Theorizing the Cuban Revolution - SAGE Journals

Theorizing the Cuban Revolution by John Foran

An assessment of the outcomes of the Cuban Revolution in terms of theories of both the causes and outcomes of revolutions in general reveals that that the revolution has been spectacularly successful in terms of ensuring the well-being of the vast majority of Cubans, while at the same time failing to deliver fully democratic institutions and freedoms. The success of the revolution in maintaining itself against U.S. hostility and the deepening of neoliberal global capitalism is attributed to the strength of the political culture that the revolution has forged and carried forward across the generations. The future of the revolution looks bright, especially if the Cuban people find a way to secure deeper democratic gains to match their social and economic ones. Keywords: Cuban Revolution, Causes, Outcomes, Political culture, Future

At the start of the twenty-first century, Cuba remains the one indisputably revolutionary society on the planet. Having survived the hostility of the United States at the height of the cold war and the harsh impact of the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the country now faces the imminent passing of its only head of state in a world characterized by reckless U.S. militarism and savage global capitalism. Knowing the future of this longest-lived of all Third World revolutions is impossible, but one can imagine various futures as more or less probable. To do so requires some understanding of Cuba’s past as well as its present, and theories about revolution, as well as sociological imagination, can come in handy. In this essay, I draw freely (and very immodestly) on work I have done over the years on how to theorize Third World revolutions in an effort to signal what this might mean for understanding the Cuban Revolution. THE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION: 1953–1959 A MODEL OF HOW THIRD WORLD REVOLUTIONS COME ABOUT

Much of my scholarly life has been devoted to a search for patterns in the origins of the great revolutions that have shaped the Third World, from Mexico and China in 1911 to Iran and Nicaragua in 1979. Most tellingly, only Cuba remains a revolutionary society today. My own particular synthesis (see Foran, 2005: 18–24; 1993; 1997b) insists on balancing attention to such perennial (and all too often reified) dichotomies as structure and agency, political economy and culture, state and social John Foran is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books and edited collections on revolutions. LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 165, Vol. 36 No. 2, March 2009 16-30 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X09331938 © 2009 Latin American Perspectives

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Foran / THEORIZING THE CUBAN REVOLUTION 17

structure, internal and external factors. I have argued that five interrelated causal factors must combine in a given conjuncture to produce a social revolution (see Figure 1): 1. Dependent development (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; Evans, 1979), essentially a process of growth within limits set by a country’s insertion into the capitalist world economy, which creates social and economic grievances among diverse sectors of the population. 2. A repressive, exclusionary, personalist state, led by a dictator or colonial power who provides a solid target for social movements from below, often alienating even the middle and upper classes. 3. The elaboration of effective and powerful political cultures of resistance1 among a broad array of actors, drawing upon formal ideologies such as socialism, folk traditions such as memories of past struggles (so salient in Cuba), and popular idioms such as nationalism, social justice, or an end to dictatorship. 4. A revolutionary crisis produced by the combination of an economic downturn, which may even be created by revolutionaries in the course of the struggle, as Castro’s July 26th Movement managed to do by disrupting the 1958 sugar harvest. 5. A world-systemic opening or let-up of external controls, originating in disruption of the core economies by world war or depression, rivalries between core powers, mixed messages sent to Third World dictators, or a divided foreign policy when faced with an insurrection. The coming together in a single place of all five factors has led to the formation of the broad revolutionary coalitions that succeeded in gaining power in Mexico, China, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua. What are some of the lessons we might cull from the revolutionary record in light of this theory of causes? Let me try stating a few in propositional terms (see Foran, 2003): Revolutions have typically been directed against two types of states at opposite ends of the democratic spectrum: exclusionary, personalist dictators or colonial regimes and—paradoxically—truly open societies in which the left had a fair chance in elections, as in Chile in 1970. They have usually been driven by economic and social inequalities caused by both the short-term and the medium-run consequences of “dependent development”—a process of aggregate growth by which a handful of the privileged have prospered, leaving the majority of the population to suffer innumerable hardships. They have had a significant cultural component in the sense that no revolution has been made and sustained without a vibrant set of political cultures of resistance and opposition that found significant common ground, at least for a time. They have occurred when the moment was favorable on the world scene— that is, when powers that would oppose revolution have been distracted, confused, or ineffective in preventing them. Finally, they have always involved broad, cross-class alliances of subaltern groups, middle classes, and elites, to an increasing extent women as well as men, and to a lesser degree racial or ethnic minorities as well as majorities. Such broad coalitions will have the best chances for success in terms of attaining state power.

