Between the years 1933 and 1958, Fulgencio Batista’s oppressive oligarchic regime policies created the room for many economic and social tensions to form amongst the cuban population. By 1959, however, a revolution calling on the immediate need for reform soas to better the lives of the country’s people was underway, and would come to reconfigure not only the cuban government and domestic programs, but cuban culture, too. This revolution and the rise of the Castro regime introduced the country to classic Marxist ideologies in a manner that would prove to severely complicate the future of Cuba’s international relationships, as well as its prosperity, for more than 40 years and well into the 21st century. Though the leaders of The Revolution initiated the movement – and, therefore, the dictatorship – with the greatest interests of national development in mind, the Castro regime’s controversial policies and ideologies have ultimately exacerbated tensions in cuban society and constructed a culture that has since had profound influence on the country’s economic and political ability to enter the 21st-century capitalist world market.
Spanning from 1959-1965, the Cuban Revolution occurred during a period of high political tension between several major world figures including the United States and the Soviet Union. Throughout its history, the United States has typically assumed a self-assigned international role as the “protector of true democracy.” As the revolution took place during the height of the Cold war, Cuba’s adoption of communist policy and ideology was extremely threatening to Washington’s capitalist agenda. This led to a type of race between the United States and the communist Soviet Union to assert their place in Cuban society and government. However, because Cuba had begun to participate in major economic and social reform that worked hand-in-hand with the SU’s ideologies, The Union was quick to offer its resources to developing-Cuba as a means of strengthening relations with potential Third-World, communist allies. This both heightened Cuba’s interest and ability to pursue communist-style reform, as well as exacerbated US-Cuba tensions.
On New Year’s Eve of 1958, after resisting almost five years worth of efforts to remove him from a seat of power, Batista called his aides together, designated a successor president, and fled with his relatives to the Dominican Republic, thus creating the room necessary for Castro to enter Havana and begin revolutionary action (Skidmore, Smith, and Green 123). As a result, on January 1st, 1959, with other revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara by his side, the public revered Castro as a genuine national hero. This was one of his most effective characteristics; his ability to present himself as the savior of the nation. He was young, charismatic, and, most importantly, he had a vision for not only the country, but a value and a role for every person in it. In accordance with this dream and his willingness to provide for the people, Castro also placed great emphasis on the unity that would be required of the people in order to achieve this dream.
In March of 1965, Guevara wrote a letter now titled: Socialism and Man in Cuba. The main points of the letter address the then-current state of socialism in Cuba, the revolutionaries’ hopes for the future, and also offers several justifications as to why cuban socialism is exceptional from other socialist countries. Guevara notes that “a common argument from…capitalist spokespeople, in the ideological struggle against socialism, is that [it]…is characterized by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state.” He counters this argument by explaining Fidel’s mannerisms and charisma, and states that, rather than abolishing the idea of the individual, Castro had “his own special way of fusing himself with the people.” Though Guevara frames this as a “fusion” between the masses and Castro, simply to say this disregards the fact that Castro himself is an individual. In this sense, Castro may not have called directly for the abolition of the individual, rather as a direct result of the regime’s policies and ideologies the individuality of the masses was essentially eradicated and reconstructed to adhere to one individual: Castro himself. He was able to accomplish this through his emphasis on nationhood; a nationhood that, similarly to the masses, was shaped almost entirely by Castro’s own vision and sense-of-self. In addition to the popularity of his vision, Castro was now in the highest position of power to bring his (and therefore, the public’s) dream to life, which furthered his popularity as a leader among the cuban people. While Castro did appeal to the masses and maintained fairly high levels of support throughout the dictatorship, ultimately his regime did abolish the individual, not only through molding the mentality of the public, but also in redefining and, particularly, in further nationalizing cuban culture.
