Fidel Castro is a man of many words. No other political figure in modern
history has spoken more on the public record, varying the scope of his oration from
short interviews to twelve hour lectures on the state of Cuban society. Starting in
1959, his ideas flooded Cuban society and provided a code of social expectations
for all to obey. Cubans listened patiently, and over time enjoyed the fruits of an
egalitarian socialist system: food, shelter, education and medicine for all. By the
early 1980s, Castro had constructed a centrally planned economy and an
economically favorable partnership with the Soviet Union.
In 1989, however, the dissolution of the Soviet Union crippled the Cuban economy
and forced millions of Cubans into poverty, resulting in widespread hunger and
unemployment. Faced with the threat of an economic meltdown that could end his
regime, Castro looked inward for ways to revive the Cuban economy. Though
previously condemning and imprisoning Cubans illegally possessing black market
dollars, Castro suddenly regarded these dollar holders as the key to his regime’s
survival. This hard currency was crucial to restoring the national economy, and
though its legalization would undermine his socialist, anti-American ideology,
Castro saw no other option. In 1993, he decriminalized the possession of U.S.
dollars and established state-run dollar stores to channel dollars to the
government. Castro legalized self-employment, decentralized the agricultural
sector and boosted Cuba’s tourist industry. Though they aided in reviving the
national economy, these policy changes transformed the socioeconomic structure of
Cuban society, creating a mixed economy that required Cubans to embrace certain
market principles outside of socialist doctrine.
The basics of Cuba’s centrally planned economy lasted through the 1990s,
but the microeconomic activities of the Cuban people revealed considerable free
market strategy. For the first time in thirty years, Cubans were legally given a
taste of free market structure, and they operated swiftly and naturally within
that framework. Despite Castro’s assertions that socialism would live on after
the economy “recovered” from the Special Period, his reforms permitted the teeth
of capitalism to sink more deeply into a Cuban society that already valued
entrepreneurship. My sense is that Cubans have an inherent capacity for trade
that grew furtively throughout the Revolution through black market activity.
Castro’s 1993 reform policy fostered this activity, and commercialism blossomed
during the Special Period. Thus, socialism could no longer stand alone as Cuba’s
official ideology. It is my goal in this work to expose the breakdown in the
centrally planned Marxist economy in Cuba during the Special Period. I hope to
show that during this time, the Cuban people’s various pursuits of capitalistic
goals transformed the economy from socialist to mixed.