Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–10, Documents on American Republics, 1969–1972

207. National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 85–69¹ ²

Washington, September 2, 1969

(Supersedes SNIE 85–68)

Cuba, Castro, and the Course of the Revolution

CONCLUSIONS

A. The Castro regime is clearly in control of Cuba. Fidel Castro retains much of his charismatic appeal, and the military and security forces remain loyal to him. Even though there is evidence that popular dissatisfaction is on the rise, we know of no serious organized resistance to the regime.

B. Cuba’s major economic goal over the past few years has been to increase sugar production to 10 million tons annually, beginning with the 1970 harvest. Radical preparations have been undertaken to accomplish this purpose, but we doubt that more than 7 to 8 million tons can be produced.

C. Castro would probably regard a production of less than seven million tons as a failure, but we are uncertain of what his response would be. Faced with a discouraged populace and bureaucracy, he might decide the time had come to shift toward more moderate goals and methods and to increase the use of material incentives. Or he might respond by dealing out punishment and resorting to greater authoritarianism. This latter course would further depress living conditions, which are already quite drab and cheerless.

D. A comparative success—eight million tons or better—would improve morale but might not help the consumer very much. A large crop would tend to depress world sugar prices, and Castro might not wish to use scarce foreign exchange for consumer goods; in any case the financial benefits of increased production are already heavily mortgaged to Cuba’s creditors. The largest of these is the USSR, and much depends on how helpful the Soviets choose to be.

E. Cuban-Soviet relations have improved since Castro supported Soviet action against the Czechs a year ago. There will probably be continuing tensions in their relationship, however. Castro would like continued Soviet economic help but not Soviet tutelage; the Soviets would like ideological and political conformity, but would also like to reduce Cuban economic dependence on them.

F. Castro appears to be reassessing his role in the hemisphere and his relations with the US. He has at least temporarily de-emphasized the export of revolution, and he may be seeking to re-establish formal ties with some other Latin American states. While there have been some indications of an interest in reduced US-Cuban tensions, Castro will be very cautious about making gestures of substance. If there is improvement in US-Cuban relations, it will probably come on peripheral issues and at a very slow pace.

DISCUSSION

The Revolution: Achievements and Failures

1. The Castro regime is clearly in control of Cuba, and Fidel Castro remains the líder máximo of the Cuban people. They still feel that he is accessible, and when he addresses a crowd or appears in a remote village he retains his charismatic appeal. His stature is augmented by favorable publicity, which is guaranteed by his control of the news and propaganda media. Finally, the loyalty to Castro of the leaders of the military and security forces insures his position.

2. For 10 years, the course of daily life in Cuba has been dominated by Fidel’s goals for the nation. He has attempted to build a “new man” who could carry Cuba along a course of egalitarian development. Castro sees the students as the great hope of Cuba and accords them a wide range of privileges and opportunities. In Fidel’s concept of revolutionary development, a new well-educated, highly-committed generation is essential. Thus, extensive planning and resources have been devoted to the housing, health, and training of youth. He also has sought to reward—at least symbolically—those Cubans most oppressed by the old order. Hence, the peasants have also been the beneficiaries of the Cuban Revolution. Their lot has been changed by a redistribution of wealth and by destruction of the prerevolutionary class structure. While urban life, capitalism, and bureaucracy have been the butt of attack by the Revolution, the peasant has made some material gains and has achieved a dignity which his ancestors never knew. He has become an official interest of the state, and he appears to believe that any problems in his daily life will be corrected when they are brought to Castro’s attention.

3. The other sector of Cuban society to reap unusual benefit from the Revolution is the military establishment. Led by a corps of Castro cronies from the Sierra Maestra and other newer officers, it is the main institutional force of the revolutionary government. After Fidel, the military under the command of his brother, Raul, has the most pervasive influence over Cuban life. Because Castro has increasingly come to doubt that civilian bureaucrats would implement his programs effectively, he relies heavily upon the military to administer much of Cuba’s social and economic development. Although the Cuban Communist Party nominally rules Cuba, and has grown recently, about one-fifth of its members are military personnel, its Central Committee is two-thirds military, and its politburo has only two civilians other than Castro among its eight members. Thus, if there is a power elite in Cuba beyond Fidel himself, it is undoubtedly the officer corps and the military establishment.

