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The island nation of Cuba has increased the development of its merchant marine capability in the nearly 20 years since the Castro revolution. The ramifications are both political and commercial, and sometimes it is difficult to separate the two. On the facing page, a shipment of Soviet fish products is being unloaded at Havana, part of the approximately 50,000 tons imported annually for domestic consumption.
Since 1500, the island of Cuba has been an integral part of two great naval empires, the Spanish until 1898 and the Soviet from I960. In both eras, distant European naval and commercial systems have integrated Cuba into their Caribbean military and trade activities.
Under Spanish rule, Cuba was the military outpost for the defense of the Spanish Caribbean and Central America. Havana was a major naval base and fortress city. This role as a military outpost declined after the many Spanish territories and viceroyalties around the Caribbean basin—Mexico, Venezuela, the Central American republics, and the Dominican Republic—won independence from Spain during the 1820s. It declined even further with the almost complete disappearance of effective Spanish naval power during the late 19th century.
By 1898, the chief value of the Spanish West Indies (Cuba and Puerto Rico) was commercial—the export of sugar and tobacco supplying the mother country and wealthy Caribbean plantation societies with new riches. But the direct Spanish commercial and naval presence in the Caribbean was wiped out forever after the Spanish land and naval defeats of the Spanish-American War. The antiquated battle fleet of monarchist Spain, though manned by determined officers and crews in the tradition of Spanish ship captains of their great age of empire, was obliterated by the superior technology and ships of the United States. Cuba therefore passed from the Spanish impe
rial orbit into a new and even more intimate commercial relationship with the United States, though politically it became an independent republic.
Cuba’s period of political independence and eco nomic interdependence with the United States began in 1902 and ended with the revolutionary victory ol Fidel Castro in January 1959- Since then, Cuba has slipped slowly and perceptibly into the orbit of the Soviet world empire of commercial and naval strength. Cuba’s role within that Soviet world system is more than the historic one of its interdependence with a great colonial power as was the case in its | relationship with Spain.
Castro’s Cuba today is a maritime nation in its own right with an outreach of naval power, commer-^ cial shipping, and deep-sea fisheries. Cuba’s state merchant fleet, the Flota Mombisa of about 800,000 deadweight tons, is the third largest in the Western Hemisphere after those of the United States an<f Brazil. Cuban deep-sea fisheries, virtually nonexis tent before the revolution, could be the largest in thel Western Hemisphere by 1985 if present shipbuild ing and shore development plans are completed. Cu ba’s small but efficient force of Soviet-built coastal craft and surface-to-surface missile-firing motor torpedo boats is the most lethal of all Caribbean navies.
This maritime outreach would have been impossible without the support of the Soviet Union and its maritime satellite states of Eastern Europe. The)', have supplied Castro’s regime with new ships, tech-> nical knowhow, training facilities for officers and crews, longterm loans to build new shipyards, a huge Havana fishing port, and modern bulk export tenth' nals for shipment of the ever-essential sugar.
In doing all this, however, the U.S.S.R. has givem an extra boost to Cuban nationalism and to the growth of truly indigenous industries in the country’s ocean shipping and deep-sea fisheries. Castro'5 heavily controlled press is never more proudly CubaC than in its frequent and frank reports about the growth and expansion of the fisheries industry. Expressions of pride by the Cuban press and by seniof government officials in the excellent shiphandling skills of relatively young merchant skippers trained
The Cuban Merchant Fleet (as of 1 January 1978)
Name of state Number of Deadweight Tonnage,
shipping enterprise Ships (thousands of tons)
MOMBISA | ||
General cargo | 43 | 548.8 |
Bulk carriers | 2 | 49.9 |
Container ships | 2 | 33-6 |
Refrigerated ships | 7 | 14.6 |
Training ships (passenger and freight) | 3 | 22.9 |
Passenger and freight | 1 | 7.3 |
| 58 | 677.1 |
CARIBE | ||
Tankers | 15 | 86.7 |
General cargo | 5 | 28.7 |
Bulk carriers | 3 | 7.4 |
Ferries (passenger and freight) | 2 | 1.4 |
Passenger ships | 4 | 1.3 |
Hydrofoils (passengers) | 6 | 0.4 |
| 35 | 125.9 |
Grand Total | 93 | 803.0 |
Source: Report "The Cuban Merchant Fleet: A Symbol | of our People in |
the High Seas," Granma (official daily of the Cuban Communist Party), 12 March 1978, pp. 6-7.
in Cuba, the U.S.S.R., and East Germany are echoed by the executives in the shipyards of non-Communist countries where many new Cuban ships have been built. Shipbuilders for the Cuban Government are impressed with the competence, skill, and knowledge displayed by Cuban shipping officials and liaison officers during negotiations for the construction of ships and the working up with Cuban crews.
