History Research Paper/Internal Assessment 2011Theme: Nationalism and Nation Building

‘Misguided or Consistent, Wrong or Right‘. Cuba’s Socialist Transformation up to 1970 was a justified revolution for the Masses of the society.

Candidate Number: Centre Number:Andrew Lindsay4/1/2011

1

Acknowledgements

While responsibility for the completion of this project is entirely my own,

there is need to acknowledge gratitude to the following who helped to

provide the information that was necessary for the preparation of this

assignment. I am grateful to my father Louis Lindsay and my mother Sandra

Johnson, whose understanding and hospitality I cherish. I thank my father

who has provided me access to the resources of his personal library, from

which I had a variety of books and articles to choose for the completion of

this project. Last but definitely not least, I owe considerable gratitude to my

mother, Sandra as it was most from her computer and house countless

hours of research and typing was done.

2

Table of Contents

ContentsAcknowledgements.........................................................................................1

Table of Contents............................................................................................2

Area of Research.............................................................................................3

Rationale/Aim..................................................................................................4

Introduction.....................................................................................................5

3

ThemeNationalism and Nation-building more specifically Cuba’s Socialist transformation up to 1970

Module 3: Freedom in Action

Theme 2: Nationalism and Nation-building

o B)Cuba’s Socialist transformation up to 1970

4

Hypothesis

‘Misguided or Consistent, Wrong or Right‘. Cuba’s Socialist Transformation

up to 1970 was a justified revolution for the Masses of the society.

5

Introduction

The topic of Nationalism and Nation Building especially regarding

Cuba interested me due to my father’s specialisation in the field of Political

science and government and my overall desire to discover for myself

whether or not of Cuba’s infamy today is in fact justified.

The nature of the revolution itself, in this research will be analysed

using a variety of primary and secondary sources from Cuban historians

such as Ramon Eduardo Ruiz and from leaders as influential Fidel Castro

himself. The information obtained will be then examined in order to derive if

the revolution was indeed justified in origin.

El República de Cuba as the nation of Cuba is properly known was not

the rigid, confined and nationalised state it has become in recent times.

Cuba was once one of the most powerful economic powers in the Latin

American and Caribbean Region due to its loose trade regulations and

relative ease in which investors could capitalise on profits in the. This all

changed however in 1959 at the end of the Cuban Revolution.

By almost popular consensus at the time, Cuban nationals did not

want to live in a society with gross economic wealth at the cost of their

independence, and so the transition towards Socialism began and with that

change came great disturbances within the region, emanating from this

small island, reverberating into the wider world.

6

The witlessness and misapprehension of many nations have in large

part facilitated the socialist revolution in Cuba. Britain, Spain, the U.S. and

the Soviet Bloc have at various stages in the country’s history, played the

island like a pawn in their game of bolstering power internationally and

have tried to influence its internal developments. This can be observed

through the upheavals in the conspiracies of the Ten Years War (1868-78),

The War for Liberation in 1895 and the social revolutions in 1933 and 1959.

Therefore it is no surprise to many that the island nation underwent a

powerful, large scale societal shift that changed the very nature of

intellectual thought in the state’s people.

7

Background, Nature and Impacts of Cuba’s Socialist Transition

Fidel Castro, the leader of the revolutionary forces that were at the

ending of the 1950’s, Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government and

the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba was not a Marxist

initially. Castro as a matter of fact was not a member of any communist

groups and was only briefly introduced with Marxist-Leninism at best as a

young revolutionary, this changed greatly with time. He was a member of

the Ortodoxos or The People’s Cuban Party which greatly opposed

communism and its tenets.1 So why did Castro so firmly change his

ideological stance when coming into power?

The development of the movement is closely related to the history and

nature of Cuban society as a whole as well as the local economy.

Unemployment, economic crises, a fragmented, stagnant electoral system,

1 Grupo de Propaganda Doctrinal Ortodoxa, Doctrina del Partido Ortodoxo (Havana: P. Fernandez y Cia., 1951), pp. 3, 62.

8

public corruption – all influenced the rise of Marxism in Cuba at the time

and possibly could have played a part in Castro’s capitalist departure.

Political stagnation and later on dissatisfaction with the political scene on

the island was a very important factor which played in the rise of Marxism.

The three major parties in control at the time the Democrats, Liberals &

Republicans battled for supremacy in Cuba. All were conservative and all

were representative of a powerful oligarchy. Ruiz states that ‘their

programs eulogized private enterprise …[and] when the chips were down

preferred dictatorship to chaos and disorder’.2 There were Reform Parties

however such as the Autenticos, which when led by Grau in 1944 won the

elections. They started to follow the status quo soon after and out of

frustration the ‘true’ reformers left and formed the Ortodoxos.

