Things Fall Apart
Benjamin, Medea
IT WAS WITH GREAT TREPIDATION THAT I accepted NACLA's offer to write for this issue on Cuba. Opinions are more polarized than ever. In a recent radio talk-show I was criticized by the first...
...I had had my fill of starving children dying in my arms for want of clean water or a meager plate of food...
...But removal of union leaders from above does not by itself signify meaningful change...
...Huge swings in economic policy over the years have caused massive disruptions, the most infamous being the disastrous 1970 campaign to produce a ten-ton sugar harvest-a campaign that not only failed to reach its goal but ate up so many resources that it left other sectors of the economy in shambles...
...This point is debatable...
...I was soon surrounded by about 100 young people, all of them yelling and screaming to get my attention...
...One day I stopped at the university in Havana to interview students at random...
...How do you expect us to get to work in the morning...
...But I must tell you that here the problem is not malnutrition but obesity...
...Needless to say, I did not make a good hack and was canned for being "conflictiva...
...Others disagree vehemently...
...President," the team leader explains...
...New loans dried up, and Cuba was obliged to cut Western imports drastically...
...But the short-term prospects for a substantial increase in exports are not rosy...
...Rhetoric to the contrary, she insisted, workers have little say over the planning process, and trade unions have simply become vehicles for transmitting state policies from the top down...
...And, unlike the bus driver, most are too young to remember the days before the revolution...
...After waiting 30 minutes to get served, the surly waiter treated us to warm sodas and cold, dried-up hamburgers...
...Of course, the Cuban road to labor force efficiency does not pass through automatic unemployment as under capitalism" but will be a "gradual approach...
...Andrew Zimbalist, "Cuba's Revolutionary Economy," Multinational Monitor, April 1989...
...6. Quoted in San Jose Mercury News, Oct...
...The ration system guarantees that no one goes to bed hungry...
...I began freelancing for U.S...
...We'll have to have family or worker-owned restaurants and cafeterias if we're ever going to overcome the exasperating food service we now have...
...Here, everything from a kidney transplant to bypass surgery is scot-free...
...But the industry is still in its infancy and faces fierce competition from transnational corporations...
...Until the U.S...
...However, the CTC has announced that union leaders will now be elected by direct, secret vote...
...Cuba's bus system was crippled when the Hungarian factory began demanding hard currency for spare parts...
...According to a recent report in Izvestia, some Soviet enterprises are already trying to get out of the Cuban market...
...My mother just had a kidney operation and it didn't cost us a cent," the young woman declared...
...The recent changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union caused further problems and brought these long-standing shortcomings to a head...
...The Cuban government, I was told, does not implement "capitalist strategies...
...And power failures have become common throughout the nation because most of Cuba's electrical equipment is Czech...
...Or will they tire of their espera estoica and instead demand a more radical perestroika...
...Miami Herald, Jan...
...In the last few years the standard of living has deteriorated...
...I think they just failed to institute proper controls...
...In a recent radio talk-show I was criticized by the first caller for "defending a two-bit dictator" and by the second for being an "apologist for imperialism...
...Nowhere is greater productivity more important than in the hard currency sector...
...The principles of this revolution state that you get rewarded according to how hard you work, and here were these swindlers becoming millionaires, not from working harder but from cheating the people...
...This emerged in part from a recognition that the management and accounting systems copied from the Soviets in the mid1970s had been disastrous for the Cuban economy...
...The private selling of homes was also banned, and fewer licenses were given out to freelance workers...
...In addition to trade with the socialist bloc, Cuba was receiving-and paying back-loans from the West...
...1989, unpublished mss...
...market...
...officials who voiced opinions contrary to U.S...
...Economist Andrew Zimbalist comes to a similar conclusion: "Cuba will only succeed economically if it makes its economy more agile, flexible and efficient...
...In 1986 the government began to address these obstacles through what it calls the "rectification campaign...
...Our goal now is to hold the line at 1984 levels...
