Oscar Zanetti Lecuona, Cuba: El largo siglo XX, Santo Domingo, Rep. Dominicana: Archivo General de la Nación, 2021, and Ediciones Temas, 2021. 1,030 pp. ISBN: 978-959-310-085-4
This magisterial, comprehensive, informative, and lucid history of twentieth-century Cuba, addressed explicitly to non-expert readers, starts in the late Spanish colonial period and reaches the start of Miguel Díaz-Canel’s presidency, hence comprising the country’s “long” twentieth century. The book proceeds chronologically, albeit emphasising recurring themes of structure and process, rather than personalities. It builds on the extensive historiography of Cuba for its component periods but eschews footnotes; there is a splendid bibliographic essay at the end. The text synthesises the research regarding Cuba. It incorporates various versions of the nation’s history and its specific events, but it does not pretend to sort out contending interpretations; Zanetti makes clear that his distillation rests on his “own judgment” (p. 14). He provides considerable factual information to enable readers to assess his judgments. His interpretation rises from the descriptive narrative, not from the use of theoretical constructs to shape the evidence.
The broadest overarching argument emphasises the observable continuities in this history. I call attention to four of them. One is the rise of the state as a protagonist in the unfolding of Cuba’s economic history and, within that trend, the rise of executive power over legislature, courts, and economic and social actors. This process began during the century’s second decade, advanced during Gerardo Machado’s presidency and sped up during the 1930s and the Second World War to a climax under revolutionary rule. Zanetti’s account persuasively highlights his sidelining of two ideologically driven interpretations, namely, that an untrammeled market economy had operated successfully through the 1950s and that the state’s economic capacities emerged only following Fulgencio Batista’s fall at the start of 1959. The author makes clear one key period difference, namely, before 1959 for the most part the state did not own or manage property or enterprises. Similarly, the executive’s towering over legislature, courts, and economic and civil actors was not invented following 1959; its roots are traceable to the presidencies of Mario García Menocal and Luis Zayas early in the republican period, even if the maximum asymmetry appeared under revolutionary rule.
A second continuity is international dependence. During the twentieth century, the economy overwhelmingly depended on one product (sugar cane) and one market, respectively the United States and the Soviet Union. The forms and terms of such dependency varied, but the distorting effects of such dependency on the economy, state economic policies, and the lives of workers and their families persisted. The 1901 and 1934 Reciprocity Treaties with the United States enshrined that dependency, incentivising the sugar economy and disincentivising industrialisation. The 1963–1964 agreements with the Soviet Union, in large part a Cuban initiative, relaunched the dependency on sugar cane and a predominant market, which agreements in the early 1970s reconfirmed. The very high prices for Cuban sugar that the Soviet Union paid financed Cuba’s “years of splendor” (p. 796) from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, but the seemingly limitless and widely available Soviet resources set back the urgency of economic diversification and “fostered inefficiency” (p. 835). The book ponders whether in the twenty-first century Cuba’s engagement with the international economy through the export of services (tourism, health care exports) will at last diversify the economy’s structure.
Cuba’s international dependence features a second continuing facet, namely, its vulnerability to relentless US sanctions since their first imposition in 1960. US sanctions were comprehensive and, especially during the 1960s, destructive of the economy’s capacity to function normally. The harsh impact of sanctions reemerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union, enshrined in a statute, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, better known by the names of its sponsors, the Helms–Burton Act. In the years that followed, its application was limited and intermittent until the Donald Trump presidency, which authorised the descendants of property expropriated during the early years of revolutionary rule to file in US courts to seek compensation from international companies that had invested in those properties. Thus, Zanetti has two endings to his book, one with the Obama presidency and another when the Trump presidency demonstrated that this US–Cuban history had not ended.
A third continuity is corruption, whose massive and persistent dimensions and corrosive effects systematically delegitimised the republican period under presidents chosen through competitive elections as well as under the Machado and Batista dictatorships. Under revolutionary rule, corrupt officials were punished severely, especially in the 1960s, but corruption reappeared in the 1990s and beyond. General Raúl Castro’s preference for an institutional approach to combat it led near the start of his presidency to the establishment of the Contraloría, but this plague persists.
