Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the rise of 'red managers' by looking at an organism that claims to represent the 'Cuban businessmen'. Since 2001, the Chamber of Commerce politicizes for the regime the group that restored capitalism in other socialist countries and turned itself into a new bourgeoisie.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the rise of 'red managers' by looking at a managerial corporatist apparatus: the Chamber of Commerce. Such organism, created to promote national exports, experienced in 2001 a political turn that propelled it to also be the representative, before the State, of the interests of the "Cuban businessmen" -that is, the group that leads the companies oriented to the global market.

In other words, the Chamber has the delicate function of politicizing, for the regime, the group that restored capitalism in other socialist countries and turned itself into a new bourgeoisie. Due to its political implications, the analysis of the link that the regime has established with the managers does not have a merely retrospective relevance. Such link is the starting point of any future relationship between the managers and the political context in Cuba.

In this paper I characterize the link regime-managers as a post-totalitarian one, which implies to deduct equilibrium in such relation, as opposed to something ephemeral. As such, the Chamber's corporatist side is not aimed at the "mobilization of enthusiasm", but "to achieve a minimum degree of conformity and compliance". Thus, the politicization the regime undertakes through the Chamber is of a kind that wants to produce 'red managers', or, a (contradictory) subject integrated to the official ideology.

Apart from presenting relevant empirical evidence, I will address the political implications of the characterisation I propose both for the political transition under the presidency of Raúl Castro and for a hypothetical capitalist restoration.