Cuba After Castro - RAND Corporation

Castro’s Political Legacies: Caudilloism and Totalitarianism 11
gross domestic product (GDP) plummeted by nearly 32 percent by
1993 compared with that of 1989. Cubans now had to endure unrelenting
austerity under the “Special Period in a Time of Peace” that
was launched in 1990 and that remains in effect today. Monthly food
rations were cut back to a ten-day supply, forcing Cubans to grow
their own vegetables and to scour the black market for food and other
basic necessities that the government no longer could supply. Housing
and transportation deteriorated sharply, as did public health––the
crown jewel of Cuba’s extensive social safety net. Unemployment as
well as underemployment rose. As a result, the social compact between
state and society became badly frayed as the economy shrank at
an annual rate of –1.2 percent in the 1990–2000 period. Even if the
economy were to maintain the 3.3-percent annual average growth
rate of 1994–2002, Cubans will not regain their 1989 standard of
living until 2009, according to a leading economic specialist on Cuba
(Mesa-Lago, 2003b, p. 2). But the recovery may take longer: The
Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CSCE), which is affiliated
with the Cuban government, announced that 2003 would be “a
difficult year” because the economy was expected to grow at a rate of
only 1.5 percent (Cuba Transition Project, 2003b).
In the meantime, bereft of ideology and with the economy contracting
after 1989, the totalitarian state apparatus––the regime’s last
supportive pillar––no longer could be sustained in its original form.
As shortages and living conditions worsened, the state was unable to
rely on police officers or Party or Committee for the Defense of the
Revolution (CDR) militants to enforce public conformity because
they were now increasingly susceptible to accepting bribes offered by
equally desperate citizens. Because the state was no longer able to employ
the labor force fully or supply consumers with basic necessities,
Cubans turned to the proliferating black market and other illicit activities––from
prostitution to the pilfering of government stores and
warehouses––to survive on a day-to-day basis.
As the crisis of the 1990s unfolded, Cuba evolved into a posttotalitarian
state––a mutant form of totalitarianism in which the state
was less ideologically driven, less able to satisfy the basic needs of its
citizens, and less able to fully penetrate, control, and mobilize society.