CUBA-ECONOMY: Senior Military Officers Take the Reins

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 30 1997 (IPS) - Cuba took a new step in the militarisation of its socialist economy with the naming of one of the country’s highest-ranking officers to the key ministry of Sugar.

General Ulises Rosales del Toro, the first substitute for the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and army chief of staff, will now head the sugar industry, considered the motor of the Cuban economy.

The Oct. 25 designation of Rosales del Toro, who is also a member of the governing Communist Party’s select 24-member Political Bureau, was the first such measure taken in the wake of the fifth party congress held Oct. 8-10 in Havana.

The sugar harvest dropped again this year, leading to a slowdown in the timid recovery of the economy, racked by a devastating crisis for the past seven years.

This is not the first time since the 1959 revolution that a senior FAR officer takes the reins of the sugar industry. Former commander Diocles Torralba headed the ministry before he was named Transport Minister, a post he held until he received a 20-year sentence in 1989 for misappropriation and misuse of public funds.

But the designation of Rosales del Toro, who will retain his high military rank, has given rise to a variety of interpretations.

Some analysts see the move as one more indication of the tough situation faced by the Cuban economy after its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell 34.8 percent from 1989 to 1993, and due to the impossibility of obtaining soft credits to boost the economic recovery. (The government’s initial projections of five percent GDP growth this year have been pruned to two or three percent).

Others stress the on-going process of the militarisation of the economy and other spheres of civil and political life.

The naming of Rosales del Toro brings to 10 the number of active or reserve senior FAR officers holding cabinet posts.

Besides the ministries of Defence and the Interior, military officers head the ministries of Communications, Transport, Fishing, Ports and Merchant Marine, Higher Education – and now Sugar. The Institute of Civil Aeronautics, the Institute of State Reserves and the Attorney-General’s Office are also under military command.

Retired officers hold key posts in other enterprises and entities linked to the economy, many of them involving the tourist industry – which outstripped sugar last year as Cuba’s leading foreign exchange-earner – or joint ventures with foreign capital.

The fifth congress of the Communist Party elected seven senior officers to sit on the polit-buro, and 18 generals, a vice- admiral, a navy captain and commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdes to the Central Committee.

Other analysts attribute the military’s participation in the economy to the high levels of organisation and efficiency that have characterised the armed forces and the military-industrial complex, especially during the crisis-ridden 1990s.

Perhaps the most significant accomplishments lie in the testing of a new business system whose formula is described by the military as “made-to-measure” for each one of their productive and service entities.

The naming of Rosales del Toro, known in local military and political circles for his strict discipline and great capacity, intelligence and austerity, suggests furthermore the armed forces’ aim to throw its strength behind the sugar sector.

Cuba’s sugar industry hit an historical low point in 1995 with the smallest yield in half a century – 3.3 million tonnes – which led to an estimated 2.5 billion dollars in losses for the economy.

The fifth congress dedicated a large part of its debates to the question of sugar, and according to reports, the discussions were heated and led to the removal of engineer Nelson Torres, then- minister of Sugar.

Local experts say Torres was given only a relatively brief period to “revive the dead,” taking into account the complexity of a ministry that is a virtual “country within a country.”

But others say there was no time to lose, given the strategic role the sugar industry must play in Cuba’s economic recovery, as a potential contributor of more than one billion dollars in export revenues.

The sugar sector, which produced an average of seven million tonnes a year in the 1980s, provides jobs to more than 300,000 workers (in a country of 11 million), and affects other productive and service sectors in a chain reaction.

Rosales del Toro will undertake the mission of restructuring and increasing the efficiency of the sugar industry, an enormous challenge given the antiquity of the sector’s 100-odd factories.

The first problem to be tackled is to make the 400 basic units of cooperative production, which supply a large part of the raw material which goes to the mills, truly productive.

He will have to tackle extremely high production costs, problems of jobs and wages, reparation costs, the management of foreign loans, administration plans and tough living and working conditions.

Cuba’s recovery as one of the world’s top exporters of sugar is also based on the production of derivatives of sugar cane, such as electricity, animal feed and alcohol.

Rosales del Toro – who fought as a guerrilla in Cuba and Venezuela and was sent on missions to Algeria and Angola – will face a yield expected to be only slightly higher than last year’s, perhaps reaching 4.2 million tonnes.

His task will not be easy, especially if predictions of a rainy winter due to the El Nino weather phenomenon – beyond the reach of even the highest-ranking military officer – come true in the next few months, with the resultant decline in the sugar harvest.