Any observer can see by the start of Batista’s regime in 1952 the

electoral system was in a state of shambles. Ruiz continues:

“Party goals were the spoils of office and the public Treasury, for the

distribution among party hacks and leaders. The parties functioned in a

world of their own, independent of public demands and aspirations,

where loyalty to the party, its members and its leadership, dictated

decisions”

It was clear at this stage in Cuba’s history democracy was no longer

legitimate. J. Lanuza states ‘No one more resembled a conservative than a

2 H. Beckles & V. Sheperd, Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emacipation to Present (Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), pp 534

9

liberal’. Politics became almost a personalist enterprise where if the party

leader was supported enjoyed popular stature and if not enjoyed political

favours from the man climbing the ladder up or jefe poltico. It was the

advent of the caudillo or political boss the rise of the Machados, Batistas

and Graus3. The illegitimacy of Cuba’s ‘old’ politics facilitated a desire for

newer more radical systems of political thought – Marxism became sought

more as the change needed to purify the islands policy.

Economically being invested in sugar was not always bad for Cuba. After

the War for Liberation in 1896 there was a fast upward rise in sugar’s

development for the U.S. market. Cubans’ living conditions were not low

compared to international standards. In 1925 per capita income averaged

over US $200 in current prices, according to tentative estimates – more

than 35 percent of US per capita income at the time. A shortfall soon

occurred however; the purchasing power of Cuban exports in 1956 was no

more than it had been thirty years ago. Historians and Economists such as

Dudley Seers blame it on a single cause – unemployment. There was a

failure in the removal of large scale unemployment after the depression

between 1956 – 57; unemployment averaged 16 per cent4.

An important tenet of Utopian Socialism is the distribution of resources

equally to all classes5. In the case of Cuba under that system enough

3 H. Beckles & V. Sheperd, Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emacipation to Present (Kingston, Ian Randle Publishers, 1993), pp 5344 D. Seers, The Economic and Social Revolution (North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 6-9, 11-13, 17-19.5 Utopian Socialism, from Wikipedia the Online Encyclopaedia retrieved on March 13, 2011http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism

10

resources would be expropriated to the poor to give them work causing in

the long term economic growth, solving both the labour and the economic

problems. Many came to believe that Socialism would become the short and

long term answer to these inconveniences.

Economic challenges were not the only ones faced by citizens of Cuba

before the revolution in 1959; societal ones were faced and were perhaps

the most detrimental in the nation’s development. Illiteracy, after

decreasing to its lowest levels in the1920’s failed to decline any further. It

was to such a state that the proportion of school children in the 1950’s was

lower than those in the 1920’s.6 A third of the nation lived in poverty. Seers

describes them ‘living in huts, without electricity and toilet facilities,

suffering from parasitic diseases and lacking access to health services,

denied education (their children received first grade education, if

that)’.Taking the urban and rural populations, 62 percent of them had

incomes less than US$75 a month, less than one-fourth of the average per

capita income.7

The built up desire for change was regulated by the repression of the

political opposition, which was great. Stability could hardly be expected in a

country with such societal divides and in the case where people were short

6 D. Seers, The Economic and Social Revolution (North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 6-9, 11-13, 17-19.

7 D. Seers, The Economic and Social Revolution (North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press, 1964), pp. 6-9, 11-13, 17-19.

11

food and money – such state of affairs could not continue. The stage for

revolution was set.

Fidel realised that the revolution for national independence he planned

could not be separate from a social one – meaning that his deep rooted anti-

imperialist regime had to simultaneously be a socialist one. In a television

appearance in 1961 he said:

“We had to make the anti-imperialist, socialist revolution…the anti-

imperialist, socialist revolution could only be one, one single revolution,

because there is only one revolution. That is the great dialectal truth of

humanity, of imperialism and standing against it, socialism”8

It would be easy to therefore conclude that Castro desired the transition

into Socialism to implement reforms to the problems stated earlier, but to

do so would be naïve and incomplete assessment. The Cuban historian

Ramon Eduardo Ruiz has four suggestions which illustrate the causes for

Castro’s fierce transition into Marxist-Leninism and eventually into

communism. Firstly his immense fear of the U.S. and their foreign policy

tactics in the Latin Americas, secondly his need for popular support from

the masses after the revolution, the belief that Socialism could solve their

socio-economic problems and finally the forced isolation of Cuba into the

Soviet Bloc9.

8 Castro, La revolution cubana, pp. 438-39. On this issue see “Caracter proletaria y socialista de la revolucion cubana”9 R. Ruiz, Cuba: The Making of A Revolution (New York, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1970), pp. 116.

12

The fear of the US is an understandable reason for Castro to change

ideologies. The Cold War was well under way in the late 1950’s and in order

to protect himself from US intervention explains the appeal of Marxist-

Leninism to Castro. Ruiz supports this view stating that it illustrates Castro

metamorphosis from a ‘humanist reformer to a Communist’10. This move

served to protect Cuba if for example the US intervened in Cuba using the

Platt Amendment, Cuba would have the Soviets’ support in order to protect

Cuba against this invasion.

