The Militarization of Raul

February 21, 2011

A great analysis of Raul Castro's three years as Cuba's dictator du jour:

Raúl, three years on

by Ernesto Hernandez Busto

This coming February 24 will mark three years since Raul Castro's election by the deputies of the Popular Power National Assembly as Cuba's President of the Council of State. He succeeded his brother Fidel who had resigned days earlier in an open letter. Beyond any doubts we have about the legitimacy of this process of installation, he has now governed for three years and it is worthwhile to judge those years looking at what happened, and not just on their congenital anomaly.

It has not been a period of immobility, at least among the ruling clique. In these three years officials dismissed or removed for specific reasons, include, at least: Five vice presidents (Carlos Lage, Otto Rivero, Jorge Luis Sierra, Pedro Miret and Osmany Cienfuegos), as well as the Ministers of Education, Foreign Affairs, Sugar, Transportation, Basic Industry, Light Industry, Economy, Construction, Water Resources, Health, and Telecommunications, along with the president of the Institute of Civil Aviation and the Attorney General.

We have no knowledge of similar movements within the Armed Forces, but we do know that many of the new ministers came from there, so one might deduce a certain "militarization" of the structure of power, though it involves an Army that for some years has undertaken the hardly orthodox, but nevertheless agreeable, task of obtaining the greatest return on capital. In the short term, it is a guarantee of control; in the long term it suggests an augmentation of the role of that institution, now becoming more and more intricately intertwined with the government and the economy of the nation.