Tag Archives: Democracy

THE CONCEPT OF A “LOYAL OPPOSITION” IN THE CUBAN CONTEXT

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Arch Ritter

By Arch Ritter, November 5, 2014

An earlier version of this note was prepared  for presentation as a discussant at a panel entitled “Estado, sociedad civil y oposición en Cuba” at the August 2014 meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

Cuba has had and continues to have a “Loyal Opposition”. It consists of a broad range of independent analysts, many or perhaps most of whom are outside official institutional structure. Included here would independent journalists (14ymedio, many “bloggers” or web-based groupings), activists of many sorts, independent economists, and some academics among others.

But while there has been and is a “Loyal Opposition,” it has been effectively suppressed and un-institutionalized. Virtually all shades of opposition have been prohibited. They were perceived by President Fidel Castro as treasonous since the earliest days of the Cuban Revolution. Divergent views competing with Fidel’s hyper-monopolistic visions, ideas, arguments, and conclusions were considered to be counter-revolutionary. Anyone holding these views was silenced, shunned, fired from any responsible job, incarcerated or pushed into emigration with their property confiscated.

The expression of strong oppositional views led one to being labeled by the regime and the power of the monopoly media as a “gusano” or “worm”. Such de-humanization of citizens was despicable.

Unfortunately the United States provided a handy pretext, fully exploited by Fidel, to characterize all opposition as treacherous support for the overthrow of the regime and the reversal of the “Revolution”.

For a while I thought that the Government of Raul Castro had softened its stance on internal dissent. The “Bloggers” for example had not been imprisoned, though they have sometimes been vilified and harassed. Within academia, some analysts such as Esteban Morales Domínguez had pushed the limits but avoided severe penalty.

However, repressive actions have been building up in the last few years, leading to surprisingly large numbers of preventative arrests. For 2014, the total number of short-term preventative detentions had reached 7.215 by October 2014. Some detail on these arrests during 2014 is presented in Table 1.

New Picture (3)Source: Observatorio Cubano, 2014

In the “Westminster” or Parliamentary systems of the United Kingdom and the “Old Dominions”, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the official opposition to the political party that forms the government is labelled “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.”  While critical of the policies of the government in power and continuously trying to promote its own views, electoral prospects and political fortunes, this opposition is ultimately loyal to the people of the country and its institutions, these being personalized through loyalty to the Queen.

An effective and institutionalized “loyal opposition” performs a number of vital functions. First, it participates in policy formulation, criticizing policy proposals, preventing stupid mistakes and – one hopes – correcting major blunders as soon as possible. Think, for example, of the 10 million ton harvest of 1964-1970 or the shutting down of about half of the sugar agro-industrial complex in 2002 in Cuba. Would these have been adopted and implemented if there were an effective opposition on operation?

Second, an effective opposition can check the tendencies towards the domination, arrogance and corruption that come with the continuing entitlement to power of a single party monopolizing the political system.

Third, an opposition can provide a new governing team, a “government in waiting” with fresh ideas, new vision, renewed energy and strong initiative, ready to form the government.  At some stage, “Old Regimes” become mired in their sense of entitlement, self-importance, paralytic conservatism, sclerosis, irrelevance, entrepreneurial lethargy, and intellectual exhaustion. An opposition can inject new life into governance when it is time to “throw the rascals out.”

It is interesting to note that in two of the “Parliamentary Democracies” namely Canada regarding Quebec and the United Kingdom regading Scotland, there have been “Oppositions” that have wanted to secede from the Unions. Are such “Oppositions” loyal? Fortunately they have been loyal to the institutions of their democracies and have been willing to put decisions on separation to referenda and they have abided peacefully by the results.

The existence and operation of an effective official opposition in a country is messy, preoccupying and controversial, particularly from the standpoint of the governing Party and leadership in power. Such monopoly politics is exceedingly boring and irrelevant, as typified by the meaningless unanimity of the Assemblies of One-Party states.[1]. Open debate and the uncertainty of genuine democratic participation also is more fun ultimately.

In time, Cuba will accept one institution of the Westminster political system, namely the concept and reality of a “Loyal Opposition.” The Government of Raul Castro obviously is not ready for this yet.Governing is easier for those in power when there is no opposition and no-one can challenge the wisdom of their decisions.

One could conclude that the Cuban regime blocks any opening to an authentic pluralistic and participatory democracy because it fears that it would be voted out of office and lose its monopoly of political power and the perquisites of power. But whether Raul’s regime likes it or not, an opposition, though tightly repressed, will strengthen.

If Raul Castro were truly interested in the long term health of Cuba – and his own “legacy” – he himself would make moves towards such political pluralism. Unfortunately, this is improbable though perhaps not impossible.

Bibliography

El Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos, “Continúan las detenciones arbitrarias en Cuba,” Web Site: http://observacuba.org/continuan-las-detenciones-arbitrarias-en-cuba/, Accessed October 6. 2014.

