I have just spent two weeks in Cuba, at a critical moment for the island, and I return convinced of two things that seem to me fundamental. First, the revolution is firmly established and could only be overthrown by a massive, direct invasion by the United States, an operation which would have incalculable consequences. Secondly, Cuban socialism is idiosyncratic, very different from the rest of the countries of the Soviet bloc, a fact that could have very important repercussions for the future of world socialism.
Within a few days of arriving in Havana, I witnessed an unusual spectacle. A film screening had to be interrupted in order to silence the audience, which had begun applauding and cheering Fidel Castro when his face appeared on the screen. ‘Don’t confuse this with the cult of personality,’ a Cuban friend remarked when I told him about this incident. ‘That cult is imposed from above; the affection for Fidel comes from below and can be seen in a spectacular way every time that the revolution is in danger. The night that Kennedy announced the blockade, everyone went out into the street, chanting “Fidel, Fidel”. It’s their way of showing their support for the revolution.’ A few days later I went to a meeting in the Garcia Lorca Theatre. Every time that the speakers wanted to fire up the audience, they would mention Castro; immediately, thunderous applause broke out. On another day, on a ‘people’s farm’ some seven miles outside Havana, I asked the administrator, a barbudo from the Sierra Maestra with a scapular round his neck: ‘If Fidel were to die, who would replace him at the head of the revolution?’ ‘No one,’ he replied immediately, but then hastened to add: ‘I mean, the revolution would continue, but it wouldn’t be the same, something would be missing.’ That ‘something’ is, at the moment at least, very important. All the differences of opinion that might exist within the revolution disappear when it comes to Fidel Castro. He is the most solid agglutinating force that the Cuban people possess, the factor that maintains cohesion and popular enthusiasm, the twin pillars of the revolution.
This support for Fidel is not just based on legend. Obviously the
popular imagination has been caught by the odyssey of the young lawyer who attacked the Moncada barracks, disembarked with a handful of men from the Granma and fought an unequal battle against the regular army in the Sierra Maestra. But what has undoubtedly cemented this support is the relationship that Fidel has developed with the people in whose name he governs. This relationship cannot be reduced to any simple formula or label, it is something personal and friendly. It could be seen at the critical time of the blockade. The head of state suddenly appeared on 23rd Avenue, one of the streets in the centre of Havana, at the busiest time of the day. Passers-by congregated around him and he began to ask them questions. ‘Let’s see,’ he said to someone, ‘what do you think about the blockade? Do you think that the Russian missiles should be removed or should remain in Cuba?’ And the following day, he turned up in the same surprising way in the university square, to talk to the students about current problems. In this way, the man in the street feels a direct link with the responsibilities of the state, feels that he is being personally consulted by Fidel at every important stage of the revolution. A journalist present at the conversation between Fidel and the passers-by told me that many people thought that the missiles should not leave Cuba, they were openly opposed to Nikita Khrushchev’s offer to remove them, and chanted in front of Fidel: ‘Nikita, Nikita, lo que se da no se quita’ (Nikita, Nikita, what is given shouldn’t be taken away). I am not trying to deny with all this that the revolution is Marxist-Leninist. Quite the opposite. It is clear from the press, the radio, the training courses and different publications that there is an official insistence on indoctrinating the masses. ‘Social Books’ published in Spanish in Moscow and the popular democracies circulate widely; in their speeches all the leaders proclaim themselves to be orthodox Marxists. But this campaign has not led to an exclusive ideological directorate, as happened in the popular democracies. I have seen Trotskyist and anarchist publications displayed in the windows of Havana bookshops. There is no censorship aimed at maintaining the ideological purity of the publications. Recently a rather quaint and improbable essay entitled Espiritismo y Santeria en la luz del marxismo (Spiritualism and Santeria in the Light of Marxism) appeared. A shop assistant recommended the book to me in the following way: ‘It is a very interesting essay, comrade, of esoteric materialism.’
What I want to say is that the recognition of Marxism as the official
philosophy of the revolution does not exclude, until now at least, other ideological viewpoints, which can be freely expressed. Castro’s statement to the Congress of Cuban Writers – ‘Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing’ – is being put into practice in a rigorous manner. In art and literature this is very obvious: there is no official aesthetic. When I was in Havana, the National Council of Culture (where one of the best contemporary novelists in the Spanish language, Alejo Carpentier, works) was showing a retrospective of the surrealist Wilfredo Lam and a collective exhibition of young painters, all of whom were abstract. Literary publications have paid homage to William Faulkner, praised Saint-Jean Perse (Pluies (Rains) has just appeared in Havana) and have passionately discussed the objective novelists. The influence of Sartre is undeniable in three of the best young Cuban writers, Ambrosio Fornet, Edmundo Desnoes and Jaime Sarusky.
