Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald
July 5, 2007

”China opened the door wide, Vietnam a window, here not even a crack!” So blasted Fidel Castro in 1995 after visiting the two Asian countries. Modest market reforms had earlier cracked a vent to capitalism in Cuba, which his recalcitrance kept from widening and then all but closed. Last month, the Comandante sang Vietnam’s praises in a taped TV interview without ever mentioning the market as the source of its success.

I spent the first two weeks of June in China with Cuba constantly on my mind. Vast differences in size, resources and geopolitics aside, China and Cuba have a few things in common. Each is a dictatorship established by a national revolution. The Chinese and Cuban Communist parties have weathered domestic and international adversities. Nationalism and the steely resolve to retain power are the central levers of their regimes.

Castro, however, opted for ideological battles, revolutionary ethics and true socialism, while the Chinese leadership placed the economy and living standards at the heart of its rule. What a difference each choice makes for ordinary citizens!

In Cuba, most people suffer through untold hardships to scrape up their daily fare. Consumption is rationed, stores are sparsely stocked and options are limited. Not so in China where people are respected as consumers, if not fully as citizens. Still, the state basically leaves them be as long as the political lines in the sand aren’t crossed. In Cuba, the regime’s elbows are never far away.

Contemporary China is marked by two before-and-after moments: Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The first led to the rise of Deng Xiaoping and the market opening that jump-started the economy. The second shook the regime’s foundations. Three years after giving the order to mow down the students, Deng accelerated the reforms as a means to regain some legitimacy and give ordinary Chinese a stake in the system.

During his 2003 visit, Castro commented: ”I can’t really be sure what kind of China I’m visiting.” Mao would surely have seconded him. Yet, the Great Helmsman is still held in high esteem, even though his policies — which cost millions of lives and ruined the economy — are criticized without attribution. Mao souvenirs abound. I bought a deck of cards that opened with a joker bearing a full-length photo of Mao. Personality cults aren’t what they used to be.

Raúl Castro and the other successors are trapped in the worst possible scenario: Castro is alive and somewhat recuperated. Will his veto on markets stand? If so, the succession’s longer-term prospects may be more complex and uncertain. Might Raúl at least manage a return to the reforms of the early 1990s, e.g., by freeing self-employment from the manifold strictures imposed in the past decade? Could Fidel’s interview on Vietnam be useful to legitimize modest changes?

Last July 31, we thought a signal before-and-after moment neared for Cuba. If we’re frustrated, so it seems are ordinary Cubans as the expectations awakened last year have gone unmet. That’s what official but unpublished surveys are apparently registering. While diffused and unorganized, there is widespread discontent in Cuban society. The regime should seize the opportunity. For starters, nothing major would be required — liberalizing self-employment would immediately catch people’s attention.

Raúl, it is said, is too cautious. All the same, I’m sure he has to think about his children and grandchildren. Wouldn’t a Cuba that delivers material well-being be more hospitable to them than one that implodes?

A successor regime is anathema in official Washington and sectors of Cuban Miami. I’d welcome it as a stepping stone to a better Cuba and, eventually I hope, one that is free and democratic. Anything that ameliorates the penury of Cubans should be welcomed. If the succession consolidates for a while, Castro will serve the regime as Mao does China’s.

A democratic Cuba — like a more-open China with Mao — would, however, hand down a more-complete judgment on the Comandante. In the meantime, we’d be making progress if joker cards bore Castro’s image.