Cuba under Raúl Castro the Reformador
In 1931, a young boy named Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz was born in Holguín province, Cuba.
There are three Castro brothers; Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, and Ramón Eusebio Castro Ruz.
After the US left Cuba because Fidel Castro was taking Cuba towards a more hardline socialist model, unfortunately, the problem started after the Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991. República de Cuba under Fidel Castro underwent significant economic, political, and social changes.
November 25, 2008. El Comandante Fidel Castro retired from his presidency and gave all his power to one of his lovely brothers, Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz.
Beginning of Cuba
Cuba had been a colony of the Spanish from 1492 until 1898 after the US took over Cuba from the Spanish and started The Spanish-American War after the 25th president of the United States, William McKinley (1843–1901), sent the battleship USS Maine to Cuba’s main seaport, Havana port.
The Spanish-American War (April 25-August 13, 1898) is a conflict between the United States and the Spanish as a result of “that” intervention on Havana port as a defense for U.S. citizens and some properties there. The intervention happened because in December there are riots in Havana by Cuban to the Spanish for Cuba's independence.
February 15, 1898. The USS Maine was unknowingly destroyed and killed 266 out of 354 crew members (Ohio History Central, n.d.). That the “Maine” for “Remember the Maine!” became a famous anti-Spanish slogan and many Americans believe the Spanish mined the port.
However, from 1868 to 1878, Cubans also struggled to achieve independence from the Spanish, led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (1819–1874), also the first president of Cuba in 1868. This revolt is also known as the “Ten Year’s War” and ended in failure and more than 200,000 lives were lost.
December 10, 1898. Cuba was officially free from Spanish colonialization under the Treaty of Paris 1898. This treaty is an agreement between the US and the Spanish right after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898.
The Treaty of Paris 1898 made Cuba have more freedom under the US. Therefore in 1901, the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), let the Cuban Government have full control of Cuba, but the US had the right to do intervention in Cuba under the Platt Amendment.
According to a Professor of History and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina Louis A. Pérez, Jr.,
“The Platt Amendment served as the principal instrument of hegemony. Immediately through direct rule during the occupation and subsequently, through indirect rule under the Platt Amendment, the United States exercised authority over Cuba not unlike sovereignty.” (Louis Jr, 1986)
It is a way for the US to achieve its hegemony in Cuba and how to keep having authority over Cuba domestically or even internationally.
Platt Amendment (March 2, 1898) is a treaty between Cuba and the US that limited Cuba to make treaties with other nations, and the US has the right to involve in Cuban affairs, but also to protect Cuba from foreign intervention.
In 1934 the Platt Amendment was lifted and Cuba started its relations with the US by creating the,
Treaty of Relations Cuba and The United States.
This treaty became more important because this is the first step for Cuba to have relations with the US. We all know that the US is a big country, a superpower, so when you have good relations with that country it means you will get so many benefits from it. (it is not a win-win solution but yeah still great)
but then actually on May 22, 1903, Theodore Roosevelt met the first President of Cuba Tomás Estrada Palma (1835–1908) to sign another agreement named Cuban-American Treaty of Relations (Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute United States Department of State, n.d.). This agreement is a special request from the US about Guantánamo Bay for coaling and naval stations, for as long as necessary. (yes it’s just like that “for as long as necessary”)
Cuban Revolution (July 26, 1953-January 1, 1959), was led by Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz or Fidel Castro because in 1942 the left-wing party was legalized and in 1947 a left-wing party named The Party of Cuban People-Orthodox (PPC-O) was founded by Eduardo Chibá and became one of the opposition parties to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (La Cuba de Castro y después…: Entre la historia y la biografía, 2007, p. 143). This revolution can be set forth in four broad categories (Wright, 2001, p. 2),
- Strong and pervasive anti-US sentiment;
- The disrepute in which Cuba’s political system and institutions were held;
- The fragmentation of Cuban society; and
- The deleterious effects of excessive dependence on sugar culture
July 26, 1953 (M-26–7) or in Spanish Movimiento 26 de Julio was a Cuban revolutionary organization that was led by Fidel to attack the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, Oriente to overthrow the Dictator Fulgencio Batista that also gained 165 new members, and immediately planned the next attack on the second-largest military in east Santiago (Wright, 2001). However, even though this movement was successful to make Batista more aware, most of the group was killed.