Marxism was made into a unifying force by Fidel during the revolution to

as well as to increase his troop numbers. Castro states during a letter to

Luis Conte Aguero that:

“The task of uniting all of our combatants must come first because it

would be a shame that the lack of basic motivation was to lead to serious

losses in our ranks…perhaps the most difficult and time consuming task

is to find people of quality and prepare them so that their initial

participation will be decisive. Starting with the people that we now have,

we can greatly multiply our forces, that is, forces that are prepared to

join other similar forces in disciplined fashion in order to build the

necessary momemtum to defeat the existing political system. 11”

Marxists traditionally used socialism to attract the poor and disenfranchised

to their movements. Afro-Cubans usually took kindly to its principles since

10 R. Ruiz, Cuba: The Making of A Revolution (New York, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1970), pp. 116.11 Fidel Castro, August 14, 1954, letter to Luis Conte Aguero in Cartas del Presido, pp. 60-61.

13

they were shunned by the whites and refused equality. Communists made

thousands of converts among the Afro-Cubans, for example Lazaro Pena

who became the biggest labour boss in Cuba’s history. By the end of 1961

the Commitees for the defence of the Revolution already had one million

members. In the early 1970’s over half the county’s adult population

belonged to this committee12. It was clear Castro had popular support using

ideology.

The third reason given by Ruiz explaining Castro’s shift to socialism is

under dispute by some but involves the amelioration of many of the social

and economic problems before the revolution. To solve the economic and

social crises the Castro government gradually expropriated all foreign-

owned private assets and pumping those resources into infrastructural

programs such as hospitals and schools. By the early 1960’s Jorge

Dominiguez states that:

“Virtually all Cuban Industry, foreign trade, wholesale, internal trade,

banking, education, and health had all been nationalised. In 1963 the

second agrarian reform act raised the government’s ownership share of

all land to 70 percent; its share of land actually under cultivation was 57

percent…[by] 1968 all small businesses, retail trade, artisan shops and

petty service shops were nationalised”13

12 H. Defosses & J. Levesque, Socialism in the Third World (New York, Praeger Publishers), pp. 3913 H. Defosses & J. Levesque, Socialism in the Third World (New York, Praeger Publishers), pp. 40

14

Along with land reform, one of the primary areas that Minister of industries,

Che Guevara stressed needed national improvement was in the area

of literacy. Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60-

76 %, with educational access improved in rural areas and a presence of

instructors were the main factors which facilitated at end of the literacy

campaign an increase to 96%.14.

The final factor as explained by Ruiz is isolation from the West directed

towards Cuba. The US Embargo of 1960 implemented as retaliation for the

nationalization attempts in the island played the hidden and perhaps

unwanted role of pushing Castro into the communist camp. Castro needed

materials and money to both keep himself safely in power as well as for his

infrastructural reforms. Soviet assistance was critical if the rest of the world

decided not to help. He had no choice – this perhaps could have been the

main factor at play.

Overall however the nationalization schemes implemented from the

agrarian reforms were not successful economically after the initial phase of

wealth redistribution as they were poorly suited to Cuban conditions.15 The

same conditions of Political stagnancy were rampant, even more so at the

end of the end of revolution. Dominiguez states:

When the revolutionary government came into power in January 1959,

the political parties were suspended pending national elections (which

14 D. Kellner, Critical Theory Marxism and Modernity (Maryland, Johs Hopkins University Press), pp.6115 S. Craig, Contemporary Caribbean: A Sociological Reader (Maracas, Susan Craig), pp. 246

15

have not been held). The leadership around Castro deemphasized the role

of revolutionary organisations such as the 26th of July Movement …

because they were subject to being influenced by other leaders…at the

same time they took over autonomous organisations of producers and

professionals”16

The societal reforms though were successful as observed earlier on in this

work, but was this achievement significant enough to call the revolution

successful, hence justifying it?

16 H. Defosses & J. Levesque, Socialism in the Third World (New York, Praeger Publishers), pp. 38

16

Conclusion

The question of whether or not Cuba’s transition into a Marxist-

Leninist state before 1970 was a justified revolution cannot be simply

answered by assessing benefits of the revolution. One has to critically

examine if the revolution truly solved the major problems facing the citizens

of the island: the economic crises, splintered society, stagnant electoral

system and public corruption; or if it merely served Castro’s need for

protection against US intervention and gaining popular support in Cuba.

Essentially if the revolution was more successful at a greater degree in the

former one could state that the revolution was justified as it strived to help

the people of Cuba directly more than the ruling system. If not the

revolution would be pointless as it strayed from its original intentions of

helping the poor and disenfranchised.

Now on the analysis of the research paper presented one observes a

sharp distinction when it comes to the successes of the transition. It is

noted that only true success of the revolution in terms of ameliorating the

problems prior to the revolution occurred in social and infrastructural

reform for example in the literacy campaigns. Economic and Political reform

failed. However, in regards to factors Ruiz stated which facilitated Castro’s

ideological change into Marxism (the factors above) all were implemented

for the benefit of the regime. This gap in the advantages for the masses

17

relative to those of the regime forces me to therefore conclude that the

Socialist revolution, in fact was not justified.