Cuba, how to implement democracy and the market in 365 days

By: Carlos Alberto Montaner - 12/02/2023

In Cuba there will be elections in March for the National Assembly of People’s Power (NAPP.) Those who will run, and will be elected with 99% of the votes, include Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz Canel, Manuel Marrero, Elián González, and the current president of the ANPP, Esteban (El Gori) Lazo, as Fidel himself called him to humiliate him because he was black and corpulent. It was something that made him laugh a lot and was directly heard by the extraordinary poet Raúl Rivero, before he confronted the regime “of deceased and flowers” (Silvio Rodríguez dixit in Ojalá, a song created by the troubadour).

Up to a total of 605 “fathers and mothers of the homeland” will be elected that day. My advice, not requested by anyone, is to enjoy the occasion very much. Maybe it will be the last one. The date of July 11, 2021, with thousands of people shouting “freedom” and singing a song, of which there are more than a thousand who have been accused in court and are serving unjust sentences, is not only a precedent—it is a path.

The number of recent arrivals in exile in the past year is 278,000 people. There are many children and relatives of generals, ministers and former ministers, deputies and former deputies. That includes only the US because in that country they cultivate and keep statistics better than in much of the world.

A long time ago, perhaps more than two decades ago, I received from the dissident Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (GAB) the bare name of an active general in command of troops. Shortly afterwards, he told me that this was a trustworthy person to initiate a transition. GAB was a Fidel’s political party member, and an assailant at the Moncada Barracks, where he was hit in the spine by a bullet that almost left him paralyzed. After the triumph of the Revolution, he was the Cuban ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium.

GAB was a serious man. So much so that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for criticizing his former boss. Once in jail, and outside of it, he met with Ricardo Bofill, Dr. Martha Frayde, with his brother, Dr. Sebastián Arcos, a mid-ranking leader of the Revolution, and with his son, also called Sebastián, to place the opposition under the mantle of Human Rights and prevent Cuba from another bloody revolutionary cycle. Then Elizardo Sánchez followed, and also Juan Manuel Cao, who was less than 20 years old back then and suffered the confiscation of some very witty verses against the Commander. Today he is a renowned novelist and journalist for Channel 41.

At that time, I believed that the regime did not have much time left, but then Hugo Chávez appeared, and since Fidel previously had Lula da Silva, and the support of the Sao Paulo Forum, he was able to weather the storm by hiring professionals. Fidel no longer exists, nor Hugo Chávez, and the Sao Paulo Forum is under the constant scrutiny of the Brazilian army, so the death sentence of the Cuban communist dictatorship has been handed down. It died of starvation and incompetence.

Ultimately, it died of what communist regimes usually die of—the inability to generate sufficient quantities of goods and services. Much less than those achieved in an open economy subject to the market and the existence of private property, even if the alleged equality of results has to be sacrificed. However, how long it lasts, be it months or years, will depend on the ability of the opposition to exert pressure, and on the willingness of the thousands of reformists who still exist in the government to change. We all need to listen to them carefully.

In 1990 Soviet liberal economists put into circulation a plan to transform the USSR in 500 days. The plan promised to revive in that term the subordination of all to the Market and, even within the rules of Marxism, they thought that society would discover political freedom on its own. In short, they did not obtain economic or political freedom. That plan failed, despite having the approval of Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1990 it was Grigori Yablinski and Stanislau Shatalin who bet all their prestige as doctors in economics that the formula would work in the USSR, but it was enough that Nikolai Ryzhkov, who was prime minister, tenaciously opposed it to deflate the plan. I don’t think that will happen in Cuba. If there is a very clear consensus, inside and outside of power, it is that there is no humane way to revitalize Cuban communism.

What has been found about the transitions is that they all have a high level of improvisation and uniqueness. In any case, collecting ideas put to work in other countries and in other systems has been somewhat useful:

· Restoring the illusion. Yablinski and Shatalin’s unborn plan serves to frame the reforms in a time frame. In a year, “things” will start to get better. To a society that has been tricked countless times with crazy plans that don’t work, this is called restoring the illusion.

· USA, always USA. The small Cuba can be transformed into a place where business can be done. A free trade agreement is needed. One of the reforms that must be made is the dollarization of the economy. The greatest wealth of that Island is having as a neighbor, just 90 miles away, 325 million people, among whom are the richest and most creative on the planet.

· There is between 20% to 30% of the Cuban-American census that has its roots on the Island. This is an extraordinary source of enrichment on both shores of potential business.

· For the first time, the US has someone to talk to outside its territory. Cuban-American congresspeople should be on that list of privileged people, as well as four of the former Congress members.

What I mean is that it is not worth making any detailed plans. You just have to create the conditions for it to work and leave the rest to imagination. We are still waiting for a person who can start the transition in Cuba. [©FIRMAS PRESS]

*@CarlosAMontaner. CAM’s latest book is Sin ir más lejos (Memories.) Published by Debate, a label of Penguin-Random House, the book is available through Amazon Books.

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