...But as a writer and a rebel, I remain extremely frightened by a one-party state that has full power to determine where the boundaries of revolutionary behavior lie...
...By the time I get to work, I'm late and exhausted before the day has even started...
...In the debates leading up to next year's Communist Party congress, the issue of decentralization has frequently emerged, and it is likely that some measures will be taken to loosen controls from above...
...And who knows, maybe the waiter would even smile and wish us a pleasant day...
...After a decade of valiant progress in diversifying its commercial partners, Cuba was forced once again to depend on the socialist trading bloc, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON...
...Quoted in James Petras and Morris Morley, "Cuban Socialism: Rectification and the New Model of Accumulation," Dec...
...It's cultivating the best in people...
...Health care and education (from elementary school through university) are free and accessible...
...Theofficial rate of exchange is US$1.67 to the ruble, but on the black market rubles are worth only 10 or 11 cents...
...Another Soviet source put the debt at 15.4 billion rubles...
...Every day, almost every Cuban I know does something illegal just to get by," remarked a European friend who has been living in Cuba for 20 years...
...The griping one hears reflects the state of the Cuban economy, which for years has been plagued by inefficiency and bureaucracy...
...We'll have to have farmers markets to get greater variety in our diet...
...We must be prepared for the worst-case scenario...
...VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)21 VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990) 21Cuba I government allows its citizens to visit Cuba as tourists, our industry will never be able to fully develop...
...Were we in the United States only able to make a similar boast...
...12, No...
...I landed ajob at Granma, the official Communist Party paper and Cuba's major daily, where news stories were little more than predigested editorials reflecting the current party line...
...consumer goods that would eventually wind up in Cuba...
...The night before I'd seen women sleeping in front of the shoe store to mark their place in line...
...It fostered income inequalities that neither the government nor the people were willing to tolerate...
...1 In other words, local enterprises must be allowed to make decisions, instead of having everything dictated from above...
...Dock workers loaded and unloaded ships by hand...
...There's no unemployment but nobody works...
...This friend considers herself a supporter of the revolution...
...At the end of Fidel Castro's speech to the congress of the Federation of Cuban Women in March, he warned the women to take good care of their clothes because if the special period does happen, they might not be able to buy dresses for the next few years...
...You just don't understand, chica," said Inds, who had been the biggest complainer of all...
...Donna Rich, "Embargo Economics Keeping Cuba at Bay," Multinational Monitor, April 1989...
...Alas, my timing was off...
...Infant mortality is now about the same as in New Zealand and Israel...
...Consumers have had to contend with long lines, shoddily produced goods, and frequent shortages of items from coffee to shampoo...
...The state just can't do everything, and when it tries, the result is shortages, inefficiency and bureaucracy...
...And since everyone sees everyone else doing it, it becomes part of the game...
...Artisans were permitted to sell their crafts in street fairs...
...embargo and growing protectionism in Western markets, all combined to reduce Cuba's hard currency earnings by $337.1 million, or 27.1...
...Cubans do indeed enjoy a better standard of living than most of their Third World counterparts...
...7. CubaBusiness (London), Vol...
...It just doesn't sit well with a lot of us...
...in fact she first migrated to Cuba for that reason...
...In the tourism industry, Cuba made another major concession to foreigners: They can manage hotels, including hiring and firing personnel.' 6 This contrasts starkly with the rest of the economy, where it is virtually impossible for workers to be fired...
...We'll have to have private plumbers, carpenters, and mechanics if we want to get things fixed...
...One has to have a healthy, sensible mind and not be a vulgar merchant...
...People are resentful of party officials who live high on the hog...
...If they had set ceilings on prices, or if the sellers had been licensed, regulated and taxed, the markets might have worked...
...5. Granma Weekly Review (Havana), April 29, 1990...
...WHETHER THE EXPANSION OF EXPORTS and tourism can compensate for the dramatic drop in Eastern European trade and the likely freezing of trade with the Soviet Union remains to be seen...
