How Is Raul Doing?

Former New York mayor Ed Koch was fond of hovering at busy subway station entrances and startling commuters by asking, with a big smile and a handshake, “How am I doing?” There is no Cuban equivalent of course, not even remotely so, yet in his own diffident way Raul Castro must be wondering how his “provisional” administration has done.
Fair to say, the record of his interregnum is mixed. Nothing truly transformational
has occurred, and may never as long as this innately cautious career military officer is in charge. He may ultimately decide against any real economic decentralization, fearing it could ignite instability. Most of his brother’s calamitous legacies may be just too difficult for him to repudiate. And perhaps, even now as the need to decide is urgently upon him, Raul may not be able to assure that Fidel vacates the Cuban presidency. That will be the most critical test of how Raul is doing.
He is likely under considerable pressure to finalize the transfer of power soon. It has been eighteen months since Fidel has been out of sight, and increasingly too, out of mind. A particularly insightful Cuban recently observed that the populace has moved on beyond Fidel, without fear or cognizance of him, and with an abiding sense of relief that he is no longer able to impose on them. This person observed that “Fidel has been forgotten as absolutely by the Cuban people as all of those boring Russian movies they had no choice but to watch for so many years.”
It’s not clear to what extent Raul has taken a lead in engineering Fidel’s evanescence. But he is nonetheless its principal beneficiary and it may actually be his most important accomplishment thus far. He has in other ways too begun to stimulate and lift the popular mood on the island, even if he can claim no credit yet for providing significant improvements in the mostly miserable lot of the Cuban people.
Yet, anecdotal accounts suggest they have a better image of Raul now than in the past. To their relief he has delivered only a few speeches since taking over, and, unlike Fidel’s interminable and desultory oratory, when Raul speaks, he is succinct, precise, and on subject. He mostly avoids the front pages of Cuba’s newspapers, is known to delegate and share power, and has made sure to convey the image of himself as a family man. He has communicated through the leadership ranks that he prefers to work a normal day and does not want to be disturbed after hours. Unlike his brother, he permits no self imagery of heroic accomplishments or extraordinary personal capabilities.

He is not known to have traveled abroad since Fidel’s confinement, and has had neither the time nor interest in mounting mass demonstrations against the United States. For Fidel, problems at home were always less important than internationalist posturing, but Raul communicates the impression of concentrating almost exclusively on domestic problem solving. Notably, he has almost entirely ignored the non-aligned movement that Cuba has led since September 2006. All of this is surely calculated to contrast his personal and leadership styles with Fidel’s and to demonstrate that his priorities are more attuned to the real needs of the populace.
Raul and those speaking for him have admitted that Cuba’s many grave problems are systemic. In their disarmingly truthful view, it is not the American economic embargo or “imperialism” that are the cause of all problems on the island, as Fidel always insisted, but rather their own mistakes and mindsets. In turn, Raul has called on Cubans, especially the younger generation, to “debate fearlessly” and help devise solutions for the failures. Brutally candid discussions at the grass roots level have proliferated. Not long ago all this would have been considered counter-revolutionary blasphemy.
There have been no reports of the death penalty being invoked, even in the cases of young hoodlums guilty of killing a military officer. Despite continuing brutal repression of the country’s human rights and dissident groups, Raul has allowed some limited social decompression. Intellectuals, artists, and previously oppressed homosexuals have been given more space. Juventud Rebelde, the newspaper intended for Cuban youth has been innovatively reconfigured, publishing investigative stories that could never have been aired while Fidel was in charge. Even the previously sacrosanct public health system has come under critical scrutiny in its pages.
Remarkably too, The Lives of Others, an Oscar winning film about the amorality of communist East Germany’s repressive secret services was shown recently in Havana. At least one independent and often irreverent internet site intended for Cuba’s disenchanted youth has been allowed to function. Without fanfare, police in Havana have stopped ticketing illegal taxis and more buses are on the streets.
In a major address last July dedicated primarily to massive failures in agriculture, Raul called for “structural and conceptual” change. Given his past sympathetic references to the laws of supply and demand, his advocacy of liberalizing economic reforms in the 1990s, and the many for-profit enterprises his military officers have been encouraged to run, he probably plans to introduce market incentives in the countryside. Private farmers are being paid more by the government for their produce and are receiving tracts of land so that food crops will be more available in markets. More dramatic innovations in agriculture are likely to be announced this year.
With his own powerful base of support in the military he has run since 1959, the security services he has controlled since 1989, and the communist party he manages, Raul has led from a position of undisputed strength. He has no intention of opening or liberalizing the political system or permitting a flowering of dissident activity. But as he approaches his seventy-seventh birthday in June, he gives every indication of wanting to leave a legacy of his own, one quite distinct from that of his brother.

