From Spontaneity to Stagnation

By George Russell

At 25, Castro's revolution has already reached middle age

It was hailed as an anniversary of popular triumph, but the subdued ritual that took place last week in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba looked more like an exercise in lonely defiance. As a chilly evening rain fell on the tiny colonial plaza of Cuba's second-largest city (pop. 360,000), a crowd of 5,000 carefully selected guests waited patiently as the country's aging revolutionary leadership filed into place on the carved wooden balconies of the venerable city hall. Soaked to the skin, the audience heard Army Chief Raul Castro declare all of Santiago a "hero of the republic" and bestow upon the city Cuba's highest honor, the Order of Antonio Maceo. Then all eyes shifted to the central balcony, where President Fidel Castro, 56, stood alone, his head bowed. Stepping to the lectern, Castro used words he had first uttered to a frenzied and much larger crowd from the same spot exactly 25 years earlier, announcing the overthrow of Dictator Fulgencio Batista: "The revolution begins now."

Notably absent on this occasion was the kind of flamboyant improvisational rhetoric that Castro introduced to the world a quarter-century ago. The graying revolutionary jefe read from a prepared text for a mere 90 minutes--a brief span compared with the five-and six-hour Castro stemwinders of the past. In a detailed litany of the accomplishments of his Communist regime, Castro described Cuba's socialist state as "the most advanced political and social system known in the history of mankind."

With that, Castro launched into venomous language to describe the No. 1 enemy of his revolution and, in his view, of mankind: the Reagan Administration and U.S. "imperialism." The U.S. leadership, said Castro, is composed of "new Nazi-fascist barbarians, blackmailers by nature, cowardly, opportunistic and calculating like their Hitlerian predecessors." The Reagan Administration, he charged, is pushing the world toward nuclear holocaust. Citing in particular the deployment of new U.S. medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, Castro declared that President Reagan's "warlike hysteria" would produce a "necessary and just response" from Cuba's main ally, the Soviet Union.

Above all, Castro singled out the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada. Referring to the 24 Cubans who died in the invasion, Castro declared to loud applause that "the blood shed by the heroic collaborators who fell in Grenada will never be forgotten." Nor, he said, would the Cuban revolution "tremble or vacillate" should the time come to defend itself. Harking back yet again to the Santiago triumph of 1959, Castro invoked the "heroism, patriotism and revolutionary spirit" of that day to achieve the same aim: "Victory."

Castro's choice of this year's anniversary setting may have been a bid to rekindle the revolutionary fervor of the past. It may even have been, as some foreign observers speculated, an indication of the Cuban President's longing for those simpler, happier days when, as a charismatic guerrilla leader, he descended like a savior from the island's rugged Sierra Maestra. But whatever Castro's intentions, the real effect of last week's ceremonies was to demonstrate, by sheer force of symbolic contrast, that the Cuban revolution in the past 25 years has led from spontaneity to virtual stagnation. Ronald Reagan, in his special anniversary radio broadcast to Cuba last week, tried to make the same point for reasons of his own. At birth, said Reagan, the Cuban revolution marked "what all of us hoped was the dawn of a new era of freedom." Instead, said the President, "the promises made to you have not been kept. Since 1959 you've been called upon to make one sacrifice after another. And for what?"

As the man who inflicted the worst defeat on Cuba's revolutionary foreign policy since the '60s, Reagan already knew at least part of the answer. The Cuban regime is still reeling from Grenada. For Castro the defeat was a personal one: Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, whose murder in October by more extreme Marxist elements of his regime precipitated the U.S. intervention, was a close friend and protege.

While the Cuban government publicly blames the U.S. for all aspects of the Grenada debacle, rumors are circulating in Havana that Cuban military and diplomatic personnel are paying penalties for the defeat. Among those said to be out of favor with Castro are Julian Torres Rizo, the youthful Cuban Ambassador to Grenada, who failed to warn Havana of the plotting against Bishop, and Lieut. Colonel Pedro Tortolo Comas, dispatched by Castro to Grenada four days before the U.S. intervention to organize the unsuccessful Cuban resistance.

Despite the ignominy of Grenada, both Castro and his regime have survived a quarter-century of more or less unremitting hostility from the most powerful country in the hemisphere, an animus that has increased during the Reagan Administration. As Castro put it, "To us corresponds the historic role of confronting at a distance of 90 miles, or even less, at 90 millimeters, if the territory occupied by the Guantanamo naval base is considered, the most powerful imperialistic country on earth." In the process, Castro has converted his country, with a population of only 9.8 million, into a significant global actor, with some 45,000 troops and advisers operating as Soviet proxies in such countries as Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, and with Cuban civilians working in some 30 countries.

In assessing the achievements of his prematurely middle-aged revolution, Castro takes special pride in its social benefits, particularly in the areas of public health care, education, public housing and nutrition. Some of Cuba's progress is indeed impressive. The country has one of the Third World's highest ratios of doctors to overall population (1 to 626 in 1980); Castro confidently predicted last week that within 15 to 20 years Cuba would lead the world in health-care delivery. Illiteracy has been virtually eliminated; Cuba's population now has an average educational level equivalent to junior high school. Last week Castro added the boast that Cuba is the second-best-fed country in Latin America, after Argentina, a major grain and beef exporter.

