Much ado about something?: Regime change in Cuba

Problems of Post-Communism

Volumn 48, Issue 6, 2001, Pages 6-18

  Mujal León, Eusebio ^a   Busby, Joshua W ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035541554     PISSN: 10758216     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2001.11655956     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. For a first cut at this issue, see Eusebio Mujal-León and Jorge Saavedra, "El post-totalitarismo carismático y el cambio de régimen: Cuba en perspectiva comparada," (Charismatic Post-Totalitarianism and Regime Change: Cuba in Comparative Perspective), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 115. See also Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 55.
2. For a first cut at this issue, see Eusebio Mujal-León and Jorge Saavedra, "El post-totalitarismo carismático y el cambio de régimen: Cuba en perspectiva comparada," (Charismatic Post-Totalitarianism and Regime Change: Cuba in Comparative Perspective), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 115. See also Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 55.
3. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), p. 227.
4. Marifeli Pérez-Stable, "Caught in a Contradiction: Cuban Socialism Between Mobilization and Normalization," Comparative Politics 32, no. 1 (October 1999): 67.
5. Jorge I. Domínguez, "Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba" (The Beginning of a Transition to Authoritarianism in Cuba), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 9.
6. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, "Cambio de régimen o cambios en el régimen? Aspectos políticos y económicos" (Change of Regime or Change in Regime? Political and Economic Aspects), Encuentro 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 37-40.
7. Pérez-Stable, "Caught in a Contradiction," p. 67.
8. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation, p. 48.
9. Mesa-Lago documents the increasingly unfavorable change in the terms of aid from the Soviet Union as it faced economic decline in 1986-90. Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, p. 312.
10. Pérez-Stable, "Caught in a Contradiction," p. 70.
11. The production of almost all other agricultural goods declined sharply over this period. Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, pp. 281-88.
12. Julia Preston, "The Trial That Shook Cuba," New York Review of Books (December 7, 1989): 24-31.
13. For the classic formulation, see Jorge I. Domínguez, "The Civic Soldier in Cuba," in Armies and Politics in Latin America, ed. Abraham Lowenthal and J. Samuel Fitch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986), p. 263.
14. Domingo Amuchástegui, "Cuba's Armed Forces: Power and Reforms" (paper presented at the conference on "Cuba in Transition," Coral Gables, FL, August 12-14, 1999), in Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 9, p. 110.
15. The exception was during the visit of Pope John Paul II.
16. Greene Walker estimates that 300,000 Cubans served overseas during a sixteen-year period. Phyllis Greene Walker, "Challenges Facing the Cuban Military," Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 12 (October 1996) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/clas/Caribe/ bp12.htm).
17. Enrique A. Baloyra, "Twelve Monkeys: Cuban National Defense and the Military," Cuban Studies Association Occasional Paper Series 1, no. 4 (November 15, 1996): 13. Baloyra's observations are based on interviews with Cuban military defectors.
18. Frank O. Mora, "From Fidelismo to Raulismo: Civilian Control of the Military in Cuba," Problems of Post-Communism. 46, no. 2 (March/ April 1999): 25-38.
19. For one of the best treatments of the Ochoa affair, see Preston, "Trial That Shook Cuba," pp. 24-31.
20. Apparently many MININT officers were purged either because they had not thoroughly investigated General Ochoa's activities or, more likely, because Fidel was unsure of MININT's loyalty to the regime. Greene Walker reported, "In the reorganization . . . that followed, nearly all the officers of the formerly independent ministry were dismissed and replaced with career military personnel."
21. Millett reports that up to 70 percent of the Western Army's officers were removed in the wake of the Ochoa trial. Richard Millett, "Cuba's Armed Forces: From Triumph to Survival," Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 4 (September 1993) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/ programs/clas/Caribe/bp4.htm).
22. Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello and Manuel Sánchez Herrero, "Background: Cuba's Economic Reforms: An Overview," in Perspectives on Cuban Economic Reforms, ed. Jorge Pérez-López and Matias F. Travieso-Díaz (Tempe: Arizona State University Center for Latin American Studies Press, 1998), p. 9.