Sierra Maestra. In 1956, Raúl, Fidel, Ché (1928–1967), and another 82 men representing the 26th of July Movement sailed from Mexico aboard the Granma and landed in a remote area of eastern Cuba. However, most of their men were killed because Batista’s forces ambushed the revolutionary shortly after they arrived, and only around 20 men escaped (History, 2021). After this incident, Batista thought they all have died, but they were escaping to the old Oriente Province in southeast Cuba, the Sierra Maestra.
In the Sierra Maestra mountains, they tried to gain more members and began a guerrilla campaign. In 1957, The New York Times released an article, “Castro Is Still Alive and Still Fighting in Mountains,” and because of this, Batista sent some of his troops to the Sierra Maestra to attack them. However, this attack failed and turned out to give many benefits to the revolutionary group, unfortunately, there are so many international media in the Sierra Maestra (History, 2021). Then, in 1958, they started attacking government facilities, some of Batista’s assets, and sugar plantations and started to spread socialism in Cuba, and yes, this was the end of the Dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The anti-US sentiment was getting burned in early 1959 after Fidel snapped,
“What do Americans know about … a tyrant’s atrocities, except in the novels and movies? why now against legitimate punishments? what was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?” (Paterson, 1994)
As a result, Fidel Castro nationalized all the US assets and property in Cuba, especially the city in eastern Cuba, Nicaro (the area that was the scene of major fighting in 1958 during Fidel’s revolt against the regime of Fulgencio Batista) that valued at more than $132 million because it’s a Cuba’s major center for the refining of nickel and cobalt from nickel oxide.
and yes everyone in Cuba is so happy about this.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion (April 17, 1961), as a response to what Fidel did to Cuba in the Cuban Revolution 1959, in March 1961 the 34th President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to remove the Communist Castro regime from power in Cuba. The CIA organized a group of Cuban exiles for the counter-revolution named Brigade 2506.
April 15, 1961. The US sent several men to Cuban Air Force Base with three Martin B-26 Marauder aircraft already being modified to look like Cuban planes. The first attack failed because Fidel already knew about the US plan and immediately removed all his planes from his Air Force Base (History, 2009). But then on April 17, 1961, Brigade 2506 made a flight to a remote island located in southern Cuba called the Bay of Pigs or Bahía de Cochinos and also a sign of the start of The Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961.
This invasion was carried out by Brigade 2506 with a total army of 1,500 people, but in just two days Fidel managed to capture around 1,100 people and The Bay of Pigs Invasion officially failed (Britannica, n.d.). In consequence, the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy formed a new committee under former US Army Chief of Staff General Maxwell Taylor with Attorney General Robert Kennedy to examine what were the reasons behind the US defeat in The Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961. And after several months of investigation and evaluation, the US decided to carry out Operation Mongoose (the operational name for the CIA plan to topple Castro’s government, and this operation was designed to fix what “The Bay of Pigs Invasion” failed to do), this operation was carried out by the US special group 5412/2 under the supervision of the US National Security Council (Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, n.d.). Operation Mongoose then developed in addition to conducting investigations and evaluations, and this operation also received direct direction from the CIA and Edward Lansdale of the US Department of Defense.
February 20, 1962. CIA and Department of Defense under the direction of Edward Lansdale (1908-1987) (Landsdale serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Special Operations, Staff Member of the President’s Committee on Military Assistance, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations) was explained this operation had six phases: military; coordinated program of political; sabotage; intelligence operations; proposed assassination attempts on Cuba’s “top” political leaders including Fidel Castro; and psychology. These phases were followed by establishing several guerrilla bases, spreading anti-Castro propaganda, providing weapons to opposition groups, and these stages led to the planned US intervention in October 1962, but the intervention was canceled and never materialized until the US embargo happened (Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State, n.d.). After the invasion and Operation Mongoose failed, the US continued to carry out espionage through the CIA in Cuba and received information that the Soviet Union had begun to supply weapons to the Cuban military and of course had a huge impact on the US-Soviet Cold War at that time. And this failure led the US to embargo Cuba in 1962.
