CUBA- A MUSEUM OF COMMUNISM
Bjarne
Fjeldsenden
Facts
about Cuba.
Area: 114
524 km˛. Population in 1999:
11.179.700. Capital: Havana with
2.250.000 in 1998. Independent from Spain since 1898, but dominated by US until
the revolution January 1 1959.
President: Fidel Castro Ruz. Literacy rate: 98%. Infancy mortality rate (until one year) in
2000: 6.4 pr. 1000 (better than US).
What follows
are mainly based on my travels all over Cuba from January 31 to March 19,
2003. I travelled alone and spoke with
a lot of people, mostly in Spanish. If you want to know more about Cuba you
will find Internet references at the end of the article.
Cuba’s
form of communism.
Cuba is a
communist country in many ways similar to the old style communism found in the
former Soviet Union but flavoured by its Latin-American culture, its nearness
to US and also influenced by African music and culture. While Chinas focus is
on economic development Cuba is focused on defending the revolution of 1959 and
the ideology connected with it. But it
is also a journey back in time with horse and carts trafficking many streets
operating like a tram, rationing books, libretta, for food, reminding me
about wartime in Norway from 1940-45. All the Americans cars from the 1950-ties
indicate the strong economical link to US up to 1959 and all the Soviet built
cars, Lada, indicate the strong links to Soviet up to around 1990. The government frowns upon private
ownership, but in one area they have allowed it, i.e. allowing private people
to let out a room or two, but they have to get a licence and pay 100-250
dollars pr. month for each room they let. These licensed houses are called casa
particular and they have a blue triangle over the door so they are easy to
find and there are lots of them in the cities but not at the typical tourist
resorts where the government wants all the tourists in their more expensive
hotels. A room in a casa particular costs around 25 dollars in Havana
and 15 dollars in most other cities. The standard is reasonable, sometimes with
a bathroom attached but more often shared with another room or the family. Some
considers the owners of casa particular the nouvau riche. If people let
out a room without a licence they may have their house confiscated and their
family evicted within three days. But in one instance I encountered the owner
was fined 1500 pesos = 60 dollars and told to make the necessary arrangement to
get a license.
Freedom
and control.
Cuba is a
strictly controlled society and its citizens have very little access to
information from the world outside Cuba. Cubans have no access to Internet and foreign
TV stations. Many said that a liberalisation had taken place the last 2-3
years, but then they had a crack down on dissidents that began on March 18.
2003. Amnesty International is
concerned that 77 people may be prisoners of conscience, detained for the
non-violent exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and association.
In what has been labelled by dissident groups as the biggest crackdown in a
decade, at least five dozens people from different provinces across the country
have been detained in a major police operation. Those detained include
journalists, owners of private libraries and pro-democracy members of illegal
opposition parties. All of the detainees remain imprisoned without charge, and
the whereabouts of some of them is unknown. .
Meeting
with a dissenter group.
I meet a
group of dissidents early in March 2003. One member had been to prison for
seven years, another political journalist twice two years. They were not
exposed to physical torture but psychological like being kept awake and living
in a small cell with 18 other prisoner. The group I met were easygoing people
more preoccupied that evening with music, dance and drinking rum than politics.
I got some written material from one of them which emphasised human rights and
a desire for a democratic society. It was a peaceful group with no extremist
points of view. Similar groups had contact addresses in other cities in Cuba.
They would definitely be known to the authorities and felt safe. But an owner
of a casa particular said, when I showed the writings to him, that if he
was found with these papers on the street he would be arrested. This ubiquitous presence of the secret
police combined with the lack of human rights as in democratic countries makes
people uncertain. I met one pensioner
who told he had anxiety for the police and couldn’t sleep at night without
medicine.
Cuba’s
positive sides.
But let it
also be said that family members are not reporting on each other, as has been
the case in some authoritarian regimes as Nazi Germany and Cambodia under Pol
Pot from 1975-79.
Fidel
Castro may be described as a mild dictator, and Cuba’s situation has clearly
been aggravated by US’s harsh embargo and hostile attitude. It is a miracle
that Cuba has survived after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuba has also a good education system free
of charge and free hospitalisation. There is though a shortage of antibiotics
and pain killing drugs, and medicine prescribed to outpatients is not free. A
good health service and education for everybody are also part of human rights,
and in this Cuba is far ahead of other Latin American countries.
