The Pragmatic Fidel Castro

The Pragmatic Fidel Castro

By: Erreh Svaia

“Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.”

Fidel Castro

It doesn't come to me as a surprise that in Cuba, after all those years of the ”revolution to establish a new dictatorship" (as the great writer George Orwell brilliantly explained), after dictator Fulgencio Batista was forced to leave, and Fidel revealed himself as a Marxist, and made Cuba a Soviet satellite, the Castro brothers are still gripping strongly the power of the impoverished island, with Fidel as the longest running dictator alive, yes, as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, he is still the main ruler in the island, smart guy Fidel is a master in real politik, applying pragmatism in order to keep power in his hands, surviving world changes year after year, but not making conditions in the island any better.

After the Castro brothers supposedly defeated American imperialism is a romantic revolution that was more stuff of a novel than a reality, a new dictatorship was established in order to permanently "protect" the revolution, and to full fill Castro's dream of install a communist economic system just like the one in her s admired USSR, Fidel might claim his triumph over American ambition and intervention, but he simply let others take control over the Island, in the form of the Soviet imperialism, but the Soviet system Fidel loved so much had a date of expiry and as it collapsed at the end of the 80s, the Soviet money stopped flowing towards the island, so Fidel, very smart guy I should mention it, created a new system in order to  his dictatorship to survive, in typical Soviet fashion again, Castro knew that as an isolated socialist country would not survive, so he set to create his own Union of Socialist Republics in America, Castro, convoked the left wing forces in America via the Sao Paolo forum, and choose from a wide variety of characters as his apostles, a populist military commander and in Venezuela, a leftist economist in n Ecuador, a liberation theology priest in Paraguay, an indigenous leader in Bolivia, a union leader in Brazil, a Peronist couple in Argentina and an ex guerrilla member survivor of the Cold War in Nicaragua.

For a while it looked that oil from Venezuela would be the perfect fuel for his project just as in the USSR, in order to keep the plan going, he also used his strategic location in order to serve as bridge for drug traffickers from South America to the USA, thus explaining the dual crime/radical left wing tendencies of organization like the FARC in Colombia.

But luck also smiled at Fidel, as China economy was starting to grow at a prodigious rate, the enormous country demanded raw materials to sustain growth, Fidel had some experience at selling sugar to China, so he had no trouble making the contacts to habilitate his allies to sell these products to the communist giant, which helped the economies of Brazil and Argentina grow at record rates, money from these transactions was traduced into subsidies for the lower class, bureaucracy grew in those countries, making it easily to establish populist governments who showed off its "social advances", democracy was deformed and people like Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, the Kirchners, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega accumulated great social and political power, the raw material s bonanza and the world rise of the so called BRICS, which strengthen the relationship between China and Brazil, made the later become the big rising star of the global economy, things looked just like Fidel dreamed them, but just as the USSR collapse in the late 80s, Fidel's dream was also about to collapse.

The disease was the same that debilitated the USSR in the late 80s, as oil prices started to come down, Fidel socialist union of South American countries was too dependent on the money coming from the oil Venezuela produced, so the system started to collapse, Fidel thought of a new strategy and looked for his brother Raúl admired Chinese model of socialism, a more open approach that allowed global commerce, Raúl Castro became president of Cuba, and the move was sold to the world as a new start for the island, but what the Castro brothers again forgot to look for, was that China's model was still being figured out and what was once a manufacturing force was changing as middle class in China was growing and salaries were increasing, moving China away from its strength as a cheap manufacturer, foreign investment left China and moved to other countries in South Asia and Mexico, deeply damaging China's amazing growth, and as a consequence, deeply affecting Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil whose economy was too closely related to that of China.

Today things look grey for the once famous "pink tide", Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner successor was defeated in elections, Hugo Chavez died of cancer and left an improvised successor who has turned an oil rich country into a catastrophe, while the once miracle growth of Brazil has revealed a darker side, full of corrupted politicians fighting in Machiavellian ways for power, as the Castro brothers devise their new strategy, having studied the successful model of Singapore, a small, once impoverished island with an iron hand rule that became one of the economic miracles in South Asia, the Castro Bros. obviously fell in love with the idea of a successful dictatorship that turned a small island into a world economic phenomenon, so they quickly started to run a process in order to open their economy and re start their economic relationship with the USA, I think that neither of the Castro Bros. is a Lee Kwan Yeh, the hard line dictator who demanded strict obedience from his country in order to turn them into one of the most advanced, less corrupt and admired countries of the world, so the future might not be so promising for the Castro brothers as their strong desire to remain in power might still be holding  Cuba's from a chance to escape its troubled fate and isolation from global economy.

The Singapore model is a good one to follow, but I guess it will be hard for Cuba to be able to achieve that level of openness toward globalization also, Castro should consider Panama as a another example, as it is the country which is having the best economic growth rates in the las few years.