Cuba After Castro - RAND Corporation

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2 Cuba After Castro: Legacies, Challenges, and Impediments after 1989, and to the regime’s failure to live up to its highminded ideals. These youth, once viewed as the promise of the Revolution, will likely prove difficult to re-engage politically. • A looming cleavage between white Cubans and Afro-Cubans, stemming not only from the growing racial discrimination of recent years but also from different expectations concerning the distribution of political power and economic wealth in a new Cuba. Part II then focuses on two major structural problems: • An emerging demographic bind, in which Cuba’s population is rapidly aging at the same time that its shrinking supply of young workers will not be able to support either old-age entitlements or Cubans’ educational, health, and other needs. • An economic legacy of deformed institutions and an obsolete and inefficient sugar industry that has left Cuba ill prepared to make the needed transition into a global economy. Cuba’s economy will require substantial restructuring along marketdriven lines if it is to produce sustained economic growth and development required to meet the demands that will be placed on the new government. The analysis in this report will show how these problems are interconnected and how, individually and in combination, they will pose very difficult policy choices for a new post-Castro government. Failure to meet these challenges is certain to further weaken the successor government’s fragile legitimacy, thus lessening its capacity to marshal the public support needed for Cuba’s political and economic reconstruction, including the long-term process of moving toward national reconciliation.
Part I: Political Legacies, Social Challenges Signs of political change and growing uncertainty abound in Cuba. In the spring of 2002, more than 11,000 Cubans dared sign their names to the Varela Project, in which they petitioned the National Assembly to enact liberalizing political and economic reforms. Less than a year later, on March 18, 2003, the Cuban government responded by rounding up 75 prominent dissidents, independent journalists, and librarians, and sentencing them to prison terms of six to 28 years. Three Afro-Cubans, meanwhile, were executed for attempting to hijack a boat in a vain attempt to flee the island. When international condemnation of these actions followed, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s aging patriarch, in a sign of increasing irascibility, leveled bitter, vitriolic attacks against the European Union and the Spanish and Italian prime ministers. In the meantime, the Cuban economy is again faltering and the European Union has refused to sign a cooperation agreement with Cuba. Prospects are that social tensions could worsen in the months ahead. These developments, and the continuing delay in convening the Sixth Communist Party Congress, suggest that the Cuban leadership is both apprehensive and uncertain over what course changes it should make as the Castro era nears its end. Indeed, the government that follows Castro will face daunting political, social, and economic challenges, including some that are of a structural nature that will require fundamental systemic changes if they are to be resolved. However, Cuba’s future government, whether communist or non-communist, is certain to be constrained by the legacy of its past in trying to cope with the challenges ahead. A large part of this constraint is due to the comandante’s more than four dec- 3
Page 1 and 2: CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS CIVIL JUST
Page 3 and 4: CUBA AFTER CASTRO Legacies, Challen
Page 5 and 6: Preface Cuba is nearing the end of
Page 7: The RAND Corporation Quality Assura
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Page 13 and 14: Executive Summary Cuba’s economy
Page 15 and 16: Executive Summary xiii trate, contr
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Page 27: Acknowledgments The authors wish to
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Page 75 and 76: CHAPTER FOUR Cuba’s Racial Divide
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Page 79 and 80: Cuba’s Racial Divide 51 new, more
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 53 Blas Roca
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 55 emphasizi
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 57 holding o
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 59 compiled
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 61 • None
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 63 to ignore
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Cuba’s Racial Divide 65 region co
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Part II: The Structural Challenges
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The Structural Challenges Ahead 69
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CHAPTER FIVE Cuba’s Changing Demo
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Cuba’s Changing Demographic Struc
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CHAPTER SEVEN The Need for Industri
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The Need for Industrial Restructuri
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CHAPTER EIGHT Conclusion Both Fidel
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Conclusion 107 the majority of the
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Conclusion 109 1988) were unsustain
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Conclusion 111 would seem to be in
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Conclusion 113 As the experience in
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Conclusion 115 First, the governmen
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Conclusion 117 gime will be unwilli
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Conclusion 119 China. Still, the Un
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122 Cuba After Castro: Legacies, Ch
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