Schmitz, Gerald. The Opposition in a Parliamentary System, Library of Parliament, Political and Social Affairs Division, Government of Canada: Ottawa, December 1988

The Guardian, “Raúl Castro’s daughter first lawmaker to vote ‘no’ in Cuban parliament,” 19 August 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/19/mariela-castro-raul-no-vote-discrimination, Accessed September 23, 2014  

 

Note:

[1] Even the almost unprecedented single dissenting vote to a proposal put forward in the National Assembly caused relative excitement in Cuba and among some observers of Cuba, admittedly partly because the “no” vote was made by Raul Castro’s daughter Miriela. Hers was the lone dissenting vote on a workers’ rights bill that she argued insufficiently prevented discrimination against people with HIV or with unconventional gender identities. (The Guardian)

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WHICH WAY CUBA? THE 2013 STATUS OF POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Vegard Bye;  The full Report is available here:  NUPI Report: Which Way Cuba? This NUPI Report is the result of a project financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the purpose of studying and accompanying economic and institutional reform in Cuba. This Report consists of three papers taking stock of the political changes in Cuba by the end of 2013 (with some updates from early 2014). First, Vegard Bye attempts to summarize the status of the Cuban reform processes under president Raul Castro, with emphasis on the link between economic reforms and political transformations. One basic question is whether increasing economic pluralism may also lead to political pluralism, or whether there will rather be a re-concentration of both economic and political power. Second, Armando Chaguaceda looks at the social deterioration in Cuba. What is at stake are some of the most important achievements of the revolution in terms of health, education and social security. The author argues that these achievements have never been seen in a rights perspective. Lastly, Borghild Tønnessen-Krokan describes the polarized debate and issues that have blocked normalization and friendly coexistence, and analyzes constraints and benefits related to dialogue on human rights, security and other contentious issues both inside Cuba and between Cuba and the US in light of a recent thaw. In Annex 1 at the end of the Report, we reprint an English translation of the very visionary Manifest elaborated by our partner Laboratorio Casa Cuba: CUBA SOÑADA; CUBA POSSIBLE; CUBA FUTURA. This is the first proposal for a liberal democracy in Cuba proposed by a group of political thinkers operating within the Cuban political system, and thus tolerated by Government and Party. There is reason to believe that this document – with possible follow-up will become a benchmark for future debate about democratic political transformations in Cuba. New Picture (4) CONTENTS Foreword Which Way Cuba? The 2013 Status of Political Transformations By Vegard Bye

1. Introduction

2. Agricultural transformations and their implications

3. Widening space for employment-generating entrepreneurs?

4. Mariel: the new Cuban panacea?

5. The new cooperative sector

6. A dual state-private structure?

7. Social deteriorations and their possible impact

8. Cuban agents of change

9. International context Cuba towards Latin American normalcy?

10. Assessing the on-going transformations up against theoretical and empirical literature

11. The three scenarios

 Cuba: revisitando la Justicia Social en tiempos de reforma By Armando Chaguaceda

  1. Resumen
  2. Introducción
  3. Las perspectivas del análisis.
  4. El caso cubano
  5. Las reformas y sus impactos
  6. La (in)seguridad alimentaria y los ingresos personales
  7. El déficit habitacional y la marginalidad.
  8. “ é ” y “ á ”
  9. Reducciones en la calidad educacional
  10. Conclusiones

Build Walls or Open Doors? Prospects for Cuba Dialogue By Borghild Tønnessen-Krokan

  1. Introduction
  2. Methodological constraints
  3. Scope and definitions of dialogue and reconciliation
  4. Origins and dynamics of the conflict
  5. From Deadlock to Détente
  6. Conclusion

ANNEX I:

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Cuban dissidents say political arrests top 1,000 in February

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Daniel Trotta, Reuters, March 4, 2014

(Reuters) – Politically motivated arrests in Cuba topped 1,000 for a third straight month in February as the result of wider public demonstrations against the one-party state, a leading human rights organization said on Monday.

The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation said arrests in the past three months have nearly doubled from the monthly averages of the previous two years.

The commission reported 1,051 arrests in February that it considered arbitrary and politically motivated, although all the people jailed were released, usually within a few hours. true

 

 

 

The February number was similar to the 1,052 reported in January and down from 1,123 in December.

Reuters could not independently verify the numbers, which the commission’s president, Elizardo Sanchez, said were based on first-hand reports from activists around the island. The commission excludes any arrest report that it cannot verify, Sanchez said.

CUBA WIVES OF PRISONERSDamas de Blanco, in 2011

The Cuban government says the commission is illegal and counterrevolutionary, and normally does not respond to its monthly reports. It generally considers dissident groups to be in the pay of the United States as part of the 55 years of hostility between the two countries since Fidel Castro came to power in a 1959 revolution.

A Reuters request for government comment was not immediately answered on Monday.

The commission said the December number was the highest on record since March 2012, when Pope Benedict visited Cuba. It has been keeping records since 2010, and says the arrests rise when there are international events in Cuba, such as a summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in late January.

The numbers have stayed high largely because a growing number of citizens now publicly oppose the communist government, Sanchez said.

The report details each case by name, date and reason for the arrest, with many detentions coming before, during or after organizing meetings or public protests. Other dissenters were held on their way to or from church, the report said.

“There are more demonstrations of the people’s discontent,” Sanchez said in telephone interview from Spain, where he is meeting with human rights activists from Cuba and other countries.

Human rights groups say Cuba in recent years has avoided jailing dissidents for lengthy periods, instead choosing to detain them for several hours or days. As a result, estimates of the number of political prisoners are in the single digits, compared with numbers in the thousands decades ago. Amnesty International reported seven new prisoners of conscience in 2013, of whom three were released without charge.

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, World Report 2014: CUBA

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Arch Ritter

New Picture (10)

In 2010 and 2011, Cuba’s government released dozens of political prisoners on condition they accept exile in exchange for freedom. Since then, it has relied less on long-term prison sentences to punish dissent and has relaxed draconian travel restrictions that divided families and prevented its critics from leaving and returning to the island.

Nevertheless, the Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticize the government or call for basic human rights. Officials employ a range of tactics to punish dissent and instill fear in the public, including beatings, public acts of shaming, termination of employment, and threats of long-term imprisonment. Short-term arbitrary arrests have increased dramatically in recent years and routinely prevent human rights defenders, independent journalists, and others from gathering or moving about freely.

