Cuba's military

Did you know that Cuba's senior military officers

are in charge of sugar production, tourism, import-export, information technology and communications, civil aviation and cigar production?

James Bruno was the State Department’s former representative to negotiations with Cuba’s military, and he shares today at Politico his insights gained from that experience. Cuba's military establishment is the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, or FAR.

Bruno writes,

Under Raúl Castro’s leadership from 1959 until he succeeded brother Fidel as president in 2006, the now 60,000-strong military has been widely considered to be Cuba’s best managed and stablest official entity. Furthermore, it has never been called upon to fire on or suppress Cuban citizens, even during the so-called Maleconazo protests in 1994, and most observers believe the FAR would refuse any orders to do so.

Former CIA Cuba analyst Brian Latell believes the pragmatic-oriented FAR will be easier to deal with than the old-guard civilian leaders.

“The generals will either dominate a praetorian successor regime after Fidel Castro dies or is incapacitated, or, like the militaries in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, be the willing accomplices in the demise of Marxism,” according to Latell.

The end of Soviet subsidies also led the FAR to expand into non-military-related economic activities in order to help pay for defense outlays as well as to fund the civilian side of government. It has focused its efforts on three key sectors: agriculture, manufacturing and tourism. Many high-ranking active and retired FAR officers subsequently have turned into “entrepreneur soldiers,” i.e., olive-drab businessmen in charge of large, hard-currency-earning industries, all controlled by GAESA, headed by Raúl’s son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez, an Army brigadier who speaks English with an impeccable upper-class British accent.

Read more here.

Thanks to Betsy Newmark