Last Updated: August 19, 1999
Printer-friendly version
See also:
'Conversation' is the stage for a forceful one-man
act
November 1, 1998
HAVANA -- Roberto Robaina, Cuba's foreign minister, looked a delegation
of 32 U.S. newspaper editors in the eyes and said, "People say bad things
about Cuba, but we want you to see Cuba for yourself -- make up your own
mind."
But when you look at Cuba from the inside, it's like peering through
Alice in Wonderland's looking glass: Everything is upside down.
Robaina, who was dressed in a black tuxedo jacket, sleeves pushed up
to his elbows, black silk T-shirt and black slacks, talked of a Cuba the
editors never saw.
Robaina, President Fidel Castro and others praised socialism and their
39-year-old revolution and cursed the United States and its embargo. Yet
the underpinning of the Cuban economy is a capitalistic dependence on tourism
and the U.S. dollar.
Cuban officials speak of equality for all, yet the government does not
allow Cuban citizens to enter its tourist hotels or many tourist restaurants.
In Cuba today, the economic system of rewards has been turned on its
head. And the repressed Cuban people don't like it.
After the Soviet Union collapsed and withdrew its economic support,
the Cuban government began a desperate scramble for hard currency. It turned
to dollar-based tourism while restricting Cuban citizens to the peso system.
So when I gave my maid a $20 tip, I committed a significantly subversive
act. That $20 meant she made 400 pesos in one day. The top doctors and
scientists in the country make 350 pesos a month.
Waitresses, bellboys, maids, street vendors and prostitutes have become
Cuba's wealthiest citizens. One of our cabdrivers had quit his engineering
job to make far more money from the tips he receives in dollars.
The quest for the tourism dollar is blatant and can border on begging.
Another cabdriver explained that the state gets all of his fare money but
that he gets the tips. He then unashamedly pulled out a picture of his
toddler daughter and said she needed milk. The tips were generous.
When I hadn't left a tip for the maid during the first three days I
was in my room, I came back to find a polite letter from the maid saying
how much she'd enjoyed serving me. Without saying it specifically, it screamed,
'Leave me a tip.' "
Cashing in
This year, 1.4 million tourists are expected to visit Cuba, and the
predictions are for 2 million visitors by the year 2000. Everybody wants
to cash in on those tourists. Street vendors come up with imaginative products,
prostitutes roam the streets and there are rumors that people are paying
as much as $1,000 to get jobs as waitresses and cabdrivers.
Victor Rameriz Ruiz, president of the assembly of Matanzas Province,
was candid when he said: "Tourism has brought about some differences in
people. People serving the tourists have advantages some people don't have.
... Tourism creates some limitations on our people, but they know development
of tourism is important to our economy."
An old Communist revolutionary, Osmany Cienfuegos, was straightforward
when he said: "We would have liked a chance to develop something else to
improve our economy, but we had to develop tourism. ... Tourism has its
bad points, but we think economic development is more important."
The message of most of the Cuban leadership is that while only a few
people benefit directly from tourism dollars, that money will trickle down
to the masses and provide better social services.
Castro makes the argument that "tourism dollars allow us to develop
more medicines, better schools and better health care systems."
A second key element propping up the economy is money sent to Cuban
citizens from family members in the United States. Some U.S. estimates
put that number as high as $800 million a year. Cuban officials argue that
that the number is half that.
Two economies
Whatever the number, the hard fact is that there are two starkly different
economies in Cuba: an external market in foreign currency and an internal
system in the peso. Salaries for most Cubans range from $6 to $18 a month.
Dinner at one of the tourist restaurants in Cuba costs $25 per person.
The government has its hand in just about every dollar transaction.
The U.S. interests section, which represents the United States in a country
with which it does not have diplomatic relations, pays $500 per month to
the Cuban government for each of its 250 Cuban employees. Each employee
is then paid $10 a month by the government.
The hotels in the country are owned in partnership with the government,
which takes its money off the top.
Tourism is confined to a few modern hotels in Havana and to some beautiful
beach resorts, such as Varadero. Cubans are not allowed to stay in those
hotels or stray onto the grounds of the resorts, restrictions that breed
contempt and distrust among Cubans.