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Economic downturn Dependent development

Exclusionary personalist state or Open polity

Political cultures of opposition

Revolutionary outbreak/ Multi-class, -race, -gender alliance

Worldsystemic opening

Figure 1. A Model of Third World Social Revolutions

CUBA AMIDST THE FIVE FACTORS

The Cuban Revolution presents the appearance of an almost wholly “willed” revolution: a small band of idealistic young revolutionaries overturning a military dictatorship through determination, bravery, and luck. And in good measure this is true, but it is not the whole story, even if it is an aspect we should not lose sight of (see Foran, 2005: 57–65). Underlying the revolution was an almost textbook case of dependent development. It is not always recognized that Cuba in the 1950s ranked as “one of the four or five most developed nations in Latin America, and the most developed tropical nation in the entire world” (Wickham-Crowley, 1992: 166). The key to this growth, of course, was sugar: Cuba had been the world’s largest producer since the early 1900s and provided more than half the world market in sugar, amounting to 80 percent of Cuba’s exports (Benjamin, Collins, and Scott, 1986: 9). At the same time it housed a society marked by enormous disparities of wealth and power, for behind the positive statistics lay the dependent aspects of Cuban development. The United States had US$1 billion invested in Cuba in 1958 (up from US$657 million in 1952), second only to its investments in the Venezuelan oil industry and representing one-eighth of all U.S. investments in Latin America.2 The internal impact of this dependent development was dramatic. Estimates of income inequality suggest that the poorest 20 percent got between 2 and 6 percent of income, the richest 20 percent taking 55 percent. In terms of land tenure, the largest 9 percent of landowners had 62 percent of the land, while the bottom two-thirds had only 7 percent.3 While Cuba had more millionaires per capita than any other country of Latin America and “more Cadillacs were sold in Havana than any other city in the world in 1954” (Benjamin, Collins, and Scott, 1986: 5), during the “dead season” in the countryside, which could stretch to eight or nine months, “families ate roots and bark to stay alive, hunted locusts, lived in woods, in caves” (Cannon, 1981: 41). In between lay a large middle class—one-fifth of the working population—consisting of merchants, professionals, and civil servants and a somewhat smaller urban working class that was better-off (and more politicized) than its more numerous counterpart in the rural sector (see Foran, Klouzal, and Rivera, 1997). Holding this political economy together through various means was the state of Fulgencio Batista, who seized power on March 10, 1952, after lagging


in the polls during that year’s presidential campaign. Propped up by the vast patronage and corruption networks open to him and severe repression of opponents, Batista’s exclusionary, personalized control had weakened his military and alienated civil society, undermining the bases of his rule. The deep currents of oppositional culture at work in the Cuban Revolution included a long history of rebellions, a tradition of nationalism, and the loose, radical amalgam ultimately fashioned by Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement. The growth of U.S. influence and the seeming inability of Cuban politicians to withstand it made both nationalism and democracy appealing to diverse social strata. Unity of purpose was provided by the message of the July 26th Movement, toned down but clear enough in its promises of elementary social justice and an end to imperialist domination.4 The world-systemic opening that facilitated the success of the Cuban Revolution came before the internal economic downturn. Batista, never particularly popular with the U.S. State Department, was still supported well into his reign as the only force that could hold Cuba together, thereby safeguarding U.S. interests there. By mid-1957, however, a perception was growing that Batista was losing legitimacy in Cuba and might have to be abandoned. In the absence of a third alternative to Batista and Castro, U.S. policy floundered: Some wanted to see free elections under Batista (increasingly viewed as an impossibility); U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith sought a renewal of arms to him, while others favored a military junta and still others felt he could not be supported without losing all credibility in Cuba and the United States. Smith cabled home in late March 1958: “At this time it would appear to me that we are in the position of a spectator watching the third act of a Greek tragedy.”5 The internal economic downturn came suddenly. While 1956 had been the best year for the economy since 1952, the progress of the guerrilla war in 1958 threw it into an irreversible free fall as the rebels opened new fronts; by December, economic activity outside Havana had come to a virtual standstill and the coming sugar harvest was in serious jeopardy. Auspiciously enough, the revolutionary forces swept triumphantly into Havana on New Year’s Day 1959. Almost uniquely in the annals of revolutions, the rebels had created the downturn needed to destabilize the government and enlist the population in a struggle for change. Further surprises would follow, as the Cuban Revolution has proven uniquely deep and durable in any comparative perspective. THE OUTCOME TO DATE A THEORY OF OUTCOMES