...And I am distrustful of a press that fails to reflect the sophistication of its readers...
...So artisans stole reams of cloth from state-run clothing factories, freelance plumbers filched materials from state factories, and agricultural supplies disappeared from state farms only to reappear in the fields of the private farmers...
...Latinamerica Press, March 15, 1990...
...But soon the term was used to refer to attempts to remedy any economic or political ill...
...This time we must be prepared...
...So you see, Mr...
...After I wrote an article about the government's decision to raid the private farmers markets, I was summoned to the Interior Ministry for questioning...
...I never got an education, but today one of my kids is a doctor and the other is an electrical engineer...
...Everybody has everything but they're always complaining...
...In interview after interview, government officials repeated generalizations about greater efficiency, less bureaucracy, less corruption, and higher worker morale...
...How much would an operation like that cost in another country-if you could even get it, that is...
...One of the bright spots was meeting and working with Cuban internationalists in Africa...
...Here the money goes to improve our health care, our schools, our roads...
...Now we have tourists who are more equal than we are...
...Is that socialism...
...There's nothing to buy but everybody has all they need...
...But it won't work today...
...5 Even so, Cubans fear the Soviets may be unable to fulfill their commitments...
...But it creates a kind of cognitive dissidence that some perceive as a greater threat to the revolution than the open encouragement of private initiative would pose...
...2 2 People hound tourists on the street to change money and to buy something for them in the dollar store...
...It's falling apart as it is," interjected Inds...
...basic services have been maintained and, in many cases, improved...
...I believe Cubans should have the right to a job, but not to a particular job...
...What an immense pleasure to live in a society that had abolished hunger...
...Beer became scarce when imports of Czech malt were slashed...
...Cuts in Bulgarian chickens and canned goods made supermarket shelves more paltry than ever...
...In response to heated criticism by some Soviet parliamentarians, Soviet Vice President Leonid Abalkin answered, "We have to bear in mind who gave us a helping hand after the Armenian earthquake and who has taken in our children affected by the Chernobyl tragedy...
...economic blockade, that has tried to strangle the Cuban economy since 1962...
...Since the state received priority, private producers had no way to purchase legally what they needed...
...4. Miami Herald, Nov...
...These debt figures have always been kept secret," said George Carriazo from Cuba's Center for the Study of the World Economy, "but a recent article in Izvestia put the Cuban debt to the Soviet Union at 24 billion rubles," somewhere between $2.4 billion and $40 billion depending on the rate of exchange...
...I am skeptical of a nation that does not change its top leadership in over 30 years...
...I believe in socialism and a state-run economy, but not in the fucking service sector," barked my friend Celina Sinchez, an elementary school teacher...
...Traditionally, COMECON granted special trade concessions to less developed countries such as Cuba, Vietnam and Mongolia...
...But Cubans quip that their perestroika is better translated as espera estoica-a long, stoic wait...
...The Economist, April 14, 1990...
...This deep sense of humanity and justice so impressed me that I left my cushy U.N...
...The damn buses don't even stop," she cried out as we helplessly watched bus after bus race past, exploding with passengers...
...They may buy black market coffee or shoes for their kids, call in sick atwork so they can have time to shop for food, swipe supplies from the office to use at home, or get their toilet fixed by a plumber working illegally...
...As it is, they threw out the baby with the bath water...
...To deal with the economic crisis, we will eventually have to make greater use of private initiatives," a Cuban economist confessed privately...
...Granma, July 10, 1988...
...But a series of factors combined to bring the economy to a halt...
...As time went by I began to see the cracks...
...professor Rail Hinojosa...
...There was nothing in it for them personally, only the moral satisfaction that they were doing the right thing...
...The public has responded with a heightened level of discontent...
...To this day, it is an accomplishment that I refuse to let people brush aside with a parenthetical "Oh yes, the Cubans have made some achievements, but...
...If this were a small family business or a workers co-op, we'd be served in half the time...
