Mass Organizations
Three of Cuba's principal mass organizations were founded shortly after revolutionary victory, between late 1959 and 1961. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) groups women members, as might be expected. The National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) brings together small-holders regardless of their crops of specialization. Following the 1963 agrarian reform, many such private small-holders remained. Some cultivated plots on their own or with their families; others did so as members of cooperatives. All belonged to the ANAP. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) were established in every neighborhood to uncover plots against the government. "Revolutionary vigilance" was their main task. The CDRs were also responsible for rooting out common crime and, from time to time, collaborated in such activities as mass vaccination campaigns, garbage recycling, park clean-ups, and the like.
The fourth mass organization is much older: the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC) was founded in the 1930s. The CTC groups all Cubans who are gainfully employed. It is organized into federations according to sectors of economic activity, not according to professional categories or trades. The CTC has a presence in every work center, and it and the ANAP often substitute for government agencies in dispute resolution.
Mass organizations have served important social functions in Cuba since the early 1960s. As in former communist states such as the Soviet Union, mass organizations have been used to inculcate socialist values and to mobilize the population in support of the state. Mass organizations have also been entrusted with security, educational, and public health functions. Although in principle voluntary in nature-except for military service-mass organization membership since the 1960s has been a prerequisite for full participation in the country's political, economic, and social life.
Non-membership is viewed as deviant and leads to ostracism by signifying either a refusal to accept or actual opposition to the prevailing political and social order. Those refusing to join mass organizations pay a dear price by being prevented from pursuing higher education or engaging in certain occupations, as well as by forfeiting material rewards. Given their enormous membership (in some instances in the millions), it is far from simple to determine what motivates individuals to join mass organizations. Social, political, and educational pressures are a major factor. Membership may be motivated as much by conviction as by the desire to avoid the penalties inherent in failing to join.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, these mass organizations were means by which the government and the PCC implemented policies and monitored the population. The moment of highest recognition of their role came at the Second Party Congress in 1980, when all four heads of the mass organizations became alternate members of the party's Political Bureau.
In the 1970s every action launched by the Ministry of Public Health was carried out with the cooperation of the mass organizations and, depending on its nature, the public health problem to be solved is the responsibility of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women, the National Association of Small Farmers or the trade unions. The role played by Cuban women over the years is worth mentioning. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) include about two million women in the 1970s, nearly 75% of the country's female population over 14 years old. FMC members carried out a number of activities in the field of public health, and helped to raise the consciousness of women concerning health and hygiene.
A total of 35,000 FMC health representatives had participated in all the actions programmed by the Ministry of Public Health, among them the mother and child care program, anti-polio vaccinations, blood donation campaigns, environmental sanitation and the fight against parasitic diseases. There were more than 47,000 FMC health brigades in 1977, composed of women who had followed health and sanitation courses. Under the public health system, each health area was comprised of 25-30,000 inhabitants, sub-divided into sectors of 3-5,000 inhabitants each. These sectors are divided into sub-sectors composed of 300 inhabitants, in each of which a FMC health brigade functions, its members being local inhabitants.
By the 1980s, however, the capacities of the mass organizations had begun to weaken. Consider the ANAP. One of the top national objectives in the rural sector was to promote Agricultural-Livestock Cooperatives (Cooperativas de Producci6n Agropecuaria - CPAs); the national leadership thought it more rational for small-holders to pool their resources. CPA membership jumped from 9,103 in 1978 to 82,611 in 1983, but by 1990 membership had dropped to 62,130. The number of hectares in CPAs peaked in 1986; after this high point, the organizations lost nearly a fifth of their pooled land.
A generalized weakening of the capacity of the various mass organizations became evident in the late 1980s. PCC leaders, worried that these longstanding means of control were breaking down, took decisive action in the early 1990s by replacing the leaders of three mass organizations. Thus, Orlando Lugo Fonte replaced Jose Ramirez Cruz, the longtime ANAP president; Juan Contino replaced Armando Acosta Cordero, the longtime national coordinator of the CDRs; and Pedro Ross Leal replaced the longtime CTC secretary-general, Roberto Veiga Menendez. Lugo Fonte and Contino joined the PCC Central Committee in 1991; Ross Leal was elevated to the Political Bureau that same year.
Vilma Espin founded the FMC and remained its only president until her death in 2006. She was Raul Castro's wife, Fidel's sister-in-law. Espin was promoted to alternate member of the Political Bureau in 1980 and to full Political Bureau membership in 1986. In 1991 she became a member of the Central Committee but remained as FMC president.
Notwithstanding these attempts to reinvigorate the mass organizations, primarily through new leadership, the FMC, the CDRs, and the ANAP remain weaker than in decades past in terms of representing and mobilizing the population. The CDRs hit bottom in the early 1990s; in the mid-1990s, they responded to their reduced capacity by concentrating on some strategic tasks where they are still capable of delivering important support for the political regime.
The CTC, in contrast, found a new, albeit still limited, role in the 1990s: defending the interests of workers in some respects and questioning some of the recommendations of government technocrats. In this latter stance, the CTC differed from its prior role of just helping the government implement its objectives. In the 1990s, labor unions, for example, delayed legislation that would have forced recalcitrant workers to relocate to other jobs. As a result, Cuban state firms remained overstaffed and inefficient, but the government was spared from political protest and overt unemployment remained relatively low. Unions also resisted stricter sanctions against labor absenteeism (thus making it easier for workers to moonlight as self employed), and fought off linking wages to productivity.
The CTC also spoke out in late 1993 when the government adopted some of its most far-reaching economic reforms and, spurred by Finance Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Garcia, the government's leading technocrat, began to consider whether to impose taxes on self-employed and salaried workers. The CTC opposed the imposition of taxes on the payrolls of salaried workers and supported a nationwide discussion of the proposed measures in "workers' parliaments" during the first half of 1994. In the end, taxes were imposed on self-employed but not on salaried workers.
The changes that took place in the 1990s increased the CTC's autonomy from the state and imbued it with some claims to represent the interests of state workers. This new political role, of course, came at the expense of delaying or impeding economic reform, but it no doubt made the CTC more important. During this period, the CDRs, on the other hand, became even more closely connected to the PCC's partisan interests. The ANAP and the FMC had yet to find an effective new role.
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