Cuba: Misery and Hope; J. Amador

There is no food, or water,or electricity."But it wasn't a press account from a place ravaged by bombing or military occupation. It was a letter from an ordinarycitizen,writingabout Cubainto its fourthdecadeofsocialism. Cuba'seconomicplightis hardlynews.A curso ry glance at United Nations historical statistics shows how a once up-and-coming developing nation has slowlysunk into the bottom half of ThirdWorldeconomies.But somehowthe parade ofgrimstatisticsneverreallyhithomeuntilaseries of lettersand personalinterviewswithrelativesin recent months added a human dimensionto the coldnumbers.Theseare not therantingsofembit tered exiles,but the firsthandaccountsofmen and womenwho grew up in FidelCastro'sCuba. I met my aunt Josefinain November,when she came to the United Stateswith my grandmother for a three-weekvisit.She lastsaw me whenI was still a toddler in 1961. She belongsto the genera tion of idealisticyouth who helped put Castroin powerin 1959.

What do you talk about with a relativeyou've nevermet before?As a nephewand a journalist,I was bound to ask, "What are things like over there?" "We'regoingbaekto the 19thcentury,"was her short reply. Josefina confirmspress reports that horse-drawn carriages are replacing delivery Jorge Amador is editor of The Pragmatist, a current affairs commentary. The names ofprivate individuals in Cuba have been changed for their protection. trucksin Havana.The governmentrecentlyissued bicyclesfor urbanworkersto get to work,and put in an order for thousands of oxcarts to replace tractorsin the countryside. Electricityis strictlyrationedin Cuba,she says, enforced by scheduled and unscheduled power outages.Thosewhospendmorethantheirmonth ly electricityallowanceget theirpowershutofffor threedaysa month.Twenty-five-wattbulbsarethe rage in Havana. Depending on their location, homes in the city have running water for a few hours everysecond,third, or fourth day. Josefina shouldknow:she'semployedin the waterworks.

For yearsthe Cubaneconomywas kept barely afloat by Soviet subsidies, but recently it has foundered as formerly Communistcountries in EasternEurope havestarteddemandinghardcur rency, not worthless rubles or Cuban pesos, in exchangefor their goods.The sharp rise in crude oil pricesfollowingthe Iraqi invasionof Kuwait madethingssuddenlymuchworse.Cubandictator FidelCastrowas quickto blameeverythingon the price of oil, but the economy continued to deteriorateevenafterDesertStormstartedandoil pricesreturned to pre-invasionlevels. ConsumerHell In response to the growingcrisis, Castro has decreeda "specialperiodofausterity"reminiscent ofwartimeeconomies.Rationinghasbeeninplace for mostconsumergoodssincethe 19608,but now everything is strictly rationed, and buying one rationeditemforfeitstherightto obtainsomething elseuntilthe nextrationbook arrives.

291 Empty store shelves: Cubans have plenty of money but little opportunity to buy. I "Things are very difficult here," writes another aunt, Rosa. "To give you an idea, it was my turn to shop on Friday. If 1 bought a refill for my pen, I would lose the right to buy perfume .... Abso lutely everything is [bought] by the ration book." "I am a Fidelista,but not a comunista,"declares my grandmother defensively over this kind of din ner talk. She admires Castro's carefully cultivated image as the dynamic Maximum Leader. "That's because you stay home all the time, and I'm the one who has to stand in line for hours to do the shopping," retorts my aunt Josefina. "You just see what they put on television. If you went out more often, you'd realize how bad things really are." As in other centrally planned economies, Cubans have plenty of money, but little to buy with it. Socialist labor bosses can boast that the system has given workers unprecedented levels of in come, but shoppers begin lining up in the wee hours of the morning before the stores open to make sure they get in before the goods run out.