...We do not sacrifice our social ''24 programs...
...publications, but even there I landed in hot water...
...San Jose Mercury News, Sept...
...Plumbers, carpenters and other skilled laborers were licensed to work as independent contractors...
...Of course, while Celina longs for better services, she -along with the majority of Cubans-would probably be fuming mad once such co-ops or family businesses became lucrative...
...post and resolved to live in Cuba...
...Andrew Zimbalist, "Perspectives on Cuban," p. 37...
...27, 1989...
...When I tried to return two years later to complete research for a book on the Cuban food system, I was held incommunicado for three days, despite my valid visa, then dispatched on the next plane back to Miami...
...But deep down, it creates a kind of double standard that flies in the face of the mores this revolution stands for...
...Another point of reference is the recent past and herein lies the rub...
...Cuba has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, and drugs are virtually nonexistent...
...This initiative was practical as well as ideological, since material incentives are not easily employed in times of scarcity...
...The shortages provoked tighter rationing and longer lines, and for the first time in 20 years the government increased the price of these staples...
...I wouldn't place much weight on all the grumbling you hear," shrugged Cuban economist Carlos Tablada...
...The old permanent employment of workers in an enterprise is incompatible with our own modem model of economic calculation...
...Perhaps worst of all, to keep Cubans from bothering tourists the government has created a new police force: the tourist police...
...We're willing to tolerate the inequalities because it benefits all of us...
...In facing what may be its worst economic crisis, Cuba is not alone...
...Much of this may have reflected food that had previously been sold on the black market...
...3, 1990...
...The blockade continues to cost the island some $500 million yearly, according to Cuban officials...
...Microbrigades were first introduced in the 1970s to boost housing construction...
...tourists travel to the Caribbean each year, but they can't come to Cuba...
...In March, selected workplaces held a dress rehearsal for this special period...
...Half the population is under 25...
...It is worth nothing that Cubans who spoke out against the revolution did so on the promise of anonymity, and their names have been deleted...
...Contrary to speculation beforehand, the new trade agreement signed by Cuba and the Soviet Union in April called for an 8.7% increase in trade over the previous year...
...We are no longer talking about increasing levels of consumption," conceded Eugenio Balari, head of the Cuban Institute of Internal Demand, the government agency charged with researching consumer needs...
...Emphasis shifted from administrative mechanisms to the human role in building socialism, and from material to moral incentives-harking back to the original ideals of revolutionary leader Che Guevara...
...The two buildings on either side had already been condemned...
...The university professor who belittled the rectification campaign insisted that the way to increase productivity was not to demand greater moral commitment but to give workers more of a real voice in the workplace...
...Fidel is the only leader in the world who could tell thousands of women that they might not be able to buy new clothes for the next five years, and have them all clap," mused Abel Prieto, head of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists...
...But in singing Cuba's praises I was just as narrow as those who try to squeeze the island into their image of hell...
...In fact, Cuba seems to have done "a better job than other poor countries in shielding its people from the negative consequences of economic crisis...
...As of 1986, Cuba was unable to make further payments on its debt to the West...
...With the government taking the hard line that "We tried this market stuff and it didn't work," there is little internal debate about the significance of the experience...
...If we want to increase productivity, administrators need the leeway to instill greater discipline...
...Many Cuba watchers on the outside feel the problem was not the NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS market mechanisms themselves, but the way they were handled...
...We have to revive the dream...
...For writing such blasphemy I was forced, under duress, to sign a document in which I admitted to being a counterrevolutionary...
...And so it was...
...But many workers I spoke with saw no change, and it is not yet clear whether productivity levels have improved...
...The joint venture law passed in 1982 allows foreigners 50% ownership, tax-free investments, and grants of land and infrastructure...
...The result was not only a decline in productivity, but a bourgeois mentality among workers...
...It's like this, Mr...
...this one was literally falling apart...
...In some ways, Cuba has created a nation of hypocrites and liars...