4. It is not just charisma, material change, or propaganda which have sustained Castro’s popularity. He has carefully created in Cuba a new sense of nationality and historical continuity. Before the Revolution Cubans felt their country was little more than an appendage, first of Spain and then of the U.S. They lacked a history and a culture uniquely theirs. Perhaps the most important of Castro’s achievements has been the creation of a Cuban identity which is likely to weather any change in leadership. He has presented Cuba’s history as a series of strivings for independence from foreign control which have culminated ultimately in this Revolution.

5. Even so, daily life for most Cubans has grown drab and cheerless. Participation in the plans and programs of the government is mandatory—often at the expense of individualism and the highly developed Cuban family life. Castro has a revolutionary’s commitment to certain achievements, and he expects his countrymen to have similar enthusiasm and to be willing to make the sacrifices which he deems necessary. Thus, he has instituted massive mobilizations of labor to insure the expansion of sugar and general agriculture, and he has transported workers to projects far from home, often without specifying in advance a date upon which they may expect to return. He calls for maximum worker effort based on “moral” rather than material incentives, and life has grown spartan even in terms of the availability of necessities such as food and clothing. Queuing outside government stores has become a tedious and burdensome routine, and even then there is no guarantee that one will be able to purchase his ration.

6. To prepare Cubans for the unusually arduous work which was to precede a generally improved way of life after 1970, in 1968 Castro did away with the last small private businesses and service establishments, pensioning off the aged and infirm who were displaced by this act and re-directing the able-bodied into government-designated jobs. At the time of this “Revolutionary Offensive,” Castro saw these 60,000 or so coffeehouses, bars, cleaning shops, appliance repair centers, etc., as sustainers of materialism, as centers for the black market, and as gathering places for the disgruntled. For many Cubans, the “Offensive” meant a net loss of convenient services and leisure time diversions, since many of the establishments never reopened and those which did became less efficient and reliable under state control. This action was followed by restrictions on the consumption of even tobacco, rum, beer, cigars, bread, and sugar, and by a reduction in the share of produce which the remaining small private farmers could retain for their own consumption.

7. Sweeping actions of this kind have not been uncommon in Cuba since 1959, but they have been disruptive even for those who have favored the Revolution, and they have tended to increase dissatisfaction. A grumbling Cuban today probably feels that he has gained from the social programs of the Revolution, but he would be unhappy about the sustained downward trend in material benefits over the past two years or so. Furthermore, the block informer system must add to anxieties by underscoring the defenselessness of the individual against the prying of the state.³ Thus, shortages and efforts to alter cultural patterns have increased tensions among the population, especially in the larger urban centers. Over the years, many thousands of the most heavily oppressed members of the former middle and upper classes have left the island, and more recently even thousands from Cuba’s working class have sought a new life away from the demands of the Cuban government.⁴ Many of those Cubans who have stayed behind are probably ambivalent in their attitudes toward Castro and the regime.

The Economy: Planning and Performance

8. If the positive effects of the Revolution have been due to the conception and energy of Castro, the negative aspects are also his responsibility. Fidel is neither patient nor consistent where development and change are concerned. He searches for panaceas and usually fails to follow through on a problem until it is resolved. His interventions have hindered the very professionalization of planning and management which he desires. Once a goal is established and work begun, Fidel often moves on to a new project; unfortunately for Cuba, he usually takes the energy of the Revolution with him, and those left to administer the deserted project find themselves leaderless and often without the resources to accomplish their mission.

9. Although Cuba’s economic organization and foreign economic relations have changed dramatically under Castro, the level of total output has changed little. Tourism and foreign-owned business are gone, but sugar is still the foundation of the island’s economy. In good years, sugar accounts for one-fourth of GNP, the same as in the prerevolutionary period. From, a low point in 1963—the result of dramatic changes in economic organization and of misplaced emphasis on industrialization—the annual rate of growth has been slightly less than two percent, while the rate of population growth is believed to be 2.3 percent or higher. The best year was 1967, and even then GNP was only 10 percent higher than 1957, the peak prerevolutionary year.