In a 1993 study of Iran and Nicaragua, Jeff Goodwin and I concluded that “the comparative study of the actual outcomes of social revolutions . . . remains in its infancy” (1993: 209). I (and, I am willing to bet, Jeff) believe that this remains true today. Once in power, revolutionaries have typically run into a series of related difficulties resulting from the continued significance of the same patterns for revolutionary transformation (see Foran, 2005: 268–269): Truly democratic structures have been difficult to construct following revolutions against dictators, while democratically elected revolutionaries have been vulnerable to nondemocratic opponents, internal and external (it


is important to note that “democracy” can have a range of meanings, from competitive multiparty elections to freedoms of expression and dissent to participation in decision making, all of which are valuable goals). Dependent development has deep historical roots that are recalcitrant to sustained reversal, however much the material situation of the majority can be improved in the short and medium run. The challenge of forging a revolutionary political culture to construct a new society has generally foundered rapidly on the diversity of subcurrents that contributed to the initial victory, compounded by the structural obstacles all revolutions have faced. Few revolutions have been able to withstand the renewed counterrevolutionary attention of dominant outside powers and their regional allies. Given the above, the broad coalitions that have been so effective in making revolutions are notoriously difficult to keep together because of divergent visions of how to remake society and unequal capacities to make those visions prevail; meanwhile women and ethnic minorities have consistently seen at best limited reversal of patriarchy and racism after revolutions. In addition to these linked causal and outcome issues, there seem to be recurrent trade-offs or contradictions in the revolutionary record. For example, the participation of massive numbers runs up against the leadership’s need to take decisive measures to deal with all kinds of problems once in power; this in part explains the often bloody narrowing of substantively democratic spaces even as many previously disenfranchised members of society are gaining new rights and opportunities. When movements have been radically democratic, as in France in 1968 and Chile in the early 1970s, they have had trouble articulating a program acceptable to all the progressive forces that made them up and withstanding illegal subversion from the right. Similarly, a series of economic trade-offs is associated with many revolutions, particularly in the Third World: impressive gains in employment, wages, health, housing, and education have after short periods been eroded by internal economic contradictions (demand-driven inflation, limited human and material resources, labor imbalances) and powerful international counterthrusts (boycotts and embargoes on trade, equipment, loans). As if these political and economic contradictions were not daunting enough, massive external violence, whether covert or openly military in nature, has often also been applied, further undermining prospects for democracy and development. These patterned realities have produced disappointing outcomes, including authoritarian (in the sense of real power being concentrated in very few hands) and relatively poor socialisms in Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam (the only revolutions to last much longer than a generation, except for Iran, where the degree of economic change has been limited); violent overthrows of revolutionaries in Guatemala, Chile, and Grenada; slow strangling of change leading to political reversals in Mexico (by 1940), Bolivia (by 1960), Michael Manley’s Jamaica, and Sandinista Nicaragua; and a blocking of the path to power altogether in France in 1968, El Salvador in the 1980s, China in 1989, and Iraq in 1991, among many other places. Once a measure of power is achieved, broad, heterogeneous coalitions tend to fragment, as their constituent elements begin to struggle among themselves over the shape of the new order (in the case of a protracted