...I think we've been operating under a misconception about the right to work," reflected Ram6n SuSrez of the Communist Party's Revolutionary Orientation Department (DOR), where the official line is defined...
...Spanish entrepreneurs, for example, have invested over $100 million in the tourist industry, and Cuba's Chamber of Commerce is courting business from Japan to India...
...During those experimental years, private farmers were allowed to sell their surplus at whatever price the market would bear...
...The three of them looked at me in horror...
...In spite of severe difficulties, Fidel Castro remarked, "We do not take such measures as leaving senior citizens without help, reducing pensions for retired people, giving less medical care to the sick, or less resources to hospitals and schools...
...6 The Soviets may also ask Cuba to begin paying back its substantial debt from economic development loans when the grace period runs out next year...
...My house is ready to crumble, but we have nowhere else to go...
...policy also insisted on remaining anonymous...
...Trade with the U.S.S.R...
...The women clapped and cheered wildly...
...I've discovered in my travels around the world that NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASCubans are idiosyncratic complainers...
...Unlike Western development workers or the Soviets and Eastern Europeans, the Cubans exhibited a true humanitarian spirit that resonated in my soul...
...EVEN WITH GREATER LOCAL AUTONOMY, however, it is doubtful that certain sectors of the economy-such as the service sector--could ever respond adequately to the vast array of consumer demands without some degree of privatization...
...This is a dilemma that socialism has bred: People have such an ingrained belief in equality that allowing greater inequalities in order to improve poor economic performance unleashes a popular backlash that is difficult to contain.14 Virtual total state control of the economy has led not only to inefficiency, but to a thriving black market...
...These are incomparable gestures...
...Judging by the construction boom-output of housing units soared by 18% from 1986 to 1989-the rectification campaign is a success.'" But the construction industry aside, it is hard to get a sense of what rectification has meant...
...But they often produced substandard homes and were phased out...
...According to the [accounting] system," explained Cuban economist Carlos Tablada, "workers' salaries were supposed to be linked to their output, but workplace norms would be lowered so that output would look high and everyone would receive bonuses...
...Sporadic shipments of industrial inputs and petroleum have led to plummeting productivity in certain factories, like the Havana electronics plant that failed to fulfill its production plan for lack of Soviet components...
...For Cubans, the quote from Che Guevara that graces the entrance to Havana's main hospital is more than a slogan: "The life of one child is worth more than all the riches of the wealthiest person on earth...
...These products, such as meningitis and hepatitis vaccines, treatment for skin burns, treatment for heart attacks, interferon for hepatitis, and AIDS testing kits, have been sold mainly to Latin America, particularly Brazil...
...Economist Andrew Zimbalist confirmed this: "Cuban austerity in the face of the debt bears little resemblance to IMF-style austerity elsewhere in Latin America...
...office workers did invoices by hand...
...Wouldn't that be nice...
...They might be members of the Communist Party or staunch supporters of the revolution, but they break the law as a matter of course...
...This will require greater decentralization, either through greater use of the market or through profound administrative measures, including a thoroughgoing democratization of the planning process, or both...
...In addition to inefficient central planning and coordination, corruption, bureaucracy and low worker productivity have hampered Cuba's development...
...Here in Cuba, we may complain till we're blue in the face, but when it comes right down to it, our motto is patria o muerte-my homeland or death...
...Basically the company administrator does nothing, but he always gets blamed when things screw up...
...Their own internal tensions may make them an extremely unreliable partner," confided Julio Garcia Oliveras, president of Cuba's Chamber of Commerce, the state agency which solicits foreign investment...
...asked a disgruntled university professor...
...We finally managed to squeeze onto a bus and found ourselves in the middle of an argument between the elderly driver and a young woman...
...President, we have plenty of data but no conclusions...
...Cuban economist Jos6 Luis Rodriguez said that due to slow Soviet deliveries, some Cuban industries are now operating at only 40% to 50% of normal capacity...