Arbitrary Detentions and Short-Term Imprisonment

The government continues to rely on arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate individuals who exercise their fundamental rights. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation—an independent human rights group the government views as illegal—received over 3,600 reports of arbitrary detentions from January through September 2013, compared to approximately 2,100 in 2010.

The detentions are often used preemptively to prevent individuals from participating in events viewed as critical of the government, such as peaceful marches or meetings to discuss politics. Many dissidents are beaten and threatened when detained, even if they do not try to resist.

Security officers virtually never present arrest orders to justify detentions and threaten detainees with criminal sentences if they continue to participate in “counterrevolutionary” activities. In some cases, detainees receive official warnings, which prosecutors may later use in criminal trials to show a pattern of delinquent behavior. Dissidents said these warnings aim to discourage them from participating in activities seen as critical of the government.

Victims of such arrests may be held incommunicado for several hours to several days. Some are held at police stations, while others are driven to remote areas far from their homes where they are interrogated, threatened, and abandoned.

On August 25, 2013, more than 30 women from the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White)—a group founded by the wives, mothers, and daughters of political prisoners and which the government considers illegal—were detained after attending Sunday mass at a church in Santiago, beaten, forced onto a bus, and left at various isolated locations on the city’s outskirts. The same day, eight members of the group in Havana and seven more in Holguín were arbitrarily detained as they marched peacefully to attend mass.

Political Prisoners

Cubans who criticize the government may face criminal prosecution. They do not benefit from due process guarantees, such as the right to fair and public hearings by a competent and impartial tribunal. In practice, courts are “subordinated” to the executive and legislative branches, denying meaningful judicial independence. Political prisoners are routinely denied parole after completing the minimum required sentence as punishment for refusing to participate in ideological activities, such as “reeducation” classes.

The death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo in 2010 after his 85-day hunger strike and the subsequent hunger strike by dissident Guillermo Fariñas pressured the government to release the remaining political prisoners from the “group of 75” (75 dissidents sentenced to long prison terms in a 2003 crackdown). Yet most were forced to choose between ongoing prison sentences and forced exile. The overwhelming majority accepted relocation to Spain in exchange for their freedom.

Dozens of political prisoners remain in Cuban prisons according to local human rights groups, which estimate that there are more political prisoners whose cases they cannot document because the government prevents independent national or international human rights groups from accessing its prisons.

Luis Enrique Labrador Diaz was one of four people detained in January 2011 for distributing leaflets in Havana with slogans such as “Down with the Castros” and was subsequently convicted in May 2011 for contempt and public disorder in a closed, summary trial. He was still in prison at time of writing.

Freedom of Expression

The government controls all media outlets in Cuba and tightly restricts access to outside information, severely limiting the right to freedom of expression. Only a tiny fraction of Cubans are able to read independent websites and blogs because of the high cost of and limited access to the Internet. A May 2013 government decree directed at expanding Internet access stipulates that it cannot be used for activities that undermine “public security, the integrity, the economy, independence, and national security” of Cuba—broad conditions that could be used to impede access to government critics.

A small number of independent journalists and bloggers manage to write articles for websites or blogs, or publish tweets. Yet those who publish information considered critical of the government are sometimes subject to smear campaigns, attacks, and arbitrary arrests, as are artists and academics who demand greater freedoms.

After jazz musician Roberto Carcasses called for direct elections and freedom of information in a nationally televised concert in Havana in September 2013, officials told him that his words benefitted “the enemy” and that he would be barred from performing in state-run venues. The government lifted the ban—widely reported in the international press—a week later. In May, the director of the government-run Casa de las Americas cultural institute, Roberto Zurbano, published an article in the New York Times highlighting persistent inequality and prejudice affecting Afro-Cubans. He was subsequently attacked in the government-controlled press and demoted to a lesser job at the institute.

Human Rights Defenders

The Cuban government refuses to recognize human rights monitoring as a legitimate activity and denies legal status to local human rights groups. Meanwhile, government authorities harass, assault, and imprison human rights defenders who attempt to document abuses.

Travel Restrictions and Family Separation

Reforms to travel regulations that went into effect in January 2013 eliminate the need for an exit visa to leave the island, which had previously been used to deny the right to travel to people critical of the government and their families. Nearly 183,000 people traveled abroad from January to September 2013, according to the government. These included human rights defenders, journalists, and bloggers who previously had been denied permission to leave the island despite repeated requests, such as blogger Yoani Sanchez.

Nonetheless, the reform establishes that the government may restrict the right to travel on the vague grounds of “defense and national security” or “other reasons of public interest,” which could allow the authorities to deny people who express dissent the ability to leave Cuba. The government also continues to arbitrarily deny Cubans living abroad the right to visit the island. In August, the Cuban government denied Blanca Reyes, a Damas de Blanco member living in exile in Spain, permission to travel to Cuba to visit her ailing 93-year-old father, who died in October before she could visit him.

The government restricts the movement of citizens within Cuba through a 1997 law known as Decree 217. Designed to limit migration to Havana, the decree requires that Cubans obtain government permission before moving to the country’s capital. It is often used to prevent dissidents traveling there to attend meetings and to harass dissidents from other parts of Cuba who live in the capital.

Prison Conditions

Prisons are overcrowded, unhygienic, and unhealthy, leading to extensive malnutrition and illness. More than 57,000 Cubans are in prisons or work camps, according to a May 2012 article in an official government newspaper. Prisoners who criticize the government or engage in hunger strikes and other forms of protest are subjected to extended solitary confinement, beatings, restrictions on family visits, and denial of medical care. Prisoners have no effective complaint mechanism to seek redress.

