The Party assesses problems in Cuba
The Party assesses problems in Cuba
The vanguard leads the people toward continued socialist construction
In the midst of the challenges provoked by the crisis of the Cuban economy and the sustained structural crisis of the capitalist world-economy, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (CC-PCC for its initials in Spanish) held its eighth plenary on July 5-6, 2024. It identified key areas of improvement in the work of the Party and the Revolution, namely, increasing national production of food; the elevation of sugar production; the stabilization of currency exchange; the strengthening at the local level of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Federation of Cuban Women; the ideological formation of youth; and the elimination and prevention of criminal and anti-social behavior.
§
On the first day of the Plenary, the Secretary of Organization of the CC-PCC, Roberto Morales Ojeda, presented a report on the implementation of agreements adopted at the Eighth Congress of the Party, held in April 2021. The agreements concerned the strengthening of the mass organizations and the Union of Communist Youth as well as a transformation of ideological-political work. The report noted that the implementation of the agreements is in process.
Morales observed that the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) are two key mass organizations related to the work in the communities and neighborhoods, and much remains to be done in order for them to attain their true role in Cuban society. Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, National Coordinator of the CDR, and Teresa Amarelle Boué, General Secretary of the FMC, also stressed the importance of the work of the Party cells at the base level of the organizations. It is at the local level where the true community work is carried out.
Elier Ramírez Cañedo stressed the importance of the dissemination of teachings with respect to the history of Cuba and of Marxism-Leninism. Even though there exist in the country numerous institutions and specialized centers dedicated to history, it has not arrived to the consciousness of the youth. Therefore, he maintained, it is necessary to advance in communication, using codes of communication that are prevalent among the youth. As a dimension of this task, the Party and the structures of education have to be attentive to the formation of teachers, who play an essential role in the formation of consciousness in the classrooms.
Humberto Camilo Hernández Suárez emphasized the prevention and confrontation of political-ideological subversion, which is today a greater challenge as a result of the greater aggressiveness of the United States with respect to Cuba. He spoke of the need to take advantage of all digital spaces in order to counteract the campaigns of mediatic toxification directed against Cuban society. At the same time, all the institutions and organizations ought to play an important role in facilitating the dissemination of truth among the population.
José Ramón Monteagudo Ruiz presented a report on the Cuban sugar industry, which has been severely affected by the impossibility of providing material resources necessary for production, as a result of the intensified blockade. Monteagudo maintained, however, that there also are various problems of a subjective character that have contributed to the decline in sugar production, which must be attended with a high priority. There is a need to strengthen the companies of the agro-industrial sector in order to stop the decline of sugar cane production in the country.
§
Secretary of Organization Morales also gave a report on the work of the Political Bureau since the VII Plenary of the CC-PCC. He maintained that the connection of the Party leadership with the Party base has been constant, as is made evident by the fact that Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the CC-PCC, has visited seventy-six cities and towns in the country. In addition, the Political Bureau has conducted in the period since the VII Plenary twelve meetings, which have addressed sixty-eight themes and adopted 108 agreements on questions tied to defense, national security, internal order, and foreign policy. In addition, Morales reported that 155,334 meetings have been held during the current year of 2024, in which more than 3,000,000 persons participated, as part of the implementation of the governmental projections for correcting distortions and stimulating the national economy.
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz also addressed the Plenary during its first day of sessions. He reminded the delegates of the integral economic plan that was submitted to the National Assembly by the Council of Ministers on December 27, 2023, which included eight fundamental objectives. The Prime Minister explained the various activities that were undertaken with respect to the objectives, which included the stabilization of the monetary system of the country; the diversification of external sources of income to the country; increasing national production; improving the entrepreneurial system; and reducing crime, corruption, illegalities, and social indiscipline through both confrontation and prevention. The delegates unanimously approved the text presented by the Prime Minister, which will be presented to the next session of the National Assembly of People’s Power.
