ABSTRACT
For many socialists, Castro’s Cuba represents an exciting radical alternative to the stale orthodoxies of Marxism-Leninism. Relying heavily on sources sympathetic to the Cuban experiment, this chapter will try to explain why the results have been so disappointing. Before Castro and Guevara wrested power from General Batista’s murderous regime in 1958–9, Cuba’s per capita national income was around 50 per cent above the average for Latin America and ‘Only Venezuela and Argentina, of the larger Latin American countries, had a higher average income’ (Seers, 1964, 18). But by 1970 Cuba’s per capita GDP was approximately 2 per cent below the average for Latin America and her relative decline continued in the 1970s (UN Economic Bulletin for Latin America, 1967, 108; Warren, 1980, 230; Bairoch, 1975, 193, 247; Wynia, 1978, 326; World Bank, 1980, 110–11):
|
Current US dollars per capita |
Latin America |
Cuba |
El Salvador |
Guatemala |
Peru |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
GDP, 1950 |
247 |
372 |
148 |
166 |
121 |
|
GNP, 1959–61 |
350 |
500 * |
321 |
269 |
198 |
|
GDP, 1970 |
540 |
530 |
295 |
350 |
435 |
|
GNP, 1974 |
937 |
640 |
410 |
580 |
740 |
|
GNP, 1978 |
1362 |
810 |
660 |
910 |
740 |
|
Current US dollars per capita |
Columbia |
Brazil |
Mexico |
Argentina |
|
|
201 |
208 |
211 |
496 |
||
|
GNP, 1959–61 |
253 |
267 |
348 |
551 |
|
|
GDP, 1970 |
315 |
365 |
660 |
1055 |
|
|
GNP, 1974 |
500 |
920 |
1090 |
1520 |
|
|
GNP, 1978 |
850 |
1570 |
1290 |
1910 |
1957: Seers, 1974, 264.
