[Marxism] Rare unease in Cuba on survival of revolution

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It has been nearly two MONTHS since Fidel gave that five-hour long talk
at the University of Havana´s Aula Magna, but at long last the Miami Herald
has taken notice of it, though to give the story its own predictable spin. And
of course they don´ recommend that you go to the source, but you should.
The Cuban Revolution has been through many challenges and crises in the
past. This is another challenge and crisis for Cuba´s revolution. Can it beat
back the corruption attack? Personally I am hopeful that it can, but as you
can see from this, the MIAMI HERALD is hoping it won´t, and Cuba´s
Fidel Castro puts a question mark on the matter. Very important reading,
both that of the HERALD, for its importance in the US and in the Cuban
exile milieu, and then to get you to read the complete commentary. 

The CubaNews list will soon provide additional commentaries on this
by Celia Hart and others, including, hopefully, yours truly.


Walter Lippmann

Cuban gov't website:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2005/ing/f171105i.html 
Word Format, 33 pp.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-aula-magna-11-17-2005.html.doc

This is the same article below, but published with a second title
Socialist party recognizes fragile grip
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/5min/13575704.htm
======================================================

Posted on Sun, Jan. 08, 2006

CUBA
Rare unease in Cuba on survival of revolution
Cuban government officials appear suddenly aware of their own -- and the 
socialist revolution's -- mortality, and they are talking about it openly.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/front/13573535.htm

First, Fidel Castro used a loaded word seldom heard in Cuban government 
speeches: ''self-destruct.'' Then Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque 
made a rare reference to a future without Castro: a ``void nobody can fill.''

And now experts are asking: Is the Cuban government for the first time 
undergoing an unprecedented introspection -- one that perhaps acknowledges a 
fragile socialist grip on the island?

In recent weeks, the Cuban government has made a series of rare public comments 
urging Cubans to embrace the revolution -- or risk its future. Having just 
celebrated the revolution's 47th anniversary, Cuban government officials are 
openly worrying that the generation of disaffected youth that grew up with 
scarcity and hard times since the early 1990s will be the very catalyst that 
destroys Castro's legacy.

And they're scrambling to stop it.

''This country can self-destruct,'' Castro warned during a five-hour speech 
Nov. 17. ``This revolution can destroy itself, but they can never destroy us; 
we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.''

Castro's comments came as he announced a new push against corruption. He 
blasted thieves who live off stolen government goods, like gasoline, and said 
that since the crackdown, gas stations have begun to collect twice the normal 
revenue. His tirade against fraud came with the message that the looting of 
state coffers deepens class distinctions and jeopardizes the revolution.

In the following weeks, he announced economic changes, including salary hikes 
and electricity rate increases aimed at the ''new rich'' who damage socialism's 
credibility.

Castro, experts say, seems to be acknowledging his own system's failures.

Castro's comments were followed by a Dec. 23 speech at a National Assembly 
session by Pérez Roque, a former Castro aide who represents the younger 
generation of Cuban officials. Referring several times to Castro's Nov. 17 
speech, he said that 1.5 million Cuban adults were about 10 years old in 1990, 
when Cuba began to feel in earnest the impact of the collapse of the Soviet 
Union and its massive subsidies.

Those children are now grown-ups who take cheap housing and free medical care 
and education for granted, Pérez Roque said, and never witnessed Cuba's 
prerevolution poverty.

''The fact that we have resisted all these years as we have resisted and 
battled, doesn't in itself guarantee we will be victorious in the future,'' 
Pérez Roque said, according to a transcript on the Foreign Ministry website. 
``I think we should pay all our attention to the call made by Fidel, that 
phrase never said publicly in the history of the revolution: This revolution 
can be reversible, and not by our enemies who have tried everything possible, 
but by our own mistakes.''

Experts agree that Pérez Roque's comments are important.

''I am surprised this kind of stuff is spoken of this openly,'' said Mark 
Falcoff, author of Cuba, The Day After. ``It suggests two things: Castro's 
health may be as bad as the CIA says it is, and the [communist] party 
leadership recognizes they are going to have a rough time when he's not there.''

Two days before Castro's November speech, The Miami Herald reported that the 
CIA was convinced that the Cuban leader has Parkinson's disease and that the 
agency had briefed lawmakers on its findings.

Falcoff said the recent comments are particularly important because they 
contradict the standard rhetoric in Cuban government circles that the 
revolution has been ''institutionalized.'' The government, he said, is 
admitting it failed to capture its young.

''Nothing that happens in Cuba is an accident, above all anything these people 
say and say publicly,'' said María Dolores Espino, an expert on Cuba at St. 
Thomas University. ``They are positioning themselves for the aftermath. Castro 
wants the survival of the revolution to be his legacy, and they are preparing 
for that.''




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