The hotels are as modern and spacious as any in the United States, though
the construction is probably not as good, if that whistle through the windows
of my coastside room was any indication.
The breakfast buffet in the hotel Cohiba was incredible, equaling any
I've seen in the United States and several foreign countries. Cheeses,
meats, breads, fruits, salads, omelets with all the fixings and U.S.-brand
cereals adorned the many tables. Breakfast cost about $12 per person.
However, the food in two state-owned restaurants for ordinary Cubans
ranged from OK to memorably awful.
The luxury and plenty of the tourist hotel is turned upside down again
when you walk outside into a rundown, ramshackle Havana. The glory of this
city is obvious but faded, and it would appear that the greatest effect
of the U.S. embargo has been on paint. Everything needs several coats.
Some good hardware stores could make a killing with all the fixing-up that
would be necessary to restore Havana to the grandeur of the '50s.
In many ways, time stopped when Castro seized power in 1959. Havana's
road system is excellent, far better than in many European countries, but
the system was built before the revolution. There are no traffic jams because
few cars are on the road. Most of those are '49 Cadillacs, '53 Chevies,
'54 Buicks and the like. The word is that many of those cars have American
bodies but Russian engines.
The '50s motif is found in people's dress too. Most men wear the traditional
Spanish guayaberas (shirts) and some women dress in a sharp, contemporary
style. But some high-ranking female scientists look as though they stepped
off the set of "I Love Lucy."
Ongoing revolution
Perhaps the greatest marketing victory in the universe belongs to Castro
and his ministers, for their ability to convince the people that they are
still in the midst of a revolution, 39 years after Castro marched into
Havana.
Jose Ruiz Rodriguez, the minister of economy and planning, seems to
understand important economic principles, but he and most other Cuban officials
talk of the revolution as an ongoing thing, not as an event that took place
more than a generation ago. Rodriguez is proud of the socialistic underpinnings
of the economy. "What we have here is a more equal distribution of income
than any other country in the world, even with the dislocations of the
last year."
Some common citizens, including executives at the Carlos Finlay Science
Institute, which manufactures life-saving vaccines, lectured the U.S. editors
on the economy and socialism. They argued that one should not think of
350 pesos as the only salary that Cuban scientists get, singing the praises
of the housing that is supplied by the state, the free medical system and
the free education system. Those executives argued that those benefits
made their salaries far more comparable to U.S. salaries than we understood.
And whenever the socialist rhetoric fails, everyone from Ricardo Alarcon,
the head of the popular assembly of Cuba, to Foreign Minister Robaina to
Castro himself blames the U.S. embargo. As Alarcon put it: "Cuba has been
and continues to be a minor problem for the United States. To Cuba, the
United States is the major problem."
A clear message conveyed to the editors was that the embargo is bad,
that the United States is inconsistent because it is embargoing Cuba and
not the Communist governments of China and Vietnam and that the United
States has broken repeated promises to lift the embargo if Cuba did certain
things. Most important, Cuban officials insist that it is the United States
that must change, that Cuba will not change in order to get the embargo
lifted.
The head of the U.S. interest section, Michael Kozak, contends that
the embargo is a good thing simply because "we don't want to be doing business
with this repressive regime." But one wonders what would happen to Castro
and his apologists if the embargo was lifted and he no longer had an excuse
for the country's poor economic performance.
Despite all the roiling in the country, you find little dissent. It
is not tolerated. Dissent is viewed as an act against the state, and dissidents
are routinely jailed. There's only one newspaper in the country, the state-run
Granma. The newspaper's editor in chief, Frank Aguero Gomez, was unabashed
in admitting that Castro has a personal hand in deciding what is published.
Gomez could not understand why a newspaper might publish something that
was not in the interests of the government.
Even though many Cubans complain about the economy and the government,
most of them still love Castro. Despite the grousing about economic inequities,
there was never any indication that serious rebellion is afoot.
Stability after Castro is a major question. Castro's brother Raul would
legally succeed him, but it is unclear whether Raul or any other Cuban
would have the political muscle to handle the upside-down world Castro
and his ministers have created for Cuban citizens.
© Copyright 1998 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