The Soviets have not attempted to dampen in any way this emergence of the Cuban identity at sea. In fact, the “double source” methods employed by senior Cuban technocrats in buying new ships from both the Soviet bloc and capitalist shipbuilding nations are favoring the latter in the number of new ships ordered under the current five-year plan (1976-1981). In November 1974, the Cuban Ministry of the Merchant Marine and Ports, which ad- minsters the Flota Mombisa, announced in the Cuban Communist Party daily newspaper Granma, “Cuba purchases 36 large tonnage freighters from shipyards in 11 countries.” These countries are Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Norway, West Germany, Yugoslavia, and the United Kingdom.
At the start of the revolutionary regime in 1959,
Cuba possessed a tiny shipping fleet of 14 ships with a total 52,135 deadweight tons. These represented aging Liberty ships sold to small private shipping lines during the 1950s and a new class of U.S.-built refrigerator ships of the Fundador class, delivered a few months before the collapse of the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. By 1965, the newly formed Flota Mombisa (named after Cuban revolutionaries against Spanish colonial rule in the 1860s) possessed 26 ships with a total capacity of 113,924 deadweight tons. They came mainly from the expanding shipyards of the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. By January 1978, the Flota Mombisa and a subsidiary state tanker company were operating 93 ships with a total of 803,000 deadweight tons. The majority of these ships were built in the non-Communist world.
The expansion into new ships began in 1962 when the 10,000-ton Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos class of three general cargo ships was built in Poland’s Stocz- nia Gdanska, Gdansk (Danzig) State Shipyard. This class was built to the specifications of the Polish B-54 prefabricated ship design for the Polskie Linie Oceaniczne (Polish Ocean Lines) and not necessarily for Cuban needs. Since the late 1960s, however, ships ordered overseas by Cuba in both Soviet and non-Communist shipyards reflect the country’s special needs for bulk cargo carriers and small tankers.
Bulk cargo carriers are needed not only to move out the country’s basic sugar exports but are also integrated into a modern and efficient chain of bulk sugar export terminals designed by British and Soviet , engineers. The two chief such terminals are now in full operation at Matanzas and Cienfuegos. Cuba’s ^ growing merchant fleet has been planned apparently* to service overseas routes to countries other than the* U.S.S.R. which supply Cuba with industrial equip-H ment or to which it exports its agricultural products- The fact that Cuban ships are not used to any great| amount in the heavily travelled service betweenH Soviet and Cuban ports was revealed in Granma onr 28 August 1977 in an unusually frank report. The| newspaper indicated that more than 50% of general! cargo moved between the U.S.S.R. and Cuba is handled by 14 “regular shipping schedules” of Soviet- flag carriers. The report also revealed that Soviet ships call at 33 Cuban ports 1,700 times a year.
Since the summer of I960, Cuba’s petroleun1 needs have been met by regular Soviet tanker service between the Black Sea and the Havana refineries from multipurpose tankers in the 35,000- to 55,000-deadweight ton range. By comparison. Cuban tankers are smaller so far, not in excess of 22,000 tons. A class of small, 10,000-ton tankers fot carrying both oil and refinery products has recently
h been built in a Canadian shipyard. Cuba’s largest d tankers are in the 5 de Septiembre class of three ships, g Soviet-built and delivered to Cuba in 1970-1971. It All three Merindus-type tankers built by Marine In- a dustrie Limitee of Sorel, Quebec, and called the
o Primero de Mayo class have been delivered to the Cud bans. They were intended for short-haul petroleum
-S cargoes in the Caribbean between Venezuela and
d Cuba but are now believed to be in a lucrative it naphtha export trade operating out of Rotterdam, j- According to The New York Times of 20 October 1" \^77, some of that naphtha, which is excess produc-
te non from the state-owned refineries in Havana, is al mding its way into the U.S. market in spite of the se c°ntinued embargo against Cuban imports.
