By PHILIP BOWRING
Published: March 20, 2011
HAVANA — Rising prices following years of economic failure, five decades
of oppressive one-party rule, an aged first family, an education system
producing graduates with few prospects, a rich exile community waiting
in the wings.
In this year of revolutions, will Cubans follow the Arab example and
demand a better, freer future? Or are they condemned by the inertia bred
of socialist egalitarianism and the opiate of Cuba's wonderful music to
remain passive? Or can this Communist regime follow Asian peers such as
Vietnam and transform its economy while maintaining its grip on power?
Of course Cuba is sui generis, however much some aspects of it may
remind one of North Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam or the former Soviet Union
as well as of Arab regimes that have failed or are under threat. As the
Arabs have shown, stasis can continue for decades and revolt come when
it is least expected.
A superficial view provides scant hint of impending upheaval here. But
there is an expectation that next month's Communist Party Congress, the
first since 1997, will point as to how far it will go in abandoning
socialist shibboleths in the search for the economic gains it needs if
its power is to survive much beyond the bombastic but genuinely
egalitarian era of Fidel Castro and the more pragmatic era of Raúl Castro.
Pressure is rising not just among the public but within the
700,000-strong party. How far can the party go in moving to a market
economy, opening more space to the private sector and foreign
investment, how far in cutting subsidies and welfare? The road to reform
means more job cuts, lower food rations, higher prices — more risk of
popular resentment.
The regime has a few things going for it. Number one remains U.S.
hostility, an embargo which is a mirror image of Cuba's island redoubt
mentality and makes anti-gringoism respectable. Secondly are its very
real, internationally recognized and very popular, achievements in
health and education. Thirdly is the lack of high-level corruption. The
official cult is of long dead Che Guevara, not Fidel. Leaders lead
modest lives, the party has a broad base and no one expects a dynastic
succession to the Castros. Less admirably, the population is both aging
and falling, so its demographic pressures are the opposite of those in
the Arab world.
But the time is up for an economic model which, for all the nationalist,
self-reliance rhetoric, and tired revolutionary slogans, has always been
dependent on foreign subsidy — currently cheap fuel from Venezuela's
Hugo Chávez.
Cuba's agricultural failings have been remarkable even by Soviet and
North Korean standards, and revenue from tourism, remittances and
minerals is not only insufficient but has created a divide between those
with and without access to foreign currency.
Raúl Castro has promoted many younger practical military and party types
in place of old revolutionaries. The overt military role in the economy
is growing.
These new leaders may be the sort who can push toward a Chinese-style
semi-privatized economy where market and party share power. Some of them
may already be looking to feather their own nests, as counterparts
elsewhere have done, as joint ventures with foreign companies seeing
Cuba's vast potential start to blossom.
But this is not a vast China nor even a large mid-sized, self-confident
Vietnam. It is a small country next to a giant neighbor which harbors a
million people of Cuban origin who mostly do not want the island to
evolve into a more successful version of the current system, but want
the party to be swept from power and its system as well as personnel
replaced.
So to survive, the regime must have economic reform and much more
engagement with the outside world without being swamped. It needs
foreign money and markets, but it also needs the U.S. embargo as a
political crutch.
To survive, too, it may have to give dissidents — those who bravely
speak out and decline to be exiled — more space, and so disarm those who
view the whole system as an oppressive relic. Raúl Castro's men may be
economic pragmatists, but their instincts are naturally authoritarian,
and they may find it easier to talk to foreign capitalists than to their
own artists and intellectuals.
Cuba looks unlikely to have a counterrevolution in the near future. But
change is being forced on the regime, and it will be very difficult for
the party to manage. Can Cuba find the space between socialist failure
and again becoming an economic colony of the United States, a social
democratic mean between one-party oppression and the corruption and
violence of pre-Castro Cuba?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/opinion/21iht-edbowring21.html?_r=1
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