Monday, November 30, 2009

Comment to Valentin's post on Charisma, Fidel, and White Doves

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1) For Weber, Charisma is a type of legitimation of authority—i.e., how citizens or subjects justify their obedience to the ruler. The focus is on the motivations and feelings of the ruled, and not so much on objective features of the leaders (Gonzalez in the readings abuses a bit the Weberian concept, as his focus is on Fidel, not on the Cuban public).

The picture shows the other "barbudo:" less revolutionary, but probably crazier, and as brilliant.


2) For Weber, there are three polar types of legitimacy, which correspond to three different "subjective" motivations for obedience. One is fully rational, and obedience is to the rule of laws, not to persons. People obey because they think that rules (even bad ones!) provide stability to their lives and hence allow for rational calculations for individual plans of action. Modern constitutional governments of the North-Atlantic type (US, Western Europe post WWII), are the prime examples.

Another one is "traditional" legitimacy, which is semi-rational (people obey because they are used to obeying, and do not think too much about authority), and also impersonal (the focus of obedience is a tradition, not a person). Dynastic monarchies, in Medieval Europe, or African/Asian Ancient times, are the key political examples.

Charismatic authority, the third type, is both irrational (based on "love" to the ruler by the ruled, according to its Greek etymology), and personal: the target of the people's affection is a person, the leader, not rules or traditions. Examples? Ancient priests, druids, saints, military leaders, Jeanne d’Arc, Hitler, Ghandi … they were all the object of extraordinary amounts of admiration and love.

3) Is Castro a Charismatic leader? It is OK to say that in a dinner party in order to sound interesting. However, the real issue in Weber’s theory is that Charisma is not something inherent to Castro’s personality, responsibility, or body. Rather, the Cubans created a Charismatic authority by loving Castro ("Fidel, Fidel") and by attributing him supra-human, magical, attributes (pretty much like what progressive Americans did in relation to Obama only a year ago).

4) Does Castro WANT to be a Charismatic leader? Yes, of course. But the question is pertinent because Castro's speeches and policies are directed to a rational (not an irrational) audience: one that will appreciate the rational value of socialism, of a change in property rights, and the subsequent change in civic virtues and the enhancement of social cooperation. Only VERY rational citizens can get that message. Weber would have liked this: he thinks reality "mixes" theoretical ideal types in complicated, context-specific ways. Authority in Cuba is not only Charismatic. Were it so, it would have vanished long time ago.

5) An extension of (4). Castro exploits his Charisma (receives love) but the Revolution has been genuinely involved in creating a new, super-rational man (returns “consciencia”). Pretty unique authority process. The other few super-charismatic leaders, eg., Hitler, generally receive irrational support from their followers, and lead them to more irrationality.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Case Study in Charismatic Authority: Fidel and the Dove

The armed conflict between the 26th of July Movement and the Government of Cuba came to an end in the early morning hours of New Years' Day 1959. Facing limited prospects for success, then-president Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic at 3 AM. The Commanders of the Revolution, as the leaders of the armed movement came to be known, quickly secured control over the provinces in the aftermath of Batista's departure. On January 8, 1959, Fidel Castro Ruz entered the city of Havana. On that very day, he delivered a lengthy victory speech in which he recounted the years that had preceded that occasion and outlined a course of action for the coming year.

At a pivotal moment in the speech, a dove landed on his shoulder and two others hovered around the stage. Over the past 50 years, this landing has been the subject of much speculation, controversy, and worship. Some have claimed that Luis Conte Agüero, at the time a Fidel ally and mentor, had spent the previous week training the dove for this performance. Others have suggested that lead pellets had been placed in the dove's beak prior to its release, weighing it down and forcing it to grasp for the first available... shoulder. Additional explanations have ranged from the random to the pheromonal.


Whatever the reasons for the dove landing, the dove landed. And hundreds of thousands of people watched as it landed on the shoulder of the man who would go on to become the longest serving head of state in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Millions more saw pictures of the seemingly unbelievable occurrence in the nation's newspapers and television channels.

As Fidel assured Cuban mothers that he "would do everything in his power to solve all of the nation's problems without a single drop of blood being shed," the dove (and the community of doves that stood beside it) entrusted the 32-year-old revolutionary with the power to lead them into a differentiated state of affairs. In one totalizing moment, the natural seemed to yield to the discursive, the impossible seemed possible, and the mythic peacefully gave credence to the political. It is this last point, whereby new power structures arose from what, at first glance, may have looked like thin air, that holds particular salience for the course.