revolutionary struggle, as in Mexico from 1910 to 1920, this process begins even earlier). The persisting limits of dependency and the probability of renewed external pressures and intervention put further pressure on the coalition to fragment, which can lead to counterrevolutionary coups as in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and Grenada (1983) or to a strong but undemocratic state as in postrevolutionary Mexico, Cuba, China, and Iran to various degrees. The democratic route is the hardest to follow; Sandinista Nicaragua tried this, despite the odds, and its wonderful revolution lasted less than a dozen years. It is worth noting that of the four poor authoritarian socialisms on the list, all but Cuba have seen their situation reversed; Russia, China, and Vietnam are no longer socialist but remain authoritarian, and only China has raised itself further out of poverty. No revolutionary movement of the twentieth century has come close to delivering on the common dreams of so many of its makers: a more inclusive, participatory form of political rule, a more egalitarian, humane economic system, and a cultural atmosphere in which individuals and local communities may not only reach full self-creative expression but thereby contribute unexpected solutions to the dilemmas faced by society. In this sense Walter Benjamin’s oft-invoked image of the angel of history being swept forward by the storm of progress willy-nilly into the future, its face turned to the catastrophic debris of the past, appears an apt one. Yet the past may hold other messages for the future if we know how to read them. WHAT CUBA HAS ACHIEVED

Interpreting the pluses and minuses of Cuba’s revolutionary experience can be controversial, because Cuba is an inherently politicized topic. For example, some see food rationing as proof of a just society (as Fidel says, “Everyone eats the same . . .”), while others see the need for rationing as proof that Cuba is an economic basket case. As Benjamin, Collins, and Scott (1986: xi) write in a book on the food situation in Cuba entitled No Free Lunch, “For some, the revolution has made Cuba paradise on earth and its leader, Fidel Castro, a heroic symbol of hope. For others, Cuba has become hell on earth, its leader a ruthless dictator.” My own view is that Cuba’s revolution has been the most thoroughgoing in world history. At the same time, it is not without flaws, some of them very deep. The achievements (see Keen and Haynes, 2000: 447–448) are very impressive and very real: By 1990, unemployment had been virtually wiped out; Cuba’s rate was the lowest in Latin America. Income distribution is also the fairest in Latin America. Rents were limited right after the revolution to 10 percent of one’s income. There are virtually no beggars, almost no slum housing (with 80 percent of Cubans owning their own homes), no starvation or chronic hunger. Medical care and education are free, with the most doctors per capita and the best health care system in all of Latin America. Seven percent of the budget goes to education, the highest in Latin America, and literacy is high. As Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes conclude (2000: 448), “Undoubtedly, most Cubans have benefited from the revolution, which explains their extraordinary support for it, almost forty years later in the midst of its deepest economic crisis.”


No Free Lunch focuses on quality-of-life indicators. Writing in the 1980s, Benjamin and colleagues could report that Cubans consumed more food on the average than the people of any country in Latin America except Argentina. Infant mortality was 16.8 per thousand, compared with 126.9 in Haiti, and lower than the 18.1 among African-Americans in the United States. Life expectancy had risen from 57 years in 1958 to 73.5 years in 1983. A U.S. Congressional report admitted that health care is “superior in the third world and rivals that of numerous developed countries”—not to mention that it is free. In the estimation of these researchers, “Cuba is now the most racially harmonious society we have ever experienced” (Benjamin, Collins, and Scott, 1986: 189).6 Until quite recently, it had one of the lowest crime rates in the world and safe streets at all hours, with rape reportedly very rare. They concluded that Cubans were characterized by a “pervasive sense of dignity and confidence in the future—a sharp contrast from the shame and hopelessness one finds in much of the third world” (190). Johnetta Cole, then president of Spellman College, who was passed over for a cabinet appointment in the Clinton administration in December 1992 because of her ties to an American group in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, has shown that the revolution has improved women’s lives dramatically, as well as discussing the limits to this process, which she attributes to the overall scarcity of material goods in a poor country and the continuation of attitudes of machismo that are not easily done away with (Cole, 1993). Men, for example, are required by law to help with the housework, a practice honored more often in the breach, as in the rest of the world.7 More recent, comparative economic, social, and political indicators from Latin America show the degree of well-being that the Cuban Revolution has delivered and sustained into the twenty-first century. The United Nations’ Human Development Index ranks Cuba fifty-first among the world’s nations, fifth among Latin America and the Caribbean’s 33 nations, behind Argentina (38), Chile (40), Uruguay (46), and Costa Rica (UNDP, 2007), including it in the category of high human development. On many measures, Cuba fares even better than this (Table 1). Cuba’s levels of infant mortality, infants born with low birth weight, percentage of children enrolled in secondary school, adult literacy, undernourishment, and degree of public expenditure on education and health rank first in Latin America, while its life expectancy and percentage of women in parliament are a close third behind only Chile and Costa Rica on the first measure and Argentina and Costa Rica on the second. In fact, Cuba’s quality-of-life indicators are on a par with those for the United States and in terms of participation of women in the government far surpass them. On the whole, these facts suggest that there have been tremendous accomplishments in terms of where Cuba was in 1959, and I would judge them unprecedented in the history of Latin America, the Third World, or the world. THE DOWNSIDE