From initial colonization up until The Revolution, the cuban economy consistently revolved around its sugar exports, of which the large majority were sold to the US; a dependence that revolutionaries found to be extremely humiliating. Ergo, after rising to power, Castro immediately took to a series of reform initiatives to combat this reality. Perhaps “his most radical measure to date” was the Agrarian Reform Law of May 17, 1959, which eliminated the giant estates and foreigners’ ability to own agricultural properties, expropriated farmlands over 1000 acres, and granted small private holders and cooperatives all expropriated lands (Skidmore, Smith, and Green 124). Though it was enacted with the intention of promoting national self-sufficiency, the result of nationalizing the agriculture industry in this way instead became the foundation of a new extreme dependency on the Soviet Union and other Eastern-bloc states. In February of 1960, the Soviets went so far as to invest $100 million in credit for the expansion of cuban technologies and practices, as well as promising to buy 4 million tons of sugar every year for the following four, which only increased Cuba’s incentive to industrialize and expand both the economy and the rest of the state (Skidmore, Smith, and Green 125). In addition to the dependence on the Soviet bloc, the Castro regime also promoted moral reward (decorations, public praise, etc.) in place of market or material incentives for laborers. This, along with the lack of opportunities to attain a higher income or position of power in a work setting, and the nation-wide concentration on the sugar industry essentially devalued entrepreneurial work ethic and culture among Cubans (Pickel). With nothing to aspire to, workers instead fell into a new work culture that promoted unquestioned faith in the government and labor force, which was effective in further abolishing the individual for the sake of Castro’s agenda.
As well as creating a shift in work culture, the regime has had heavy influence on cuban arts and popular culture. At a surface level, the arts and music in Cuba today may appear to reflect a diverse people. However due to the heavy censorship of all art forms under the regime, Castro was able to construct an entire national culture (acceptable by only his own standards) that, in reality, reflects most evidently the homogeneity brought on by his ideologies and his enforcement of conformity to the state. One of the only reasons he was able to do this was because of the large amount of support he maintained from the Afro-Cuban community. Several of Castro’s main concerns upon gaining power tailored to the injustices experienced by the poor, including blacks and rural-area residents. Considering also the fact that most adults in Cuba are wage-earning workers, though there may be varying levels of income, wealth, and power in Cuba, they “do not constitute classes with structurally distinct relationships to modes of production” (Manuel). This, combined with the fact that all Cubans are guaranteed basic levels of nutrition, education, housing, and medical care, means that many of the adversities reflected in Western popular culture are relatively absent from cuban art forms following 1959. This not only restricted cuban art from reflecting individual or class-level adversity, but further abolished the idea of the individual by attempting to replacing ancestral and personal culture with an artificially constructed national narrative.
In the wake of The Revolution and even into the 21st century, Cuba’s domestic safety programs have proved to significantly better the lives of Cuban people, particularly the education initiatives. Because of these initiatives (again implemented with poor people, specifically Afro-Cubans in mind), within a year of their implementation illiteracy rates were cut in half, and have continued to decline in subsequent years into the present, where illiteracy has now “essentially disappeared” altogether (Skidmore, Smith, and Green 127). However, this is not without consequence to the development of cuban culture. Due to Cuba’s dependence on the Soviet bloc for the majority of raw and consumer goods, as well as shared ideologies between Cuba and bloc states, academic work has been consistently censored in the same manner as music and art soas not to contradict the Castro regime or the legitimacy of Communism. This is particularly problematic as it has limited the content of work available to cuban students in any level of education to a specific frame and, in essence, provided another opportunity for Castro to abolish the individual: through molding the common line of thought in integral educational institutions. At the beginning of The Revolution, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Cuba were quick to form a relationship, as both needed support for a claim to political legitimacy, the relationship would strengthen the growing Soviet bloc, as well as aid the political and economic efforts of both countries (Holtz). This presented a route for migration that had previously been impossible, however this also led to the creation of a “transnational academic elite” that was not only influenced by political, economic, and institutional constraints, but also proved to influence such institutions in return thereafter (Holtz). This not only limited the works available to students and/or academics and enforced a common line of thought, but also inhibited critical analysis of cuban government and structure, therefore also inhibiting Castro’s own ability to cultivate comprehensive initiatives, as opposed to the many failed reform acts which started during The Revolution.
Throughout its duration, it has been estimated that Cuba holds or has held between 100 and 1000 political prisoners (Skidmore, Smith, and Green).