Cuba gears up for key Communist summit

Posted on Friday, 04.15.11

Cuba gears up for key Communist summit
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press

HAVANA -- A Communist Party summit set to start this weekend on the 50th
anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion offers Cuba's aging leaders a
last hurrah to celebrate the victories of their past, and perhaps a
final chance to salvage their revolution's future.

Part pep rally, part nostalgia tour, part leadership shake-up, the Sixth
Party Congress is designed to consecrate the once-unthinkable free
market economic changes enacted by President Raul Castro as the
country's only path to prosperity.

Even the 79-year-old president acknowledges it will be the last such
gathering under the island's graying old guard - and they have a lot
riding on its success.

"The Sixth Party Congress ought to be, according to the laws of nature
... the last in which those who make up the historic generation will be
present," Castro told Cuba's parliament in December. "The time that we
have left is short, and the work that we have to do is gigantic."

Already, Castro has pushed reforms that allow islanders to get licenses
to work in 178 approved private enterprises, a limited but significant
departure for a Marxist economy where the state employs about 80 percent
of the work force, and controls virtually all means of production.

More than 180,000 Cubans have taken up the call to go into business for
themselves, Vice Labor Minister Jose Barreiro told The Associated Press
in a rare interview Thursday, putting the country on pace to shatter its
stated goal to issue a quarter of a million new licenses by the end of 2011.

"We've seen a very high demand (for the licenses)" Barreiro said. "That
tells us that there is interest and that people believe the way we are
implementing (the changes) is attractive."

Barreiro acknowledged that around 30,000 licenses had been returned, but
said that was normal given the fact that not every new business can
succeed. He would not say what new economic measures might be authorized
at the Congress, but indicated the gathering would make clear that
socialism and private enterprise are compatible.

Cubans impatient for more economic opportunities hope the summit does
more than that. In a country awash in rules and regulations, many of
them contradictory, islanders can run off a laundry list of desired changes.

Delegates to the congress will be working off and ultimately asked to
approve a revised list of guidelines for economic change that has been
circulating since last year. Many of the guidelines have reportedly been
altered to reflect the input of ordinary Cubans in thousands of meetings
held across the island, but any changes have been a closely guarded secret.

Some Cubans hope the party will expand the number of approved private
enterprises, others that leaders will give more details about promised
bank credits for fledgling businesses. Some want the state to legalize
the sale of cars and homes - mostly frozen since shortly after the 1959
revolution. Others say the key to the economic opening is the creation
of mid-sized businesses and cooperatives, which still face steep
limitations.

"We need to improve the economic system to overcome the hurdles we
face," said Osquer Palacio, a car mechanic in historic Old Havana who
said he struggles to get by on a salary of less than $20 a month,
despite Cuba's system of deep subsidies for housing, health care and
education. "We need to make things better for the population so that we
can live off the wages we earn."

Other Cubans say they are fed up with government promises and done
hoping for change from Cuba's longtime leaders.

"The Congress? I don't expect anything to come of that," said Juana
Rojas, a 66-year-old retiree in the leafy Miramar section of Havana.
"These are the same dogs with different collars. This has been going on
for 50 years and I'm tired of it."

In addition to the economic changes, the congress also has the task of
electing a new party leadership, including someone to replace
84-year-old Fidel Castro as first secretary. The revolutionary icon
revealed in March that he effectively stepped down from the party after
he fell ill in 2006, and has never returned - despite the fact the
Communist Party's Website continues to list him as leader.

Raul Castro is widely expected to move up to the top party spot, but
there is speculation the brothers could pick a fresh face to take Raul's
old job as second secretary. If they do, it could signal their preferred
choice of an eventual successor.

The four-day congress kicks off Saturday with an enormous military
parade through Revolution Plaza featuring tanks, helicopters, fighter
planes, and even the famous yacht Granma, which carried Fidel and Raul
Castro back from exile to launch their guerrilla war against Fulgencio
Batista.

Saturday also marks the date in 1961 when Fidel Castro announced in
Havana that the revolution would from that day forward be socialist in
nature. Fidel's speech came at a funeral for seven Cubans killed a day
earlier in a U.S.-backed air campaign to soften up targets ahead of the
Bay of Pigs invasion, which began on April 17, 1961.

After the parade, a thousand party delegates will ensconce themselves
inside a Havana convention center to hear a speech by Raul Castro, start
discussions on the revised economic guidelines, and elect new party
leaders, all of which is expected to be announced when the congress
closes on Tuesday.

While delegates don't have the power to sign the new economic measures
into law, their recommendations will quickly be acted on by parliament
under the direction of the Council of State, Cuba's supreme governing body.

Historically, party congresses were meant to occur every five years -
but they have often been delayed. The current meeting is the first to be
held since 1997.

Past meetings have taken place at times of deep crisis for Cuba, like
the fall of the Soviet Union that ushered in a period of deep economic
hardship on the island. But observers say this congress is even more
crucial, with an octogenarian leadership racing against Father Time to
face down an existential economic threat.

"What is happening in Cuba is a great crusade of rectifying errors,
suppressing absurd prohibitions and eradicating flawed ideas," wrote
Angel Guerra Cabrera, a political analyst based in Mexico, in an opinion
piece that was surprisingly republished in Cuban state-media earlier
this year. "Essentially, the modernization of the economic model has
become a question of life and death."

Associated Press reporters Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia
contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/15/v-fullstory/2168519/cuba-gears-up-for-key-communist.html