The prudence with which the revolution has acted concerning the freedom to publish can be seen clearly in the following example. I was very surprised to see in Cuba street stalls selling all kinds of pornographic books. It was very strange to find, displayed in the middle of the street, books that in any city of the world would be sold in a semi-clandestine manner: the Kama-Sutra, the Ananga-Ranga, Musset’s Gamiani, the Dialogues of Aretino etc. I was with a Bulgarian engineer who was as surprised as me and also angry: ‘This is a scandal,’ he said. ‘They should ban this trade: socialism and eroticism are incompatible.’ Before the revolution, Cuba was not just a North American entrepôt, it was also the paradise of pornography. Many publishing houses specialized in exporting literature of this genre to the Spanish-speaking world. These enterprises no longer exist, but the books that remained on the island still circulate without any restriction. ‘This trade will disappear by itself in time,’ an official told me. ‘The roots of the evil have been cut out and the leaves and branches will wither on their own. Look at what happened with prostitution and begging. Havana was the city that, proportionally, had the greatest number of prostitutes and beggars in the world. Both problems are being solved without any coercive measures, without violence. Instead of banning prostitution, the government made an offer to the women who worked in this area. It offered to teach them a trade and to give food and lodging to their families – parents and children – while they trained. At first, only a small number of prostitutes accepted, but then there
was a real flood and new instruction centres had to be opened for them. They spend several months there and come out with a secure job. Today, prostitution has practically disappeared in Cuba.’
Cuba is not the only socialist revolution in which the creation of the revolutionary party came after the revolution itself. The 26 July was not really a party but rather a movement with quite a vague liberal and humanist ideology. The revolution has been shaping its political and economic doctrine in practice, in the exercise of power. This explains why, at the beginning, the revolution had the support of conservative groups and movements. As the young barbudos, faced with the open or covert aggression of the United States, became more radical and determined to save the revolution in any way possible from the economic stranglehold of Washington and became dependent on aid from the Soviet Union, all these sectors withdrew their support from the revolution. In the end, it was defended by just three movements: the 26 July, the Revolutionary leadership and the Popular Socialist Party (a Communist group). It has been said that the establishment of the Integral Revolutionary Organizations has placed the effective control of the revolution in the hands of the PSP. It is clear that there was a move made by a section of the PSP to place the key state posts in the hands of a group. Fidel Castro himself recognized this in his speech of 26 March against Aníbal Escalante. I think that the fight against sectarianism has been effective. The formation of a single party of the revolution is being carried out, at least, in an exceptional way. They are attempting, it seems, to create a party of ‘exemplary men’. The nuclei of the party candidates are selected at the work place, in public assemblies, in which all the employees and workers in the enterprise participate. The ‘exemplary workers’ – those who have contributed greatly to production and have been designated as such by their fellow workers – are automatically candidates for party membership, unless they decide to the contrary. But – and this is the exceptional part – in these assemblies, the workers can make criticisms and even vote for the nomination of certain candidates. In some way, every member of the single party must be anointed and blessed by the masses. In his speech, Fidel Castro had insisted that the revolutionary party should be ‘the vanguard of the workers’. The selection is carried out rigorously. In the province of Camaguey, in 525 work places, and out of a total of 76,439 workers, 4,605 candidates to the single party have been selected. Of these, only 25 per cent had previously been politically active. In the
four Havana factories that I visited, the candidates to the party had recently been chosen in public assemblies. It is interesting to note the composition of these groups. In one of the factories, out of a total of 345 workers, twenty-seven were selected. Of these, five had been members of the PSP, three of the 26 July and the remaining nineteen had never been politically active. In the second, out of 150 workers, sixteen were chosen: two ex-PSP, four 26 July and the rest non-affiliated. In the third, out of 217 workers, the group was twenty-five: nine PSP, no one from the 26 July and the other sixteen non-activists. And in the last factory, out of 143 workers, the group was fourteen: no PSP, three 26 July and eleven non-activists.
The slowness with which this selection process is being carried out is another demonstration of the decision – expressed by Fidel Castro in his speech of 26 March – to make it an organization deeply rooted in the masses, in which they can ‘recognize the best of themselves’, a party formed ‘without exclusivity or sectarianism’.
Paris, November 1962