The various Cuban press announcements of the ■n arrival of new ships emphasize the youth of their cap- of tains and crews. Captain Oscar Gomez Orne was 28 z- *n October 1970 when the 5 de Septiembre left on her is niaiden voyage to Odessa. Captain Alfredo Margol- >4
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January 1978, she delivered 10,000 tons of raw sugar. The Jose Marti, like Soviet and Eastern European cadet training ships built for the state merchant fleet, stints on nothing. Classroom instruction has the latest instructional aids including closed-circuit television. A duplicate bridge and wheelhouse are located in a lower deck instructional area. First-class student quarters and facilities exceeding anything cadets must experience on shore in Cuba include a sauna, gymnasium, tumbling mats, and color television. According to Captain Romay, the Cuban state fleet has two other training vessels converted from small passenger liners, but the Jose Marti is the country’s first new school ship.
es> 30, the new skipper of the 20,000-ton tanker 7 e Noviembre in the same class, held three commands e‘Ore taking over his ship, also in October 1970, on el*very from the Leningrad shipyard.
A* 28, Captain Orlando Romay has already served Seven years at sea in Cuban state merchant ships and commands the modern and fully equipped >700-ton Jose Marti, built by Helsingfor Vaerft, sinore, Denmark, as a combination training ship a°d bulk sugar carrier. On her first visit to Canada in
Cuban shipping and fisheries industries operating in a country within the Soviet orbit are understandably linked to various Soviet ideological programs and naval intelligence-gathering systems. Three times in the last decade, political priorities have removed ships from commercial service. In 1966-1969, Cuban
ships operating in a regular service between St. John, New Brunswick, and Cuban ports to export sugar and import Canadian cattle and industrial equipment were used to carry radical U.S. students of that period to work in Cuban sugar fields. The transport of these students, styled the Venceremos (“We Will Overcome”) Brigade, was meant to involve sympathetic foreign students (mainly U.S.) directly in the propagandistic use of sugar harvests leading to the promised record ten million-ton harvest of 1970. Castro’s cane-cutting push, relying heavily on inexperienced Cuban and foreign urban dwellers, did not work, and he admitted in August 1970 that the ten million-ton goal would not be reached.
In early 1972, a few Cuban bulk sugar carriers
badly needed in the carrying trade were intentionally included in the U.S. naval blockade of North Vietnam by lingering in Haiphong Harbor as a measure of support for Communist North Vietnam. As a result, Castro’s overseas customers for raw sugar, including the Canadian sugar refineries, were buying from Australia, South Africa, and Hawaii in the face of erratic deliveries by Cuban ships.
The current role of Cuba’s merchant shipping fleet in the largely Soviet-dominated sealift to Angola and into East African waters for political purposes is the most serious intrusion of ideological needs on the commercial activities of the state shipping services. In March of this year, Cuban Vice Prime Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez admitted in an interview with the Latin American correspondent of The Financial Times of London that the earliest stages of the Cuban air and sealift to Angola in mid-1975 was an entirely Cuban operation, using Cuban-flag carriers- Given Cuba’s continued precarious position in selling its goods competivively overseas and its chronic need for foreign currency earnings, such a Soviet-inspired diversion of Cuban shipping can only be detrimental in the long run to Castro’s domestic policies.
Der Spiegel, the Hamburg newsmagazine noted fof aggressive reporting, revealed during the early winter of 1978 that the initial African air and sealift of Cuban military and technical personnel to Angola if mid-1975 was carried out primarily with Cuban aircraft and merchant ships. These included three refurbished Britannia turboprop airliners of Cubana Airlines, a type of aircraft long since retired by world airlines, and a few bulk sugar carriers quickly converted into troopships. However, the participation of the Cuban merchant marine in Castro’s greatly expanded African activities has been severely curtailed during the late 1970s because all Cuban shipping was needed as never before to move out sugar export* in a world market of greatly reduced sugar price* from the record highs of 1974-1975.
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The majority of the increasing number of Cuba*1 military personnel now operating in about 15 black and Islamic African states have been moved out duf' ing the late 1970s by Soviet jet transports and bulk
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frrriers of the same class as the ones supplied to Cuba Co 01 ^0v'et an<^ Eastern European shipyards. The jat^tant Soviet influence in Cuban maritime and re- of act*vities has also been revealed in the presence senior Soviet officials at the first landing of a te • rreifihter at the Boqueron bulk sugar shipping julnal near the Guantanamo Naval Base in early re They included Valery G. Kobzo, Soviet
rnartSentat'Ve *n ^u^a °f U.S.S.R. merchant in ne’ ^tanislav Suvorov representing the purchas- halfa^etlC*eS t^le ^ov'et Union, and others. On be-
inau°fthe Cubans, the new bulk sugar terminal was Ju ^Urated by Major of the Revolutionary Army, n, n Almeida Bosque, member of the Political *Ureau of the Party '
fisheries: The emergence of a strong and grow-
eeP-sea fishing industry ranks high among the
CoeVernents of the Cuban Revolution and can be
the ^are^ t0 end illiteracy in the island and
hn. Vast exPansion of state services in medicine and '“Using.