...is 15 times greater than with East Germany, Cuba's next most important COMECON partner...
...See, Andrew Zimbalist, '"Perspectives on Cuban," p. 6. 8. Andrew Zimbalist, "Perspectives on Cuban," p. 6. 9. The Economist, Feb...
...We were delighted that more goods were available, but we couldn't stomach watching a handful of crooks get rich from it," a woman Cuba I Cubans compare themselves to their relatives in Miami at the grocery store told me...
...23 Electricity consumption would be halved, for example, and state resources would be channeled to export agriculture, nickel mining, tourism and other production to generate hard currency...
...The whole purpose of this revolution was to promote equality...
...It's your job to stop at the stops," the woman was yelling...
...The more cynical say the Cuban government purposely mismanaged the markets to turn people off to capitalist reforms," remarked U.S...
...We're getting a lot of tourists from Canada, Western Europe and Eastern Europe," said Alfredo Rodriguez of Cuba's Tourism Bureau, "but our most natural market, of course, is the huge U.S...
...Certainly, the history of socialist ecoriomies to date leads to this conclusion...
...Going back to moral incentives is going back to our roots...
...Cuba is pinning most of its hopes on tourism, which now garners $200 million a year but is slated to replace sugar as the number one foreign exchange earner by 1991.21 The state has set up tourist stores, tourist restaurants, tourist nightclubs, tourist hotels, even tourist taxis-all accessible only to those with hard currency...
...Economist Andrew Zimbalist estimates that Cuba imported an average of $6 million yearly in the 1980s through such companies...
...4 In early 1990, when shipments of wheat and chicken feed failed to arrive on time due to rural strikes in the A private market in 1985: more goods, greater inequality 15Cuba I Ukraine, bread and eggs became scarce...
...When we were cut off by the Yankees in the early 1960s, we were caught off guard," recalled economist Carlos Tablada...
...Joint Cuban-Panamanian ventures set up dummy companies to buy U.S...
...They continue to receive their salary, and their co-workers agree to cover for them on their regular jobs...
...We might get a clean table with fresh cut flowers from someone's backyard...
...All houses in Havana look worn and dreary for lack of paint...
...Boy, things are pretty bad here in Cuba," I said innocently...
...During that period I personally observed a veritable explosion of planting in the countryside and innumerable patches of idle land suddenly blossoming into gardens...
...invasion of Panama, which had been a major route for circumventing the U.S...
...The money we make from tourists doesn't go into the hands of a few wealthy business tycoons like it does in other countries," another shouted defensively...
...Inds complained about everything-the phones don't work, the electricity goes off, the plumbing is broken...
...I went to live in Cuba in 1979, after working for eight years as a nutritionist in Africa and Latin America...
...Unemployment in Cuba remains minimal...
...Since then, low-energy drills are held once a month: Air conditioners, lights and other nonessentials are turned off, and automobile use is restricted...
...Another sore spot in the free market experiment was the "appropriation" of goods from government supplies...
...2 0 A promising source of future dollars is the sale of medical products developed through Cuba's advanced research in biotechnology...
...Tourism may not even bring in the amount of money Cuba needs after all...
...We talked about food shortages and the long lines to buy shoes for her kids...
...But, he added, "I'm sure that if five years of the special period pass and we meet again, you'll be just as beautiful and elegant as you are tonight...
...In the special period," Fidel Castro warned, "we would have to halt all social development programs, which means the construction of schools, day-care centers, clinics, homes...for perhaps one, two, three, four or five years...
...Just in case, the Cuban government is bracing its people for the worst...
...lower income groups have seen their wages rise as higher wages have been frozen...
...It's too bad we can't just bottle our weather and export it, instead of having to import tourists," grumbled an irritated young man trying to get into a nightclub with his date on a crowded Saturday night...
...Their main point of reference is the United States, particularly their relatives in Miami-an unfair standard for any Third World country...