23. Ibid., p. 11.
24. This felicitous phrase is from Edward Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters (Santa Monica: RAND, 1996).
25. Amuchástegui, "Cuba's Armed Forces," p. 113.
26. Mesa-Lago, Market, Socialist, and Mixed Economies, p. 293.
27. Juan J. López, "Implications of the U.S. Economic Embargo for a Political Transition in Cuba" (paper presented at the conference on Cuba in Transition," Miami, August 7-9, 1997), in Papers and Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 7, p. 250.
28. Pérez-Stable, "Caught in a Contradiction," p. 73.
29. On balance, Cuban economic reforms have been tepid, certainly as compared to those enacted in China and Vietnam. See Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters, p. 9.
30. Josep Colomer, "After Fidel, What? Forecasting Institutional Changes in Cuba" (paper presented at the conference on "Constitutional Law in a Post-Castro Cuba," New York University School of Law, April 21, 1997), p. 9.
31. At the closing session of the Eighth Congress of the Federation of Latin American Journalists (FELAP), held at the University of Havana on November 12, 1999, Castro attacked the U.S. political system as a sham. "We prefer," he said, "our socialism with all its imperfections; we prefer the totalitarianism of truth, justice, sincerity, authenticity; the totalitarianism of truly humanitarian feelings; the totalitarianism of the type of multiparty system we practice." Text available at www2.ceniai.inf.cu/gobierno/ discursos/1999/ing/f121199i.html.
32. Gonzalez, Cuba: Clearing Perilous Waters, pp. 9, 25.
33. Juan J. Linz, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," in Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson Polsby (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1975), pp. 197-98.
34. Alan C. Lamborn, "Theory and Politics in World Politics." International Studies Quarterly 41 (1997): 193-94.
35. Ibid., p.193.
36. Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 168.
37. Pérez-Stable, "Caught in a Contradiction," p. 64.
38. Ibid., p. 68.
39. Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Profile, 1999-2000 (1999): 10.
40. Economist (April 6, 1996).
41. For coverage of the restrictions on the self-employed, see Philip Peters, "Cuba's Small Business Experiment: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 17 (March 1998) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/clas/Caribe/paper17.pdf). See also Tom Gjelten, "Entrepreneurs in Cuba," Radio report on National Public Radio (July 24, 2000).
42. For coverage of the restrictions on the self-employed, see Philip Peters, "Cuba's Small Business Experiment: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back," Georgetown University Cuba Briefing Paper Series, no. 17 (March 1998) (www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/clas/Caribe/paper17.pdf). See also Tom Gjelten, "Entrepreneurs in Cuba," Radio report on National Public Radio (July 24, 2000).
43. Economist Intelligence Unit, Cuba Country Profile, 1999-2000 (1999): 8.
44. The extent of the shift in focus is evident from the assessment by U.S. General Charles Wilhelm: "We have convincing evidence that as much as 70 percent of the effort of the existing force is being expended on agricultural and other self-sustaining activities." Quoted in Anthony Boadle, "Cuban Military No Threat, Turns to Farming - U.S.," Reuters (March 31, 1998). Mora and Greene Walker discuss the activities of Gaviota in more detail. See also Gaviota's web site: www.gaviota.cubaweb.cu.
45. "It is almost certainly the case that top administrators and 'selected managers' in the enterprises have access to dollar accounts, make high salaries, and receive perks as part of the job." Juan M. del Aguila, "The Cuban Armed Forces: Changing Roles, Continuing Loyalties," in Cuban Communism, ed. Irving Louis Horowitz and Jaime Suchlicki (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1998), p. 670.
46. The differences between those who could earn dollars and those with wages dependent upon the state were depicted humorously in the film Guantanamera. Somewhat more formal estimates have been produced by Philip Peters, "Where Capitalists and Socialists May Agree: Future Issues in Cuban Economic Policy" (remarks at a conference of the Georgetown University Caribbean Project Washington, DC, March 20, 2000) (www .lexingtoninstitute.org/cuba/cubaeconpol.htm).
47. Linz, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," p. 204.
48. There is little evidence to support Jorge Domínguez's contention that the Cuban Catholic Church plays a role "comparable" to that exercised by its counterparts "under authoritarian regimes in other latitudes." Domínguez, "Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba," p. 16.