Also evident is the recurrence of failed economic reforms, albeit for different reasons. Machado’s incipient industrialisation policy (the tariff of 1927) was undone by US policies and the Great Depression. Batista’s Plan Trienal neither lasted three years nor served as plan, though the important 1937 Sugar Coordination Act sprung from it. The industrialisation push at the start of the 1960s hit a balance of payments wall, and the Gran Zafra of 1970, the highest in the nation’s history, comprehensively unravelled the rest of the economy. The “rectification” campaign launched in 1985 left the country internationally and sugar dependent and with its operations “plagued with inefficiencies” (p. 770). The “Battle of Ideas” programme launched in 1999 sought to emphasise the sense of “the collective” and “solidarity” and combat corruption as means of redirecting economic policy; by its end, agriculture and industrial production had grown little and infrastructure maintenance and investment had been deferred (p. 934); Raúl Castro terminated it. In 2011, the sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party launched a programme (“Lineamientos”) for the economy’s “actualisation”; the 2016 seventh Party Congress reported that only 21 per cent of its policies had been implemented (p. 960).
Zanetti promises to provide readers with his own judgment. He renders several, succinctly, clearly, and generally persuasively. The late Spanish colonial period witnessed the abolition of slavery, the emergence of a new bourgeoisie, the rise of a rural middle class (“colonos”) mainly in the sugar sector, new legislation to foster finance and commerce, and the rise of a diverse civil society. The brutality of Spanish policy during the war of independence, its authoritarian polity, and its denial of rights to most Cubans brought its end (pp. 28–32).
Notwithstanding the undercutting of its sovereignty by the United States, during the first republican period there was a “notable advance in governance”, in particular the recognition of individual liberties, the reemergence of civil society, and the periodic rotation of elected officials (p. 99), all dramatically undermined by the venality of many of those government officials including the presidents.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Fulgencio Batista surrounded himself with “talented advisers”, “enforced” labour laws, showed “sensitivity” to labour demands, and fostered a reorganisation of economy and polity that culminated in the new freely-chosen Constitution of 1940 (pp. 287–89, 300–1, 311). In the 1950s, his venality and repression brought down the regime. Carlos Prío’s presidency fostered the state’s institutional development, with the creation of the Central Bank, a General Accounting Office, and for the first time in a decade the submission of budgets for Congressional approval while respecting public liberties, including the media’s rights to condemn his government’s rampant corruption (pp. 315, 318). The prosperity of the 1940s enabled the regulator state’s consolidation, facilitating the subsequent growth of the revolutionary state.
Revolutionary rule, in Zanetti’s judgment, strengthened the state, transformed economy and society, and projected Cuba into world affairs unparalleled for a country of its small size and limited resources. The concept of modernity is one of the author’s organising ideas; such modernity flowered under revolutionary rule. An educated people lived with notably extended life expectancies. Scientific development in universities and research institutes reached world-class standards. The skill of diplomats, and the talents of Fidel Castro, turned Cuba into a global actor, not just countering US policy to make the world safer for this revolution, but also advancing revolutionary objectives across the continents. The instruments of these changes were many. Fidel Castro’s role knew no parallel in the nation’s history or that of many other countries but, especially in the 1960s, “the revolutionary mystique represented a stunning resource for mobilization”. In contrast, the author provides a reason for the failure of the Battle of Ideas project forty years later when people lacked “reasons to awaken a new willingness to sacrifice” (p. 901).
Similarly, Zanetti forthrightly calls attention to egregious examples of government policy. The repression of the Independent Party of Color in 1912, the Machado government’s escalating repression in the late 1920s until his overthrow in 1933, the Batista repressions during the middle 1930s and again during his dictatorship in the 1950s, as well as the repressions of worker and peasant collective action at other times, are presented clearly and unambiguously.
The author also calls out the arbitrariness and abuse of the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), to which homosexuals and other social nonconformists were sent to suffer exhausting treatment and frequent abuse (p. 657). He deplores the government’s social-policy excesses in the late 1960s, prohibiting radio or television broadcasts of music performances in English (including the Beatles), the closure of bars and social clubs, the postponement of carnival, and the use of “coercive procedures” to compel people to work (p. 660). He sharply criticises censorship and dogmatism against many intellectuals, especially during the first half of the 1970s.
