The downfall of Alejandro Gil Fernández, former Minister of Economy and Planning, accused of espionage and other crimes, is not an anomaly. It is merely the latest chapter in a political ritual that has been repeated with revolutionary punctuality since 1959: the purge as a reaffirmation of power.
There was a foundational fall, one that left its mark on the grammar of revolutionary power: Huber Matos, commander of the Rebel Army and hero of the Sierra Maestra, was the first man to discover that dissenting from the course of the process was equivalent to treason. In 1959, barely ten months after the triumph, Matos sent a letter to Fidel Castro denouncing the communist drift of the new government; the gesture cost him twenty years in prison. The official press portrayed him as a “counterrevolutionary” and a “traitor to the homeland,” while in the streets his name was erased from murals as quickly as new slogans were written. His case made it clear that, in the Revolution, trials are not so much about clarifying, but about warning.
In the 1960s, when the fledgling revolutionary process was just getting started, another offensive began. In 1968, Aníbal Escalante, a leader of the continue reading
United Party of the Socialist Revolution, was accused of belonging to a “micro-faction” and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The official press didn’t speak of ideological differences but of “divisive activities,” and Escalante, who had helped found the Party, ended up as an example of what should not be repeated. He died in exile.
It was a time when a single phrase was enough to make someone disappear: “The comrade has been relieved of his responsibilities.”
The method was established: identify, isolate, and erase. It has never been about justice, but about harsh political pedagogy.
In the early 1970s, the “purges” became routine, though without such high-profile names. Bureaucrats, artists, or intellectuals who didn’t fit the mold of the “New Man” disappeared from the public eye, reassigned to administrative positions or agricultural work. It was a time when a single phrase was enough to make someone vanish: “The comrade has been relieved of his responsibilities,” news anchors would frequently read.
But the greatest destructive blow was undoubtedly in 1989, the same year the Berlin Wall fell, when the Cuban Revolution decided to put itself on trial. The so-called Case No. 1 led to the execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa, a hero of Angola and Ethiopia, along with Tony de la Guardia and other high-ranking officers, accused of drug trafficking and treason. It was a carefully televised spectacle, a mixture of internal purge and exemplary message. While the communist world teetered, the Cuban regime preferred to settle scores behind closed doors. The trials were presented as an act of moral cleansing, but in reality, they served as a warning: no one was—nor could aspire to be—above the Commander-in-Chief.
The process marked a before and after in Cuban politics. From then on, the word loyalty became more a matter of survival than conviction. The execution of Ochoa—a popular figure even among the military—sealed the end of the illusion of pluralism within the regime. From that point forward, the Revolution learned to purge without bullets. Silence, discreet seclusion, or the disappearance of one’s face from the official press were enough. The general’s death not only closed an era; it inaugurated the modern method of socialist disgrace.
The case of Carlos Aldana was the tropical version of a handbook of political errors: a man who believed that power was a matter of intelligent speeches, not timely silences. In the early 1990s, Aldana was the public face of the Party, the one in charge of “correcting errors,” and, according to many, the only one who spoke with any degree of frankness. But frankness, in Cuba, has always been a risky business. In 1992, he disappeared from the scene with a statement from the Central Committee that sounded more like an epitaph than a sanction: “serious errors and indiscipline.” No one explained further. His name became taboo, and his downfall marked the beginning of a long political winter where loyalty outweighed intelligence.
The two most promising figures in the Government went from the ministerial office to irrelevance in a matter of days.
Then came the downfall of Roberto Robaina, foreign minister during the years of the Special Period. Young and charismatic, the potential successor was dismissed in 1999 for “conduct unbecoming of a leader.” There was no trial nor details, but the message was clear: too much visibility is dangerous in a system that distrusts those who attract too much attention. Today he paints and avoids the cameras.
Forty years after Escalante’s “micro-faction,” came the “macro-faction” of 2009. That year, General Raúl Castro decided to reorganize power after his brother’s departure from public life and, in the process, sacrifice several of the most well-known figures from the previous period. In a letter published by the official press, Fidel Castro described Felipe Pérez Roque, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Carlos Lage Dávila, Vice President of the Council of State, as men who had been seduced by the ‘honey of power’.
It was a political execution with biblical rhetoric. The two most promising figures in the government went from ministerial office to irrelevance in a matter of days. There were no legal charges against them, only the public vilification of their names and reputations. Lage got his white coat back, Pérez Roque his anonymity. In Cuban slang, they were on the “pajama plan“: neither fully condemned, nor ever rehabilitated.
Along with them fell other lesser figures: Otto Rivero, architect of the “Battle of Ideas,” and Carlos Valenciaga, Fidel Castro’s young secretary, who were erased from the organizational charts of Cuban power. Their names did not appear in any court records, but popular wisdom understood: it was a settling of scores between the new group at the helm and the one leaving the scene.
The case of former Minister of the Food Industry, Alejandro Roca Iglesias, sentenced in 2011 to fifteen years for corruption in a business deal with Chilean businessman Max Marambio, ushered in a phase of “economic” purges. It was the era of the technocrats, those who negotiated directly with investors and controlled foreign currency. “For serious ethical and moral deficiencies,” declared the Granma newspaper . No one ever mentioned him again.
Something similar happened with Juan Carlos Robinson, first secretary of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba, accused of corruption and sentenced in 2006 to 12 years in prison. The official statement, true to form, spoke of “improper conduct” and “violations of revolutionary ethics.” In reality, it was an internal power struggle: the infighting within the PCC after the strain of the Special Period. Until recently, Robinson was the last high-ranking leader to face formal legal proceedings.
In Cuba, trials against high-ranking officials are less frequent than “losses of confidence,” but the outcome is identical: invisibility.
Since then, the punishments have been more administrative than criminal. Yadira García, Minister of Basic Industry, and Rogelio Acevedo, head of Civil Aeronautics, were dismissed in 2010 for “deficiencies in their work.” There were no courts or defenses, only the word of a Council of Ministers, as cryptic as it was terse.
The recent downfall of Alejandro Gil Fernández, a symbol of Raúl Castro’s economic orthodoxy, seems to be reviving that old script. His arrest and subsequent conviction mark a turning point: for the first time in over a decade, someone who held the position of minister is formally facing criminal proceedings. The official press initially spoke not of “mistakes,” but of serious crimes and later of espionage. Behind this rhetoric, however, lies the same logic as in the 1960s: a system that doesn’t trust its own personnel and that needs, every so often, to offer a political sacrifice on the altar of revolutionary purity.
The mechanism repeats itself because it works. In Cuba, trials against high-ranking officials are less frequent than “losses of confidence,” but the outcome is identical: invisibility. The punishment is not prison, but oblivion. Those who fall, almost all men who believed they were part of the inner circle of power, end up out of the spotlight, writing reports for some minor company or, if they are lucky, exporting their talents to exile.
Amid the wreckage of so many broken loyalties, the case of Alejandro Gil only confirms that Castroism, more than a political process, has been a chain of forced successions. In six decades, the pattern hasn’t changed: every time the system runs out of steam, it looks for someone to blame. And the chosen one, as in any good communist fable, is usually the one who, until yesterday, appeared smiling in the official photograph.
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