Corruption in Cuba
Encyclopedia
Corruption is a problem in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, according to surveys such as the Corruption Perceptions Index
Corruption Perceptions Index
Since 1995, Transparency International publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index annually ranking countries "by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." The CPI generally defines corruption as "the misuse of public power for private...

.

The state ownership has contributed to rampant corruption. The book Corruption in Cuba says that "As in other former socialist countries, when given opportunity, few citizens hesitate to steal from the government. Since the bulk of the productive resources are owned and managed by the state and the vast majority of Cubans work for state-owned enterprises, these petty crimes are widespread".

Bribes are widespread. To get medical care, patients pay bribes. Musicians regularly pay bribes to able to perform on tourist areas, where they can earn convertible currency. A bicycle taxi license is reported to cost $150 in bribes.

Corruption in socialist societies

Holmes has developed a taxonomy for corruption in socialist societies such as Cuba:
  • Turning a blind eye
  • Refusal to investigate/charge, and/or obstructing an investigation
  • Avoidance of specific procedures
  • Improper Filling of Office—Patronage
    • Nepotism
    • Shared experiences (cronyism)
    • Shared interests
  • Deliberate Deception
    • False reporting—overstatement
    • False reporting—understatement
    • Deception of supplicants
    • Forging of documents
  • Other Interactive, Gain-Based Forms of Corruption
    • Accepting bribes
    • Offering bribes
    • Extortion
    • Blackmail
  • Possibly Non-Interactive, Gain-Based Forms of Corruption
    • Not earning one’s salary
    • Improper use of socialized property
    • Embezzlement
    • Speculation
    • Smuggling
    • Treason


Twentieth Century

In 1942, the British Foreign Office reported that that U.S. State Department was "very worried" about corruption under President
President of Cuba
--209.174.31.28 18:43, 22 November 2011 The President of Cuba is the Head of state of Cuba. According to the Cuban Constitution of 1976, the President is the chief executive of the Council of State of Cuba...

 Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....

, describing the problem as "endemic" and exceeding "anything which had gone on previously." Batista refused U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's offer to send experts to help reform the Cuban Civil Service.

Mauricio Augusto Font and Alfonso Quiroz, authors of The Cuban Republic and José Martí, say that corruption pervaded public life under the administrations of Presidents Ramón Grau
Ramón Grau
Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín was a Cuban physician and the President of Cuba .-Youth:...

 and Carlos Prío. Senator Eduardo Chibás
Eduardo Chibás
Eduardo René Chibás Ribas was a Cuban politician who used radio to broadcast his political views to the public. He primarily denounced corruption and gangsterism rampant during the governments of Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío which preceded the Batista era...

 dedicated himself to exposing corruption in the Cuban government, and formed the Partido Ortodoxo
Partido Ortodoxo
The ' was a Cuban political party, otherwise known as the . It was founded in 1947 by Eduardo Chibás in response to perceived government corruption and lack of reform...

 in 1947 to further this aim.

Post-revolution

Sergio Diaz-Briquets and Jorge F. Pérez-López, in the book Corruption in Cuba, argue that the government of Fidel
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 and Raul Castro
Raúl Castro
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008; he previously exercised presidential powers in an acting capacity from 2006 to 2008...

 institutionalized corruption with government monopolies, cronyism
Cronyism
Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy....

, and lack of accountability. High-ranking members of the Cuban nomenklatura
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the...

 and the military
Military of Cuba
The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces consist of ground forces, naval forces, air and air defence forces, and other paramilitary bodies including the Territorial Troops Militia , Revolutionary Armed Forces , and Youth Labor Army .The armed forces has long been the...

 enjoy privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens. The Cuban nomenklatura
Nomenklatura
The nomenklatura were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the...

 is also referred to as pinchos, pinchos grandes or mayimbes.

In 2001, the Cuban Government set up a ministry to investigate corruption and improve efficiency in the Cuban economy. A BBC news
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...

 article stated that foreign businessmen in Cuba said levels of corruption were lower than in most other countries in Latin America. BBC says that "Inspectors went to thousands of state-run enterprises and consistently found customers being short-changed. The offences included beer mugs being only partially filled, taxi rides being charged at almost five times the going rate, government price lists being hidden, even shoe repairers charging vastly inflated rates."

Sociolismo

Sociolismo
Sociolismo
Sociolismo also known as amiguismo meaning "partner-ism" or "friend-ism" is the informal term used in Cuba to describe the reciprocal exchange of favors by individuals, usually relating to circumventing bureaucratic restrictions or obtaining hard-to-find goods.It comes from the Spanish word socio...

 is the informal term used in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 to describe the reciprocal exchange of favors by individuals, usually relating to circumventing bureaucratic restrictions or obtaining hard-to-find goods. It comes from the Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 word socio which means business partner or buddy, and is a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...

 on socialismo, the Spanish term for socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

. It is analogous to the blat
Blat (Russia)
Blat is a term which appeared in the Soviet Union to denote the use of informal agreements, exchanges of services, connections, Party contacts, or black market deals to achieve results or get ahead....

of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. It is a form of corruption in Cuba.

Transparency International

Cuba scored 4.3 for perceived corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

 in Transparency International
Transparency International
Transparency International is a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development. It publishes an annual Corruption Perceptions Index, a comparative listing of corruption worldwide...

's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index
Corruption Perceptions Index
Since 1995, Transparency International publishes the Corruption Perceptions Index annually ranking countries "by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." The CPI generally defines corruption as "the misuse of public power for private...

. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) rates countries from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 10 ("highly clean"), reflecting perceived levels of corruption. Cuba scored below some Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 island nations such as Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is an island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 620 km2 and has an...

 (7.1) and Barbados
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

 (7.0) and some Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n nations such as Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 (6.9) and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

 (6.9), but above most other Latin American nations, such as El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

 (3.9), Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 (3.8) and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 (3.6) and Caribbean nations such as Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

 (3.6) and Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

(3.1). Cuba has been assessed by the CPI since 2003, with scores ranging from 3.7 to 4.6.
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