Raul Castro Delivers State-of-the-Nation Address
CAMAGUEY, Cuba _ A year after Fidel Castro’s last appearance in public, his brother and interim replacement, Raul, delivered his own state-of-the-nation address in the longtime leader’s absence Thursday, saying he wanted to open the country to more foreign investment and giving the impression of a man trying to settle into power.
On the anniversary of the 1953 start of the Cuban revolution, Raul Castro painted a national picture that was upbeat about how Cubans have overcome a long period of uncertainty since the elder Castro stepped aside last year, yet solemn about how they continue to suffer economic distress.
“The past 12 months have constituted a remarkable example of our people’s maturity, steadfast principles, unity, trust in Fidel, in the party and above all in themselves,” Castro told tens of thousands assembled in the central plaza of this provincial capital.
“These have truly been very difficult months, although with a diametrically different impact to that expected by our enemies, who were wishing for chaos to entrench and for Cuban socialism to collapse,” he said. “Senior U.S. officials even made statements about taking advantage of this scenario to destroy the revolution.”
Indeed, aside from Fidel Castro’s absence, the annual celebration and speech stood in stark contrast with the expectations of dramatic change after he underwent emergency surgery and transferred provisional power to his younger brother and a panel of close advisers on July 31. No upheaval has occurred to loosen the Castros’ hold on power, despite the hopes of Cuban exiles in Miami and Castro opponents in Washington. The island’s anxious hush about Fidel Castro’s illness, believed to have been internal bleeding due to the thinning of a colon wall, has now passed. Cubans largely accept that Raul Castro, 76, is in charge _ but with his older brother, 80, watching over things closely, according to interviews with Cubans and analysts.
With business pretty much as usual in Cuba, it is as if Fidel Castro had figured out a way to see for himself how the country would function after he is gone: Another Castro leads smoothly enough, although with more planning, fewer mass mobilizations on the streets and a team effort with his older brother’s trusted ministers, analysts said.
“The transfer of power is really the key thing,” said Wayne Smith, the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba from 1979 to 1982. “There were those in Cuba who wondered what will happen when the maximo leader would go _ well, nothing.”
In Thursday’s speech, Raul Castro at times sounded like his brother, although his one-hour delivery fell far short of his brother’s famously long-winded addresses. He excoriated the United States and its trade embargo _ or “blockade,” as Cubans call it _ as a “relentless war against our people.”
“President Bush himself insists on repeating that he will not allow the Cuban Revolution to continue,” Castro said. “How little they have learned from history!”
For years, Fidel Castro delivered hours-long speeches on Revolution Day, including two last year in separate towns. Five days later, he announced that he was stepping aside.
Absent from the public eye since his illness, Fidel Castro has most recently reminded Cubans of his continued presence by turning from marathon public speaker to a prolific writer of columns in the government’s daily newspaper.
In these “Reflections,” glimpses of Castro’s convalescence occasionally can be seen amid his exhortations about how Cuba must avoid becoming a consumer society and his condemnations of Bush for the Iraq war.
For example, Castro wrote that he has been so ensconced in watching Cuba’s medal-winning performances in the Pan American Games in Brazil that he once forgot to take his medicine.
Fidel also frets that his country’s two-currency system _ the national peso and a separate, more prized peso derived from foreign and tourism spending _ “at times creates irritating inequalities and privileges in a country that does its utmost to supply vital services free of charge to the entire population,” such as medical care and education.
Despite the leadership stability, serious economic problems endure, as was evident on a recent afternoon in Havana’s La Playa neighborhood, where a retired schoolteacher, Rafaela, 60, and a dozen other retirees are so poor that they run an illicit flea market on a window ledge outside a grocery.
The gray-haired set _ in their 70s, 80s and 90s _ supplement their more-or-less $8 monthly pensions by illegally selling packs of cheap cigarettes, toothpaste and other sundries for 25 to 50 cents.
Rafaela, who asked that her last name be withheld, said she and her peers cannot live off retirement pay alone. The $2 a day she makes in this black market is just enough for her survival, she said.
“Don’t tell the police,” she pleaded. “They’ll run us off.”
In his speech Thursday, Raul Castro acknowledged his compatriots’ hardship, “where there’s hardly ever a balance between accumulated needs and available resources.”
Throughout Cuba, shortages of food, clothing and medicine are common, analysts said. They said the once-dominant sugar industry is “bankrupt” on the island after several poor harvests, including this year’s 100-year low. Instead, what has helped prop up the economy is Fidel Castro’s friendship with President Hugo Chavez of oil-rich Venezuela, who provides assistance.
In his speech, Raul Castro said the country would try to remedy those financial woes by bearing down on waste and inefficiencies. The government is also studying the possibility of securing more foreign investment, although analysts say Fidel Castro would oppose opening the economy as wide as communist China has.
In Cuba, foreign investment typically occurs as a joint venture with the government, which holds half of the equity. While a 1995 legal framework allowed for foreigners to hold a majority stake, such arrangements are non-existent, according to the U.S. State Department. In a candid moment in the speech, Castro also spoke about what he called an “absurd” example of inefficiency in the country’s economy. He said the government had been trucking milk hundreds of miles “before reaching a consumer who, quite often, lived a few hundred meters away from the livestock farm.”
Many attending Thursday’s speech said they thought Raul showed he was in control of the country, though some held out hope of a full recovery for Fidel.
“Raul is taking over what Fidel has been doing,” said Gloria Amador Fanjul, 80, a retired primary school teacher. But, she said, “Fidel will recuperate to take charge again.”
Her daughter, Liliana Souto Amador, 49, also a teacher, said Cuba faces an economic “crisis in every sense,” but there haven’t been the sort of mass layoffs you would see in capitalist countries.
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