10. Sugar and sugarcane by-products account for 85 to 90 percent of exports, more than they did in pre-Castro days. Increased nickel sales account for another seven percent of total exports, while minor commodities such as tobacco, meat, and seafood do not yet provide significant diversification of the export pattern.

11. Cuba remains highly dependent on imports for food, fuels, and equipment. Its imports have risen since 1957, while exports have tended to decline or stagnate. As a result, trade deficits have been much larger than before the Revolution, with 30 to 40 percent of imports being financed by foreign credits.⁵ Most credits come from Communist countries, which account for 75 to 80 percent of Cuban trade. At the end of 1968, the debt to these countries for economic assistance totaled $2.1 billion, with 85 percent of it to the USSR. Cuba has also received commercial credits in non-Communist countries, particularly in Western Europe. By the end of 1968 these debts approached $250 million.

12. Foreign aid has enabled Cuba to consume and invest more than it has produced. At the same time, there has been a pronounced shift from private to public consumption, reflected in expanded outlays for education, public health, and the armed forces. A marked redistribution of income has benefited the lower income groups at the expense of the middle and upper classes and the level of investment has been maintained at around 17 percent of GNP. Even so, total consumption has risen only slightly and per capita consumption has declined.

13. Because of faulty planning, bad management, uncooperative weather, and the heavy commitment of resources to long-term development projects, the regime simply has not been able to produce or purchase enough food and clothing for the population. In a tardy realization that he needed to build an economic base to support his social program, Castro has adopted economic priorities which have exacerbated the decline in living conditions. Though unemployment is virtually non-existent and wages are higher than ever before, money has declined in importance and the barter of scarce consumer goods is increasingly a feature of black market operations.

Salvation in Sugar

14. The economic development goal to which Castro has most consistently adhered is the growth and diversification of Cuban agriculture. Within this program, sugar has been given the full attention of the regime since 1965. The intention originally was to raise Cuba’s sugar production to a sustained 10 million ton level from 1970 forward, compared with an average annual output of 5.2 million tons over the past decade. In order to achieve this output, important changes in the system of sugar agriculture were undertaken, and some of the most frustrating problems of Cuban economic development were encountered.

15. The sugar mills were old and the equipment of American manufacture, but the US embargo cut off the supply of critically needed spare parts. Different lines of support for these mills had to be developed, at heavy cost. New cane land had to be cleared, plowed, planted, weeded, and fertilized, causing large expenditures for imported machinery, petroleum, and chemicals. Irrigation projects had to be developed, the cane harvest partly mechanized, and transportation facilities modernized and augmented. Professional canecutters had deserted to the cities and easier jobs in the first flush of the Revolution, and field labor became progressively harder to recruit for cane cutting. New and mostly unskilled labor was mobilized, despite the cost to the sectors from which they were conscripted, to compensate for rural labor shortages and the deficiencies in attempts to mechanize the harvest. In spite of these efforts, the result so far has been a succession of shortfalls on annual sugar goals. While adverse weather has been a factor in some years, failures have been due mainly to bad management.

16. The shortfalls during the past few years apparently have caused Castro to place even greater emphasis on the production of 10 million tons of sugar in the 1970 crop year (which began in July 1969). The great effort put into reorganization and preparation for this harvest accounted in part for the failure to meet the 1969 goal (for which the harvest began in November 1968). A record draft of labor is anticipated in order to meet the 1970 goal, and the work load will be intense throughout the abnormally long harvest period. Cuban family life will be disrupted to a far greater degree than before, and output in other economic sectors is likely to decline.

