Cuba is preparing to mark the 50th anniversary of its victory over a US-backed attempt to overthrow the government at the Bay of Pigs as it convenes a Communist Party congress that looks set to introduce new political and economic goals for the struggling island.
The anniversary celebration coincides with the first Communist Party congress since 1997, which will reaffirm the “socialist character of the revolution” while examining wide-ranging economic reforms proposed by Cuban President Raul Castro.
A military parade on Saturday in Havana’s Revolution Square marks what Cuban officials call the -victory over “American imperialism” in April 1961, when former Cuban president Fidel Castro’s forces turned back the invasion of CIA-backed Cuban exiles on a beach on the southern coast of Cuba.
The clash left 161 dead in Cuba along with 107 of the invaders, and Cuba captured 1,189 prisoners who were exchanged in 1962 for US$53 million worth of food and medicine. However, the incident set US-Cuba relations on a downward spiral that led to an economic embargo by Washington.
Following the anniversary ceremonies there will be a three-day congress of the ruling Communist Party. Delegates will vote on the reform program proposed by Raul Castro and formalize the retirement of his brother. Fidel.
Raul Castro, 79, has said the reforms are a way to “update” the Cuban model.
“Either we change course or we sink,” he said in announcing the party congress.
The president, who took over from his brother in 2006, has said that Cuba, which for decades followed the Soviet model as part of the communist bloc, has to revise its system without copying others.
So far Cuba has refused to adopt major market-oriented -economic reforms or a multiparty system.
However, Cuba in January began the process of axing 500,000 state employees as part of an ambitious overhaul designed to build up the private sector in an economy that has been run on communist lines since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.
The events take place with Cuba no longer part of a Soviet-led bloc, but with still-tense relations with the nearby US.
Although US President Barack Obama has sought to ease some aspects of the embargo on the island, relations have seen a chill since the December 2009 arrest of a US contractor for distributing laptops and communications equipment.
The contractor, Alan Gross, was recently convicted of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity” of Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Meanwhile, Havana has demanded the release of five Cubans jailed in the US for espionage.
Former US president Jimmy Carter last month traveled to Havana and met Fidel and Raul Castro in a visit aimed at improving US-Cuban relations, but this has failed to yield any concrete results so far.
The reforms sought by Raul Castro seek to have former state workers absorbed by the -private sector, for state subsidies to be cut, for urban cooperatives to spring up, the welcoming of foreign capital, and for companies to operate autonomously.
However, the Cuban leader said last month it will take “at least five years” to see through economic reforms after running into problems with its plan to lay off half a million state workers.
“Carrying out our model is not the task of just one day, not even of one year, and because of its complexity it will require at least five years to complete its implementation.
The biggest threat to the revolution resides precisely in the mistakes we could make,” he said.
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