Caribbean & Central America - 14 December 2004

Seven of the 75 political dissidents rounded up by Fidel Castro's government in June 2003 were released in late November. A fortnight later, on 13 December, Cuba launched 'Bastión 2004', a week of military exercises widely trumpeted as the biggest for over a decade. The first looks like a gesture to the EU; the second is, according to the Cuban media, a warning to US President George Bush not to get any ideas in his second term. Yet both the release of the dissidents and the military posturing deserve more than surface readings. 

The EU and the dissidents
The decision by the Fidel Castro's government to release the seven dissidents was all about timing. Havana had monitored the courtship of Madrid ever since the new left-of-centre government of Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero came to power in April 2004. Relations between Cuba and Spain hit a nadir during the term of Zapatero's predecessor, José Marí­a Aznar, described by Castro as 'a little Fuhrer'. Under Zapatero, Spain, which has by far the greatest trade and cultural links with Cuba in Europe, has been trying to change the EU policy, which was personally developed by Aznar in the wake of the dissident clampdown. 

Any serious rapprochement between Cuba and the EU will take more than the release of a handful of dissidents. Spain will have a hard enough time persuading Germany and the Netherlands to change the EU's foreign policy without a significant improvement in human rights in Cuba but the gulf between Madrid and Riga, for instance, is far greater: many of the Eastern European states are strongly opposed to forging closer ties with a country bearing more than a passing resemblance to their own states before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. 

It is axiomatic that agreeing to a joint EU foreign policy stance will not be easy. Aside from the opposition of several member states to opening up dialogue with Havana, Cuba's Oswaldo Payá, winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 2003, wrote to the EU telling them that a change in policy towards Cuba is not in Cuba's best long-term interests. However, under Spanish pressure, EU foreign ministers agreed in November to instruct EU ambassadors in Havana to produce a report with 'new measures' to establish political dialogue with Cuba. This report will be considered by EU foreign ministers on 14 December. Cuba's decision to renew official contact with Spain on 25 November and then, subsequently, to release the dissidents, should be seen in the light of this meeting. 

There are, however, other considerations. Several of the men released from prison had suffered from medical problems. The Cuban government was probably also wary of the adverse publicity that would have been excited by the possible deaths of the dissidents in prison. It is also significant that the Castro government should make a conciliatory gesture to the EU just before a major demonstration of military strength, calculated to show the regime can be tough. 

Military exercises
'Bastión 2004', which runs from 13-19 December, will involve 100,000 members of all branches of the armed forces and reservists. Currently Cuba's press is full of photos of Cuban soldiers, armed and camouflaged and the defence minister, Raúl Castro, is omnipresent. He is talking about a 'war of the entire population'. At a press conference on 7 December, he said, 'The Americans should watch closely, so that they do not commit the mistakes they made in Vietnam and are now making in Iraq, where they are bogged down.' Raúl explained that the purpose of the exercises was so that the US could 'observe well and not underestimate our people who are more united and therefore much stronger than the Iraqis. That is the reason'. Quite apart from the cost of the exercises, Cuba is desperately short of fuel: there have been power cuts in Havana since August 2004 when the government introduced a host of new measures to curb electricity demand, the suspicion being that it has been badly affected by the surge in oil prices. 

Domestic significance
The military exercises, ostensibly a warning to the US, have a much deeper domestic significance. Beneath Raúl's rhetoric lies a message from the Castro government: Fidel is intent on concentrating more power in the hands of the military and centralising power. The military exercises present a big propaganda opportunity for Raúl. With speculation growing that Fidel's health is in decline after he slipped and broke a knee and fractured an arm on 7 October, the media outside Cuba is discussing possible successors. Raúl has, officially at least, always been his brother's chosen successor. However, relations between the two were looking strained until a number of hardline measures implemented by the Bush administration in 2004 forced Castro to tighten his grip on the economy and turn once again to some of the old revolutionary warhorses at the expense of the new generation of leaders. 

Cuba's two most significant industries, tourism and sugar, are under military control. The lucrative tourism industry, formerly run by the 53-old vice-president and economic supremo, Carlos Lage, (the man who oversaw Cuba's economic opening and trade diversification after the collapse of the Soviet Union) was brought under Raúl's remit in February 2004 when Fidel appointed a military colonel, Manuel Marrero Cruz, as tourism minister.

North Korea
The military exercises follow fast on the heels of a visit to Cuba by a top-flight military delegation from North Korea that went almost unreported in the international press and did not create (on the surface at least) a ripple of concern in Washington. Both Cuba and North Korea are on the US State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism. Under the Bush administration, North Korea was even placed in the US's 'Axis of Evil'. In view of this, and Cuba's uncomfortable proximity to the US, it is difficult to understand just why the State Department chose to make no comment about the five-day visit (starting on 23 November) from Kim Yong Chun, North Korea's chief of the General Staff, and his military retinue unless the US somehow knew about it in advance or knew exactly what was on the agenda.

The Cuban media simply reported that Kim Yong Chun was shown around Cuba's military installations by his Cuban counterpart Alvaro López Miera.

The visit of the North Koreans came amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in Cuba. The president of China, Hu Jintao, the president of Vietnam, Tranc Duc Luong, and the prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, all stopped by in late November. Abdullah arrived in Cuba on 24 November to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Malaysia and Cuba. Raúl Castro entertained Tranc Duc Luong on 24 November, hours after Hu, and a 200-strong Chinese business delegation, left.

Hu's visit was the culmination of a two-week tour of Latin America. Although China has shipped military goods to Cuba and is working with Cuba's communist government on intelligence and military issues, all the talk (that the press picked up, at least) was of nickel. China agreed to import 4,400 tonnes of nickel annually from Cuba. It also promised a US$500m investment in a new nickel plant in Moa, in the eastern region of Holguí­n. Fidel even managed to stand to greet Hu. It was the first time he had been seen to rise from his wheelchair since his fall on 7 November. Hu made one political statement: he praised Fidel, 'under whose leadership the Cuban people has been able to resist enormous pressures'.