Cuba - Lonely Planet [22]
Adamant to learn from its mistakes, the Cuban government elected to diversify and mechanize after 1970, ushering in a decade of steadier growth and relative economic prosperity. As power was decentralized and a small market economy was permitted to flourish, people’s livelihoods gradually began to improve and, for the first time in decades, Cubans started to live more comfortably, due in no small part to burgeoning trade with the Soviet bloc, which increased from 65% of the total in the early 1970s to 87% in 1988.
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Cuba began its developing-world medical assistance by sending 56 doctors to Algeria. It now has ongoing medical programs with 58 developing-world countries.
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With the home front starting to reawaken from a deep slumber, Castro turned his attention toward the international stage and his vision for Cuba as leader of a developing-world coalition in global affairs. The idea was nothing new. Covertly, Cuba had been sponsoring guerrilla activity in South America and Africa since the early 1960s, as documented in various historical sources, and in 1965 Che Guevara had spent nine largely fruitless months in the Republic of Congo trying to ignite a popular uprising among a fractious band of antigovernment rebels. Quickly abandoning his plans in frustration, Guevara resurfaced a year later in Bolivia where he launched another equally fruitless campaign aimed at inspiring the Bolivian peasantry to rise up against their oppressive militaristic government. However, the Cuban model didn’t translate well to the Bolivian reality and Bolivian troops, with heavy US support, captured Guevara on October 8, 1967. Shot the next day by a nervous alcohol-plied executioner he went down in history much as Martí had done before him – a martyr.
In an interesting footnote to the story, Guevara’s remains, which lay in an unmarked grave beneath a Bolivian airfield for nearly 30 years, were rediscovered in 1997 and returned to Cuba amid much ceremony. They now rest in a mausoleum adjacent to the Plaza de la Revolución in Che’s adopted Cuban city of Santa Clara.
Another heavy and costly adventure was Cuba’s involvement in the Angolan war. Initially invited to send troops to Luanda by Angolan leader Agostinho Neto in November 1975, the Cubans quickly became bogged down in a long and complex bush war that pitted tribe against tribe and Marxist MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) government against South Africa’s reactionary apartheid regime. Famous for their tenacity in battle and oft-lauded for their bravery under fire, the Cubans slugged it out for over 10 years alongside poorly trained MPLA forces and heavy-duty Soviet weaponry. But, despite a military defeat over the apartheid regime in 1988, the price of the Angolan escapade was inexorably high – for many, too high. Barely mentioned in Cuban history books, the Angolan war conscripted over 300,000 Cubans between 1975 and 1991 and left 14,000 of them dead. And the end result was negligible. The war in Angola dragged on until 2002, killing an estimated 1.5 million Angolans and leaving the country a mess.
In 1976 a third Cuban constitution was drawn up and approved by referendum; Fidel Castro replaced Osvaldo Dorticós as president.
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The ‘wet foot, dry foot’ law (Cuban Adjustment Act) signed by Bill Clinton in 1995 means that only Cubans who make it onto US soil can apply for citizenship. Those picked up at sea are summarily sent home.
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CRISIS AS THE WALL FALLS
After almost 25 years of a top-down Soviet-style economy, it was obvious that quality was suffering and ambitious production quotas were becoming increasingly unrealistic. In 1986 Castro initiated the ‘rectification of errors’ campaign, a process that aimed to reduce malfunctioning bureaucracy and allow more local-level decision-making to wrest control. Just as the process was reaping some rewards the Eastern bloc collapsed in the dramatic events that followed the