Cubaverdad

CubaBy ANTHONY DEPALMA | Updated: Oct. 27, 2009Overview

A half-century ago, on Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro brought down the curtain on Fulgencio Batista's right-wing dictatorship in Cuba. As Mr. Castro planted himself firmly in the Communist camp and began to nationalize businesses and property and clamp down on dissent, an exodus began that eventually brought hundreds of thousands to the shores of the United States; Miami became Cuba's second city.

In the shadow of the 50th anniversary of the revolution, Cuba is a repressive society long under a single ruler — the ailing, aged Mr. Castro still holds Cubans in his thrall even if he formally handed the presidency to his younger brother, Raúl, in July 2006 when he was taken sick with an undisclosed stomach ailment.

Through a labyrinth of rations, regulations, two currencies and four markets (peso, hard currency, agro and black), people make their way. Life for most Cubans is filled with injustices and indignities-a currency system that keeps many consumer goods mockingly out of reach; swank tourist hotels that few Cubans can afford (or until 2009 were even allowed to enter); recurring shortages of necessities like milk, eggs, beans and even toilet paper. Health care is free, but seeing a doctor can be a day-long ordeal that ends with a prescription for drugs that cannot be found, or a recommendation for surgery that cannot be performed. The creaky old American cars in Havana that rumble past the historic yacht Granma that Mr. Castro used to start his revolution underscore the static nature of life in Cuba.

For the last 50 years, a long line of American presidents-Republicans and Democrats alike-have tried to stare down Mr. Castro, without much success. He has proven to be a master of imagery, a complex strategist who managed to turn U.S. attempts against him and his country to his own advantage again and again. In the end, it appears that nature and human frailty may do what assassination attempts and a half-century-long embargo have failed to do-bring the Castro era to an end.Fidel Castro's Rise to Power

After seizing power, Mr. Castro promised to restore the Cuban constitution and hold elections. But he soon turned his back on those democratic ideals, embraced a totalitarian brand of communism and allied the island with the Soviet Union. He saw himself as Cuba's messiah, and he governed with an ideological fervor that bordered on self-destructive. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the fall of 1962, when he allowed Russia to build missile launching sites just 90 miles off the American shores. He weathered an American-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs and used Cuban troops to stir up revolutions in Africa and Latin America.

Declassified Pentagon documents indicate that in the 1980s, Mr. Castro pushed the Soviet Union to take a tougher stand against Ronald Reagan's military buildup, and urged the Soviet generals to seriously consider a nuclear strike on the United States, even if it meant catastrophe for Cuba. And after a pair of powerful hurricanes devastated large swathes of the island in 2008, leaving behind $10 billion in damage, the Castro regime refused to accept foreign assistance offered directly to the Cuban people. All aid had to go to the government, or it would be turned down.

Actions such as these have earned him the permanent enmity of Washington and led the United States to impose decades of economic sanctions that Mr. Castro and his followers maintain have crippled Cuba's economy and have kept their socialist experiment from succeeding completely. The sanctions also proved handy to Mr. Castro politically. He cast every problem Cuba faced as part of a larger struggle against the United States and blamed the abject poverty of the island on the "imperialists" to the north.

For good or ill, Fidel Castro was without a doubt the most important leader to emerge from Latin America since the wars of independence of the early 19th century, not only reshaping Cuban society but providing inspiration for leftists across Latin America and in other parts of the world. But he never broke the island's dependence on commodities like sugar, tobacco and nickel, nor did he succeed in industrializing the nation so that Cuba could compete in the world market with durable goods. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its aid to the island, Cuba has limped along economically, relying for hard currency mostly on tourism and money sent home from exiles..Raul Castro's Turn

Some experts have said that Raúl Castro is more pragmatic than his hot-tempered brother. Involved in the revolutionary struggle from the beginning, Raúl had run the armed forced efficiently for decades. But nothing about him was charismatic, and he did not command loyalty outside of the barracks.

Understanding that he needed to make concrete changes if he was to win a measure of support from the Cuban people, Raúl acted quickly after taking over as provisional president. He ordered a fleet of Chinese busses and put them on the streets of Havana, vastly improving daily life for thousands. He also agreed to allow Cubans to enter tourist hotels, and to buy DVDs and computers (even though one could cost several years salary).

He has given signals he might try to follow the Chinese example of state-sponsored capitalism. But his regime has made no significant changes. In March 2009, Mr. Castro announced a shake-up in his administration. That his brother was still calling shots was obvious after the 2009 purge that saw several top ranking officials, including two who had often been mentioned as possible successors, unceremoniously removed. By all account, their crime was ambition.

People say they have seen small improvements in the economy that do not go far enough. Many roads in Havana have been repaired. Microwave ovens, DVD players and cellphones are now in stores.

The nation still imports more than 80 percent of what it consumes, and Mr. Castro is trying to encourage farming by giving fallow land to those willing to work it. But the money they can earn selling the food remains below what is needed for the tools and labor needed to start a farm.

Three hurricanes in 2008 cost Cuba $10 billion, or 20 percent of the gross domestic product. Salaries remain low, food prices are high and housing is scarce. Bartenders, with access to dollars, earn wages many times that of physicians. Tourism was up in 2008 but the price of Cuba's top export, nickel, dropped by 41 percent.U.S.-Cuba Relations

Many Cubans are putting their hopes for the economy on President Barack Obama's easing of longstanding restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba, although the Cuban government charges hefty fees on such remittances.

Recently there have been other small signs of détente. Cuban and American officials have talked about resuming direct mail service, and the Obama administration has given American telecommunications firms the OK to provide cell phone services in Cuba. The Cuban regime has promised to make Internet service more available, though it still does not tolerate direct criticism, online or off.

In the meantime, as the American embargo continues, foreign companies are gradually increasing their presence in Cuba. Brazil, China and Russia have joined the search for oil in Cuban waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Spanish companies have always had a strong economic presence, and relations between the countries have grown stronger since Spain passed a law in 2008 that allows anyone with Spanish grandparents to become a Spanish citizen.

Instead of lifting the trade embargo with Cuba, enacted in the 1960s in an unsuccessful attempt to force a change in government after Fidel Castro came to power, Mr. Obama is using his executive power to repeal President George W. Bush's tight restrictions and the looser restrictions issued under President Bill Clinton so that Cuban-Americans can now visit Cuba as frequently as they like and send gifts and as much money as they want, as long as the recipients are not senior government or Communist Party officials.

In a sense, the policy shift is an admission that a half-century of American policy aimed at trying to push the Castros out of power has not worked — as the Cuban American National Foundation, the most powerful lobbying group for Cuban exiles in Miami, conceded in April 2009. Cuba policy experts characterized Mr. Obama's moves as important humanitarian steps but said they still left open the broader question of how the United States and Cuba plan to engage in the future.

Cuba – The New York Times (31 December 2009)http://www.nytimes.com/info/cuba/