On the negative side, there is criticism that the political system is constrained, whether one equates democracy with fairly contested multiparty

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74.8 75.9 64.7 71.7 78.3 72.3 78.5 71.5 74.7 71.3 68.2 69.7 59.5 69.4 72.2 75.6 71.9 75.1 71.3 70.7 75.9 69.2 73.2 77.7 77.9 72.8

15 15 52 31 8 17 11 26 22 23 17 32 84 31 17 22 30 19 20 23 14 17 18 6 6 26

Infant Mortality Rate per 1,000 Live Births 8 6 7 8 6 9 7 11 16 7 8 12 21 14 10 8 12 10 9 11 8 23 9 5 8 *9

% Infants with Low Birth Weight

Source: UNDP (2007) except that starred items come from UNDP (2003). n.a. = not available

Argentina Belize Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador Grenada Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Uruguay Trinidad Venezuela Cuba USA All Latin America

Life Expectancy Country in Years

TABLE 1

79 71 73 78 n.a. 55 *51 53 52 53 79 34 n.a. 21 78 65 43 64 *51 70 *71 69 63 87 89 68

97.2 n.a. 86.7 88.6 95.7 92.8 94.9 87.0 91.0 80.6 n.a. 69.1 n.a. 80.0 79.9 91.6 76.7 91.9 93.5 87.9 96.8 98.4 93.0 99.8 n.a. 89.9

3 4 23 7 4 13 5 29 6 11 7 22 46 23 9 5 27 23 15 12 2 10 18 2 2 10

3.8 5.4 6.4 4.4 3.5 4.8 4.9 1.8 1.0 2.8 5.2 *1.7 *1.1 *4.0 5.3 5.4 3.1 3.8 4.3 2.4 2.6 4.2 n.a 9.8 5.9 *4.4

4.3 2.7 4.1 4.8 2.9 6.7 5.1 1.9 2.2 3.5 5.0 2.3 2.9 4.0 2.8 3.0 3.9 5.2 2.6 1.9 3.6 1.4 2 5.5 6.9 *2.5

% Enrolled in % of % of GDP % of GDP Secondary Adults % People Spent on Spent on School Literate Undernourished Education Health

Development Data on Latin America

36.8 11.9 14.6 9.3 12.7 9.7 38.6 17.1 25.0 16.7 28.6 8.2 6.3 23.4 13.6 21.5 18.5 16.7 9.6 29.2 10.8 25.4 18.6 36.0 16.3 *14.2