How did Castro parlay his victory (or Batista's defeat) into authority with a monopoly on violence? In other words, how did Castro's authority achieve legitimacy? One possible explanation for this process of legitimation rests on the notion of charismatic authority, one of three ideal types (Idealtyp) that German sociologist Max Weber used to classify forms of political domination, best explained in his aptly-titled book, The Three Types of Legitimate Rule.

Richard R. Fagen notes that Weber defines charisma as "a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with superhuman, supernatural, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities." Some who witnessed the dove-on-the-shoulder moment perceived it as nothing short of a miracle, an anointment from the heavens, a moment of spiritual transcendence. This moment, then, corresponds directly with the formation (or at least, the concretization) of Fidel's authority-cum-charisma. Whether a symbol of divine kingmaking or a happenstance call to peace, the dove created (or contributed to) a visual narrative of Fidel's legitimacy. Please refer to Fagen's article, "Charismatic Authority and the Leadership of Fidel Castro," originally published in the June 1965 Western Political Quarterly, for an overview of the relationship between charisma and authority vis-à-vis 1959-1965 Fidel Castro. (The article is one of the readings for Week 8.) Alternatively, turn to Alejo Carpentier's El Reino de Este Mundo for a literary take on charismatic authority in the context of the Haitian Revolution.



An editorial on the front page of the January 9, 1959 edition of Diario de la Marina, one of Cuba's leading center-right newspapers at the time, declared:
Cuando todo el pueblo de Cuba escuchaba ayer las palabras del supremo adalid del movimiento revolucionario, comandante doctor Fidel Castro, pronunciadas desde el polígono de la Ciudad Militar de Columbia, una paloma blanca, una de las muchas que soltó al vuelo la mano limpia de nuestro pueblo, vino a posarse sobre el hombro del Comandante en Jefe del Ejército Rebelde. Nosotros, junto a la mayoría abrumadora de todos los cubanos, no podemos creer que tal suceso haya sido una simple incidencia, una anécdota sin importancia.

No; en la paloma blanca sobre la mano diestra de Fidel Castro vimos un claro signo del Altísimo, porque ese signo universal de la paz traduce e interpreta cabalmente el gran deseo, la voluntad entera, de todo el pueblo cubano.

The editorial affirms that it saw "a clear sign of Providence" in the white dove, "the universal sign of peace that fully translates and interprets the grand wish, the entire will, of the Cuban people." (The newspaper would go on to cease publication in May 1960 in response to government pressure and organized acts of violence and vandalism.)

The first minute of the following clip from Estela Bravo's 2001 documentary, Fidel: The Untold Story, shows video evidence of the landing and delves into its perceived religious significance:



The dove landing continues to hold currency in Cuban politics. A January 2008 Reuters article, in which a Cuban babalao (high priest in the Santería religion) asserts that Fidel is "untouchable," includes the following:
Santería followers have believed their gods were on Fidel Castro's side ever since a white dove landed on his shoulder during a victory speech in Havana after his 1959 revolution.

The following video shows a March 2009 performance-art piece assembled by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, in which members of the audience were given the opportunity to speak for one minute in front of a microphone as two actors placed a dove atop their shoulder, evoking (arguably, parodying and subverting) Fidel's 1959 speech:



The story of Fidel's dove and its many photographic iterations serve as a reminder of the continued interplay between charisma and the reified power relations of the Cuban Revolution.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Voluntary Work -- The Official Story

Contemporary narrative of Moral Incentives: Bohemia 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Key Points on the Literacy Campaign

Key Events of the Literacy Campaign:

  • Summer 1957: Sierra Manifesto decreed that upon victory there would be an “immediate start of an intensive campaign against illiteracy”
  • April 1959: Literacy Commission established to lay the groundwork for an eventual campaign
  • September 26, 1960: Fidel Castro announces Literacy Initiative at the General Assembly of the United Nations
  • October 1960: Literacy Commission replaced by National Literacy Commission to prepare for the broad effort in 1961
  • Late 1960: National Literacy Commission produces major teaching materials (Alfabeticemos, Let’s Alphabetize, and Venceremos, We Shall Triumph). Both had significant political content
  • November 1960-August 1961: Census to locate illiterates was conducted on an ongoing basis. 985,000 were located by August ‘61
  • January 23, 1961: Castro announces that Conrado Benitez was assassinated by counterrevolutionaries while teaching in Las Villas
  • January 28, 1961: Castro announces that all secondary and pre-university schools would close on April 15. This freed 100,000 literacy workers from the ranks of students older than 13 years. // Same time that “Conrado Benitez Brigades” were formed
  • April 1961: Bay of Pigs invasion. Distracted Fidel for a few days, but gave more impetus to the literacy campaign as a tool to combat hostility from outside by strengthening the Revolution
  • May 1961-August 1961: Members of Conrado Benitez Brigades are trained at Varadero beach.
  • August 1961: Fidel Castro calls up 30,000 brigadistas obreros from the Confederation of Cuban Workers
  • September 1961: National Literacy Congress convened to celebrate, criticize, and plan improvemenets in the literacy campaign
  • September 18, 1961: Fidel Castro says that teachers would be required to work on the literacy campaign for the last three months of the year (no longer a voluntary program)
  • Late November, 1961: Manuel Asunce (literacy worker) killed by counterrevolutionaries. Gives impetus to the final few weeks of the campaign much like the Conrado Benitez’s murder gave impetus to the start of the movement.
  • December 15, 1961: Trains with literacy workers pour into Havana celebrating success (similar to entrance of victorious guerillas in 1959- Fagan, 53)
  • December 22, 1961: Grand finale of the illiteracy campaign // In his speech Castro emphasized the theme that “while the mercenary [US-backed] army had been drawing up battle plans to attack Cuba, the Cubans had been drawing up battle plans to eradicate illiteracy” (Fagan 54) // At the end, one out of four eligible Cubans had participated as volunteers in the literacy campaign

Analysis:

One of the literacy campaign’s successes was the mobilization of both the literacy workers and the illiterate towards political ends. Parts of this analysis stems from Fagan and part stems from course lectures.

Facing the end of guerilla warfare, which had defined the very existence of the revolutionaries, there needed to be some cause, some mechanism to make revolutionaries out of young people who had not had a chance to fight in the Sierra Maestra. To crystallize commitment to the revolution, according to Castro, young people and teachers had to go out and spread its work to the masses. The youth involved in the literacy campaign were agents of social change, but, perhaps more importantly, their political fervor was galvanized by the transformative experience of bringing the Revolution to the masses.

The goal of teaching those who were illiterate to read was a noble one; however, literacy can also be seen as a proxy to political participation and support of the Castro regime. As Professor Dominguez said in one of the Q&A sessions, many were taught that “F is for Fidel” and “I is for Imperialism.” Those who were taught to read had their eyes opened to the written word at a time when only government-run newspapers or approved books were legally available. Was the goal of the Castro regime social justice or political consolidation and loyalty? It is difficult to tell for sure, but the answer is probably a combination of both. They were creating a revolution in the name of improving the situation of the lowest classes, but they also had to ensure that they maintained the support of the lower classes through political mobilization.

Literacy Campaign Timeline

September 26, 1960: Speech to the United Nations General Assembly
Castro declares that “next year our people propose to launch an all-out offensive against illiteracy… Cuba will be the first country in America to be able to claim that it has not a single illiterate inhabitant.”

Early October 1960: First Congress of the Municipal Councils of Education
Local level and Ministry of Education officials convene and start to strategize. This first conference shows that Castro did arrange for some planning in the campaign.

Late October 1960: Creation of Comision Nacional de Alfabetizacion
The Comision Alfabetizacion (Literacy Commission), which was created after the rebels came to power, was replaced by new Comision Nacional de Alfabetizacion (National Commission), which was structurally different. It tied the local councils of education to national key members of government. It became vast machine for financial, propaganda and mobilization means.

November 1960: Special Census to Locate Illiterates Begins
The government sends out students, teachers, and voluntary census takers to the country side with a single page questionnaire to comb the villages for illiterates. It ended in August 1961, having found that roughly 1 million people in Cuba cannot read.

December 1960 – January 1961: Recruitment Efforts Start Full Force
Before this point, there were students and teachers in training, in the mountains. Parts of Red Army and IRNA and people in the cities became volunteer teachers for the Ministry of Education. Castro starts making more speeches, getting the word out (New Years Eve speech, etc.). There was no formal plan yet, but the propaganda machine was in place.

January 23, 1961: Death of Conrado Benitez Announced
Benitez was a young volunteer in Las Villas. “He was poor, he was a Negro, and he was a teacher,” and according to Castro, he was assassinated by counterrevolutionaries. Castro used the opportunity to further advertise the campaign. He turned the literacy project into issue of great national importance, and the young man into a Saint of the revolution.