Predictably, the preponderance of buyers over sellers has resulted in minimal levels of quality and service. "Let me explain to you how it is here so you understand," writes my cousin Lidia. "You take a roll of film to be developed. Three or four months later-if you're lucky-you get back maybe half the pictures you took. You go through the negatives and find undeveloped photos, but there's nothing you can do about it; you can't go and complain. And forget about getting extra copies of your prettiest pictures: it's impossible." Unlike a "seller's market" in a free economy, however, entrepreneurs cannot enter the market to provide the relief of competition. Nobody else is allowed to fill the people's needs, and the sellers themselves derive no profit from their endeavors, so they lack the incentive to increase their own production. The result is not a seller's paradise, but sheer hell for consumers.

"StoneAge Man"in Manhattan My cousin Domingo, 38,left Cuba for good with his two sons late in January. He was eager to tell me about Cuba, and to offer his first impressions of the United States. "Coming to the United States from Cuba is like putting a man from the Stone Age smack in the middle of New York City," he said to me. "The differences are that great. Here you have everything; over there, we had nothing."

292 THE FREEMAN • AUGUST 1991 UnlikeJosefina,Domingolivedin the country side. I probed him for information about rural Cuba.Whateverbecameofthe farmers'free mar ketsthat Castroallowedfor a few yearsin the mid 1980s?Didn't they help to ease the shortagesof food staples? "They were relatively expensive,"replied my cousin,"but youcouldget thingsyoucouldn'tfind in the state stores.Fidelcloseddown the farmers' free markets because, as he put it, they were 'exploitingthe people,' sellingrice at 1.30pesosa pound.So then he set up thesestate-run,socalled 'parallelmarkets'-and they soldthe samerice at 1.50 pesos a pound." Now even the parallelmar kets are closed,sincethere'snothingto sell. Whateverthe economy'smaterialfailings,apol ogistsfor Cuban socialismare quick to point out that Cubans now possess"dignity,"an intangible commoditywe are saidto havelackedbeforeCas tro. Whether or not Cubans had dignity before, Domingowould disagreethat they have it today.

"Whathurtsthe most,"he saysaboutconditionsin Cuba,"isthe discriminationagainstCubansby the governmentitself." TheCubangovernment,he explains,runsstores where only people with hard currency(e.g.,U.S. dollars)are allowedto shop. Since Cubansaren't allowedto possessforeigncurrency,onlyforeign ersare admittedintothe stores.Thehard-currency shopsoffera widevarietyofgoodsnot availableto the average Cuban,who has to askvisitorsto go in and buy thingsfor him. "There are restaurants where anybodycan sit downto eat, but there are two setsof menus-one for foreignersand another one for Cubans,"says Domingo."You can sit at the same table and not be allowedto orderthesamethings,unlessthecus tomerwiththe hardcurrencyoffersto payforyour meal." Cracksin the Monolith Because the regime quicklyswoops down on displaysof publicdissent,Cuba presents an out ward image of undisturbedharmony.But clearly there is widespreadprivate disenchantmentwith the socialist system. One relative reports the resultsof an informalpollshe took at her officein Havana:75 percent said they are againstthe gov ernment, 10 percent are in favor, and the rest declinedto say. The fact that she felt safe enough in her surroundingsto undertakesucha projectis itselfrevealing.

Duringmy interviewwith DomingoI turned to his sons and asked what young people think of Castro. Aren't they indoctrinated in socialism from Day One? "Yes,but nobodybelievesit," said Andres,age 19. "WheneverFidelgoeson TV we say, 'The heck with him,' and go out and party." After 32 years, the state's effortsto imbueyouth withsocialistide ology can't compete with the hard evidence of its failure all around them. His brother Ian, 8, played with a remote-con trolled toy fire truck. But misery had made him wisebeyond his years. lao took me on a tour of his grandfather'shome in Connecticut,whichthe fam ily was leavingfor sunnier skiesin Florida. Strewn all over the house was the debris of movingprepa rations. Ian led me to the garage.He walkedme around a pile of items to be discarded before the move: a wooden wine-bottle box, a rack full of dusty cups and glasses,someold tools,dirtyclothes."Here [in the United States] you consider all of this trash, junk to be thrown out." He picked up the wooden box by the handle. "But in Cuba we wouldsaveall these things.When you're poor you have to make do with what you have."

