1986: The Year that Changed Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – The year 1986 is not as well remembered in Cuba as the early years of the Revolution, or 1970–71, when Fidel Castro summoned the nation to extract ten million tons of sugar from the land and human muscle—a goal that failed—or the 1990s Special Period crisis, or the gloomy five years of COVID and its aftermath.
However, things happened in 1986 that set future trends in motion. Sometimes what occurs beneath the surface has long-term effects.
Obviously, “at the top,” at that time they understood where the new leadership of the USSR was heading, although at the time it wasn’t openly talking about restructuring the system (perestroika), but rather about accelerating scientific-technological progress. When I say “was heading,” I mean that the Soviet leaders were trying to solve the problems caused by that acceleration, as well as the country’s growing shortage of general consumer goods, by introducing “more market.” Of course, neither in Cuba nor in the USSR did anyone imagine what course events would take just a few years later (the collapse of the “socialist bloc,” the disintegration of the USSR, the economic crisis in Cuba).
On the matter of the market and its compatibility with socialism, opinions within the Cuban establishment were divided. What Fidel would say on the matter was what the people and the Communist Party (PCC) were desperately waiting to hear.
From February 4 to 7, 1986, the 3rd Congress of the PCC was held in Havana (with a deferred session in November–December). At the Congress, Fidel Castro called for a “process of rectification of errors and negative tendencies”—a “homegrown Cuban response” to the increasingly evident crisis that the “world socialist system” was suffering.
Economically, the “rectification of errors” meant a shift toward the proposals made by Che Guevara in the 1960s, which called for increased centralized state control over the economy.
From March 8 to 11, Fidel Castro visited North Korea. Comrades Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il (known in the DPRK as the Great Leader and the Dear Leader, respectively) took their Cuban colleague to visit various facilities and work centers, and it is said that they made a strong impression on him. It’s possible that as a result of that trip, Fidel decided—at least at the time—firmly in favor of the “more state” vision of the future over the “more market” one.
Emerging from the Commander’s reflections and those of his comrades in the Politburo, the measure that most quickly impacted ordinary Cubans at the start of the “rectification” was the elimination of the Free Farmers’ Markets, which had existed in “socialist Cuba” since 1968. In these markets, farmers were allowed—under the watchful eye of the Economic Police—to sell their surplus production to the population (after first meeting a quota sold to the State at official prices, which favored the State).
On May 17, 1986, at the 2nd National Meeting of Agricultural Production Cooperatives, it was “decided” to eliminate the Free Farmers’ Market. The next day, Fidel Castro gave a speech to the assembly celebrating the decision, accusing sellers and intermediaries of being “lumpens, antisocials… full of greed for profit.” The extinction of the Free Farmers’ Market was implemented immediately.
At that time, no one even thought to talk about consumer cooperatives as an alternative. Everything had to go through the State.
It should be noted that in 1986, the Cuban population was relatively well supplied through State rationing. With the famous ration book (Libreta), families received at highly subsidized prices meat, grains, root vegetables, canned goods, fuel, and industrial products. Worker, student, and State institution cafeterias were also relatively well stocked. So while the elimination of the Free Farmers’ Market affected access to many agricultural products, its immediate impact was not critical. But those who made that decision had planted a time bomb under Cuba’s household economies.
With the disappearance of the “socialist bloc” and its Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA or “COMECON”), and—months later—the USSR itself (1989–1991), Cuba lost its source of cheap food imports and low-cost fertilizers for agriculture. And it did not have enough hard currency to buy these on the global market.
Many people then began calling for the reopening of the farmers’ markets, as seen—by 1991—in the mass debates over the preparatory document for the PCC’s 4th Congress, which were officially organized in workplaces and schools. When a delegate raised the issue at the Congress; the live TV broadcast was cut off, and returned a while later with an intervention by Fidel, criticizing the proposal. The market did not return; the first half of the 1990s saw extreme food shortages.
The farmers’ markets were reinstated in 1994, after the social explosion of the Maleconazo in Havana, and with the previously forbidden US dollar already in circulation. But by then, the country had changed dramatically, largely due to the food crisis of the so-called Special Period.
The year 1986 had been, for the system, a year of searching for a future. That future did not turn out the way they (and many of us) imagined, but what was done in that year shaped the “really existing future,” which is now largely past—but also still present.