17. Despite the energy which will be expended, Cuba has virtually no chance of reaching the 10 million ton goal. There will probably be enough cane to yield this amount of sugar, and most of it may be cut. But not all of the cane can be cut at a time when its sucrose content is sufficiently high to yield the 10 million ton goal. Thus we estimate that 8 million tons or so would be the maximum amount of sugar which Cuba could produce during the 12 months of the harvest, and that an output between 7 and 8 million tons is more likely.

CUBAN SUGAR PRODUCTION AND GOALS

(In Million Metric Tons, for Crop Year Ending 30 June of Year Shown)

YEAR	GOAL	PRODUCTION	ANALYSIS
[Average 1948–1959	No Goal	5.5]
1960	No Goal	5.8	Carryover from pre-Revolution.
1961	No Goal	6.7	Carryover from pre-Revolution; all cane harvested.
1962	No Goal	4.8	Little replanting, drought, emphasis on industrialization.
1963	No Goal	3.8	Little replanting, drought, emphasis on industrialization.
1964	No Goal	4.4	Continuation of the above trend.
1965	6.0	6.0	Increased fertilization, re-emphasis on agriculture.
1966	6.5	4.4	Drought.
1967	7.0	6.1	Lack of cane.
1968	8.0	5.2	Drought.
1969	9.0	4.4	Consolidation for 1970, bad weather.
1970	10.0	7–8 est.	Assuming good weather continues, longest harvest

The Meaning of the Harvest

18. Cubans are accustomed to missing revolutionary goals. And in fact there are already some indications that both the leadership and the public are anticipating failure in their effort to produce 10 million tons of sugar in 1970. This should mitigate the impact of an unsuccessful harvest. Nevertheless, Castro has staked the “honor of the Revolution” on the achievement of this goal, and failure—unexplainable by natural calamities—could have important psychological consequences and cause shifts in political and economic policies.

19. Castro would probably regard a production of less than seven million tons as a failure which would require some explanation or atonement. As the harvest neared completion and was clearly falling far short, he might try to extend the deadline by several additional months. If he could reasonably attribute a shortfall to bad weather, he would certainly do so. He might chastise those who he thought had exercised too little zeal (though probably not himself for setting goals that were too ambitious).

20. Beyond these immediate reactions, we are uncertain about more meaningful responses. There would be popular, and probably bureaucratic, demoralization and discouragement. Within the regime, doubts about Castroist methods and ideas might be raised; in fact, Castro himself might entertain them. He might seek to attenuate dissent by increasing the number of festive occasions and permitting the return of some of those popular pleasures which would be relatively inexpensive to grant—e.g., more rum and cigars. He might even realize that he ought to plan more realistically and shift back to a system of material incentives. But it is also possible that Castro would become resentful over the failure, blame both the administrators and the canecutters, and intensify the pressures on labor. If disaffection increased, with a resultant reduction in overall productivity, the response of the regime might be to become more authoritarian, and life would become grayer and more hopeless for most Cubans.

21. In the case of a comparative success—a harvest of eight million tons or better—a matter of some importance to the people would be the payoff they received for the arduous extra work they had done. They would expect life to be better after 1970 because they had been told that progress in sugar production would make it so. But in the present weakening sugar market, a very large crop would tend further to depress world prices. This could limit Cuba’s return on its 1.9 million ton quota for sales outside the Communist world and thus reduce its purchasing power there, especially since some of these earnings are already mortgaged to commercial creditors. While the Cubans presumably would sell more sugar to the USSR if they produced a record crop, the Soviets could either reduce Cuba’s annual trade deficit to them or send the Cubans more goods. But the kind of goods the Soviets may be prepared to send may not be the kind the Cuban consumer will most need or want. Thus, even in the event of a record achievement, life for most Cubans over the next two or three years may not be very different insofar as the availability of items for private consumption is concerned. Moreover, a record effort in 1970 could contribute to a reduction in production in 1971, and further postpone relief for the consumer.