What Castro failed to mention is that strict food rationing (2 Ibs. of meat a month, 2 oz. of coffee every two weeks) is an integral part of revolutionary Cuban life. Indeed, recalling that Cuba in 1959 had a prosperous middle class, Cuban Expert Wayne Smith, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., notes that "in the great equalizing process, the standard of living has declined."

A few touches of capitalism have crept back into the state-controlled Cuban economy. After fulfilling state quotas, peasant farmers and artisans are now permitted to sell their surplus goods at free-market prices. As a result of the mild free-enterprise revival, some Cubans have more pocket money to spend these days, and the government allows personal savings accounts of up to $2,000 to earn 2% interest. Higher returns are forbidden, says a Cuban banker, because "we don't want people living off their interest."

Castro noted in his speech that at nine sugar refineries under construction in the country, 60% of the components were produced in Cuba. He maintained that mechanization had increased to the point where 100,000 sugar-cane cutters were doing the work formerly done by 350,000, and that similar productivity gains applied to other branches of industry. Castro heaped scorn on some other Latin American nations, particularly Brazil, where huge foreign debts accompany "constant reports of social calamities, unemployment, hunger, inflation."

The Cuban leader made no mention of his country's own foreign-debt crisis, which, in per capita terms, puts most nations in the shade. In the West, Cuba owes Western banks and governments an estimated $3.2 billion, including $1.1 billion in short-term debt to private banks. More than a year ago, Cuba announced that it was unable to meet its payments; efforts to reschedule the debt burden have been under way in Paris and London since last March. But in addition, Cuba owes more than $9 billion to East-bloc countries, principally the Soviet Union.

Cuba had to resort to such heavy borrowing despite an economic subsidy from the Soviets that amounts to $4 billion annually. Much of the subsidy comes in the form of artificially high prices for Cuban sugar, which is still, after much Communist rhetoric about the evils of a one-crop economy, the island's chief product. Despite all the Soviet help, Cuba continues to run a trade deficit of $700 million annually. The chief result of Soviet aid, coupled with the continuing U.S. embargo against trade with Cuba, is to pull the Castro regime ever deeper within the Soviet economic orbit. U.S. officials estimate that fully 80% of Cuba's $12.5 billion annual trade is with the East bloc. To help ease its trade imbalance, Cuba exports cheap labor to the East bloc, including an estimated 10,000 workers who were sent to cut Soviet timber in Siberia in exchange for supplies of wood.

Cuba's biggest contribution to the Soviets, however, is its globe-girdling armed forces, which have been particularly helpful in propping up Marxist regimes in northeastern and southern Africa. Says a Reagan Administration official: "The Cubans pay back the Soviets by their world behavior." What Castro calls "internationalism" has been a hallmark of his political philosophy ever since he took power, and it has not always been in harmony with Soviet policy or objectives. Nonetheless, that philosophy shows little sign of alteration, particularly in Angola, even though the Reagan Administration hopes to gain the withdrawal of some 30,000 Cuban troops from that country as a condition for the independence of neighboring Namibia. Says Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez: "As Marxist-Leninists, we must be pragmatic. But we will not sacrifice a principle to obtain a result. Our pragmatism has its limits."

One of the striking features of Cuba's revolution is its increasing militarization. The regular Cuban armed forces, 153,000 strong, are among the largest in Latin America and, with a Soviet military subsidy estimated at $950 million annually, are formidably equipped. In addition, Castro last spring called for an increase in the "territorial militia" for local defense, which could bring additional millions of men and women under arms. The reason given for the huge force is the bellicosity of the Reagan Administration. That hardly explains the rising influence of the military in the highest circles of Castro's one-party state.

The growing military role in Cuban policy circles underscores the increasing bureaucratic complexity of the regime.

Castro emphasizes the point, referring frequently to Cuba's "collective" leadership. However it is described, the regime is still a one-party dictatorship backed by a wide-ranging and vigorous repressive apparatus.

At times, Castro has vaguely hinted at dissatisfaction with the course that the aging revolution has taken. As recently as 1981 he told a closed session of the National Assembly that "the revolution cannot become old. We can become old."

Castro erred: both can happen. As he reminisced last week about the first speech in Santiago after his triumph, Castro waxed nostalgic about those spontaneous early days. He recalled his promise from the same balcony that "the people will have what they deserve." "No one spoke then of the Marxist-Leninist party," he said, "or of socialism or of internationalism . . . very few had understood at that moment their true significance."

Both Castro and his foes, particularly in Washington, are sure they understand that significance now. -- By George Russell.

Reported by Bernard Diederich/Havana and Barrett Seaman/Washington

With reporting by Bernard Diederich/Havana and Barrett Seaman/Washington