Electricity
seems to be available to most people, also in the countryside, and the houses
there seem to be of better quality than what you find in developing
countries. In most places one can drink
water from the tap.
Havana has
many run down buildings in need of restoration but has at the same time a
certain charm with its rather narrow streets in the centre and the old part,
and there is people out in the streets, lit up by yellow light, 24 hours. Both
Havana and other cities have many shady parks where you can sit down. The
cities are alive and they are safe.
Cuban
people.
It is easy
to get in contact with Cubans. You can just sit down in a park and soon
somebody will talk to you. Speaking enough Spanish to have a conversation was a
clear advantage, but I also meet many older people who spoke English well. These people were often critical to the
present regime because they knew conditions before 1959 when Fidel Castro took
control and because they were a very poor group with a pension of 3-4 dollars a
month. A physician earns 15 dollars pr month and most workers around 8-10
dollars.
Cubans are
warm and friendly people, but poor. Children seem to get a lot of love from
their parents and a good follow up by well-trained health personnel. A picture sticks in my mind of a young
mother walking in front of me with her one-year-old child. She kisses the
child, the child kisses back and laugh and the mother smiles back. Maybe this
type of situation, of warm relationship, also is reflected in the grown up
Cubans behaviour. Cuba is also a
non-violent society, which partly may attributed to their treatment of
children, partly to the strict police control. Dictatorships are often strong
on good “law and order” and are safe for tourist who doesn’t interfere in their
politics.
Cubans are
well educated with a very low illiteracy rate and 12 years of education seems
common but most of them have very little knowledge of countries outside Cuba. I
asked many if they knew the name of capitals in Spain, UK, Mexico and
Venezuela. Some knew that Madrid was
the capital of Spain but the other capitals were unknown to almost everyone I
asked. One woman had studied five years in Soviet Union but only knew that the
town she had stayed in was 12 hours with train from Moscow. But at the same
time they were good in reading maps when I wanted to know exactly in which
street my casa particular was situated.
Rather few
young Cubans spoke English. I actually met older people speaking English. This
may be because of the close contact between Cuba and US before 1959, while
Castro didn’t want to many Cubans to know English because that more easily may
bring “wrong ideas” out to the people.
Cubans
enjoy music, dancing and rum, and their attitude to sex seems liberal and
change of partner seems common. Their
dancing may be described as sensual. The police try to control prostitution in
some tourist resorts by threatening owners of casa particular with a
fine of 1500 dollar if they let out room to prostitutes or allow tourists to
bring them to their house. But in big cities one are often approached by
prostitutes in central areas because this seems to be the easiest way to make
money.
Prices
in Cuba.
Cuba has a
national currency called peso and the US dollar. One dollar equals 26 pesos.
Foreigners are forced to pay almost everything with dollars while Cubans can
use peso and sometimes pay the same in pesos, as a foreigner has to pay in
dollars. This applies for instance to railway tickets meaning that as a
foreigner you pay 26 times as much for a ticket. From Havana to St. Clara, a
distance of 280 km, a railway ticket costs 10 dollars for a foreigner and 10
pesos (40 cents) for a Cuban. On local buses a foreigner can pay with pesos but
not on intercity buses. Cinema, pizza
some places and tapped beer can be paid with pesos. It normally cost one peso
at the cinema, 4-6 pesos for a pizza and 6 pesos for a glass of tap beer, cerveza
sirviendo. But even for Cubans it
is limited what they can get for pesos, i.e. medicine. The “peso pharmacies” have cheap medicine
but little is available I was told, while in the “dollar pharmacies” they can
get almost any medicine but many can’t afford it.
The
economy.
The
American embargo and the collapse of Soviet Union have certainly aggravated the
situation for Cuba but is not the only or perhaps not the most important reason
for the poverty.
The wages
are so low that very few can live from what they earn. How do they survive?
About 50% receive money from relatives abroad but the legal limit is 100
dollars pr month. The black market is big business. A job may be more important
because of what you can steal from your employer, mostly a state enterprise,
than what you can earn. Cigars are one of the products a tourist is offered.