January 28, 1961: Early Closing of Schools and Formation of “Conrado Benitez Brigadistas”
Castro announced that all secondary and pre-university schools will close on April 15, so that an army of literacy workers can be created. All children over the age of thirteen, will be given the “honor and privilege” of serving. Castro named the forces of students and young people “Benitez Brigadistas.”

Mid March 1961: Castro Takes Over Ministry of Education
The Minister of Education, Armando Hart, left for a tour of Eastern Europe. Castro considered this project so important, that he personally stepped in.

May 1, 1961: Post Bay of Pigs Speech—Castro Announces Nationalization of All Schools
Castro reaffirmed the socialist, radical, nature of the revolution, and gloated in the victory against the Yankees at the Bay of Pigs. He announces an end to the pre-revolutionary system of education.

Late May 1961: Varedero Beach Resort Training Center Expanded
Students and youth lived in hotels, clubs, former luxury resorts, taking special classes on revolutionary politics and rural life, participating in various recreational activities. By the end of August 1961, 105,700 students had been through the facilities. It is not the physical location or the programming that made the experience; it was the spirit, the fulfillment of revolutionary obligations, in the air.

May-June 1961: Teachers Join Campaign as Alfabetizadores Populares
After primary schools closed for the year, teachers joined, mostly as overseers on municipal levels, supervising students. They received a salary for this work.

Early August 1961: Confederation of Cuban Workers mobilizes 30,000 Brigadistas Obreros
Workers were called away from factories and shops to go teach. They received stipends and a salary while they traveled. The workers remaining in factories had to make up the work through over time and voluntary work. Teachers and workers served mostly as a back-up force to the Benitez brigades.

Early September 1961: National Literacy Congress
A Convention takes place at the ex-Havana Hilton Hotel, now called Havana Libre, for 4 days with 800 members, of national, provincial, municipal council, present. They came together to celebrate, to criticize and to improve the campaign. They stressed that there were only three months left to carry out the plan. They had the man power and apparatus in place—now the teaching had to start.

Mid September 1961: Beginning of School Year Delayed from September to January 1962
Most of the Ministry of Education personnel were working on the campaign, teachers were still in the field, and thus school could not start. This means students in Cuba were out of schools for eight months in 1961. At the same time, a “Plan of attendance” was established. Volunteers and parents set up alternative activities for children.

November 1961: Mass Celebrations and Final Push Start
Communities wrapped up their literacy programs and celebrated their achievements. Mass “graduation” ceremonies were arranged, awards, certificates, flags were handed out, and whole areas were declared free of illiteracy. “Acceleration camps” were set up to help those who had fallen behind and scholarships were promised to brigadistas who completed the program successfully.

Late November 1961: Death of Brigadista Manuel Ascunce Announced
A Brigadista and the father of the family with which the student was living, were hanged outside of the family home. Castro claimed it was done by counterrevolutionaries. This event gave the final weeks an incredible sense of urgency.

December 15, 1961: The Brigadistas Return Home
Trains from the provinces carried brigadistas home to Havana. A whole army of youth gathered to share their experiences. They were still wearing their uniforms and peasant’s hats upon arrival.

December 22, 1961: The Grand Finale
Hundreds of thousands met at Plaza to celebrate the campaign’s victory. “First came a gigantic Cuban flag, escorted by motorcycle police, then the flags of Socialist and Latin American countries….dignitaries and officials of the camping came next, then five hundred literacy workers with lanterns …five thousand soldiers of the literacy campaign bearing giant pencils…then came the brigadistas” (Fagan 53).


Pre Literacy Campaign: Purposes
Already in 1953, during his trial for the attack on the Moncada Army barrack, Castro proclaimed that it is unacceptable that 99% of peasants cannot spell their name and know nothing of history. By 1957, he included his passion for education in the Manifesto of Sierra Maestra. The campaign against illiteracy became part of ten point revolutionary program. Data from the 1950’s confirms that the Cuban education system greatly disadvantaged the lower classes, and that there was a decline in literacy. This partially explains the broad support the campaign received.

Post Literacy Campaign: Results
Critics point to the fact that only a first grade level of reading skills was achieved during the campaign, much too low to have real and immediate effects. The knowledge that had been gained would quickly slip away. Most importantly, 28% of those illiterates located in the census, would not or could not be taught. According to this evaluation, the campaign was a definite failure. Supporters point to the amazing scope and reach of the effort. Over one sixth of the country was mobilized. The everyday life of most Cubans was directly touched and affected by the campaign. Being able to finally spell their names, meant very much to the illiterates helped by the project. Reviews are mixed at best.

