Authoritarian or Dictator?
Authoritarian or Dictator?
Lessons from an Old Cuban in a Tracksuit
This week I am reluctantly writing about the Cuban revolution.
Not the “Cuban Revolution,” as in the official government entity that, under the guise of Communist Party ideology, has administered Cuba on behalf of the Castro brothers for 60 years. I’ve written a lot about that Revolution, the Capital-R one.
Instead, I am reluctant to write about last month’s “revolution” in Cuba. Some people used that term to describe what happened in July, when spontaneous and widespread protests broke out across Cuba. These anti-government protests are indeed critical. My problem is that most journalism and Tweeting on this issue described the protests as “revolutionary” or “unprecedented” or “like never before” “the first time in Cuba’s history” or “worst protests since 1994.” That just isn’t true.
I began covering small dissident groups in Cuba in 1991. Then it was larger, violent protests in Havana in 1994 when hungry people were blocked from fleeing the island. More than a decade ago I attended a public street march with the Mothers in White. In 2017, just days after Obama left town, I saw a raucous pro-democracy protest get broken up by police.
Are these protests different? I will say, in their size and viral nature, there is something new. Indeed, I predicted them myself, in Wired magazine. I wrote that in Cuba, the arrival of the internet and digital communications would break down barriers, and let people escape the control of the Castro government. Information wanted to be free.
It’s all true. Here’s the problem: I wrote that article 21 years ago.
https://www.wired.com/1998/02/cuba-2/
So I was a little early!
Does that mean that this time, 2021, is when the street revolution finally comes for Cuba’s leadership?
Maybe. Things have changed over 21 years. Back then, there were about 500 people authorized to have uncensored access to the internet. Now there are millions who can evade controls and connect.
By the time I saw Obama walking the cobblestones of Old Havana, in 2017, virtually every young person had a cell phone, however restricted by cost, speed, and the government’s intranet of approved connections. In 2018, frustrated artists formed the San Isidro movement. They were mostly young people of color, and prefigured the crisis of today by organizing public protests, performances, web manifestos, and a musical collaboration called “Patria y Vida.”
Then Covid-19. The virus hit Cuba less hard than some places, and the tattered health care system did less bad than in some places. What the pandemic really did was shut down Cuba’s financial supports, the Sugar Daddys who have kept the country alive. The most obvious is Venezuela, now broke and cutting back the free oil it gives Cuba. Then the wealthy capitalist countries of Europe and North America stopped sending tourists—the single largest source of foreign currency for the government, which produces and exports virtually nothing. And without foreign currency, the Cubans cannot pay the United States for the food they eat. Despite the embargo, we are Cuba’s No. 1 trading partner for food and agricultural products. (70% of all food in Cuba is imported, much of it from the US, but these are cash-only transactions by law.) And then there is one more Sugar Daddy—the Cuban-Americans, who normally send a billion dollars a year to relatives back home. Thanks to Covid, even this infusion of survival cash has shrunk.
Bankrupt, yet again, in 2021, the Cuban government simply stopped selling most food in Cuban pesos—the worthless scrip workers are paid in. But it kept selling food in dollars, at special stores. The majority of Cubans have no regular access to dollars, and found themselves hungry, yet again. Their monthly rations of rice and beans are nowhere near enough to live on.
Meanwhile those with relatives who fled Communism, or lucky jobs that brought them hard currency, or those in the island’s privileged elite, close to power, somehow all had enough to eat. One of the joys of Twitter recently has been the collective forensic investigation of Cuban elites. The current president, Diaz-Canel, is a ruthless enforcer of Party rule whose previous job was suppressing private vegetable markets. Yet many children of Cuba’s leading figures—more often their grandchildren, grown adults—have found comfortable, well-fed lives, sometimes abroad. Many made the mistake of Instagramming their lifestyle choices, from smartwatches to chic shirts, and Madrid restaurants to Party reunions that come with lobster.
This was all true a year ago. But this year, with the cheap oil gone, those same leaders turned the lights out. That was the proximate cause of the new protests: a wave of rolling blackouts. Aside from losing their lighting, fans, and television, Cubans lost refrigeration. In the heat of summer, what little food they had rotted in hours. Hungry people get angry.
Some people in San Antonio de los Baños, near Havana, staged a violent protest in the street, denouncing the government and even attacking police cars. But the real protest came when someone hit “Send” on a video of that march. Before the Revolution could respond, the video went viral within Cuba, shared peer-to-peer, and on social media. People all over the island responded, taking to the streets on July 11, to stage peaceful, mass protests. On July 12, there was a picturesque parade of protestors flowing past the National Theater and Inglaterra Hotel, baroque relics of Spanish rule, with Hemingway’s old bar, the Floridita, in the background.
One day later, the government’s digital warriors, already experienced repressors of online content, shut down the internet, nationwide, and some local cell networks, as well as blocking VPNs and dozens of other workarounds that let Cubans share content.
Protests continued, but here’s what I’ve learned in the 21 years since I predicted this very thing: the government is patient.
At first, people in the streets sang “Patria y Vida,” a song that deliberately played on a Revolutionary slogan. The original phrase of Fidel Castro was “Patria o Muerte,” Fatherland or Death. That was severe, merciless, ideological, and tiresome after half a century of pointless sacrifice. The new song’s title translates as “Fatherand and Life,” which is upbeat, constructive, and unifying by comparison. It made for a great anthem in the protests.
But words only go so far. A few ringleaders were arrested. Then, spitting venom, the government rallied loyalists to march against the protestors, armed with long wooden clubs. (Again, internet sleuths pointed out how often you saw the well-fed children and grandchildren of leadership at these events, propping up the system that fed them).
But then the government switched to deliberately targeting not the protestors, but those who filmed them, or otherwise promoted them.
In other words, Influencers! A few hundred people people have been arrested since the protests, according to their families. But I learned from this Economist show that Cuban police are deliberately targeting social media figures. One political vlogger was detained by police while live streaming; a lifestyle influencer who asked her 70,000 followers to support the protests was arrested. One who posted original videos of protests was tried, convicted, and jailed inside a week.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/economist-radio/id151230264?i=1000529830732
So here’s the difference between a Dictator and an Authoritarian. The Dictator is, in theory, a unitary being, independent, with a monopoly on violence. (Like, um, Fidel Castro.)
Authoritarianism, however, can be a personality trait (seen in many followers of Fidel Castro). But it also describes a political system, one that is not totalitarian, but roomy, a shared space run for the benefit of elites and insiders. Dictators die; Authoritarians retire and get lawyers.
My new book focusses on the way these two sides of Authoritarianism interact. My book is about not just the authoritarian leaders, but the authoritarian followers. From Manila to Idaho and Lansing to Rio, the small-a authoritarians need, want, and promote the capital-A Authoritarians. I am writing a bottom-up history of a movement normally described from the top.
Cuba is perhaps going through a transition from Dicator to Authoritarian right now. The state still has a massive repressive apparatus, and the Castros are the ones who taught me about absolute power. But the Economist reports that young protestors call the late Fidel Castro an “old man in a track suit.” Any historic credibility is gone.
Now days and weeks have passed since the protests. Once again, the Cuban government has not collapsed. There were hundreds in the opposition groups I visited in the 90s, thousands in the San Isidro movement of artists, and now there are tens of thousands who have taken to the streets. That difference from the past is important. Cubans want their rights and are saying so in unprecedented numbers.
But the Cuban Revolution has long ago proven its ability to stall, survive, and adapt temporarily to the small-r revolutions of the streets. I fear it is happening again.
I hope I am wrong now, and was right 21 years ago in Wired.