In the face of crushingpoverty and stifled for mal speech, Cubans have turned to humor for relief. Cuban jokes about features of daily life, fromrationingto Castro'spersonalitycult,serveto expresspopular feelingsabout the socialist"revo lution" and its MaximumLeader. In a recent compilation of Cuban political humor (Chistes: Political Humor in Cuba [Wash ington: The Cuban American National Founda tion, 1989]),Luis Aguilar,a professor of historyat Georgetown University,includesone about Sher lock Holmes, the master of logical deduction. Walking the streets of Havana with Dr. Watson, Holmes stops to watcha man wipinghis browwith a handkerchief and walkingbrisklypast them. "Watson, do you see that man who has just passed us? Well,he doesn't have any underwear." Watsoncouldn'tbelievehis ears about Holmes's statement and asked the man in question if it was true. Upon hearing his affirmative reply, Watson inquired from Holmes how he had reached such a conclusion.

"Elementary,Watson,elementary.In this coun try,he whospendshisration coupon on a handker chiefforfeits his right to underwear!" The cracks in the Cuban monolith are slowly growing. Listening to Radio Marti or TV Marti, the U.S.-sponsored services broadcasting into Cuba,is a punishableoffense.Nevertheless,Radio Marti is the most popular station in Cuba. "When CUBA: MISERY AND HOPE 293 Radio Marti comes on, the streets are emptied," says Domingo. "Everybody plays it real low so nobody can hear you listeningto it from the other side of the wall." TV Marti has been jammed by the Cuban gov ernment sinceit first came on the air, but that may change soon. "The jamming signal is transmitted from a helicopter," claimsJosefina, half seriously. "We're all waitingfor the helicopter's fuel to run out so we can watch TV Marti uninterrupted." But what about those great rallies we see on television, where everyone cheers Fidel's every word? "People go because they get off from work that day," explains Domingo. "It's like a holiday.

But if you don't show up for the rally or don't cheer,you're suspect." And what of those infamous "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution," the busybody block committees that are supposed to keep tabs on the people's political correctness? Josefina is the vice chair of her block committee. Participat ing in the CDRs is a matter of survival,not ideo logicalcommitment. So how soon can we hope for change in Cuba? Domingo was pessimistic. "The problem is that everybody complains in private, but nobody is brave enough to be the first to go out on the street and start a revolution.They'll shoot you." Politically,Cuba today appears to be in what we mightdescribeas a pre-reVOlutionaryhighsimmer: it could boil over at any time. There is general dis content, but as yet no widespread opposition movementto giveit direction.Crackdownson for mal dissenthavemade it more difficultto organize the opposition,but as the exampleofRomaniasug gests,organizedoppositionmay not be necessary.

"Youknow,"I told Domingo,"in Romania they had a big rally for the Communist dictator Ceau sescu, and the crowd started booing when they were supposed to cheer. It was quite a shock. The people then poured onto the streets, and the regimecollapsedin a matter of days."Even a mas sivestate securityapparatus,personallyloyalto the dictator,couldnot stop the people when enough of them decided they couldn't take it anymore. Not surprisingly, my cousin had not heard of this. Couldn't the same happen in Cuba, I asked, when things get so bad that somebody might decide they've got nothing to lose? It only takes one smallspark to set off a tinderbox. My cousin'seyes lit up. "It just might." D 294 California'sMan-Made Drought by Dirk Yandelland MichaelC. Paganelli C aliforniansandother Westernersare feel ing the effectsof a fifth year of drought. Reservoirsare at recordlows,riverlevels have dropped significantly, and the Sierra Nevada snow-packhas been well below normal.