% of Women in Parliament


elections or with human rights such as freedom of speech, the press, or religion. Until 1992, elections were directly held only for the municipal assemblies, which then chose the provincial assemblies, which in turn chose the members of the National Assembly of People’s Power; the reforms of that year made direct election the case at all levels. Supporters of the revolution, both inside and outside Cuba, argue that multiparty elections are not a measure of deep democracy, which involves people’s participation in grassroots decision making. By this criterion, Cubans do enjoy a certain measure of democracy. The influence of the Communist party, the Young Communist League, the Confederation of Cuban Workers, the Cuban Federation of Women, and the Federation of Cuban Students in the political process mark both the extent and the limits of popular participation. For 48 years, at the top of the system, power was concentrated in the hands of Fidel Castro, who simultaneously held the titles of Head of the Government, First Secretary of the Communist Party, and President of the Council of State, and it has now passed only as far as his brother Raúl. To this may be added the government’s fear of and harsh sanctions against dissenters, the lack of any opposition parties, a press that is controlled and rather uncritical, the limited degree of tolerance for gay people, and an aversion to the too-open practice of religion. Criticism is tolerated if it goes through approved channels; problems arise when it does not. Foreign relations have proven another controversial area of the revolution. Critics argue that Cuba exchanged its historic dependence on the United States for a new dependency on the Soviet Union after 1960. The fact that 80 percent of its trade was with the Soviet Union and there was a yearly subsidy of US$3–5 billion that was used to keep Cuba going, they charge, required Cuba to keep in the good graces of the Soviets, proving a burden for real independence in foreign policy, especially its African involvements in Ethiopia and Angola. But was the Soviet Union exploiting Cuba in the way we usually mean when we speak of dependency? It was not making a profit in Cuba. One could argue that a subsidy that entails paying a better price for a country’s products is a “fair” price for the goods of a Third World country. The authors of No Free Lunch contrast the Soviet subsidy with the massive aid the United States gives to El Salvador, the Philippines, and Pakistan, which have little in the way of accomplishments in providing basic needs to show for it. Again, Puerto Rico, which gets four times the aid of Cuba in per capita terms, is badly off economically in many ways (Benjamin, Collins, and Scott, 1986: 191–193). And it must be pointed out that Cuba has shown enormous solidarity with Third World nations by sending its doctors, teachers, and technicians abroad for little or no compensation. Nevertheless, the degree of Cuba’s economic reliance on the Soviet Union was exposed when communism collapsed there after 1990. In what would become known as the Special Period, Cuba’s gross national product plummeted by as much as 40 percent between 1989 and 1992. In 1989 Cuba was able to import US$8.1 billion in goods but in 1992 only US$2.4 billion and in 1993 US$1.7 billion. In addition to a US$20 billion debt to Russia from the Soviet era, by 2005 Cuba’s hard-currency debt was over US$13 billion (USAID, 2005; U.S. Department of State, 2003). Oil imports dropped from 13 million tons in 1989 to 6 million in 1992. All of this meant less use of fertilizer and tractors in


agriculture and regular electricity shortages causing planned blackouts of up to eight hours a day. Beef and pork all but disappeared from the diet; the chicken ration fell to 12 ounces per person per month. Hospitals had fewer medicines, schools fewer books and supplies. There were the first signs of official unemployment since 1959 (although the government paid up to 60 percent of the salaries of state employees without work), and underemployment deepened as well. By the late 1990s, the economy had regained its footing on a new basis without Soviet aid, a remarkable feat. Strong new economic sectors were created as resources were directed toward foreign tourism, biotechnology, and oil exploration. New trade partners emerged in China and Latin America, a trend reinforced of late by the “pink tide” of left-of-center governments throughout the continent. Measures to revive the economy have included legalizing dollars (and encouraging Cubans in the United States to send money to their relatives on the island) and allowing a certain amount of private enterprise (bicycle repair shops, beauty salons, etc.). These steps may help ease life for some, but it is doubtful that they will solve the problems posed now by the onslaught of globalization, and in any case they lead to increased inequality between those with access to dollars and those who lack this. In the twentyfirst century, people make ends meet by helping out family members, going to the black market, working extra jobs, and in some cases engaging in crime and prostitution (eliminated after the revolution came to power). Meanwhile, the U.S. embargo drags on. The second Bush administration’s terms for lifting the embargo, interestingly, were the adoption not just of democracy but also of a free-market economy. Is the embargo in place because the United States still considers the Caribbean and Central America to be its “backyard” and feels an obligation “to save these countries from themselves”? I would suggest that there has been a fear on the part of U.S. administrations historically (especially the Kennedy and Reagan ones) that the Cuban model would be found attractive elsewhere in the world, which might explain U.S. actions to make the country as poor as possible. The contradiction that successive U.S. administrations forged extensive trade and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China at the height of the cold war and normalized relations with Vietnam in 1994 suggests that the reasons for the embargo are not the stated ones. Time will tell if the administration of Barack Obama possesses the vision and will to abandon the embargo. Should this happen, the willingness of the Cuban government to open toward the United States and the terms on which this is agreed will tell us much about Cuba’s path to the future. Defenders and detractors of the revolution have long argued whether it is the drawbacks of Cuban socialism or the aggressive imperialist tactics of the United States that best explain the historical evolution and present state of the Cuban Revolution. But is there an inevitable trade-off between expanding human rights at home and successfully defending the revolution against its powerful enemies abroad? Whatever the answer to this question, the theory of outcomes traced at the start of this section suggests that the continuing effects of dependency (now expressed in the context of global capitalism) and the refusal of the Cuban leadership to open itself politically go farther than the polarized polemics of the diplomatic or academic worlds. Locating Cuba in the comparative record of revolutionary outcomes traced earlier, we can