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ahief C^e ^rst time in its history, Cuba has been t0 exploit fully the rich and varied fish and seafood resources off all the Cuban coasts. Cuban fisheries catches jumped from about 24,000 metric tons in 1958, the year before the revolution, to about 180,000 metric tons in 1976. Much of the fish is for cheap protein consumption by the Cuban population. This copies Soviet experience in mass fishing operations and the wide use of sea protein in a people’s diet. Cuban seafood has become a luxury export to Cuba s European and Canadian customers. In Canada the second largest Cuban export after sugar is no longer raw tobacco and cigars but seafood products.
Cuba’s major thrust as a leading world fishing nation began with an agreement by the U.S.S.R. to build a modern fishing port in the southwestern corner of Havana Harbor. It includes land used as the city dump in the Batista era. The agreement was signed 25 September 1962 in Havana by Soviet Fisheries Minister A.A. Ishkov and Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro. It resulted in the construction and now 12-year use of the largest integrated fishing port facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The Castro Government gives the impression the large fishing port was a new development. But the late President Fulgencio Batista had signed a $68
million contract with British suppliers to build man; of the integrated fishing, shipbuilding, and fisherie facilities which would not be concluded until th1 Castro era.
The quid pro quo between Havana and Moscow of the fishing port construction was that the Soviet would supply both the ruble and peso constructiof costs, lend the Cuban Government a further $6 mil lion for technical goods, and assist in the training o 200 technicians in return for Cuban servicing o Soviet fishing vessels for a ten-year period from th1 date of operation. The Havana Fishing Port w^ opened 26 July 1966. It cost the Soviets about $5l million, but has given them a repair and overhat base in the Caribbean-South Atlantic region whid can service up to 30 Soviet factory trawlers of th1 3,500 deadweight ton “Mayakovsky” class, th' largest single class of Russian factory trawler i( world service. At the start, the base served Sovb needs primarily. But the Cuban fishing fleets ab shore establishment have grown so large that th1 facilities are now used mainly by Cuban fishing veS sels. In fact, Cuba’s deep-sea fisheries are advancec enough that Prime Minister Castro has offered Cubb fisheries expertise to fellow Marxist countries in tb Western Hemisphere.
Cuban aid to the Chilean fishing industry durinf the Marxist government of the late President Sal' vador Allende was not successful, since Chilean fisb ing technology was already well advanced and tb Cubans did not know Pacific waters. Cuban fisherk: management on behalf of Guyana, a recently sell proclaimed Marxist state, has been more successful According to Guyanese Minister of State Christoph?1 Nascimento, there were 105 Cuban fisheries sp? cialists in his country during 1976-1977, mainly a5' sisting in the inshore shrimp fishing. Some 10% °! all Cuban catches go to the Guyanese. The arrange ment is somewhat different for Japanese and W?5’ German assistance which calls for a percentage of tb profit from their Guyanese fishing operations.
Cuba’s deep-sea fisheries are the responsibility the National Fishing Institute, Instituto Nacional ^ Pesca, in the charge of Anibal Velaz, himself a form?1 fisherman. It functions in place of a formally ident1' fied Ministry of Fisheries and is situated next to tb Havana Fishing Port. With a staff of 34,000 accord ing to Sehor Velaz, the INP manages the various fisb ing fleets, the growing number of training school5 oceanographic research activities (in close cooperatib with the U.S.S.R.), and the operation of the vario^' fish processing plants.
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Sltles- The Director of Information of the INP re- ^e*ved a master of science degree from the marine lology department of the University of Miami in . But the younger fishing vessel captains, staff and instructors in the training schools, and junior I^anagers in the INP are graduates of primary and a vanced fish science institutes in the U.S.S.R., East Germany, and Poland.
