Cuba – before and after the revolution


PETER TAAFFE reviews The Mafia in Havana by Enriqe Cerules, which
details the gangster capitalism of the era of the dictator Fulgencio
Batista before the 1959 revolution, and Fidel Castro by Volker Skierka,
an analysis of the revolution itself and the future for the regime.

The speculation over Cuba’s future following the recent illness of
Fidel Castro makes these two compelling books very topical. One deals
with gangster-ridden Cuba before the revolution of 1959 but is a warning
as to what may return if, after Castro, the gains of the revolution are
rolled back. Skierka’s book is a penetrating analysis of the revolution,
of the role of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, with its later chapters
particularly relevant as to the future of Cuba.

It is well known that Cuba, particularly the capital Havana, had been
virtually franchised out to the US Mafia prior to 1959. Gangsters such
as Meyer Lansky and the ‘capo of capos’, the founder of the US Mafia,
Lucky Luciano, ruled. But very few have detailed the incredible extent
to which the grip of the Mafia ruled Cuba, with the benediction of the
very summits of US imperialism and the protection of the Cuban dictator
Batista.

Mafia rule

So powerful was the influence of Meyer Lansky that on one occasion,
when he was going into a Havana hotel to meet another Mafia boss, "he
crossed with Santiaguito Rey Pernas, then minister of the interior.
Lansky did not even stop. He continued advancing, without greeting the
minister, leaving Santiaguito with his hand extended"! [Cirules, p114]
Another key Mafia figure, Amleto, even occupied a "Liberal Party seat in
the house of representatives" under Batista [p115].

Even the ‘Democratic’ US President Franklin Roosevelt, when he
intervened in the 1944 Cuban elections, did not go through the accepted
agencies of the US, the ambassadors, etc, but "entrusted the matter to
the ‘financier’ Meyer Lansky, because the Mafia’s relationship with
Batista was so close" [p25]. In 1952, according to the documents
produced by the author, Roosevelt’s son arrived days before Batista’s
coup, "interested in buying the second largest radio station in the
country… It is known that he had several private meetings with
Batista." [p87]

The author provides astonishing and fascinating detail, revealing the
web of control of the country linking the Mafia to the government of the
US and its secret service agencies, then under the domination of the
infamous Dulles brothers: "US dominance of Cuba was absolute by 1950-52
and the craftsmen of the coup d’Žtat of March 10, 1952, belonged to the
same forces that had fashioned the imperialist domination: the alliance
of US financial-Mafia-intelligence groups." [p75]

The country was a "giant corporation" under the control of these
foreign imperialist interests. Massive gambling casinos, the base for
the import into the US of drugs like heroin and cocaine, alongside of a
minimum of 100,000 prostitutes, were the consequences of this. But it
was the Cuban masses who picked up the bill: poverty, endemic
unemployment, starvation wages and a ruthless dictatorship that did not
hesitate to eliminate workers’ leaders and even capitalist politicians
who stood against Batista.

If you thought that the Cuban scenes in Mario Puzo’s film, The
Godfather Part 2, were fiction, forget it. Cirules recounts the famous
scene where Mafiosi representatives sat with representatives of the
financial groups at the same table as Batista: "A famous golden
telephone is presented to General Batista by an ITT representative, and
passed slowly around the table, much to the envy and admiration of
everyone present… Amazingly, it was a true story."

Revolution

Little wonder that this gangster state, decorated by Mafia-financed
entertainers like Frank Sinatra and George Raft (who managed a hotel in
Havana), would fight tenaciously to preserve this. As the revolution
inexorably marched on, under Castro and Guevara, in 1957 and 1958 the
Mafia became so desperate, they even ludicrously proposed the
Australian-born film star Errol Flynn as a rallying figure against
Castro. Mafia bosses, most notably Meyer Lansky, lost a colossal $100
million in hotels, clubs, casinos, brothels and other such
establishments – a good tenth of the value of US assets taken over by
Fidel Castro and the Cuban state after 1959.