say that it has fallen prey to the closing of some democratic windows and the hostile pressures of a capitalist world economy but has broken from the limitations of all previous social revolutions in forging a strong and enduring revolutionary culture, withstanding the counterrevolutionary thrusts of the world’s hegemonic power, and keeping a broad and diverse coalition together that has brought real gains to the poorest members of society and to the island’s women and its Afro-Cuban population. By any comparative criteria, the cup is closer to full than to empty in 2009. POSSIBLE FUTURES In the mid-1990s, in a survey of revolutions of the late twentieth century (Foran, 1997a: 11), I made a number of observations about Cuba’s future in comparative perspective: If Iran and (to a lesser extent) Egypt look reasonably secure, Cuba in 1996 represents an even more unlikely site of revolution. . . . Castro remains rather securely in place despite the presence of [several of the factors that cause revolutions]. The explanation would seem to rest very heavily on the resilience of the political culture of the Cuban revolution as a substantial legitimating vehicle for the regime and the gains of the revolution. . . . Cuba surely represents one of the most successful cases in the history of revolutions of revolutionaries working within their pre-existing ideological horizons, but also going beyond and outside them, in the process elaborating new, re-visioned cultures of opposition to try to keep a revolutionary coalition together through a skillful process of consolidation. . . . The question today, and the one on which the future of the Cuban revolution would seem to hinge, is how much remains of this effervescent support for Castro and Cuban socialism inside the country? Somehow, Castro retains a level of public support, though how much is difficult to say. As one grocer put it: “To put up with things is a national custom.” And as Castro himself said at the depth of the economic downturn in 1993: “It is an epic struggle in which we find ourselves. We have had to give up many of the things in which we were involved, but what we will never give up is hope.”8 Cuba to date, and for the foreseeable future, thus showcases the advantages of political culture for sustaining revolutions (and thereby preventing counterrevolution) in a globalizing world.

A table that accompanied this 1997 article ranked Cuba, along with Iran, Peru, and China, in the category of countries least likely to experience a change in regime (high-likelihood countries included Zaire (now the Congo again) and Mexico (which would soon witness the fall of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional). This assessment of Cuba’s relative stability seems as accurate today as it was in 1996. The revolution has weathered the crash of the Special Period, the militarized foreign policy of the second Bush administration, the arrival of globalization on its shores, and now the passing of the reins of power from the hands of Fidel Castro. Will it be so a dozen years from now, say, in 2020? Since social forecasting does not have 20/20 vision, it is hard to see the future clearly. As Zhou En-lai said of the outcome of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to say.” The scenario I would most like to see runs something like this: Cuba maintains its high spending on education and health and embarks on a visionary plan to