Cuba and the USSR

22. Whether the Cubans have a better time of it or not may depend more than anything else upon how helpful the Soviets choose to be. Castro has received substantial quantities of economic aid from the Soviets and other East European countries. Since termination of the Cuban-US relationship, he has been particularly dependent upon their technological assistance. The Soviets also equip Cuba’s 200,000 man defense forces (and they are likely to continue sufficient assistance to maintain their present strength). Yet, the Soviets and their allies have been able to gain only limited influence over the policies and programs followed by the Cuban regime, and Castro has placed heavy emphasis on the training of Cubans to replace foreign technicians so that Cuba could gain independent control of its industries and military hardware.

23. Clouding the economic relationship have been important ideological differences between Cuba and the USSR—especially with regard to each country’s attitude toward Latin American governments and the prospects for revolution there. For some time the Soviets have believed that Castro’s commitment to violent revolution in the countryside has only sensitized those countries affected to all forms of Communist activity, making life more difficult for the USSR and for the more conventional pro-Soviet parties. Castro has openly attacked those parties and the Soviets for their lack of true revolutionary spirit, and from 1966 to 1968 Cuba often resisted Soviet leadership in international Communist affairs. But the Soviet-Cuban relationship has shown marked improvement since Fidel’s speech a year ago supporting Soviet action against the Czechs. Soviet pressure evidently convinced him that in the face of only marginal economic performance, he could ill-afford to further antagonize his patron.

24. Although Castro appears to have come to terms with the Soviets for now, we assume that he will seek room for maneuver in the future. Continued poor performance would probably encourage the Soviets to put greater pressure on him to improve management and to reinstate a system of material incentives. On the other hand, a good economic performance over the next few years would probably encourage Castro to seek ways to reduce Soviet economic leverage. For their part, the Soviets would welcome a reduction of their subsidy to Cuba, provided the political costs were not too great. In the meantime, relations between the two countries are continuing to improve.

25. The Soviets might try to exploit this improving relationship by seeking facilities in Cuba to support submarines on patrol in the Western Atlantic. The Soviets would find it helpful to have such facilities, but they would also recognize that an attempt to use Cuba would alarm the US, which might regard it as a violation of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding. The recent Soviet naval visit to the Caribbean was probably part of a general Soviet plan to expand the area of fleet operations; it could also have been a test of US reactions to a Soviet naval presence in the area. We doubt that Castro would seek or readily agree to Soviet use of Cuba for support of submarine operations; he would be concerned that this would not only worsen Cuba’s relations with the US and Latin America, but would also indefinitely postpone prospects for their improvement. The Soviets would also be concerned about US and Latin American reactions, but both they and Castro might come to believe that such risks could be reduced by moving gradually and as unprovocatively as possible.

Cuba and the US: Signs of Change?

26. Castro appears to be reassessing his role in the hemisphere, and there are some indications that he may be interested in reducing US-Cuban tensions. The Soviets may even be encouraging him in this regard, if only to reduce the range of their frictions with the US. They are working to extend their official relations with governments throughout Latin America, and a Cuba more acceptable to Latin American nations and less at odds with the US would support this policy.

27. Castro’s conception of the potential for revolution in Latin America appears to have changed since the death of Che Guevara in the abortive Bolivian insurgency of 1967. Some who have talked with him say that this dramatic failure, and the dismal fortunes and prospects of Cuban-supported revolutionary movements elsewhere, have caused him to conclude that conditions which could support a Cuban-style takeover do not now exist in most of Latin America. The strongest evidence that some doctrinal change has taken place is contained in Castro’s 14 July speech inaugurating the 1970 sugar harvest. In marked contrast to his earlier impatience with revolutionaries who did not immediately take to the hills, he stated that Cuba could wait for revolution in other Latin American nations for “10, 20, 30 years if necessary.” He also indicated that some actions of the Peruvian military may have revolutionary implications, and that in fact there may be more than one path to revolution. Castro continues to train foreign revolutionaries, and he almost certainly will continue to look for revolutionary opportunities abroad. Nevertheless, he has at least temporarily de-emphasized the export of revolution and is providing assistance only in carefully selected cases. Such increased pragmatism may furnish Castro a broader range of tactics for the support of revolutionary movements, but insofar as it causes him to be more cautious it also makes him more respectable among Latin Americans who favor rapprochement.