While the government allowed select members of the foreign press to conduct controlled visits to a handful of prisons in April, it continued to deny international human rights groups and independent Cuban organizations access to its prisons.

Key International Actors

The United States’ economic embargo of Cuba, in place for more than half a century, continues to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people and has done nothing to improve the country’s human rights. At the United Nations General Assembly in October, 188 of the 192 member countries voted for a resolution condemning the US embargo.

In 2009, President Barack Obama enacted reforms to eliminate restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans to Cuba put in place during the administration of President George W. Bush in 2004. In 2011, Obama used his executive powers to ease “people-to-people” travel restrictions, allowing religious, educational, and cultural groups from the US to travel to Cuba.

The European Union continues to retain its “Common Position” on Cuba, adopted in 1996, which conditions full economic cooperation with Cuba on the country’s transition to a pluralist democracy and respect for human rights.

Former US Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross remained in prison despite a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention report in November 2012 that called for his immediate release. Gross was detained in Cuba in December 2009 and later sentenced to 15 years in prison for distributing telecommunications equipment to religious groups. The working group said Gross’s detention was arbitrary and that Cuba’s government had failed to provide sufficient evidence of the charges against him.

In May, Cuba underwent its second Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council. Several countries expressed concern with repression of human rights defenders, increased arbitrary detentions, and lack of freedom of expression. Cuba rejected many of these recommendations on the grounds that they were “politically biased and built on false premises, resulting from efforts to discredit Cuba on the part of those who, with their hegemonic ambitions, refuse to accept the diversity and the right to freedom of determination of the Cuban people.”

In November, Cuba was re-elected to a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, defeating Uruguay for a regional position despite its poor human rights record and consistent efforts to undermine the council’s work to respond to human rights violators.

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The Changing Slogans of Cuba’s Leadership

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Arch Ritter

pedro_campos1December 17, 2013 |  “Down with Capital, Long Live Capital!” Pedro Campos HAVANA TIMES

Those in Cuba who once bet on the complete expropriation and nationalization of foreign capital today beseech foreign capital to come in their aid, offering investors every imaginable guarantee. The Cuban State economy is in crisis, but not as a result of the imperialist blockade or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the defenders of “State socialism” often say. The main reasons for the crisis must be looked for in more than fifty years of nearly-absolute state control, in the extreme centralization of decisions regarding how and how much of the billions of rubles received as subsidies from the former Soviet Union and the billions of Cuban pesos and hard currency produced by the working class were spent over this period of time, in the all-encompassing intervention of the State in the economy through domestic and foreign trade monopolies. It is to be found, also, in the State’s almost complete control over the means of production, in the nationalization of international capital, the capital of Cuba’s high and petite bourgeoisie, of free, individual and family workers – recall the “revolutionary offensive” of 1968 – of cooperatives and worker associations. The low salaries of workers, the maintenance of wage labor for the State, the financial imbalances generated by high spending in gigantic State institutions – such as the Armed Forces, State Security, the Party’s political and grassroots apparatuses, propaganda networks entirely subordinated to the State / Party / government, the country’s unwieldy foreign service – and international campaigns aimed at securing support for the government are some of the other causes behind the crisis. All of this could be summed up as the catastrophic result of that series of aberrant, archaic and dogmatic conceptions that Stalinism developed under the banner of Marxism-Leninism. According to the Stalinist logic, a political and military elite is to determine and regulate a society’s laws, economy, way of life and just about everything else in the name of the communist Party, the revolution, socialism and the working class – so-called “real socialism”, whose only real characteristics have been the absence of democracy and the refusal to socialize political and economic power. I have insisted on this elsewhere: unless the economic, political and social failure of this false socialism is acknowledged, the mistakes made will never truly be rectified. Those who defend this unjust system and now unscrupulously try to “update” it mistakenly identify the Cuban revolution with the Cuban government/State/Party that has made and continues to make every absurd mistake, “validating” the claims of right-wingers worldwide regarding the “unviability of socialism” (perhaps the best help global capitalism could hope for). Today, Cuba’s State economy can no longer rely on massive subsidies from the Soviet Union, Venezuela is experiencing a serious economic crisis and cannot continue to provide the aid Chavez offered the island. Likewise, the governments of powerful allies such as Russia, China and Brazil only offer credits that must be repaid. The bureaucratic apparatus of Cuba’s government/Party/State has refused to consider the truly socialist option: it has refused to share the country’s economic power with the people, with Cubans at home and abroad, with the workers. It has refused to allow workers to participate in the administration, management and revenue-collection of State companies and to grant full freedom to the self-employed and cooperatives, instead subjecting these to regulations, experiments and all manner of toing-and-froing. Naturally, workers identify less and less with a State that only caters to the interests of an elitist, bureaucratic caste which continues to determine the country’s laws, investments, estates and the lives of people. Faced with this complex situation, torn apart by its own contradictions and flip-flopping, the Cuban government/State/Party has now decided to contract legal matrimony with international capital, in order to be able to continue exploiting Cuban workers with its aid. The ironies of history! The “revolutionary leadership”, thirsty for foreign capital, today assures us it will not nationalize foreign investments made at El Mariel, the immense commercial project dependent on the end of the US blockade / embargo. The same government that blamed international capital – and US capital in particular – of all the world’s evils, that once boasted of having nationalized (placed under State control, to be more accurate) all foreign properties, today swears blind that it will respect international capital and begs, beseeches its powerful northern neighbor to lift the restrictions that prevent US millionaires from showering Cuba with dollars. They are not concerned about the risk that big, transnational companies – particularly US companies – will take possession of the resources and wealth of the “Pearl of the Antilles”, the “Key to the Gulf”, the “World’s Cruise Ship”, offering foreign investors the sweat of Cuban laborers on a silver platter, in order to share with them the surplus value they can squeeze out of workers together. This is typical of the annexationist stance that Cuba’s new Right – which has taken power in “socialist” Cuba – cannot conceal. We are dealing with the same people whose slogan once was “down with Capital”, those who today yell: “long live Capital!” The traditional Cuban Right based in the United States does not conceal its intentions of restoring capitalism on the island. The new Right offers us a pig in a poke, painting itself a “socialist” red while acquiescing to Yankee capital, allegedly excluding the old, “imperialist” capitalists (no, the new ones are “anti-imperialists”), so that the nouveaux riches and bureau-bourgeoisie, allied to and financially dependent on international capital, can survive the inevitable collapse. This comes as no surprise. Many of us in Cuba’s democratic and socialist left have been saying for many years that the bureaucratic State has only two options: coming to an agreement with the Cuban workers and people or with foreign capital. The second alternative has been the one chosen in all places where “State socialism” was essayed, where the powerful, authoritarian elite re-converted back to capitalism and became a new type of bourgeoisie. We are not against foreign investment. The question is who these investments benefit and what type of economy they are to serve, whether they are aimed at overcoming the economic and financial problems of the bureau-bourgeoisie and Cuba’s new Right or at developing the mid-sized and small companies and cooperatives of a socialist economy. During a fund-raising campaign in Miami, President Barack Obama assured Cuban dissidents he would not negotiate with the Cuban government in what is left of his term in office, while speaking of the need to change the United States’ long-standing foreign policy towards Cuba. The Democrats are already scrambling to secure votes from the Cuban and Hispanic communities, in view of the fact that there is a good chance the Republicans will put forth a Cuban-born senator as presidential candidate in the coming elections. If that were to happen and the Republicans won… Many concerns, questions and disagreements must exist in the high echelons of Cuba’s leadership. What did the US president mean? If there are to be no negotiations, the blockade will not be lifted and American investments will not come. What will they do with the Mariel project, its three million containers and their debt to Brazil? What steps could be taken to ensure the inflow of US capital, without putting their political power at risk? If this US president doesn’t lift the blockade, is that possibility to be discarded by Cuba’s current leaders? If the Republicans were to win the coming elections and a man of Cuban origin were to take office, what would they do? Now, has anyone in Cuba’s distinguished government of generals asked the Cuban people what they want? With every new development, what becomes clearer and clearer is that Cuba needs to democratize society, allow all Cubans to freely express our thoughts and to peacefully and democratically fight for their realization, allow for freedom of expression and association, the free and democratic election of all public officials and full access to the Internet. This process of democratization would allow all Cubans of good will to take part in the building of a democratic future of peace, justice and harmony, with everyone and for everyone’s benefit, regardless of their political views, religion, skin color or sexual orientation. Let’s hope open debate and the interests of the people prevail over the petty interests of extremists. Socialism in defense of life.