Cuban publications contain many articles extolling e growth and efficiency of the country’s fishing in- stfy- Such revolutionary institutions as the Vicor;a Giron School of the Sea (named for the Bay . 'gs Victory in April 1961) are given wide publicly for both propaganda and nationalistic purposes, c heart and soul of the industry are the various u an fishing fleets formed and enlarged by the INP uring the years 1963 to 1970. Like its cargo ship- ng> Cuba s fishing fleets have been supplied heavily ith vessels built by non-Communist countries, ^ezer trawlers for the Cuban High Seas Fleet have een bmlt in Spain, France, West and East Ger- uiany, Poland, and, of course, the U.S.S.R.
he major fleet is the Cuban High Seas Fleet, °a Ptsca Cubana. It numbered 50 trawlers and a factory ships as early as 1969 and now com- (/lses about 100 vessels. It operates in the North and a '<^ant'c an<^ °ff Africa with a major supply c° repair base in the Spanish Azores. In 1968, ac- ^otding to the INP, it accounted for 20,000 metric nJLof chat year's total catch of 65,000 metric tons, p e Gulf fleet operates off Mexico’s Yucatan 0u--la and the Caribbean shrimp fleet operates t of Cienfuegos which has become a fully inte- ^sb'ng> sugar export, and naval repair center. tL che Caribbean fleet accounted for 10% of
^ years total catch of 100,000 metric tons.
e Cuban-Spanish trade relationship, indicated
has ^ • *n r^e USe t^1C ^zores 35 a maj°r fishing th^C’ 's marked more by the links of race and history u of mutual ideologies. During the 1960s and je , s’ rhe two firmly entrenched Hispanic tQ ^rs fhe Marxist Fidel Castro and the right-wing cjea ltar*an Generalissimo Francisco Franco— su e!°pe<^ a major trade which saw Spain as the chief the^* *er °^^sb‘ng vessels to the Cubans and Spain as ^Ua.jor export source of Cuban cigars, to rUrinS a v*sit of a major Canadian trade mission YelaU^a *n March 1975, INP Director General Anibal °utlined an even larger expansion of future tij an fisheries with still more vessels and an esti- l97s^ Catcb 400,000 metric tons by 1983. In pQrt ’ Cuba had earned $80 million from its fish ex- hor>S t0 the world, a figure which Minister Velaz pes to escalate to $160 million by 1983.
The use of Cuban fishing vessels and factory trawlers in the overall surveillance and intelligencegathering of the Soviet deep-sea fishing fleets is taken for granted by NATO naval specialists. In May 1976, Vice Admiral Douglas S. Boyle, retired Commander of Canada’s Maritime Command in Halifax, Nova Scotia, told a meeting of retired Canadian naval officers that Cuban factory trawlers have been used as “client ships” for Soviet naval intelligence. He revealed that Cuban trawlers were keeping station over the many North Atlantic cables between North America and Europe. Nevertheless, Cuba’s various fishing fleets do not appear to have the sort of factory trawlers committed primarily to electronic intelligence which are part of regular Soviet fishing operations.
The increasingly indigenous nature of all Cuban maritime operations should not be underestimated, in spite of the Cubans’ reliance on Soviet technology and their commitment from time to time to Soviet bloc political goals. Before the revolution, the chief Cuban national traits were identified as a profound sense of entrepreneurship and hard bargaining in business arrangements. These characteristics are now associated with the Cuban exiles in the United States. But they are also being practiced for the public goals of a Marxist society by Cuban technocrats in the key industries of revolutionary Cuba, including those in the maritime sectors. Foreign suppliers from non-Communist nations to the Cuban marine industries are impressed with such hard bargaining methods and a strong sense of cost accounting where capital equipment needs are being negotiated with Cuban government officials. The Cuban fisheries have emerged as a very substantial accomplishment of the Cuban Revolution. And it is clear Cuba’s leaders view them this way. The Soviets wisely avoid resisting this strong Cuban view that the country’s maritime outreach has taken on a genuine Cuban style and is not necessarily a Soviet maritime appendage in the Caribbean. Others would do well to pay attention also.
HMr. Harbron, a retired commander in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve, served on active duty in the Korean War. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1946, then did postgraduate work at the University of Havana in 1947-1948. He returned to the island as a news correspondent several times in subsequent years to cover the revolution. He is the author of Communist Ships and Shipping (Praeger, 1964), a major study of Communist bloc shipbuilding and shipping methods. In 1975, as a press member of a major Canadian trade mission to Havana, Mr. Harbron visited the Cuban Instituto Nacional de Pesca and some of its ships and establishments. He is now foreign affairs analyst for Thomson Newspapers in Toronto, Canada.