There is necessary and welcome empathy for those who suffer from distorted social and economic structures or government policy – Afrodescendants in particular, but more generally the poor, urban workers, rural areas, and those who at various points rose to challenge economic, social, and political injustices.
Regrettably, there is also an empathy deficit for those on the losing side of political history. Zanetti’s assessment of the role of the prerevolutionary communist party (Partido Socialista Popular – PSP) and its leaders is one-sided. He notes that top PSP leaders labelled the Fidel Castro-led assault on the Moncada barracks on 26 July 1953 “an adventurer’s putsch” (p. 468) and reports that the PSP remained sceptical of the revolutionary path after the shipwreck of the Fidel Castro-led Granma boat landing in December 1956. Alas, the PSP was accurate in criticising actions that were poorly planned, poorly coordinated, lacked a credible follow-up plan, and led to the death of many. Zanetti refers to the so-called microfaction, a label to describe disaffected former PSP members in 1967–1968 who criticised the Cuban government’s growing confrontation with the Soviet Union, the weakening of material incentives for labour, the abandonment of the central budget and the plan as well as the inattention to financial costs. Many of these criticisms were accurate as well.
The empathy deficit is most apparent regarding those who took up arms in the 1960s against the regime, whom the government labelled bandits, just as prerevolutionary governments had, to discredit armed opponents. Zanetti notes that some 40 guerrilla groups emerged in central Cuba roughly between 1961 and 1965 but others operated in other provinces. That is a larger number of nationwide fighters, for more years, than Fidel Castro’s forces until the last six months of Batista’s rule. The author seemingly attributes their rise to the US government’s Operation Mongoose. In contrast, writing at the time about southern Matanzas province, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, head of the agrarian reform institute (INRA), wrote about “serious mistakes” in policy implementation, aggressively expropriating peasant land with little explanation. Fidel Castro denounced the “despotism” of lower provincial officials. 2 The US Operation Mongoose was an act of state terrorism. These peasants rebelled in central Cuba because they had grievances; they were not robots manipulated from afar. They were aggrieved rural folk fighting to defend their rights, not unlike events in previous decades.
This magnificent book ends pondering Cuba’s uncertain future. The author leaves no doubt regarding his belief that the United States is guilty for the suffering it has caused and still causes in Cuba. However, explaining economic policy failures in the late 1980s as well as those during the Battle of Ideas and others more recent, Zanetti insists that foreign factors are not alone to blame nor sufficient to explain such failures (pp. 767, 960, 1001). He leaves no doubt that the large powerful state, necessary to defend the homeland, “blocks participation and undermines representativeness”, deploying its “discretional powers” under the shield of “excessive centralization” (p. 1002). Its bureaucrats stand in the way of change and its application, and demonstrate their “fear of reforms and [thus] constrain the expression of ideas” (p. 1003).
And yet, there are reasons for optimism. “Socialist Cuba’s greatest success has been its capacity to resist” US policy (p. 1000) – a noteworthy but now insufficient success. Thus, Zanetti salutes President Díaz-Canel’s emphasis on collective leadership, deployment of technologically advanced forms of communication, and frequent visits to the nation’s provinces. He embraces Raúl Castro’s official goal that Cuba be “sovereign, prosperous, and equitable” and, Zanetti would add, “democratic” (pp. 989, 999). He recalls that the socialist regime’s reason for being has been its social policy, namely, universal mass access to equality of opportunity (and, at times, equality of outcome), and the means to achieve it.
Indeed, the paradox of Cuba’s challenge in the 2020s stems in part from its substantial successes. It has become a modern complex society, with variations in opinions and experiences, hence more difficult to govern through vertical bureaucratic centralisation or the recycling of ideological tropes from decades past. It is a highly educated society, eager to learn, capable of doing so, ready to engage with the contemporary world. The creativity of its artists, and of its car mechanics, among many others, augurs well for the future. The talents of its people are its main resource. The search for modernity, the task of Cuba’s and Zanetti’s long twentieth century, has succeeded and its success poses new problems for the time ahead.