ABSTRACT
Cuba has been ruled in large part by military men who govern large segments of both military and civilian life who have politicized themselves by absorbing the norms and organization of the Communist party. The "civic soldier" has been a key political role in Cuba for a long time. Civic soldiers head both military and civilian agencies in Cuba and, just as military agencies have had civilian tasks, civilian agencies have had military tasks and have used military forms of organization. The military mission of the Cuban armed forces was originally to provide for national defense and to suppress internal challenges to the authority of the government. Unlike Batista's military in the 1930s, which contributed little in terms of technical and managerial skills to economic growth, the Revolutionary Armed Forces in the 1960s took on various nonmilitary technical and managerial jobs to encourage growth.