 

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Cuban dissidents say police detained more than 150 on Human Rights Day

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Arch Ritter

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO Miami Herald, Wednesday, 12.11.13

Cuban police carried out more than 150 detentions of dissidents Tuesday on International Human Rights Day and followed up Wednesday by carting off the founder of a group that was holding a rare human rights congress, according to activists in Havana.

Antonio Rodiles, founder of the group Estado de SATS, was taken away by police Wednesday around 11 a.m. as he watched a group of children write graffiti on the sidewalk in front of his home, activist Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz said.  Dissident blogger Regina Coyula, who was in Rodiles’ house participating in the First Congress for Human Rights, told reporters that Rodiles was detained when he intervened with police who were harassing his girlfriend for taking photos of the children.

Yohandry Fontana, a pro-government blogger widely believed to be a State Security official, tweeted Wednesday: “I confirm the detention of Antonio Rodiles for attacking and insulting children.”

Estado de SATS and two other independent groups sponsored the Congress, which started Tuesday on the anniversary of the U.N.’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights and was to end Wednesday night with a musical concert.

Sanchez Santa Cruz, head of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said he had information on more than 150 detentions on Tuesday and was still receiving new reports as of Wednesday evening. All but a handful had been released by Tuesday night after so-called “short-term arbitrary detentions for political motives,” usually designed to intimidate or harass dissidents and keep them from attending opposition gatherings. “That’s not counting the harassment and other acts of vandalism because there was a lot of violence by the forces of repression along the entire country,” Sanchez Santa Cruz said by phone from Havana.

Reports of more detentions were still arriving at his Havana office Wednesday because government security forces shut down the cellular and home phones of several hundred activists for much of Tuesday, he said.

The dissident group Ladies in White said its members alone suffered about 130 detentions as they tried to stage street protests — not tolerated by the government — in downtown Havana and the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second largest city. Others were detained as they tried to reach Rodiles’ home to participate in the two days of panel discussions, video programs and art shows, according to dissidents. Also detained were several members of the Cuban Patriotic Union, an opposition group most active in the eastern part of the island. UNPACU founder Jose Daniel Ferrer said more than 130 UNPACU and Ladies in White members were detained Tuesday in eastern Cuba alone amid a string of protest meetings, marches and distributions of anti-government leaflets and posters.

Several dissidents were injured when government-organized mobs and State Security agents threw rocks at them, Ferrer said. Mob members and police also made off with cameras, cell phones and cash taken from many of the opposition activists.