The Revolt of Raúl Castro
The death of Fidel Castro in November 2016 led Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz to bring Cuba into a new era of the Republic of Cuba from his brother's shadow anymore.
Raúl was elected as the president of Cuba in 2008, two years after the aftermath of Fidel’s stepping down from power in July 2006. Moreover, Fidel Castro did not really give full control over Cuba to his brother and thought Raúl was the closest to his style of leadership. The big difference in the style of leadership between Raúl Castro and his brother is how he let the US reconnect with Cuba again like the good old days that officially began in the Cuban Thaw 2014, which shows how Raúl is a little bit opposite to his brother and shows how Raúl is more pragmatic with a consultative decision-making style (Sullivan, 2007). Raúl is also not like his brother who has given so many public speeches to inspire the people of Cuba to act.
Fidel’s orthodox policies have been rooted inside the government of Cuba, and it is so much more difficult for Raúl to change some policies in Cuba. In his orthodox policies, Fidel tends to be relatively socially conservative in many aspects, like gambling, prostitution, and drugs. Instead, he focuses more on self-discipline, family, hard work, and integrity (Lago & López, 2013), Fidel tended to look at the value that grows inside the people of Cuba instead of bringing Cuba to have diplomatic relations with other countries (as long as Cuba still has the Soviet Union as its biggest partner). However, in the Raúl era, Raúl called for increased foreign investment and allowing more private enterprise could foreshadow future economic reforms. In sum, even though there is a clash between Fidel’s orthodox policies and bringing Cuba to be more open, Raúl has successfully made Cuba more open not just to the communist countries, yet to any country who wants to have a relationship with Cuba, including Cuba’s old friend, the US.
In the instability economy in 2006, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007, a reduction in mining production, manufacturing segments, and most agriculture; a considerable increase in the budget deficit; and new historical highs in monetary liquidity, goods trade imbalance, and foreign debt (Lago & López, 2013), Raúl publicly declared that structural reform (pragmatic policy) is the only way to tackle these problems.
These economic problems triggered other aspects in Cuba, including politics, and it “drove” Raúl to bring Cuba to a better place different from his brother's era. According to Thomas B. Pepinsky (2012) in his book, “The Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Non-Transitions” the economic crisis (including the GFC) can explain some cases of political turnover.
As it was a global economic crisis, history and recent research suggest that it should lead to political change — regime change, government turnover, cabinet collapses and the like — around the world. (Pepinsky, 2012)
The changes in the situation in Cuba show that by the end of 2012, Raúl had implemented numerous positive changes, including a reduction in excess monetary liquidity, higher labor productivity, elimination of monetary duality, increases in real salaries and pensions, improvement in the quality of social services, decrease in the goods trade deficit, and creation of private-sector productive employment to absorb excess workers dismissed from the state sector (Lago & López, 2013). These are the results of political change in Cuba, however still not enough to explain the regime change.
To create a policy, Raúl Castro is still holding to,
Los Hombres Mueren El Partido Es Inmortal
“Men Die, but the Party Is Inmortal” is the main organ of the Communist Party of Cuba and also became a headline in Granma Newspaper (the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party that was formed in 1965). Even though Raúl was mentioned to be a little bit opposite from his brother, however, in his presidency, he wants to keep this organ by building a national unity around the party to gain more support for his new policies and also for the next generations of Cuba (Brenner & Jiménez, 2015). The importance of the Communist Party of Cuba was intended to be a basis for the socialist system in Cuba.
