Havana/In Cuba, the powerful do not usually fall with a crash, rather they slide into silence. Some disappear after a brief statement, others fade away with a eulogy that sounds like an epitaph. The political history of the last half century on the Island can also be read as an inventory of those who have fallen from grace. From the disciplinary Marxism of the 1960s to the distrustful technocratism of this century, the “errors” of the ministers and cadres of the Communist Party have been as predictable as the way in which the State buries them, with slogans and without explanations.
The collapse of Alejandro Gil Fernández, former Minister of Economy and Planning, accused of espionage and other crimes, is not an anomaly. It is just the most recent chapter of a political liturgy that has been repeated with revolutionary punctuality since 1959: the purge as a reaffirmation of power.
There was a founding fall, one that left its mark on the grammar of revolutionary power: Huber Matos, commander of the Rebel Army and hero of the Sierra Maestra, was the first man to discover that dissenting from the direction of the process was equivalent to treason. In 1959, just ten months after the triumph, Matos sent a letter to Fidel Castro denouncing the communist drift of the new Government; The gesture cost him twenty years in prison. The official press presented him as a “counterrevolutionary” and “traitor to the country”, while in the streets his name was erased from the murals with the same speed with which new slogans were written. His case made it clear that, in the Revolution, trials are not made so much to clarify, but to warn.
In the sixties, when the young revolutionary process was just taking its first steps, another offensive came. In 1968, Aníbal Escalante, leader of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution, was accused of being a member of the “microfraction” and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The official press did not speak of ideological differences but of “divisive activities”, and Escalante, who had helped found the Party, ended up becoming an example of what should not be repeated. He died in exile.
It was the time when one phrase was enough to disappear: “The companion has been freed from his responsibilities”
The method was established: identify, isolate and delete. It has never been about justice but about harsh political pedagogy.
At the beginning of the 70s, “purges” became routine, although without such sonorous names. Bureaucrats, artists or intellectuals who did not fit the mold of the “new man” disappeared from the public landscape, relocated to an administrative position or some agricultural work. It was the time when one sentence was enough to disappear: “The comrade has been released from his responsibilities,” the newscasters frequently read.
But the great destructive ray was, without a doubt, that of 1989, the same year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the Cuban Revolution decided to judge itself. The so-called Cause No. 1 led to General Arnaldo Ochoa, hero of Angola and Ethiopia, along with Tony de la Guardia and other senior officers, accused of drug trafficking and treason. It was a carefully televised spectacle, a mixture of internal purging and exemplary message. While the communist world was reeling, the Cuban regime preferred to settle scores behind closed doors. The trials were presented as an act of moral cleansing, but in reality they functioned as a warning: no one was—or could aspire to be—above the Commander in Chief.
The process marked a before and after in Cuban politics. Since then, the word loyalty became a value of survival rather than conviction. The execution of Ochoa – a popular figure even among the military – sealed the end of the illusion of plurality within the regime. From there, the Revolution learned to purge without bullets. Silence, discreet seclusion or the disappearance of the face in the official press was enough. The general’s death not only closed an era; inaugurated the modern method of socialist disgrace.
The case of Carlos Aldana was the tropical version of a manual of political errors: a man who believed that power was a matter of intelligent speeches and not of timely silences. At the beginning of the 90s, Aldana was the visible face of the Party, the one in charge of “rectification of errors” and, according to many, the only one who spoke with any frankness. But candor, in Cuba, has always been a risky sport. In 1992 he disappeared from the scene with a statement from the Central Committee that sounded more like an epitaph than a sanction: “serious errors and indiscipline.” Nobody explained more. His name became taboo, and his fall marked the beginning of a long political winter where loyalty outweighed intelligence.
The two most promising cadres of the Government went from the ministerial office to irrelevance in a matter of days
Then would come thunder to Roberto Robaina, chancellor during the years of the Special Period. Young and charismatic, the possible youngest was dismissed in 1999 for “conduct unbecoming of a leading cadre.” There was no judgment or details, but the message was clear: too much visibility is dangerous in a system that distrusts those who attract too much attention. Today he paints pictures and avoids cameras.
Forty years after the “microfraction” of Escalante, the “macrofraction” of 2009 arrived. That year, General Raúl Castro decided to reorganize power after the departure of his brother from public life and, in the process, sacrifice several of the best-known faces of the previous period. In a letter published by the official press, Fidel Castro described Felipe Pérez Roque, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Carlos Lage Dávila, vice president of the Council of State, as men who allowed themselves to be seduced by the honeys of power.
It was a political execution with biblical rhetoric. The two most promising cadres of the Government went from the ministerial office to irrelevance in a matter of days. There were no judicial charges against them, only public stoning of their names and reputations. They returned Lage’s medical gown, and Pérez Roque’s anonymity. In Cuban slang, they entered into a “pajama plan”: neither completely condemned, nor ever rehabilitated.
Along with them fell other minor faces: Otto Rivero, architect of the “Battle of Ideas”, and Carlos Valenciaga, Fidel Castro’s young secretary, who were erased from the organization charts of Cuban power. Their names did not appear in the court records, but popular wisdom understood: it was the settling of accounts between the new group that was at the helm and the one that was leaving the scene.
The case of the former Minister of the Food Industry, Alejandro Roca Iglesias, sentenced in 2011 to fifteen years for corruption in a business with the Chilean businessman Max Marambio, gave way to the phase of “economic” purges. It was the era of the technocrats, those who negotiated directly with investors and controlled currencies. “Due to serious ethical and moral deficiencies,” the newspaper stated. Granma. Nobody mentioned it again.
Something similar happened with Juan Carlos Robinson, first secretary of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba, accused of corruption and sentenced in 2006 to 12 years in prison. The official note, true to its style, spoke of “improper conduct” and “violations of revolutionary ethics.” In reality, it was an internal rearrangement: the struggle of factions within the PCC after the wear and tear of the Special Period. Robinson was, until recently, the last major leader to face a formal judicial process.
In Cuba, trials against high officials are less frequent than “loss of confidence”, but the outcome is identical: invisibility
Since then, punishments have been more administrative than criminal. Yadira García, Minister of Basic Industry, and Rogelio Acevedo, head of Civil Aeronautics, were fired in 2010 for “deficiencies in their work.” There were no courts or defenses, only the word of a Council of Ministers, as cryptic as it was concise.
The recent fall of Alejandro Gil Fernández, symbol of Raulista economic orthodoxy, seems to reopen that old script. His arrest and subsequent conviction mark a turn: for the first time in more than a decade, someone who held the position of minister formally faces criminal proceedings. The official press did not initially speak of “errors”, but of serious criminal acts and later of espionage. Behind that language, however, appears the same logic as in the sixties: a system that does not trust its own cadres and that needs, from time to time, to offer a political sacrifice at the altar of revolutionary purity.
The mechanism repeats itself because it works. In Cuba, trials against high officials are less frequent than “loss of confidence”, but the outcome is identical: invisibility. The punishment is not jail, but oblivion. The fallen, almost all men who believed they were part of the hard core of power, end up out of focus, writing reports for some minor company or, if they are lucky, exporting their talent to exile.
Among the rubble of so many broken loyalties, the case of Alejandro Gil only confirms that Castroism, more than a political process, has been a chain of forced replacements. In six decades, the pattern has not changed: every time the system breaks down, it looks for someone to blame. And the chosen one, as in every good communist fable, is usually the one who until yesterday appeared, smiling, in the official photo.