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A member of Ladies in White is detained by Cuban security before the start of a march marking International Human Rights Day in Havana, Dec. 10, 2013.

 

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CAN WORKERS’ DEMOCRACY IN CUBA’S NEW NON-AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVES CO-EXIST WITH AUTHORITARIANISM?

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Arch Ritter

By Arch Ritter                                                                                               October 7, 2013

 On December 11, 2012, a battery of new laws and regulations on non-agricultural cooperatives was published in Cuba’s Gaceta Oficial, No. 53, including two Council of State Decree-Laws, two Ministerial Resolutions, one Council of Ministers Decree, and one Ministerial “Norma Específica de Contabilidad.”  This legislation outlined the framework for the structure, functioning, governance and financial organization of the new cooperatives and provided the legal framework within which they were to operate.

This major institutional reform may revolutionize the structure and perhaps the functioning of the Cuban economy. It also may have political implications as the cooperatives are to be governed with a form of workers’ management. The legislation presented the cooperatives as “experimental,” and indicated that after some 200 were initially approved, the institutional form would be reappraised and modified. There is thus some uncertainty regarding the long-term character of the legislative framework governing the structure and functioning of the cooperatives.

The establishment of an apparently democratic form of workers’ ownership and control is interesting, surprising and perhaps paradoxical, since Cuba’s political system is characterized by a highly centralized one-party monopoly in which political participation is manipulated effectively from above. Elections in Cuba’s one-party system are a transparent charade and an insult to Cuban citizens.

COOPERATIVE GOVERNANCE

The new regime for non-agricultural cooperatives provides for ownership and management of the enterprise by its employees, with mainly independent control over the setting of prices, the purchase of inputs, decisions regarding what to produce, labor relations and the remuneration of members through wages and the distribution of coop profits.

The ultimate authority within any single cooperative will be its General Assembly which would include all its members. This body would be empowered to elect a president, a substitute and a secretary by secret ballot (Decree-Law 305, Article 18.1). The specific managerial structure of the enterprise is to be determined by the complexity and size of the cooperative and the number of members. Cooperatives with fewer than 20 members would elect an “Administrator.” Those with 20 to 60 members would elect an “Administrative Council.” Those with more than 60 members would elect a “Directive Committee” as well as an “Administrative Council.” The cooperative’s financial management will also depend on its size and complexity, and would be the responsibility of a single member for a very small cooperative enterprise or a financial committee for a large coop.  The management structures and functioning are delineated in detail in Decree 309 of the Council of Ministers.

SOME ADVANTAGES OF COOPERATIVES

The new cooperative enterprise involves democracy in the work-place, a major improvement over both state enterprise and privately-owned enterprise, in the view of many observers.

Under the Cuba’s traditional state enterprise system, workers have been “order takers.” Their labor unions have served as conveyor belts for orders from the top to the workers at the bottom. Rather than defending the interests of their membership, the main purpose of Cuba’s unions has been to ensure that the interests of the nation – as determined by its political leadership – are implemented through the unions. In a private enterprise in most market economies, the worker is also an “order taker,” but may or may not have a strong labor union to defend his or her interests.

It is instructive to recall here that the governmental announcement of September 2010 presenting the proposal for the lay-off of some 500,000 workers in the public sector of the economy by March 2011– to be reabsorbed in the self-employment or micro-enterprise sector – was made in a “Pronunciamiento” from the head of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), Cuba’s official labor union confederation and published in Granma.  It is hard to imagine the head of any other national union confederation making such a proposal on behalf of the relevant government.

 On the other hand, within the cooperatives, the members should be in substantial control through the governing mechanisms that the legislation noted above creates. The system would in fact be a form of workers’ management of the sort that we have not seen since the days of Tito in Yugoslavia.

It perhaps should be noted that most so-called “capitalist…” or “mixed market economies” have significant cooperative sectors.  For example, Brazil has 6,652 coops with 300,000 employees; Canada has 9,000 coops with around 150,000 employees; the United States has 30,000 coops employing over 2 million people; and France has 21,000 coops employing 3.5% of the labor force (International Cooperative Alliance.)

Moreover, Cuba had a significant cooperative sector before 1959, including some major “Benevolent Societies” and the Cooperativa de OmnibusAliados.

New Picture (6) New Picture (5) New Picture (4)

Democratic control of economic enterprises is an end in itself, but it also strengthens worker commitment to a shared endeavor thereby improving the intensity, dedication and effectiveness of workers’ efforts.

Thus, greater democracy in the work place should result in improved productivity. If Cuban cooperatives are genuinely democratic, they may function more efficiently and effectively than both state enterprise and privately-owned enterprise.

WILL THE COOPERATIVES BE DEMOCRATIC?

Will Cuba’s non-agricultural cooperatives in fact be authentically democratic? So far, it is too soon to say as the first cooperatives began operation only in July 2013. As noted earlier, the governing legislation will be modified in the light of the operational experience of the first cooperatives.

Governance may be a continuing problem for cooperative enterprises. The “transactions costs” of participatory management may be significant. Personal animosities, ideological or political differences, participatory failures, and/or managerial mistakes can all serve to weaken the decision-making process and to generate dysfunction. Of course this also happens with private enterprises as well as state enterprises

Secondly, the new cooperatives must go through a complex approval process before they can come into existence. They must be approved initially by the municipal “Organs of Popular Power,” then by the “Permanent Commission for Implementation and Development of the Guidelines,” and ultimately by the Council of Ministers. Will this be a reasonably automatic process or will political controls be exerted to determine which cooperatives can come into existence? One can imagine efforts at the highest political levels to approve favored cooperatives or cooperatives in particular areas of the economy and thereby to shape the evolution of the sector in accordance with preconceived official ideas, as opposed to letting the sector evolve spontaneously and naturally. With such controls on the approval process, the emergence of the cooperative sector could be deformed and stunted.

