Castro's+Economic,+social+and+religious+policies

__Castro's Domestic Policies__

During Castro's first nine months in office, he passed approximately 1500 laws, edicts, and decrees, some of which concerned business interests and private properties owned by U.S. citizens and corporations. Two such acts that were passed in 1945 were the Agrarian Reform Law and the Urban Reform Law, which broke up large property holdings and redistributed them to the poor. Following in May 1961, Castro announced that Cuba was a socialist nation.

Transforming Cuba, however, required a reorientation of values and in order to address this Castro worked with Che Guevara to develop the New Man theory. This theory called for the development of the new citizen, who would work hard as a commitment to social change and the good of all people, instead of for personal gain. Furthermore, under this new political structure, the government held mostly all the power: the press was controlled; neighborhoods were checked for ideological purity; political parties were dissolved; and people advanced in work and in the government according to their loyalty to Castro.

However, despite the advancement in Castro’s political agenda, his economic plans failed. Castro wished to diversify the economy, which was heavily dependent on agricultural production and devoted the first four years of the revolution to promote Cuba’s industry growth. Cuban products were impractical though and made of poor quality. At the same time the sugar output, which the economy depended heavily on, declined by nearly 50 percent. Thus, in 1965, Castro reversed the economic plan and instead focused mainly on sugar production. He announced the goal of a 10-million ton sugar harvest, and like the industrial plan, the sugar harvest of 1970 failed to reach the goal, drawing in only 8.5 million tons. This cost Cuba’s ally the USSR billions of dollars in financial aid and as a result the Soviets required Cuba to develop a five-year and ten-year economic plans and to introduce a professional bureaucracy. The financial aid from the Soviets helped the Cuban economy recover; however, this also resulted in Cuba becoming economically dependent on the USSR.

Although Castro himself was not a believer, despite having been raised as a Roman Catholic, he was still somewhat lenient with religion in Cuba and had close relations to Pope John Paul II. In 1992, Castro loosened him firm grip on religion restrictions and allowed for church-going Catholics to join the Cuban Communist Party. Also, in 1998, Castro condemned the use of abortion shortly after Pope John Paul II himself made a speech scorning the widespread abortion offered in Cuban hospitals. During the same year, Castro also reinstated Christmas Day as an official holiday since its abolition by the Communist Party in 1969.

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