Caribbean & Central America - March 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

The ruling Cuban Communist Party (PCC) has elected 1,000 delegates for the upcoming sixth party congress on 16-19 April, the first since 1997, which will exclusively debate economic and social policy guidelines. The April congress coincides with the 50th anniversary of the failed US-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Politics will also be on the agenda, after the pending elections for the PCC's central committee have been brought forward to April (from the end of the year). The 150-member central committee chooses both the PCC's politburo and party's executive secretariat. Fidel Castro, still formally the PCC leader (first secretary general), is expected to formally step down, handing over the reins to his brother and successor as president, Raúl Castro (currently PCC second secretary).

The party elections will be closely watched for signs of who might succeed the Castros and the ruling gerontocracy at the top of the 52-year old Revolution. Currently, the 19-member politburo is dominated by septuagenarians. Key faces include 'históricos' like Ramiro Valdéz Menendez and Ulisales Rosales del Toro, along with José Ramon Machado Ventura (first vice president on the council of state) and Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada. Key military men include Generals Ramón Espinosa Martí­n, Alvaro López Miera and Abelardo Colomé Ibarra (second vice president on the council of state).

Since formally taking over the presidency in February 2008 Raúl has surrounded himself with what one commentator has dubbed “the Putin generation", a trusted military elite (or a potential dynasty), drawn from veteran trusted comrades in arms and younger cadre of loyal officials drawn from Raúl's inner circle and his family (including his son Alejandro), which “fully controls the destiny of the economy and national finances". Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces elected 65 delegates to represent the military in April's congress, including the politburo generals López Miera and Espinosa Martí­n.

The plans to create a small private sector are moving ahead. According to the most recent labour ministry figures, about 75,000 Cubans had signed up for private sector operating licenses as of early January 2011. While the streets of Havana are gradually filling up with new market sellers and small traders, on 28 February President Castro confirmed delays in the planned layoffs of half a million state workers. In a council of ministers' meeting, President Castro stated that “a task of this magnitude" needed to be undertaken carefully and could not be determined by “inflexible deadlines". In September 2010, Castro had set 1 April 2011 as the deadline for the lay-offs, as part of an unprecedented shake-up of the moribund economy. The Miami press has run several stories claiming no sign of any of the mass layoffs, apparently in the face of steep resistance by state company bureaucrats and administrators. President Castro did not set a new deadline for the layoffs but that “no-one will be left behind". The government, rather ambitiously, seems to think that the nascent private sector will be able absorb the thousands of laid off state workers.

Oscar Biscet calls on Castros to go
On 14 March in a Skype interview with the Miami press, the recently released Cuban political dissident, Oscar Elí­as Biscet, called on the Castro brothers to step aside, comparing their “totalitarian dictatorship" to Stalin and Hitler. Biscet, 49, one of the most high profile political dissidents, was released on 11 March as part of the ongoing process negotiated by the local Roman Catholic Church with the interior ministry. Unlike 40 of his fellow dissidents from the so-called group of 75 (rounded up in the 'Black Spring' of 2003 in a crackdown by Fidel Castro), he has refused to travel to Spain. Some 94 freed dissidents have gone to Spain since June 2010.

Biscet, a doctor and the president and founding member of the Lawton Foundation for human rights, was serving a 25 year jail sentence for acts against the Cuban state. He has been in jail almost continuously since 1999. He lamented the worsening conditions on the island and warned that the opposition movement is growing across the country, reaching even the ranks of the ruling Communist Party. He praised the role of the Catholic Church, saying that it should also play a mediatory role in any future transition government, "in order to avoid bloodshed". ““We are still living in conditions of slavery_but the system's days are numbered", he warned.

• Cuba sentences US 'spy'

On 12 March a Cuban court sentenced a US national, Alan Gross, to 15 years in jail for subversion and acts against the Cuban state. According to a statement relayed on state media, the court found that Gross took part “in a subversive project of the US government that aimed to destroy the Revolution through the use of communications systems out of the control of authorities." It also noted that Gross, detained in Havana in December 2009, had “recognized having been used and manipulated" by his company (Development Alternatives, Inc) as well as by USAID and the State Department.
Gross's lawyer, Peter J. Kahn, said that Gross may appeal the ruling before the Supreme People's Tribunal, the highest court in Cuba. While the lengthy sentence prompted US conservative critics, led by the Miami Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio, to conclude that the Castro government has no real interest in better relations with the US, other observers made the point that the judicial process had to conclude before a political solution might be 'arranged'. There is also some expectation that having made its point about US interference in sovereign affairs, the Havana government might decide to release Gross on humanitarian grounds, given that the political costs of continuing to hold him in Cuba would be fairly high (see sidebar).

• Petrobras ends Cuba exploration

On 10 March Marco Aurelio Garcí­a, special adviser on foreign affairs to the Brazilian presidency, announced that Brazil's state oil company Petrobras was ending its Cuban exploration efforts. Garcí­a said that Petrobras would continue with its proposed lubricants company in Cuba, but the poor results from its exploration acreage off the north coast, acquired in 2008, did not justify further investment. He added that Brazil would continue with its US$800m plans to expand the Cuban port of Mariel, due for completion by 2014. Garcí­a was concluding a three-day trip to Cuba, which included a meeting on 7 March with President Raúl Castro.

• US relations

The US State Department administration has repeatedly warned that further efforts to improve bilateral relations would hinge on the release of Gross. Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio called on the Barack Obama administration to “get tough" with Cuba. He and others argue that the recent relaxations on US travel and remittances to Cuba only lines the pockets of the Cuban government with much-needed dollars. Yet the White House continues to quietly promote what it calls 'people-to-people' ties with Cuba - in early March it approved travel to Cuba from nine additional US airports. Some 150,000 Cuban-Americans now visit Cuba a couple of times a year, and family remittances to Cuba are a key economic prop.