The New Contours of Cuba
Numerous changes that Raúl are brings to Cuba based on his “new style of leadership” (pragmatic) and still bring Fidel’s orthodox policies, showing this is quite distinctive. However, the real problem is how Cuba after “the new policies by Raúl” has been implemented.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba started to feel the impact of the US embargo. In 2000, Cuba had only one main partner, Venezuela, to fill 70% of Cuba’s needs for oil. However, Cuba still needs to pay Venezuela by sending more than 40.000 professional workers and the rest for 25 years with 1% interest each year (The United States and Cuba: Implications of an Economic Relationship, 2010). This “legacy” from Fidel was forcing Raúl to be more pragmatic by making Cuba more open than before.
In Raúl era, Cuba changed.
Cuba tended to be more oriented toward diplomatic and political solutions, and in my opinion, he tended to lower his ego and focuses more on Cuba’s international relations for the future of República de Cuba. Different from his brother, how Fidel always brings Cuba to a situation where he keeps using Cuba’s military power, like Havana's involvement in the Angolan conflict in Africa during the 1970s and 1980s.
As was mentioned before, when a second-world country like Cuba can have a relation to a “big country” like the US, that would be giving so many benefits to Cuba. And in the Raúl era, Cuba was able to gain good economic reciprocity with the US which let Cuba not only become a consumer of US goods and services, but also a supplier (Erisman, 2018), and it is not just for the domestic market but also a foreign investment.
And is Cuba changing much after the Reformador holds the presidency?
In sum, Cuba under Raúl Castro shows some changes, especially in the Cuban economy. Stepping back a little to see how the US embargo really affected Cuba's economy and the big momentum that happened in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed and left Cuba facing the economic crisis alone (yeah with Venezuela but still not as good as the Soviet Union). However, the pragmatic leadership that Raúl used and how he handled “the legacy” of his brother led Cuba to a better place.
Personally, it is not wrong for Fidel to bring Cuba out of the US’s hands. Fidel only wanted to sterilize Cuba with his conservative hands. But in Raúl’s hands, the Reformador wants to let Cuba grow by letting foreign investors come, increasing the labor productivity, improving the quality of social services, improving on private sectors, and gaining more “friends” by focusing more on diplomatic relations, so Cuba can compete with other countries and expand the potency that Cuba supposedly gets a long time ago.
Well, it’s just my opinion.
References:
Antonio, R. M. (2007). La Cuba de Castro y después…: Entre la historia y la biografía. Grupo Nelson.
Brenner, P., & Jiménez, M. R. (2015). A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl Castro. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
H Michael Erisman, & Kirk, J. M. (2018). Cuban foreign policy: transformation under Raúl Castro. Rowman & Littlefield.
Lago, M. C., & López, J. P. (2013). Cuba Under Raúl Castro: Assessing the Reforms. Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Louis Jr, A. (1986). Cuba under the Platt Amendment 1902–1934. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Paterson, T. G. (1994). Failing the Tests: The United States and Cuba in the Castro Era. In Contesting Castro The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution (p. 255). New York: Oxford University Press.
Pepinsky, T. B. (2012). The Global Economic Crisis and the Politics of Non-Transitions. Government and Opposition.
Sullivan, M. P. (2007). Cuba’s Political Succession: From Fidel to Raúl Castro. Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division.
Wright, T. C. (2001). Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Britannica. (n.d.). Bay of Pigs Invasion. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/event/Bay-of-Pigs-invasion
History. (2009, October 27). Bay of Pigs Invasion. Retrieved from History: https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion
History. (2021, August 19). Cuban Revolution. Retrieved from History: https://www.history.com/topics/latin-america/cuban-revolution
Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute United States Department of State. (n.d.). 301. Memorandum From the Deputy Legal Adviser (Meeker) to Secretary of State Rusk. Retrieved from Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute United States Department of State: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d301
Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State. (n.d.). The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath, April 1961–October 1962. Retrieved from Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/bay-of-pigs
Ohio History Central. (n.d.). USS Maine. Retrieved from Ohio History Central: https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/USS_Maine
The United States and Cuba: Implications of an economic relationship. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-united-states-and-cuba-implications-economic-relationship
