Otto Rivero

Otto Rivero Torres (born October 19, 1968 in Cienfuegos ) is a former Cuban politician . Coming from a humble background, he rose to the post of Vice President of the Council of Ministers at a young age, before he was dismissed from all functions by State and Party Leader Raúl Castro in 2009 on accusations of unfaithfulness and since then has had to forego all of the earlier privileges of an official's life.

Political rise under Fidel Castro

Rivero is the son of a working class and began his ascent into leadership positions in the single ruling Communist Party (PCC) while studying economics, which he completed with a master's degree. For many years he was the highest party functionary of his generation: from 1994 to 1996 he served as president of the national student union, the Federación Estudiantil Universitaria , which is subordinate to the ruling party, and from 1997 to 2004 he was first secretary, chairman of the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas , the youth association the PCC, of ​​which he had previously been a member of the board since 1995. Since 1993 he has been a member of the Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular National Assembly, which meets twice a year . In 1997 he took part as a delegate at the 5th PCC Congress and was elected to the Central Committee. In 2003 he was appointed a member of the State Council.

After President Fidel Castro , who in 1999 at the beginning of the dispute over Elián González had proclaimed his prestige company "Batalla de Ideas" ("Battle of Ideas") to ward off hostile ideological influences on Cuban youth, he appointed Rivero as the coordinator of this major project, which helped its extensive budget was equivalent to the importance of its own ministry. In April 2000, Rivero was the main speaker in the presence of Fidel Castro at the inauguration of the so-called Tribuna Antimperialista "José Martí" , an open-air stage set up directly in front of the US diplomatic interest group for major "revolutionary" events. In addition to political propaganda projects and the mobilization of young people for paid jobs, for example as auxiliary teachers or as inspectors at petrol stations suspected of being corrupt, the Batalla de Ideas also included repairs and renovations of neglected hospitals and educational institutions that were among the showpieces of the Cuban Revolution. With the official function of the coordinator of the Batalla de Ideas , Rivero was appointed one of five vice-presidents of the Council of Ministers in December 2004 and thus appointed to the top of the government.

In addition to Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque , Rivero was a leading representative within the party of the so-called “talibanes”, a group of young, ambitious and particularly uncompromising defenders of the revolution and their protector, Fidel Castro, who, however, were not very popular among the youth who were mostly hoping for reform . With them Castro had built a parallel structure to the constitutional government institutions, which was equipped with extensive special rights and budgetary privileges and enabled him to implement his dream projects immediately.

End of political career under Raúl Castro

With the health-related resignation of Fidel Castro from the presidency and the assumption of office by his brother Raúl - initially as a substitute from the end of July 2006 and finally from February 2008 - the political priorities of the government changed: Instead of ideological appeals to persevere, Raúl Castro focused on concrete steps to stimulate the situation economy and the dismantling of various unpopular bans. The rise of young officials typical of the first half of the 2000s was slowed down, while at the same time an emphasis on institutional structures and controls replaced the Batalla de Ideas . Rivero's visibility in the media decreased significantly under Raúl Castro and the handling of the Batalla de Ideas projects was gradually transferred to various institutions before Rivero in March 2009 at the same time as the even more prominent politicians Felipe Pérez Roque and Carlos Lage and other leading party functionaries of Fidel -Era was excluded from the Politburo and the Council of Ministers. A few months before his dismissal, Fidel Castro personally praised him as a member of a "revolutionary elite" at the 8th Congress of Communist Youth UJC. Rivero initially suffered from a scandal over the misappropriation of funds in his area of ​​responsibility. Ultimately, his involvement in the contacts between a group of high-ranking politicians led by Carlos Lage and the Cuban-Spanish businessman Conrado Hernández, classified by the state leadership as a conspiracy, was decisive.

After his dismissal, he was assigned a simple job as a machinist in a printing company belonging to the State Council with the corresponding salary. According to officially unconfirmed reports by independent Cuban journalists, he is said to have made several suicide attempts since the end of his political career.

Web links

• Brief CV on the list of candidates for the 2003 general election , accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
• Brief curriculum vitae on the website of the Council of Ministers , as of November 8, 2006, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 1.33 MB), alphabetical list of members, originally printed in: Granma in November 1997, German translation accessed on the website of the FRG-Cuba friendship society on February 28, 2013
2. ↑ Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro: Paisaje después de la batalla , in: Cubanet from October 19, 2012, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
3. ↑ Inauguran en La Habana Tribuna Antimperialista "José Martí" ( Memento of the original of January 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article dated April 4, 2000 on the government website Elián.cu , accessed February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
4. ↑ Otto Rivero: La política anticubana ha sufrido un duro revés, Part 1 ( Memento of the original from December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Part 2 ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Speech for the inauguration of the Tribuna Antimperialista on April 3, 2000, accessed via Granma on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
5. ↑ Antoni Kapcia: Batalla de Ideas: Old Ideology in New Clothes? (PDF, 72 kB), in: A Changing Cuba in a Changing World pp. 74–88, ed. v. Mauricio Font, City University of New York 2009 (English)
6. ↑ Otto Rivero nombrado vicepresidente del Consejo de Ministros para la 'Batalla de Ideas' , in: Cubaencuentro of December 13, 2004, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
7. ↑ Bert Hoffmann and Laurence Whitehead: Cuban Exceptionalism Revisited ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 738 kB), GIGA Working Papers from September 2006, accessed on February 28, 2013 (English)
8. ↑ Vicki Huddleston: Learning to Salsa: New Steps in US – Cuba Relations, p. 87
9. ↑ ^{a b} Bert Hoffmann: Cuba in the post-Fidel era , (PDF, 305 kB), FES analysis from March 2007, accessed on February 28, 2013
10. ↑ Official announcement ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of March 2, 2009 (PDF, 47 kB), originally printed in Granma , German translation accessed on the website of the FRG-Cuba friendship society on February 28, 2013
11. ↑ Ángel Tomás González: Raúl Castro reforma el Gobierno que heredó , in: El Mundo of March 3, 2009, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
12. ↑ Yoani Sánchez: Mejor no destacarse , in the blog Cuba Libre from September 26, 2012, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
13. ↑ Mauricio Vicent: Conrado y los espías en la isla de los Castro , in: El País of July 12, 2009, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
14. ↑ Carlos Ríos Otero: Otto Rivero se niega a trabajar , in: Cubanet from September 19, 2011, accessed on February 28, 2013 (Spanish)
15. ↑ Ex vicepresidente cubano intenta suicidarse por tercera vez ( Memento of the original of October 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Neo Club Press of September 22, 2011, accessed February 28, 2013 (Spanish)