July-August 2008

           
      Cuba’s July 26th anniversary has always been an occasion for the glorification of Fidel Castro and the revolutionary process he initiated in 1953 at Santiago’s Moncada garrison. This year at Moncada, as last year in Camaguey, Raul Castro spoke in his brother’s place, hewing to many of the themes that for decades have been standard for the event.

     Wearing his four-star general’s uniform, Raul was dwarfed by a giant billboard-sized poster of Fidel who loomed above him on the speaker’s platform. The image was of a much younger, khaki-clad Fidel in a militant stance. Raul paid fawning reverence to his ailing brother, as he also did in a speech two weeks earlier before the national assembly. He broke no new policy ground to the disappointment of many Cubans who expected the unveiling of new liberalizing reforms.

      But Raul’s intention may have been instead to establish irrevocably the ideological underpinnings for changes he has begun to make in the economy. Quoting extensively from a speech Fidel delivered on the same anniversary and in the same location in 1973, he seemed to enshrine his brother’s words. Fidel’s speech was so historic and important, according to Raul, that the daily Granma newspaper had begun serializing it in fifteen daily installments.

     The 1973 speech indeed had been an unusual performance. For Fidel it was short; only an hour and a half. It was one of the few times when speaking at home that he read the entire text, and did so methodically with no apparent ad libs, digressions, or rhetorical flourishes as were otherwise almost always his practice. It contained three calibrated utterances that were probably the clearest admissions Fidel has ever made about his pre-Moncada Marxist-Leninist convictions. In short, it was intended as one of Castro’s most important ideological tracts at a time when relations with the Soviet Union were at about their warmest ever and Soviet-style institutions were taking root on the island.

     Fidel was also militant and stridently anti-American in that speech, suffusing it with homages to Marx and Lenin and Soviet generosity. As was standard in a July 26 address, he called on the people to be militant against perceived American threats, to persevere against hardships, and to honor the communist party as their vanguard.

     Few of the latter themes were reiterated by Raul this July 26th. He never uttered the names of the founders of modern communism, and instead of praising Marxism, spoke just fleetingly of socialism. Like Fidel he mentioned the importance of defense readiness, but only alluded in passing to the United States. He again reiterated a pledge to consult the populace. “We do not seek unanimity,” he said.

     Raul’s reasons for dredging up Fidel’s old speech are not clear, especially since so much of its content is irrelevant in today’s Cuba. Perhaps he only intended to lionize his brother –highlighting all of the self-congratulation of the 1973 speech-- and to bolster faith in the revolutionary process and institutions now under such stress. And maybe too the focus on Fidel was because his health today does not warrant the expectation that he will survive until the next Moncada anniversary.

     But the practical Raul may also have had even more pressing reasons for exploiting that old speech. Core doctrines that Fidel expounded in his Moncada address may now be used to validate liberalizing economic reform initiatives. Recalcitrants in the leadership who may insist on fealty to Fidel’s opposition to such reforms in recent years may now find themselves trumped by their idol’s own words of 35 years ago.

     After vacillating during most of the 1960's between the doctrinal poles of moral versus material incentives for Cuban workers, Fidel in 1973 opted for the material. Earlier, Che Guevara had been the leading advocate of moral incentives –the imperative that true revolutionaries must labor with no expectation of material gain but only the hope of perfecting Marxism. Breaking with that, Fidel in 1973 warned against moral incentives becoming “a pretext for some to live off the work done by others.”

     He explained that reversion to Che’s moral incentive stringencies “would lead us to idealism.” Commenting further on Marx’s dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” Fidel opined that strictly adhering to it would have “adverse results for the economy.” The most productive workers would be demoralized, seeing the least effective rewarded equally.

     These propositions parallel what Raul has been saying and doing. On July 11 at the national assembly, for example, he commented that: “Equality does not mean egalitarianism. This, in the end, is another form of exploitation, that of the exploitation of the responsible worker by the one who is not, or even worse, by the slothful.”

     One of Raul’s most important initiatives this year was in liberalizing Cuban wage structures so that more productive, dedicated workers are better paid. In several speeches he has deplored lassitude, corruption, and inefficiency in the workplace. And he believes those vices are rampant. He told the national assembly: “People are working less. This is a reality that you can confirm in any corner of the nation. Pardon the bluntness of my words.”

     His conclusion: “Each should be paid according to their performance.” And in the next breath he cited the need to “eliminate unwarranted handouts and excessive subsidies.”

     But Raul’s tone on July 26 was stern and fairly gloomy, as he warned the populace of harder times ahead. “We must get used to receiving not only good news. . . We are aware of the great number of problems waiting to be solved, most of which weigh heavily and directly on the population.”

     But the curious structure of Raul’s speech, linking himself so elaborately to Fidel’s 1973 address, may also reflect new concerns about rising tensions within the leadership. The limited reforms undertaken this year may have provoked a backlash among hardliners fearful of how far Raul intends to proceed in abandoning known fidelista orthodoxies of recent years.

     In any event, Raul was more cautious and tentative on July 26th than he has been in his other public appearances since Fidel’s withdrawal two years ago. Perhaps he is reconsidering the implementation of some of the “structural and conceptual changes” he promised earlier, or the pace of such change. Perhaps he realizes that his words and deeds have elevated popular expectations to levels far above what can be satisfied. And so, like hardliners in the security establishment, he may now worry that the liberalizing initiatives already implemented, combined with the profound discontent of the younger generations on the island, have created a dangerous situation.

______________________________