Castro Turns to Youth to Save Revolution

Castro Mobilizes University Students for 'Revolution Within the Revolution'

By MARC FRANK
Dec. 12, 2005 — - At midnight on Oct. 14, hundreds of former high school dropouts trained as social workers in recent years were summoned to Havana's convention center. They received a crash course in pumping gas and filling out forms with such data as customer license plates, amount, and type of fuel purchased, in cash or credit. Cuban President Fidel Castro walked in at 3 a.m. to tell the young people they were undertaking a crucial mission for the country. At 4 a.m., they boarded buses, and by 5 a.m. had taken control of every gas station in the capital.

It was the opening shot in what promised to be an important chapter in the Caribbean island's turbulent 47 years of revolution.

Castro now says that more than half the gas pumped in the country is being stolen -- valued at $100,000 per day -- and that the entire fuel distribution system is under the control of his "troop" of social workers, just the first skirmish, he warns, in a do-or-die battle against corruption and illegalities in the state-dominated economy.

"Only we can lose the revolution," Castro recently told university students, stating he would mobilize tens of thousands of them to "confront with masses" corruption and certain "bad habits," like pilfering and purchasing stolen goods.

"We have been signing pledges to go into battle wherever Fidel orders and for whatever time is necessary," said Havana University student Maria Perez.

"A revolution within the revolution," the state-run media recently called the campaign.


An Upside-Down Pyramid
When the Soviet Union collapsed, not only did Communist Cuba's economy fall apart, but so did its relatively egalitarian social structure. The bankrupt government established a dual peso/dollar economy and special dollar stores where goods and services unavailable in pesos were sold at a 240 percent markup.

Family remittances, tourists and capitalist investment were all of a sudden welcomed by the traditionally hermetic island and some small private initiative was allowed. Castro's government avoided collapse and restructured its international relations and trade without taking the reforms further.

"The result is what we call the upside-down pyramid. Hotel workers' daily dollar tips work out to more than a brain surgeon's monthly peso wages. Selling snacks from home garners far more than teaching," said economist Omar Everleny.

"When relatives abroad send a Cuban $100 a month there is little reason to work for the equivalent of $10 to $15 as housing, health and education are free and some food and utilities heavily subsidized," another Cuban economist said, asking that his name not be used.

Some Cubans without dollars demand gifts in exchange for state services and licenses they control or steal to make ends meet and purchase gas, cleaning materials, clothing and other consumer goods available only for dollars or on the black market.

"Most Cubans merely struggle to survive and enjoy a few pleasantries people in developed countries take for granted. A few become addicted to easy money and corrupt," the economist said.


Better Days Ahead
Cuba is relatively flush with cash these days thanks to Chinese credits and generously financed Venezuelan oil, as well as billion-dollar payments for medical and other services it provides to the South American country.

Castro has moved quickly to reassert control over the economy and declared the post-Soviet crisis over.

Now Cuba's president has discovered a great deal of the state's new wealth is being squandered due to the worsening of such classic socialist weaknesses as a lack of work incentives, corruption, excessive subsidies, generalized pilfering, a booming black market, and the illegal odd jobs that feed off it.

Castro isn't blinking, declaring: "It would be a terrible mistake to believe capitalist methods can resolve socialism's problems."

The still utopian-speaking revolutionary, at 79, has promised it won't be long before Cubans can once more earn an honest living as the state raises wages, imports cheap Chinese consumer goods, and eliminates across-the-board subsidies and what he brands as a "new rich class" that needs to be repressed if involved in wrongdoing and more heavily regulated and taxed if not.

Attacks on individual initiative and the better-off within anticorruption campaigns are nothing new in Cuba, but the mobilization of university-aged youth to do the job is. That's clearly scared the thousands of bureaucrats who administer and divert the state's resources.


Mission Impossible
Ordinary Cubans, who have come to depend on the black market, are skeptical and torn.

Some fear the campaign will hurt their immediate interests by eliminating subsidies, closing down vital sources of questionable income, and more heavily taxing private initiative and dollars thus driving up prices.

"Since they clamped down on the gas and other illegal activity, there are no more private taxis, and food prices have gone up," said Rose, a retired aviation worker.

"Fidel may be right, but he should wait until he can provide decent public transportation and more food," she said.

At the same time, other Cubans hope that Castro's pledge to do away with what he calls "chaos" by setting the pyramid right-side-up again is not the mission impossible it appears to be, and that their lives will become a little bit better in the near future.

"We have to straighten this situation out now so that people who work or get a pension can live decently," said Communist party militant Eduardo Machin.


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