But this is not just a historical question. Cuba could face the
grotesque possibility that if the gains of the revolution were ended,
particularly the planned economy, "the real beneficiaries would include
the offspring of those Mafiosi who came into their possessions through
violence and repression, corruption, theft, tax evasion, and the filing
of dubious ownership claims". This is the conclusion of Volker Skierka
[p314] in his book, Fidel Castro.

Skierka makes a powerful case that it was the Mafia, the CIA and the
frenzied Cuban exiles who were behind the assassination of US President
John Kennedy because he was considering lifting the embargo on Cuba in
exchange for Castro’s withdrawal of support for guerrilla operations in
Latin America!

Bureaucracy

What is in store for the Cuban people is not a question of ‘theory’.
We have the living example of the return of the capitalist system in
Russia and Eastern Europe, a brutal form of ‘gangster capitalism’ with
Mafia gangs that make Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano look like
down-at-heel pickpockets. Skierka’s book gives a balanced account of the
achievements of the Cuban revolution – particularly in health,
education, third world aid, etc. – but points up the colossal
difficulties of maintaining the present system against the background of
what Fidel Castro himself called an "ocean of capitalism".

We have quoted extensively from Skierka in an analytical article in
the current issue of Socialism Today and space does not allow us to give
much detail from this important work. But Skierka and authors like John
Lee Anderson, enormously sympathetic to Cuba, recognise the achievements
of Cuba, particularly in the 1990s, but warn about the country’s future.
It was able to hold out against the pressures of world capitalism, but
big dangers now loom. Skierka’s account in particular shows conclusively
that the main elements of a planned economy remain in Cuba but real
power is exercised by a bureaucratic layer in the state, in the
Communist Party and in society in general.

The dollarisation of the economy in the 1990s created a ‘two-tier’
society, with those in the private sector benefiting through the
payments in dollars, while doctors and teachers – some of the firmest
supporters of the revolution and the present regime – are being paid in
pesos and have therefore suffered economically. This has inevitably
generated graft and corruption, which Fidel Castro, by recently
mobilising a section of young people, has attempted to combat.

The question is posed: how could this corruption, which Castro
himself has revealed is on a large scale, develop where in theory, power
is invested in the hands of the masses? Skierka’s book and a recent
article by Anderson show that effective power is wielded by the top and
the centre around the figure of Fidel Castro himself. Anderson
commented: "Most [Cubans] don’t believe that the anti-corruption
campaign would work because the many ruses that Cubans have devised for
their survival were too deeply embedded."

Workers’ democracy

The only way of guaranteeing the gains of the Cuban revolution is
through the programme of workers’ democracy. Skierka, in a very
important part of his book, deals with the relationship between Fidel
Castro and Che Guevara just before the latter left Cuba for the Congo in
1965. Guevara had upset the Russian bureaucracy in a speech in Algiers.
According to Skierka – who has had access to hitherto secret files from
the former Stalinist regime in East Germany – Castro was "especially
upset that Guevara should have raised such serious points in a faraway
place like Algiers. Raœl [Castro] suspected Guevara of Trotskyism,
because of his attachment to the concept of world revolution". [Skierka,
p171.]

Guevara had a copy of one of Trotsky’s books in his knapsack when he
was brutally murdered in Bolivia in 1967. Trotsky’s ideas are now
circulating in Cuba. It is in the ideas of Trotsky on the need for a
programme of workers’ democracy to replace bureaucratic control that the
salvation of the Cuban revolution lies. A democratic and socialist Cuba
would electrify the Latin American continent and the working class and
poor peasants everywhere.

These two books are essential reading to understand Cuba in the past
but also the different possibilities opening up for the Cuban masses in
the next period. It is our fervent hope, alongside working-class people
everywhere, that the gains of the Cuban revolution will be preserved on
the road of workers’ democracy.