On the other hand, conceivably the approval process will be less controlling and permit all feasible proposals to be attempted. The Chief of the Management Model Sectionof the “Permanent Commission” assured journalists that this process would be “open” (Juventud Rebelde, 2012). But in the same article, he stated that some cooperatives would be established “according to the interests of the state” (Ibid). If this is the case, the principle of voluntary membership could be jeopardized. Cooperatives established in this manner would resemble those in agriculture that were imposed from above, with negative consequences in terms of both worker commitment and the effectiveness of the incentive system in the cooperative. 

Thirdly, what will be the role of the Communist Party in the new cooperatives? If the control of the general assemblies of medium and large-sized cooperatives is captured by nuclei from the Party, not only would workers’ democracy be subverted, but incentives to work seriously would likely be diminished. Will the Party keep out of cooperative enterprise management?

If authentic democracy were to emerge within the cooperatives, would this have a spread effect into the political system? Conceivably. But Cuba’s agricultural cooperatives have had little or no democratizing effects on the political system – although these cooperatives have not been genuinely democratic either. The “UBPCs” or Unidades Básicas de Producción Cooperativa were in reality state enterprises. This was acknowleged by the government of Cuba when it instituted a series of reforms in the management of the UBPCs aimed at converting them into more genuine cooperatives. (Granma, 2012)

Possible democratic spread effects from the cooperatives to the political system do not seem to be of concern for the government of Raúl Castro.

 

CONCLUSION

If this initiative to establish non-agricultural cooperatives is implemented broadly in the Cuban economy, it could constitute a change and perhaps an improvement of historic dimension. With much of the state sector of the economy converted to cooperative institutional forms, Cuba could become a country of “cooperative socialism,” with a state sector, a cooperative sector, a joint foreign/state enterprise sector, and a micro-enterprise sector. This would be quite different from the highly centralized and state-owned system to which Cuba aspired for half a century. Cuba’s economic system would also continue to be unique in the world and to be of consuming interest to observers, analysts and those looking for alternatives on the left to the world’s prevailing “mixed market economies

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 Decree 309, Council of Ministers. Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba, Número 53. 11 de diciembre de 2012.

Decree-Law 305. “De las cooperativas no agropecuarias.” Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba, Número 53. 11 de diciembre de 2012.

Granma. September 11 and 14, 2012.

International Cooperative Alliance. WebSite: www.ica.coop (accessed January 15, 2013).

Juventud Rebelde. 18 de diciembre de 2012. “Debate sobre la nueva ley de cooperativismo : Se buscan socios.” http://www.cubainformacion.tv/index.php/economia/47243–cuba-extiende-las-cooperativas-a-a-la-traduccion-la-informatica-y-la-contabilidad. Accessed January 16, 2013.

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“From Collision to Covenant: Challenges Faced by Cuba’s Future Leaders”

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Lenier Gonzalez of Espacio Laical has written an insightful and challenging analysis of Cuba’s political future. It has been reproduced as a special study “From the Island # 19) by the Cuban Studies Group. it is available here in English: Lenier Gonzalez, From Collision to Covenant: Challenges Faced by Cuba’s Future Leaders.

A Spanish language version is here: Lenier Gonzalez:  De la colision al pacto,desafios del relevo politico en Cuba.

Lenier Gonzalez Mederos

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THE POLITICS OF CUBAN TRANSFORMATION—WHAT SPACE FOR AUTHORITARIAN WITHDRAWAL?

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Arch Ritter

An excellent exploration of Cuba’s possible political furures was presented by Norwegian Political Scientist Vegard Bye at the 2012 ASCE Conference and has just been made available in the ASCE Conference  Proceedings for 2012. Excerpts from the Introduction are presented below. The full study, well worth a close reading, is here: WHAT SPACE FOR AUTHORITARIAN WITHDRAWAL?

By Vegard Bye

Cuba is in the process of undergoing significant— perhaps fundamental—economic reforms. Although the pace is not always very fast, and the direction is more characterized by zigzagging that by a straight line, there is little doubt that the state-dominated economy is about to give way to more non-state actors. In theory and ideology, the official line confirmed at the 2011 Party Congress is still that “plan”  and not “market” is the guiding principle. But in practice, plans drawn up by the state bureaucracy play a rapidly diminishing role in the “really existing  economy.” State bureaucrats, however, seem to be practicing considerable “civil disobedience” by dragging their feet in the implementation of reforms approved by the party leadership, as Raúl Castro himself

So far, the discussion of reforms in Cuba has almost exclusively focused on economic aspects. The VI Party Congress in April 2011 was exclusively dedicated to economic reform, or “updating [actualización] of the economic model,” which is the politically correct but not very adequate expression. The Party Congress, and the comprehensive debate within Cuban society leading up to it, led to quite significantly rising expectations about economic prospects in Cuba, both for the country as a whole and for individuals and families, although the confidence in the present  leadership’s capacity to solve Cuba’s deep problems seems to be rapidly falling.

………

This article is part of a research project with the objective of making an on-going assessment of the dynamics between economic and political transformations in Cuba by comparing these to theoretical and empirical literature on other transition experiences: democratic transitions in Latin America as well as Southern and Eastern Europe, the on-going struggle between democratic and authoritarian trends in the former USSR (and even some newly democratized Eastern European countries), and the authoritarian market transition taking place in China and Vietnam.