§
On the second day of the Plenary, Julio César García Pérez, Head of the Office of Attention to People’s Power, Organs of the State, and the Legal Sector, presented a thorough and critical report on the principal manifestations in Cuban society of corruption, crime, illegalities, and social indiscipline. Such manifestations, García Pérez maintained, constitute a threat to national security. He noted that the implementation of various measures, including preventative and punitive measures, have made possible the present containment of the typical crimes of a more serious nature. Nevertheless, the results are still insufficient.
García Pérez reported that the principal symptoms of crime and corruption include: crimes against the economic system; administrative corruption; non-declaration or under-declaration of income; abusive and speculative pricing of goods and services; socially unacceptable behavior, such as abuse of elderly persons, in parks and public spaces; defacing of national monuments, generally carried out by youth that are involved in neither study nor work; the illicit use of drugs, generally introduced into the country through various airports; and construction in violation of building codes.
In response to the phenomenon, the institutions that pertain to the criminal justice system are seeking to improve their effectiveness, including the application of far more severe punishments for those whose conduct does the most damage to society. García Pérez maintains that the Party cells ought to be adequately prepared to work with local structures toward prevention of crime and social indiscipline. Various delegates at the Plenary called for more active involvement of the Party cells in the establishment of norms in the relevant institutions that manage the distribution of merchandise, and the more active involvement of social workers in the community. Party members cannot be indifferent to corruption, which must be combatted with zero tolerance.
The second day of the Plenary also included a report by José Ramón Monteagudo Ruiz, Head of the Party’s Agricultural Food Department, on the implementation of the Law of Food Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security, known as the SSAN Law. Monteagudo Ruiz reported that, in the middle of the complex economic situation, there exists a commitment of worker’s collectives in the sectors of animal and agricultural food production to advance, a phenomenon illustrated by numerous examples of outstanding production in all the provinces of the nation. The Party, he noted, is playing a role in the vanguard of these advances in the production of food, a process that was stimulated by visits to the provinces by the First Secretary of the Party, Miguel Díaz-Canel, which established a process of consultation between the leadership and the base of the Party in the food agricultural sector.
In addition, there has been developed an interchange involving mass organizations, the councils of provincial governments, and the councils of municipal administration. The consultation included the participation of 10,329 base organizations, in which 96,366 Party members participated along with 25,269 workers who are not Party members. At the meetings, the participants made 62,366 verbal interventions, which pointed to the identification of the causes of the unfavorable situation with respect to the production of food, thereby indicating solutions that would permit the transformation of the current situation.
Monteagudo Ruiz explained that the orientation of the SSAN Law and the efforts of the Party cells is toward promoting autonomous local production through the mobilization of local resources and the organization of actors in local food systems. In accordance with this goal, 111 enterprises in 105 cities and towns have been authorized for participation in twenty-one programs of local food self-sufficiency.
Even though the structures of food production have been strengthened, the intensification of the blockade has caused a decline in the production of food, due to deficiencies in financing for the acquisition of inputs, fuels, fertilizers, medicines, raw materials for animal feed, machinery, and spare parts. Nonetheless, in spite of such constraints, Monteagudo Ruiz noted that sowing for the cold season crops has been completed, and the spring planting season is progressing favorably.
However, to cover the food demands of the population and attain food sovereignty, it will be necessary to generalize the various programs with positive results, in order to cultivate more, with greater integration of the responsible institutions, Monteagudo Ruiz stressed.
Yuniasky Crespo Baquero, First Secretary of the Party in the province of Mayabeque, gave a presentation on behalf of a province that is known for its successes. Crespo Baquero noted that it is anticipated that Mayabeque in the current year of 2024 will harvest 314,000 tons of agricultural products, above the 287,000 tons that were harvested in 2023. And it has attained an increase in food production despite having less fuel, less lubricants, and less machinery, due to the intensification of the blockade. It did so by stressing the cultivation of crops most suitable to the country, such as plantain, cassava, and sweet potato. Moreover, five of its eleven local territories are self-supplying with respect to grain and rice.
Roberto Morales, Secretary of Organization of the Party, declared that, although animal and agricultural production is very far from what it needs to be to attain food sovereignty, it is beginning to transform itself.
