Creating the "New Man": From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities

Three: “Let Them All Become Che”: Creating the New Man in Cuba

127 Three “Let Them All Become Che” Creating the New Man in Cuba A s the most important communist revolution of the 1960s, especially in terms of its influence in the Third World, the Cuban Revolution presented its own type of “new man.” From 1959 to the mid-1960s, the revolution underwent a rapid and drastic transformation , from a self-proclaimed radical nationalist/democratic revolution to a socialist and communist revolution. For many historians, the Cuban Revolution is a particularly intriguing case, compared with many other socialist or communist revolutions inspired or directly supported by the Soviet Union and China. The Cuban revolutionaries claimed their Marxist ideology and sided with the communist world rather late (almost two years after taking state power), but their transformation toward socialism and communism was much more radical and hurried. The historical moment at which Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and other leaders began to embrace Marxism, perceive their revolution as socialist, and prepare measures to lead their revolution toward communism has been a subject of discussion since the early 1960s. This question is also important for a broader understanding of revolutionary movements and radical social transformation in the twentieth century. While analyses of sociopolitical policies provide substantial ground for our understanding of the issue, an analysis of the revolutionary political culture is particularly relevant in Cuba’s context. Because the socialist transformation in Cuba was less planned than in other countries and was carried out within a much shorter time, state imposition of the new social system was more forceful and had to be installed by indoctrinating people with new beliefs, values, symbols, and patterns of behavior. In this regard, a consciousness of a “new man” in Cuba was more inherently entailed by the establishment of a new system. As Richard Fagen has observed: Almost from the beginning the key mechanism of change has been seen not in this or that specific institution, policy, or program, but rather in the fundamental transformation of the sociopolitical character of the Cuban citizen. . . . During the 1960s the formation of a “new Cuban man” became 128 Chapter 3 so central to revolutionary rhetoric and action program as to constitute the ideological and operational mainspring of the revolution. . . . It is worth stressing that although the new man thesis was not formally articulated until after the Revolutionary Government had been in power for a number of years, the operation of the revolutionary system has almost from the outset depended on such a model of change.1 In such a transformation, characterized by emphasis on the new man, the Cuban leaders were facing a difficult choice between the Russian and Chinese models. Ideologically Castro and Guevara, in particular, were in affinity with the Chinese, who emphasized people’s consciousness and devotion and relied upon mass mobilization and concentration of resources in economic development, as opposed to the Soviet model, which was based on a sound economic foundation, a technocracy, and stimulation of individual incentive. But Cuba’s monocrop economy and its confrontation with the United States limited its choice of international allies. As a result, Castro followed an eclectic approach. He made Moscow his economic supporter and international ally and broke with China in 1966, while in domestic affairs he rejected the Russian model and adopted policies similar to those of Mao’s in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Castro’s goal was to telescope the transformation from socialism, which was just starting in Cuba in the early 1960s, to communism in a matter of several years. To reach this goal, the creation of the new man in Cuba became just as crucial as it was then in China and was placed in the center of Castro’s political agenda. From 1968 to 1970, following an escalation of years of revolutionary rhetoric and the intensification of institutional changes, Castro launched the Revolutionary Offensive, essentially the Cuban equivalent of a combination of China’s Great Leap Forward and its Cultural Revolution, in which Cuba’s new man was tried and tempered. JOSÉ MARTÍ AND THE EARLY EXPECTATION OF THE NEW MAN As in China, the new man was expected in Cuba long before the communist revolution. As early as the late 1880s, José Martí, the father of Cuban nationalism, expressed views similar to those of his Chinese counterparts, on the relationship between the creation of a new Cuban national character and the redemption of the nation. Having struggled many years for Cuba’s independence and frustrated by what he viewed...