 The general hypothesis is that the economic reforms in Cuba are slowly moving the country from a totalitarian to a post-totalitarian society (referring to a typology developed by Linz & Stepan2), with potential for the emergence of an increasing although limited democratic space, but alternatively for the emergence of  a post-Castro authoritarian political-economic elite not least linked to the Armed Forces. Three alternative scenarios are developed to reflect these options. It is believed that the study of two transition processes (agricultural reform and the emerging entrepreneurship), understood within Cuba’s international context and with an additional view to the impact of a future oil economy, will offer a good indication as to which of these three scenarios will have more prominence in Cuba’s political development.

  Vegard Bye is a Norwegian political scientist, Associate Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and Partner in the consulting company Scanteam. His work record includes senior positions with the UN and Norad (Norway’s Development Cooperation Agency), long experience as reporter and part-time university lecturer and thesis supervisor. He has written various books on Latin American topics, and has followed Cuba since working there with the UN in the late 1970s.

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Cubans on the Island and Cubans Around the World: We Are All Just Cubans, Period

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Yoani Sanchez

[Text read in an event at the Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida, 1 April 2013]

Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving fragments of the ugly scar, that wall that had divided a nation. In the compartment of that train, while thinking about my father and grandfather — both engineers — who would have given anything to ride on this marvel of cars and a locomotive, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting directly across from me.

After the first exchange of greetings, of mistreating the German language with “Guten Tag” and clarifying that “Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch,” the man immediately asked me where I came from. So I replied with “Ich komme aus Kuba.”

As always happens after the phrase saying you come from the largest of the Antilles, the interlocutor tries to show how much he knows about our country. “Ah…. Cuba, yes, Varadero, rum, salsa music.” I even ran into a couple of cases where the only reference they seemed to have for our nation was the album “BuenaVista Social Club,” which in those years was rising in popularity on the charts.

But that young man on the Berlin train surprised me. Unlike others, he didn’t answer me with a tourist or music stereotype, he went much further. His question was, “You’re from Cuba? From the Cuba of Fidel or from the Cuba of Miami?”

My face turned red, I forgot all of the little German I knew, and I answered him in my best Central Havana Spanish. “Chico, I’m from the Cuba of José Martí.” That ended our brief conversation. But for the rest of the trip, and the rest of my life, that conversation stayed in my mind. I’ve asked myself many times what led that Berliner and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the Island as two separate worlds, two irreconcilable worlds.

The answer to that question also runs through part of the work of my blog, Generation Y. How was it that they divided our nation? How was it that a government, a party, a man in power, claimed the right to decide who should claim our nationality and who should not?

The answers to these questions you know much better than I. You who have lived the pain of exile. You who, more often than not, left with only what you were wearing. You who said goodbye to families, many of whom you never saw again. You who have tried to preserve Cuba, one Cuba, indivisible, complete, in your minds and in your hearts.

But I’m still wondering, what happened? How did it happen that being defined as Cuban came to be something only granted based on ideology? Believe me, when you are born and raised with only one version of history, a mutilated and convenient version of history, you cannot answer that question.

Luckily, it’s possible to wake up from the indoctrination. It’s enough that one question every day, like corrosive acid, gets inside our heads. It’s enough to not settle for what they told us. Indoctrination is incompatible with doubt, brainwashing ends at the exact point when our brain starts to question the phrases it has heard. The process of awakening is slow, like an estrangement, as if suddenly the seams of reality begin to show.

That’s how everything started in my case. I was a run-of-the-mill Little Pioneer, you all know about that. Every day at my elementary school morning assembly I repeated that slogan, “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.” Innumerable times I ran to a shelter with a gas mask under my arm, while my teachers assured me we were about to be attacked. I believed it. A child always believes what adults say.

But there were some things that didn’t fit. Every process of looking for the truth has its trigger, a single moment when a piece doesn’t fit, when something is not logical. And this absence of logic was outside of school, in my neighborhood and in my home. I couldn’t understand why, if those who left in the Mariel Boatlift were “enemies of the State,” my friends were so happy when one of those exiled relatives sent them food or clothing.

Why were those neighbors, who had been seen off by an act of repudiation in the Cayo Hueso tenement where I was born, the ones who supported the elderly mother who had been left behind? The elderly mother who gave a part of those packages to the same people who had thrown eggs and insults at her children. I didn’t understand it. And from this incomprehension, as painful as every birth, was born the person I am today.

So when that Berliner who had never been to Cuba tried to divide my nation, I jumped like a cat and stood up to him. And because of that, here I am today standing before you trying to make sure that no one, ever again, can divide us between one type of Cuban or another. We are going to need each other for a future Cuba and we need each other in the present Cuba. Without you our country would be incomplete, as if someone had amputated its limbs. We cannot allow them to continue to divide us.

Just like we are fighting to live in a country where we have the rights of free expression, free association, and so many others that have taken from us; we have to do everything — the possible and the impossible — so that you can recover the rights they have also taken from you. There is no you and us… there is only “us.” We will not allow them to continue separating us.

I am here because I don’t believe the history they told me. With so many other Cubans who grew up under a single official “truth,” we have woken up. We need to rebuild our nation. We can’t do it alone. Those present here — as you know well — have helped so many families on the Island put food on the table for their children. You have made your way in societies where you had to start from nothing. You have carried Cuba with you and you have cared for her. Help us to unify her, to tear down this wall that, unlike the one in Berlin, is not made of concrete or bricks, but of lies, silence, bad intentions.

In this Cuban so many of us dream of there will be no need to clarify what kind of Cuban we are. We will be just plain Cubans. Cubans, period. Cubans.Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida

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