened their messaging, appealing more to humanistic or secular themes than Socialist ones. Yet it would be false to say that politics has disappeared completely from Cuban art. Cuban rap continues to voice a significant degree of Afro-Cuban and youth disenchantment with material deprivation and revolutionary politics, although those artists who have gained most international prominence are largely nonpolitical in nature. Likewise, younger generations of Nueva Trova singers popular internationally have taken up the critical spirit of their predecessors to criticize Cuba’s contemporary maladies. More broadly, the state continues to play an important mediating role in the arts, providing the platform, resources, and basic ideological framework through which many musicians and other artists pursue international success. Independent cultural spaces and products do receive occasional foreign attention, and it is in these spaces where political messages are often most clearly critical of the government. Yet the government also recognizes that there is a public diplomacy advantage to permitting a certain level of critical expression among those artists promoted by the state who gain international renown. Indeed, many Cuban artists have learned to speak on multiple levels in their work, including narratives that legitimate several dimensions of the revolutionary ethos alongside potent critiques of Cuban political, economic, and cultural life.