49. For an unusually good treatment of the church in Cuba, see Dagoberte Valdés Hernández, ed., Reconstruir la Sociedad Civil: Un Proyecto de Education Civic, Pluralism y Participation Para Cuba (Reconstructing Civil Society: A Civic Education Project, Pluralism and Participation in Cuba) (Caracas: Conrad Adenauer Foundation, 1997).
50. Radio Vatican E-mail (November 24-30, 2000) at www.vaticanradio. org/ispano/isparchi/noti133.htm.
51. Vela Cecilia Bobs Leon, Los labyrinths de la imagination: repertoire symbolic, identities y actors del cambia social en Cuba (The Labyrinths of the Imagination: Symbolic Repertoire, Identities, and Actors in Social Change in Cuba) (Mexico City: El College de Mexico, Centro de Studios Sociological, 2000), p. 222.
52. Rafael Rojas, "Politicos Invisibles," Encounter. 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 33. For a similar view from a perspective sympathetic to the regime, see Rafael Hernández, "Hacia una Nuevo societal socialist? Cambios, crisis y configuraciones sociales en Cuba" (Toward a New Socialist Society? Changes, Crisis, and Social Configurations in Cuba), Nueva Sociedad 157 (September-October 1998): 2717-18.
53. Rafael Rojas, "Politicos Invisibles," Encounter. 6/7 (fall/winter 1997): 33. For a similar view from a perspective sympathetic to the regime, see Rafael Hernández, "Hacia una Nuevo societal socialist? Cambios, crisis y configuraciones sociales en Cuba" (Toward a New Socialist Society? Changes, Crisis, and Social Configurations in Cuba), Nueva Sociedad 157 (September-October 1998): 2717-18.
54. The Freedom House rankings show a steady "unfree" 7 for political rights and 7 for civil liberties ranking from 1972 to 1976, then a decline to 6,6 from 1978 to 1988, and a spike upward to 7,7 for the last decade. See www.freedomhouse.org/survey99/country/cuba.html. Various human rights organizations (Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among them) have reported on the continued harassment and prosecution of dissidents, coupled with the constant refusal to grant amnesty to hundreds of political prisoners. The last wave of repression is covered by Pedro Betancur, "Cuba: Repression by Harassment," Economist (March 18, 2000).
55. Josep Colomer, "Watching Neighbors: The Cuban Model of Social Control," Cuban Studies 31 (March 2001).
56. Marcia A. Weigle and Jim Butterfield, "Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes," Comparative Politics 25, no. 1 (October 1992): 1-23.
57. Juan Carlos Espinosa, "Civil Society in Cuba: The Logic of Emergence in Comparative Perspective" (paper presented at the conference on "Cuba in Transition," Coral Gables, FL, August 12-14, 1999), in Proceedings of the Annual Meetings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 9, pp. 346-67.
58. Betancur, "Cuba: Repression by Harassment." See also Pax Christi Netherlands, Report on the Humanitarian and Social Work of Catholic Church Institutions in Cuba (February 13, 2001) (www.paxchristi.nl).
59. Betancur, "Cuba: Repression by Harassment." See also Pax Christi Netherlands, Report on the Humanitarian and Social Work of Catholic Church Institutions in Cuba (February 13, 2001) (www.paxchristi.nl).
60. A methodological account of Theda Skocpol's work discusses how "relative deprivation" is not a sufficient cause for revolution. James Mahoney, "Nominal, Ordinal, and Narrative Appraisal in Macrocausal Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 104, no. 4 (January 1999): 1160.
61. For a skeptical perspective on regime collapse, see Juan M. del Aguila, "Reflections on a Non-Transition in Cuba: Comments on Elites" (paper presented at the conference on "Cuba in Transition," Miami, August 7-9, 1997), in Papers and Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, vol. 7, p. 192.
62. Archbishop Pedro Meurice, "Present and Future of the Church in Cuba" (acceptance speech upon receipt of an honorary doctoral degree from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, May 29, 1999).
63. Lopez, "Implications of the U.S. Economic Embargo," p. 250.