Center for International Policy

As printed in
The Los Angeles Times
January 20, 2008

Change may be brewing in Cuba
Analysts see signs of modest political and economic reform in the 18 months since Fidel Castro temporarily stepped down.

By Carol J. Williams

MIAMI -- Cubans waited hours in line for tickets, packed Havana's cinemas and watched with rapt attention as "The Lives of Others," a chilling account of East German secret-police repression of communism's doubters, arrived in the Cuban capital last month.

Was the debut of the Academy Award-winning film two years after its release another signal that Cuba's Communist leaders are open to reform? Or was the cinematic snapshot of life two decades ago and half a world away more reflective of their confidence that Cubans wouldn't see themselves in the picture?

Analysts of the secretive Cuban power structure see signs of modest political and economic change emerging on the island in the 18 months since an ailing Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul and retreated to pen his thoughts and memoirs.

Raul Castro has urged young Cubans to expose government shortcomings in providing adequate food, transportation and housing. The idea of giving idle land to farmers has been floated for the first time since private estates were nationalized in the 1960s.

Havana authorities also have proposed compensating Cuban employees of foreign companies in hard currency, in a land where Fidel Castro has long fought the dollar's encroachment because of the class division it inflicts between those who have convertible money and those who don't.

But the most radical transition may come as soon as this spring, with 81-year-old Fidel Castro hinting that he may relinquish the Cuban presidency after 49 years as supreme leader of the Marxist-Leninist state he created.

In a letter read on state-run television in late December, Castro caused a bit of a stir by saying he wouldn't "cling to positions" or "obstruct the path of younger people" aspiring to lead Cuba.

He didn't demur when his name was again included on the slate of Communist Party candidates for the National Assembly to be rubber-stamped in an election today. And after a two-hour meeting with the Cuban leader last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva proclaimed Castro fit, lucid and "ready to take over his historic political role," raising expectations of a comeback.

But those familiar with the Havana hierarchy predict that the elder Castro will take his seat in the National Assembly when it convenes in March but decline another five-year stint as head of state.

"I still think it's significant that he made those comments about making way for the next generation," said Sarah Stephens, head of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. "If I were going to guess, which is all any of us can do, I think it's going to have everything to do with his recovery, and there's no way for us to know if he has been experiencing setbacks, whether he's recovering quickly or slowly."

As part of a U.S. congressional delegation that visited Havana late last year, Stephens met with National Assembly leader Ricardo Alarcon and with a senior Communist Party official, Fernando Ramirez. They denied that any transition was underway in their country, she said, casting the recent inklings of internal reflection as a continuation of their ever-evolving revolution.

But Stephens pointed to the December film festival screening of "The Lives of Others" as a sign of changing attitudes about what can be discussed and debated.

This month, Cuban TV aired a 2003 documentary on Havana's Industriales baseball team, a film that had been held back from the public for nearly five years because it included interviews with players who later defected. Among them were Kendry Morales, now with the Angels, and New York Mets pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.

Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, sees the unusual airings and musings circulating in Havana as "tokens of liberalization" that signal an attempt to tinker with a failed system rather than reform it.

"I don't think any of these things is significant," he said. "If they made significant changes in the agriculture sector, if they imported significant amounts of consumer goods from China, people would think things are getting better. But things are really tough right now."

Nonetheless, Suchlicki, whose analysis often reflects the views of Miami's anti-Castro exiles, shares the expectation of other Cuba watchers that if Fidel Castro hasn't fully recovered his health and vigor by the March assembly opening, he will step down as president and he and his brother Raul, who is 76, will make way for a younger head of state.

Many expect Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, a 56-year-old former physician, to take the helm, which would open the way for the architect of a previous reform period to tackle the economic problems that most concern Cubans. Monthly income on the island averages about $15, and though Cubans pay almost nothing for healthcare and a monthly ration basket, food costs rival those in U.S. supermarkets.

"Finally, the Cuban elections are interesting!" said Paolo Spadoni, an associate professor of political science at central Florida's Rollins College who did his doctoral work on Cuba's economy. "Before, everyone knew what was going to happen. This time there is quite a bit of uncertainty about whether he will retain his post as president."

The elder Castro was "re-centralizing" the economy before he fell ill, an attempt to roll back the modest private enterprise permitted in the early 1990s to get through the lean years after the Soviet Union's billions of dollars' worth of annual subsidies to Cuba ended. Those reforms were designed and implemented by Lage and enthusiastically embraced by entrepreneurial Cubans.

The recent resurrection of those strategies signals that a fresh reform phase is in the offing, Spadoni said.

"They've said they can't perform miracles, that it is going to go step by step and within a socialist framework," Spadoni said of the post-Fidel transition.

"But reform will happen. You don't raise expectations or stimulate debate if you have no intention to deliver."