The Latell Report

U.S. Policy and Cuba’s Security Services

President George W. Bush’s address on Cuba policy at the State Department on October 24 was his first since Raul Castro’s accession to power fifteen months ago. The president used powerful, and at times evocative, language in reaffirming his administration’s commitment to maintaining the economic embargo until a genuine democratic transition begins on the island. He welcomed several supportive members of congress --conservative Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats-- and introduced family members of imprisoned Cuban journalists and democracy activists. Bush was adamant that the United States not acquiesce in a dynastic succession, insisting that “life will not improve for Cubans by exchanging one dictator for another.” He seemed, moreover, to move policy into a more activist mode than had been the case since Fidel Castro yielded power in July 2006. By many accounts, actions in support of Cuban dissidents have been more cautious since then. The administration has also generally eschewed confrontational language, perhaps in the belief that the new regime’s grip on power was tenuous and out of concern that instability on the island would provoke another mass seaborne migration to Florida. But to whatever extent such considerations may have inhibited policy, they now appear to have been superseded. The president said, “the operative word in our dealing with Cuba is not stability. . . (it) is freedom. . . Now is the time to support the democratic movements growing on the island. Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty.” If he meant that new or more assertive policies are in the works to support the democratic opposition, he provided no details. But in other, potentially more significant ways, the president ventured beyond the standard rhetoric and policy prescriptions of recent years. For the first time, perhaps in the entire history of American relations with the Castro brothers’ regime, a president made public overtures to Cuban military and security personnel. Seeking to enlist at least some of them as agents of democratic change, Bush said that Cuba “must find a way to reconcile and forgive those who have been part of the system, but who do not have blood on their hands. They are victims too.” Remarkably, substantial segments of the speech were excerpted in Granma, Cuba’s communist party daily. The preceding conciliatory commentary was deleted, but another, equally potent one was printed on page two of the Cuban newspaper. It was a both a plea and a promise to the Castro brothers’ nomenclatura. “You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure. When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty . . . you’ve got to make a choice. Will you defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people? . . . There is a place for you in the free Cuba.” It is difficult to understand why Cuban authorities took the unprecedented step of quoting a sitting American president. I cannot recall another comparable example since relations were severed in 1961. And much of the verbiage that was aired by the Cuban media was highly critical, even incantatory, directed at different Cuban audiences, including schoolchildren and the country’s discontented youth. Perhaps the new regime is so confident of its strength and popularity that it does not fear how the president’s remarks will be received. Alternatively, reformers who appear to be ascendant in the current leadership may have wanted to add the president’s words to the increasingly dynamic mix of issues the regime has encouraged the populace to debate and discuss. Many pragmatists no doubt agree with President Bush that “life will not improve for Cubans under their present system of government.” By allowing that conclusion to be aired in Cuba’s controlled media, they may have signaled their concurrence. The president also cited many items from the long list of pre-conditions for normalizing relations that are specified in the 1996 Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton). But one of the most prominent of them was not mentioned in any form. Section 205 (a) (3) of Helms-Burton demands the dissolution of Cuba’s most powerful organs of internal repression: the Department of State Security in the Ministry of Interior, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and the Rapid Response Brigades that often inflict violence on dissidents. The omission of this previously crucial requirement for a “transition” government may have been no more than a drafter’s or editor’s oversight. But its absence is consistent with the speech’s central theme of willingness to reconcile with members of Cuba’s uniformed services. Other straws in the wind suggest that a certain new level of bilateral security cooperation has already been instituted. The State Department’s two most recent annual reports on international terrorism, issued by the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, reveal that Cuba has assured the United States that “it will no longer provide safe haven to new U.S. fugitives who may enter Cuba.” Last year, the Cuban government made good on that commitment by repatriating an American who landed a stolen plane in Cuba. The 2006 State Department report, issued in April 2007, indicates that after several meetings between U.S. diplomats in Havana and Cuban officials, the man was returned last October for prosecution. The report concludes that this “was the first instance in which the Cuban government permitted the return of a fugitive from U.S. justice.” It is not clear whether this new Cuban policy results from a unilateral decision to seek greater bilateral security cooperation or from a process of mutual concessions. So far, the administration has not commented beyond the cursory wording included in the two annual counter terrorism reports.
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Dr. Brian Latell, distinguished Cuba analyst and recent author of the book, After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next Leader, is a Senior Research Associate at ICCAS. He has informed American and foreign presidents, cabinet members, and legislators about Cuba and Fidel Castro in a number of capacities. He served in the early 1990s as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America at the Central Intelligence Agency and taught at Georgetown University for a quarter century. Dr. Latell has written, lectured, and consulted extensively.

The Latell Report

Aquí están extractos de la última entrega del reporte mensual de Brian Latell, profesor asociado de la Universidad de Miami y ex director de la CIA para Latinoamérica.

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More than eighty years old, the cumulative toll of the three life-threatening surgeries Castro has reportedly endured has surely been devastating. Last week a senior American intelligence official confirmed in a meeting with reporters that Castro indeed suffers from Parkinson’s disease as well as diverticulitis and perhaps Crohn’s disease, a debilitating inflammation of the digestive tract.

The brew of powerful medications he takes to treat his infirmities and associated pain probably has debilitating side effects. If, as suspected, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s eight or ten years ago, the medications to control its characteristic tremors and physical rigidities may no longer be providing much relief. Some of those medications can cause intermittent cognitive impairment. Not surprisingly, therefore, the unnamed U.S. intelligence briefer told reporters that available evidence suggests that Castro’s “health remains precarious.”

So if this analysis is generally correct, how much longer will it be before Fidel’s official and final abdication? As Cuban leaders ponder that possibility they should review the text of an important speech Castro delivered at the University of Havana in March, 1966. Without naming Mao Tse Tung, Castro denounced him and other elderly Chinese leaders with whom he was then bitterly at odds. Castro told his student audience that Mao should step down and pass power to a younger generation of leaders.

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