Brand Cuba

By MICHAEL CASEY

As Fidel Castro brings his reign in Cuba to a long overdue end, we are left to ponder how a leader with such a dismal economic record could retain power for a half-century.

There is merit to many of the standard explanations for Castro's longevity -- both those of his critics, who cite political repression, and those of his fans, who believe the Cuban majority was won over by advances in health and literacy. There is also some merit in the arguments blaming Washington, either for its self-defeating trade embargo or for not being tough enough.

But these only tell part of the story. Instead, if we view Castro's political machine through the apolitical prism of the market, we can attribute its durability to a concept that's alien to his socialist rhetoric, and deeply rooted in the American capitalist system he claims to despise: branding. Castro's political "success" is a case study in managing the global information economy.

The Cuban Revolution is and always has been a brand. Its face has changed over time -- from the "barbudo" rebels of the Sierra Maestra to Che Guevara's piercing stare, from Cuba's graying salsa legends to its globe-trotting medics -- but incredibly, its essence has survived.

Marketing gurus tell us that a successful brand functions as a store of values. It encapsulates a pool of attractive ideas that satisfy customers' desire for meaning. To encourage loyalty to a brand, they say, the marketer must cultivate a sense of belonging and personal identification with the individual.

For many within a core constituency of left-leaning, relatively well-educated people both inside and outside Cuba, Castro's "revolution" achieved precisely this. To this niche market, Cuba evokes a set of magical buzz words long-favored by the radical left: "resistance," "social justice," "struggle." It represents an idealized, selfless counterpoint to ruthless, greedy capitalism. It is the alternative to brand U.S.A.

This is, of course, a constructed "Cuba," one with little relation to the real Cuba, with its dysfunctional, increasingly inequitable social and economic structure. But savvy brand managers are rarely hindered by a divergence from reality. Has the availability of perfectly safe, free tap water stopped marketers from touting the life-giving powers of their bottled alternatives?

Castro has long been blessed with a great ability to manipulate information and images in the interest of self-promotion. During a pivotal 1957 interview with New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews, he had his men move around in the trees to create the illusion of a bigger rebel force. Five decades later, the art had not deserted him. After his intestinal illness was first revealed in July 2006, the delayed, staggered release of photos of the convalescing Cuban leader in an Adidas tracksuit seemed designed to give his archenemies enough rope to hang themselves. Many Miami Cuban bloggers prematurely pronounced Castro dead and denounced the first images as fakes.

In the early 1960s, Castro was forever trailed by a clique of talented photographers -- including Alberto Korda, who took the most famous photo of Che Guevara. Preferring Life magazine's documentary style over the bleak genre of Soviet socialist realism, they portrayed the bearded Cuban leader in a humanistic light, and gave his revolution a vibrant, hopeful and distinctly American aesthetic.

Later, when CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers killed Guevara in 1967 -- converting the Argentine-born revolutionary into a martyr-hero for Paris and Berkeley radicals -- Castro wrapped himself in the image of his former comrade-in-arms, which conveniently helped him cover up Cuba's very un-revolutionary submission to Soviet dominance. The Cuban government actively promoted Korda's iconic image, which the country's poster artists soon gave a Pop Art makeover. The now-ubiquitous Che brand was born.

Years later, in the 1990s, branding helped hide the wealth divide and graft in Cuba that arose out of the post-Soviet dual-currency system. Decrepit Havana was marketed as a giant museum, a revolution frozen in time -- complete with rusted '50s Chevys and octogenarian musicians. Later, with the rise of the anti-globalization movement, Che was re-resurrected in a pitch to younger tourists, one that came with Cuban-made calendars, watches, postcards and all manner of trinkets bearing Korda's image.

Now Cuba's brand centers on health care. Its free hospitals are depicted as alternatives to an unfair, inefficient U.S. system, while its foreign-posted doctors put a face on the country's projected spirit of humanitarianism.

Some 200 of these medics turned up at last October's 40th anniversary of Che's execution in La Higuera, Bolivia. They demonstrated how the Cuban revolution's brand has been simultaneously altered and preserved through a period of sweeping transformation on the island and in the world outside it.

These doctors -- members of a 30,000-strong foreign medical corps, whose work gives Havana access to badly-needed goods like Venezuelan oil -- are unwittingly contributing to a mounting problem back home. Their absence exacerbates staffing constraints in Cuba's once well-regarded hospitals, now stretched by the demands of an aging population. Nonetheless, in the long string of speeches at La Higuera, Cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian officials feted the physicians as model revolutionaries -- guerrillas with stethoscopes in place of rifles. And in case the branding tie-in wasn't clear, each medic was dressed in a white lab coat opened to reveal a red or blue Che T-shirt.

Mr. Casey is Dow Jones Newswires bureau chief in Buenos Aires, and author of "Che's Afterlife," a forthcoming book to be published by Vintage on Alberto Korda's famous image of Che Guevara.