Comment:

The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 was one of the most fantastic and dreamlike, almost whimsical, events of the early revolutionary period. A whole country was mobilized within months—children, teenagers, were driven into the countryside and mountains—peasants opened their homes to those children and for the most part, willingly received their instruction—teachers, government officials, and Fidel Castro himself, dropped what they were working on to momentarily dedicate themselves to the cause. An immense effort was poured into training teachers, printing materials, keeping labor running and younger children occupied, while the rest of the country had to function as well. The Cuban people threw themselves into a challenge which “was large enough to appear heroic without at the same time appearing absolutely impossible” (Fagan 36).

The project was turned over to the people in true revolutionary style. “The planning and organizational work would come after, not before this commitment” (Fagan 65). Fidel and Cuba committed to the campaign before any strategy was developed. Chaos was the plan, especially during the last couple of months, which is all the brigadistas had left to actually teach the people. At various random moments of the campaign, Castro haphazardly called on this organization, and that organization, to provide this many thousands of teachers. Castro’s whim was the plan, especially during the months when he ran the Ministry of Education. But the hectic and haphazard pace is exactly what the revolutionary government wanted—this was after all a revolutionary campaign. Castor firmly believed that “the act of trying, the struggle itself, opens up possibilities that could not have been imagined before the battle” (Fagan 65). The literacy campaign was as astonishing, albeit imperfect, a feat, as the effort of a dozen men in the Sierra Mountains.

Voice of the Cuban Revolution: Carlos Franqui

In 2007, the Cuban-American Undergraduate Student Association (CAUSA...www.harvardcausa.org) was able to bring Carlos Franqui to campus to have a discussion on the Cuban Revolution with one of the few outside of Cuba who actually lived it and fought alongside Fidel Castro. We have read parts of the Diary of the Cuban Revolution in the course. He spoke to about 80 undergraduates and members of the community in the CGIS Belfer Case Study Room.

(Franqui pictured in CGIS, with former HS B-64 TF Alfie Ulloa)

This was the blurb that introduced him:

“Born on a sugar cane plantation, Carlos Franqui rose through the ranks of the Communist Party in the years before the Cuban Revolution. He fought alongside Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra as his chief journalist, writing for the newspaper Revolución and organizing Radio Rebelde. In 1968, disillusioned with Castro's regime, he defected to Italy. A prolific writer and advocate of free expression, he has published numerous books, including Diary of the Cuban Revolution, one of the most authoritative collections of documents from the Revolution. He currently lives in Puerto Rico where he founded Carta de Cuba which features works by independent journalists on the island.

Franqui is now in his late 80’s, and he resides with his wife and children in Puerto Rico. His background as an active participant in the Revolution has meant that Miami’s exiles have never fully embraced him. However, his intellectual openness and demands for civil liberties made him fall out of favor with the Castro regime.

After he left Cuba, he was actually erased from many records of the revolution, most notably, from this picture where he appeared with Fidel. (click image to see the picture with Franqui in it)


In response to this editing, Franqui wrote a poem:

“Descubro mi muerte fotográfica.

Qué existo?

Estoy un poco de negro,

Estoy un poco de blanco,

Yo soy un poco de mierda,

El chaleco de Fidel.”

I discover my photographic death.

Do I exist?


I am a little black,


I am a little white,


I am a little shit,


On Fidel's vest.

He recently wrote an interesting book entitled “Cuba, la revolucion, mito o realidad? Memorias de un fantasma socialista” (Cuba, the Revolution, Myth or Reality? Memories of a Socialist Ghost), which talks about some of the failed promises of the regime and prospects for improvment. He also founded Carta de Cuba (www.cartadecuba.org), a newsletter that publishes the writings of independent journalists and dissidents on the island.


Monday, November 2, 2009

Moral Incentives Polish Style

In the "Man of Marble," the best movie I've seen on Eastern European Communism, it's all about emulation.

This segment has the key three components: 1) incentivized by emulation and the logic of "voluntary" work, 2) a hard working young revolutionary, Mateusz Birkut, sets a productivity record, which in turn earns him 3) the full range of moral individual rewards: medal, flowers, handshakes with political authorities, invitation to festivities, admiration by women, emulation by (male) fellow workers, the marble statue (which gives the name to the movie, The Man of Marble) ... and a documentary about his life!



You can watch the rest (about 120 minutes) in YouTube. The above segment was part 3 of 17.

Sunday, November 1, 2009