But the biggest income earner is the tourist industry and many Cubans try to
exploit this. Owners of casa particular are a clear example, private
taxies, often old American cars, is another. Tourist hotels are generally owned
by the state but there also seems to be some joint enterprises. Varadero is the
biggest tourist resort complex in the Caribbean with an international airport.
Many tourists don’t move outside this tourist ghetto. I didn’t go there. Foreign investments are still modest,
probably more because of strict conditions by the Cuban government and limited
opportunity to make profit more than due to the American embargo. But Cuba no
doubt is an interesting country for investment due to its well-educated
population, particularly in medicine and related areas and until now lack of
capital. I suppose most Cubans would benefit from a more liberal monetary
policy, but if the Americans were let loose in Cuba they probably would be far
more preoccupied with making money than thinking of the welfare of the Cuban
population. A gradual easing up of restriction may be one approach, and Cuba
may learn from Vietnam and particularly China, which have opened up for foreign
capital on a grand scale. Castro visited those two countries early in March
2003.
Travelling
in Cuba.
You need
patience due to delays, fully booked buses or no bus at all. The only exception is routes served by Viazul,
one of the state owned bus companies. They operate modern aircon buses between the
major cities in Cuba and I always managed to get a seat without booking in
advance. Those buses were more expensive, about six dollars pr 100 km, than
buses from the other state owned bus company Astro where it was
difficult to get a seat. In eastern Cuba trucks were more commonly used for
passenger transport than buses and foreigners were supposed to be denied access
but this rule seemed to be ignored because it meant a lot more money to the
operator as the tourist paid in dollars the same as the local in pesos, i.e. 26
times as much.
Another
example of how difficult it is to plan travelling time was my return from
Isla de Juventud 118 km off the coast of Cuba. I had planned to leave seven
o’clock in the morning. That boat was fully booked but no information was
available beforehand. The next should leave 13:00, but was delayed until 17:00.
In addition only one of the two engines was working resulting in a travel time
of five hours instead of two.
Comparisons
with other countries.
Cuba is a
very special country. Their priorities is distinctly different from other Latin
American countries with more equal opportunity for their citizen to education
and medical attention. They even help African countries by training doctors and
sending specialists to Africa. In this respect Cuba may be considered a human
and advanced society. They take well
care of the young ones but many of their old people live in poverty. China is
economically far more dynamic but also a much harder society with no health
care for everybody. The transport systems are better in most other
Latin-American countries and Asia. The
Cuban people may have a lot of initiative but the system doesn’t allow it.
Fidel Castro and his people are too preoccupied with defending the revolution
and controlling their people. Too much emphasis on ideology and too little
emphasis on economy and freedom are the main weaknesses of Castro’s Cuba.
Concluding
remarks
Fidel
Castro is considered intelligent, charismatic and a good speaker. Cuba may
continue at its present course still some years as long as Fidel Castro is
still going strong. But its present
economical policy can’t continue because it is too inefficient. Some said that
Cuba should have started to revise its economical policy 20 years ago like
China. It is a pity that no discussion of human rights and a process towards a
more democratic society is allowed. The
world is changing but Cuba remains almost the same as it was 40 years ago. I
strongly wish that Cuba can change in a peaceful way and avoid a brutal
occupation like Iraq recently. Cubans don’t hate US citizens or westerns like
many Arabs. Lets hope that leaders in Cuba and US together with the Cuban
dissidents can arrive at a peaceful solution for the prosperous future of Cuba
and its citizens. The Cuban people deserve it.
Some
Internet references:
Campaign to
End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cuba/
Cuban
political group: http://www.cubaliberal.org/who_we_are.htm
Cuban
topics: http://www.megastories.com/cuba/index.htm
Dissenter
groups view: http://www.cartadecuba.org/Homeland%20Belongs.htm
Facts about
Cuba: http://www.mapzones.com/world/caribbean/cuba/educationindex.php
Kubaforeningen (in Norwegian): http://home.no.net/vivacuba/index.html
Tourist
information (in Spanish): http://www.cubaweb.cu/esp/main.asp?screen=1024