§
Díaz-Canel speaks to the Plenary
The VIII Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba was closed with an address by Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Party and President of the Republic of Cuba. He declared, “harassed like no other by a long economic war, openly declared by the greatest power on the planet to suffocate the country and subject it to the pressure of the lack of vital resources and media demonization to discourage and to create divisions, the country needs as never before the critically acute perspective of its political vanguard, which summons in places of living and work, all the minds and arms of people of good will.”
The First Secretary declared the importance of the moment: “The times are neither of self-complacency nor of inertia that we do not know how to break. Our people demand results, and we owe the people.”
Díaz-Canel expressed admiration for the people, whom he characterized as “our immense everyday hero.” He declared that "the country is full of people that inspire, of anonymous geniuses of creative resistance, of indispensable women and men, whose exemplary response to shortcomings we must recognize, stimulate and multiply."
And he expressed confidence in the qualities of the Party as the vanguard capable of leading the people. He observed that the words expressed by the delegates at the Plenary make clear the potential and the strength of a revolution that is not pessimistic and will not accept defeat. And the Plenary has made clear the level of concern of the delegates with the principal challenges that the nation confronts.
He called upon the vanguard Party to correct all negative tendencies as a permanent practice, and to move forward with will, effort, and imagination. “The Party and its cells have the mission of stimulating, inspiring, mobilizing, and engaging its members and the people. . .. It is up to the political cadres to go to the forefront with example as a banner and the deep conviction that it is only possible to move forward by working hard, with intelligence, with creativity, aware that in each of us there is the potential to grow and surpass ourselves.... The road is clear: work, produce, create wealth, distribute with social justice.”
The road is clear, but not easy. "This line of action does not give magic solutions, it does not have an immediate impact, but gradually it resolves parts of each problem, when each of us and each of our institutions do what they have to do, from an authentic commitment to the people and with the enormous responsibility of preserving the Revolution, which is simply to preserve its conquests and continue advancing on the path of improving the society, working without rest."
In times like these, Diaz-Canel maintained, the vanguard Party must reaffirm its commitment to socialist construction, which means defending the interests and needs of the people. The highest concern must be for the people and to preserve the gains that the revolution has attained for the people. We must struggle for an efficient and healthy economy that ensures social justice and a greater level of wellbeing for the people. We ought to promote science, innovation, and the ecological production of food. And we have a special work with respect to the formation of the youth.
If we work in all these areas simultaneously, in a decisive, organized, coherent way; in a short time we will be sorting out fundamental issues such as the budget deficit, excess cash in circulation, tax evasion, the abusive prices; we will be organizing the appropriate relations between the state sector and the non-state sector; we will be confronting crime and corruption more decisively; we will be providing more goods to the population; and all this, indirectly, will also influence changes in the exchange rate, gradually, and inflation; and we would be contributing to the solution of important problems that our society has to face.. . .
We are here to save the Homeland, the Revolution and socialism. The blockade has not been able in six decades to overcome the dignity of the Cuban people or the immense collective and social work of the Revolution. The blockade intensified in these times will not achieve it either. . .. The Cuban people will continue to deal setbacks to the empire.
§
Final Considerations
The Communist Party of Cuba is in a war against the enemies of the Revolution, an enemy that has no better alternative to propose for Cuba or for the world, but that nonetheless is powerful, particularly in its capacity to confuse and destroy. And the Party grasps well the necessary strategies. In the first place, improve the productive capacities of the economy, in spite of the obstacles imposed. And in the second place, deepen ideological work, so that the number of people disheartened by material difficulties and confused by the ideological distortions of enemies do not grow. In the context of the sustained structural crisis of the neocolonial world-system, the Party is demonstrating that it knows well the mission to which it has been assigned by history and by Fidel: to lead the Cuban people to continued exemplary socialist construction.
A free subscription option is available, with capacity to read, send, and share all posts. A paid subscription ($5 per month or $40 per year) enables you to make comments and to support the costs of the column; paid subscribers also receive a free PDF copy of my book on Cuba and the world-system. Ten percent of income generated through subscriptions to the column is donated to the Cuban Society for Philosophical Investigations.