Change in Cuba - But Not for the Better
By Mike Gonzalez
CapitolHillCubans.com
The Obama Administration hasn’t had a good Cuba
week. Private companies showed that embracing
dictatorships torpedoes mission statements, while
the White House embarrassingly had to backtrack and
re-invite a jazz legend who supports democracy in
Cuba. Meanwhile, in Havana, the Communist Party shut
the door on any reform.
All these developments are important, as they
revealed the hollow middle of the President’s
decision to engage the Castros. They’re not changing
for the better—we are, for the worse.
The communist party meeting, which happens twice a
decade, was the most important, but perhaps least
understood, of these three stories. Most accounts
focused on the fact that Fidel Castro, already
looking like a cadaver, showed up, spoke some
Marxist psychobabble and reminded his audience he
may soon die. Well, he’s 89.
Other things were more important. Fidel’s
84-year-old little brother, party honcho Raul
Castro, had himself re-elected (unanimously, too,
lest there be any doubt) for another five years.
That is 2121, when he will be 90 unless he’s already
departed for warmer climes.
Until now, all the talk had been of Raul stepping
down in 2018. He might, as president of the
government, which may be left in the troubled hands
of a faceless functionary, but not in the more
important role as head of Cuba’s only party.
On Cuba’s lack of political pluralism, Raul was
firm. In an exhaustive and exhausting two-hour,
10,000-word speech (it’s not just dissidents who are
tortured), he reminded the party cadre and the world
that Article 5 of Cuba’s constitution “consecrates”
the communist party as “the superior leading force
of society and the state,” as it organizes all
efforts for the construction of socialism.
Raul castigated the world for having the temerity to
suggest that Cuba permit other parties “in the name
of the sacrosanct bourgeois democracy.” With
admittedly impeccable logic, he added, “if they
succeeded in fragmenting us one day, it would be the
beginning of the end. Don’t ever forget this!”
So now we have it directly from the Horse’s Mouth:
the Communist Party would cease to exist if Cubans
were actually given any other option.
There was more. The PCC actually reversed some of
what little progress there had been.
Previously, the private sector had been barred from
the “concentration of property.” As of the new
congress, the private sector will also be barred
from the “concentration of wealth.”
Commenting on his blog, CapitolHillCubans,
the analyst Mauricio Claver-Carone made the point
that this—not the political immobility—was the news
coming out of the Congress that deserves world
attention. I concur. Claver-Carone writes:
"In
other words, the Castro regime can crack down on any
person for accumulating any amount of money, without
any recourse, based on its own subjective standard.
Castro also reminded everyone that ’cuentapropistas’
(“self-employment”) are not juridical persons.
In other words, they are legal ghosts."
Google “cuentrapropista” and you will get all sorts
of wild-eyed expectations of growth by these small
entrepreneurs and hopes that they will be the agents
of change. Guess who else has done that? Raul. So
just as with multi-partism, he closed the door on
that.
“We are not naïve nor do we ignore the aspirations
of powerful external forces betting on what they
call the ‘empowerment’ of the non-state sector, with
the goal of generating agents of change in the hope
of ending the Revolution and socialism in Cuba,” he
lectured those who were still awake.
And that is the problem that awaits the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce and all the companies that want to make
a deal with the Castros. Their main and only concern
is survivability. Nothing else matters. That’s how
you stay in power for 56 years.
Carnival Cruise found the hard way with its maiden
cruise to Cuba, which was scheduled to launch on May
1 (International Workers’ Day, or communism’s high
holiday). To comply with a rule by the Castros,
Carnival told Americans born in Cuba they need not
apply for a cabin.
A public relations fiasco ensued, of course, and
Carnival retreated. The Miami-based company had to
go back to the Cuban government and say, you let in
the Cuban-Americans or we can’t come here.
What the experience showed was that companies will
be only too happy to coddle the Castros until public
pressure here gets too intense. In fact, even the
White House behaves this way.
This week it emerged that the White House had
disinvited 14-time Grammy winner Paquito d’Rivera—a
strong proponent of human rights in Cuba—from
playing there on April 30, International Jazz Day.
D’Rivera wrote a letter to Obama reminding him of
America’s values, but it wasn’t till the letter
became public a week later, and again public
pressure mounted, that the White House decided to
re-invite him.
All in all it was a week that showed, once again,
that dealing with the Castros will diminish us, not
them.