green its economy, with less reliance on petrochemical inputs, massive investment in public transportation and solar and other renewable energy sources, turns its economy even further in the direction of providing essential services to other Third World countries, including inexpensive medicines generated by its biotechnology sector, and continues to expand tourism of all kinds— ecological, political, and traditional. Politically, diplomatic and economic ties have been reestablished with the United States during Barack Obama’s first term, and technology, people, and ideas have flowed both ways with positive effects. When Raúl Castro passed from the scene, a younger generation of leaders guaranteed popular participation at all levels of government, no longer tied to membership in the Communist party and allied organizations. A variety of parties emerged with the new legislation on political parties, and Cuba is governed by a popularly elected coalition of left and ecological parties, which have expanded religious, cultural, literary, and media freedoms. Cubans remain characterized by a “pervasive sense of dignity and confidence in the future—a sharp contrast from the shame and hopelessness one finds in much of the third world” (Benjamin, Collins, and Scott, 1986: 190). CONCLUSIONS I want to close with an anecdote from the one trip I made to Cuba, in 1993, at the height (or trough) of the Special Period. I will never forget the Cuban scholars’ gentle critique of my presentation of the causes of the revolution, because I have never experienced this kind of critique in the United States. They appreciated my effort to speak in Spanish, unlike most of the U.S. sociologists in the delegation I came with. They were eager to engage our ideas and to learn from us. They also urged me to read more Cuban scholarship on the situation in the 1950s and generously shared books and references with me. I came away from the encounter refreshed by the culture of the Cuban Revolution as embodied in these wonderful human beings. If I have been critical as well as complimentary here, and if I have insisted that theory can help us see some things about the nature and future of the revolution, with immodest reference to the history of my own evolving understanding of the revolution, I hope that I have continued in some way the conversation started on that day. ¡Que viva la revolución cubana! NOTES 1. I first coined this term in my 1981 Master’s thesis. It is fully employed in Fragile Resistance (1993), further theorized in “Discourses and Social Forces: The Role of Culture and Cultural Studies in Understanding Revolutions” (1997c), and most extensively discussed and illustrated in Reed and Foran (2002). In formulating it, I have drawn greatly on the work of A. Sivanandan (1980), James Scott (1990), Farideh Farhi (1990), Stuart Hall (1978a; 1978b; 1986), Ann Swidler (1986), Raymond Williams (1960), Clifford Geertz (1973), E. P. Thompson (1966 [1963]), and Antonio Gramsci (1971), among many others. 2. On U.S. interests in Cuba, see Benjamin, Collins, and Scott (1986: 10–11); FRUS (1987: 870), Gonzalez (1974: 18, 31); Pérez-Stable (1993: 15), and Wolf (1969: 256).


3. Data on inequality are drawn from Benjamin, Collins, and Scott (1986: 2–6, 12); United States National Archives (hereafter USNA), 837.00/2–1056, Foreign Service Despatch 560, Boonstra, Havana, to State Department (February 10, 1956); and 837.00/7–1356, Foreign Service Despatch 28, Price, Havana, to State Department (July 13, 1956). See also Thomas (1971: 746) and Pérez-Stable (1993: 20). 4. On Castro’s views and the July 26th Movement’s positions, see Foran, Klouzal, and Rivera (1997: 54–57, 97); USNA, 737.00/8–458, Foreign Service Despatch 5, Park Wollam, Santiago de Cuba, to State Department (August 4, 1958), 11; “Ideario Económico del Veinte y Seis de Julio,” USNA, 837.00/3–959, Foreign Service Despatch 982, Gilmore, Havana, to State Department (March 9, 1959); and Wickham-Crowley (1992: 176–178). For comprehensive treatments, see Liss (1994) and Quirk (1993). 5. USNA, 737.00/3–3058, Telegram 613, from Smith, Havana, to Secretary of State (March 30, 1958). For support of elections, see USNA, 737.00/9–2658, Foreign Service Despatch 320, Braddock, Havana, to State Department (September 26, 1958); for arms renewal, 737.00/7– 1658, Telegram 79, Smith, Havana, to Secretary of State (July 16, 1958), and 737.00/10–2158, Telegram 386, Smith, Havana, to Secretary of State (October 21, 1958); for guarded intimations of support for a military coup, 737.00/8–758, William G. Bowdler, Political Officer, Havana, Memorandum of Conversation with Sr. Vasco T. L. Da Cunha, Brazilian ambassador to Cuba (Confidential) (August 7, 1958); and for State Department doubts about continued support, 737.00/7–2458, Office Memorandum from C. A. Stewart to Mr. Snow (Secret) (July 24, 1958). 6. Of course, this must be nuanced and has been by many scholars of the revolution and race. 7. “[A] 1988 survey showed that men worked only 4.52 hours per week at home while women worked 22.28 hours” (Keen and Haynes, 2000: 448). The contradictions of the revolution from a feminist perspective are well-explored by Margaret Randall (1993). 8. The quotes are from the New York Times, January 11 and 12, 1993.

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