28. There are also some suggestions of a Cuban desire to re-establish formal ties to other Latin American governments. For example, Cuban delegates have taken a friendlier attitude toward other Latin American delegations at the UN and at meetings of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America. For the first time in years, Radio Havana recently ceased attacking the Frei regime in Chile, the Venezuelan Communist Party, and the Venezuelan Government. Perhaps as a result of such changes, moderate politicians in some Latin American countries—notably Chile and Brazil—have shown interest in the resumption of relations with Cuba. Castro’s main criterion for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with individual governments is that they renounce the position taken by the OAS against Cuba. The chances are good that in the next few years some Latin American governments will choose this course.

29. Signals to the US have been much less clear. The virulence of Cuban propaganda attacks has declined during the past year, and the 1969 anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion passed in Cuba without the usual anti-US broadside or important observance. There have been explicit indications through non-US diplomatic channels that Castro would like to discuss the subject of aircraft highjackings and “other issues.” Cuban officials have suggested to Western diplomats that “the time was ripe for change” in US-Cuban relations. For economic reasons alone, the Cubans have an interest in reopening commercial ties with the US, and this interest is being made explicit in non-official conversations.

30. It is most unlikely that Castro has made any clear decision to improve relations with the US. For one thing, it would be characteristic of him to test the climate of US reaction before making any gestures of substance. And on a number of issues there is virtually no chance that he would compromise his views even in the best of circumstances. He will sustain his mainly verbal support of both North Vietnam and North Korea. But he may think of this as an ideological token which the US should overlook, and he may regard the opening of the Paris negotiations and the beginning of the US withdrawal from Vietnam as encouraging signs of change in US foreign policy. Nevertheless, he is so opposed to US involvement in the Vietnam war that he would be unlikely to move toward agreement on important issues so long as the US was heavily committed there.

31. In any event, Castro is cautious and unsure about the prospective benefits from rapprochement. He must wonder, for instance, what measures he would have to adopt to maintain control of the Revolution if he allowed an increase in contact with the US. If Cuban-US relations warmed, allegations about US hostile actions would no longer be a plausible rationale for the regime’s shortcomings, while increased contact with the US might make them more obvious. Concerns like these will make Castro move slowly in his effort to widen his options.

32. Furthermore, Castro is a dedicated revolutionary. If he became enamored of the prospects for some as yet unpromising or unknown revolutionary movement he might resume a more militant role. He does not reverse positions easily, and he is most unlikely to accept any new arrangement which could be construed as capitulation to the US. Like the Soviets, he wants the US to recognize his regime as legitimate and permanent, but he is not likely to make concessions before direct talks begin. Hence, any improvement in US-Cuban relations will probably come on peripheral matters and at a very slow pace.

1. Source: Central Intelligence Agency, NIC Files, Job 79–R01012A. Secret; Controlled Dissem. The Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence organizations of the Departments of State and Defense, and the NSA participated in the preparation of this estimate. The Director of Central Intelligence submitted this estimate with the concurrence of the USIB with the exception of the representatives of the AEC and FBI who abstained on the grounds that it was outside their jurisdiction.
2. The estimate examined the situation in Cuba, Cuban relations with the Soviet Union, and the possibility of a change in United States-Cuban relations.
3. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution—the block informer system—originally were the ferrets of the regime. Their job has grown to include propaganda and morale building functions. They are part of the ubiquitous security apparatus which is presumed by most Cubans to be effective and is therefore seldom used in a harsh authoritarian way.
4. By now perhaps as many as one-half million Cubans have left the island, and perhaps 200,000 more are on the list to leave via the US-sponsored airlift. Those who choose to leave and have money often buy tickets to Madrid or Mexico City rather than waiting to use the airlift. In addition, illegal emigration (fence-jumping via Guantanamo Naval Base, fleeing via small boats) has increased appreciably over the past two years. In all, perhaps as much as five percent of the 1959 population has left Cuba.
5. The Cuban trade deficit to all countries in 1968 was about $430 million, of which the Soviet share was $350 million.