...To counter the labor shortages which had plagued the industry (due in part to the expectations of Cuba's highly educated population), workers are now encouraged to volunteer with construction "microbrigades" for several years at a time...
...9 Production of other hard currency earners, coffee and tobacco, has declined...
...If you can find any, go right ahead...
...11, (Nov...
...On the issue of greater workplace democracy, Cuban economist Carlos Tablada pointed to the shake-up at the January 1990 congress of the Confederation of Trade Unions (CTC...
...The rectification campaign seems to have had great effect on the construction industry...
...Thanks to the revolution, my mother's alive...
...Tourism has also brought a resurgence of prostitution-nowhere near the level of pre-revolutionary Cuba, but prostitution nonetheless-and a fierce black market in dollars, which Cubans are not allowed to possess...
...The official line is that Cuba tried that route in the early 1980s, long before perestroika, and that it did not work...
...Latinamerica Press, March 15, 1990...
...By some miracle, no one was killed...
...I was reminded of the story about the U.S...
...3 Faced with significant discontent about the inequalities generated by the markets, the government began to harass them in 1983 and finally closed them down three years later...
...Landing in Havana, I remember feeling that I had entered the kingdom of heaven...
...29, 1990...
...Instead, goods that should have been sold to the state for the benefit of all were sold through private channels for the benefit of a few...
...3,June 1990...
...However, the perks are nowhere near what they were in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe, and not even as obvious as in Nicaragua...
...2. In late 1989, it was reported that the bus system in Havana was running at 75% of" minimum acceptable level...
...Fidel, Ratil and other high officials set a pretty modest standard...
...But Cubans rarely compare themselves to Dominicans or Haitians...
...We live better than the majority of people around the world, particularly those living in Third World countries, but we complain louder than any people I have ever encountered...
...Even Cuba's sugar industry, the backbone of the economy, has been affected, since the mills use computer and other high-tech equipment from East Germany...
...Everybody complains but they all go to Revolution Square to pledge their lives for Cuba and Fidel, and then they go home and complain some more...
...1989), 3. San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1990...
...Quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, July 6, 1990...
...And this idea of motivating workers through moral rather than material incentives is like beating a dead horse...
...I grew up before the revolution, and there were plenty of days we went to bed hungry," recalled the driver...
...But this is very different from state-sanctioned "get-rich-quick" schemes that could result from co-ops and family businesses...
...My interrogator was particularly furious at one phrase-that the private markets were a "capitalist solution to a socialist problem...
...Soviet administrators complain that exports to Cuba require special packaging and labeling, tropical modifications and extra documentation...
...As a nutritionist, a mother and an idealist, I remain passionately enamored of a country that puts people before profits...
...A recent study traced the journey of a truckload of cabbages from farm to market and found there were 12 levels of bureaucracy the poor cabbages had to go through before they reached the supper table-barely edible by then, of course...
...Look, chica, this goddamn bus will fall apart if I cram any more people onto it," the driver retorted...
...Speech at the Fifth Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women, Granma, March 18, 1990...
...All the goals are surpassed but there's nothing to buy...
...These achievements are all the more remarkable in the context of the U.S...
...Sure, a few corrupt administrators were kicked out, but there are plenty more bad apples where they came from...
...spy team reporting to Washington after several months on the island...
...Nobody works but they always surpass their production goals...
...In the case of the farmers markets," insisted Eugenio Balari of the Institute of Internal Demand, "there was virtually no increase in total production...
...The goods-designer jeans and sneakers, tape recorders, electric fans, etc.-are then sold on the black market for about five times the original price...
...A month later, Fidel Castro gave a speech about the private market experiment and called it an attempt to use "capitalist solutions for a socialist problem...
...My neighbors' house collapsed in the middle of the night," In6s told me...
...We'll have to have taxi co-ops or even private taxis if we want to ease the transportation crisis...
...One afternoon in a Havana cafe, this point was driven home...
...When we started using more material incentives in the mid-1970s, I was in tears," recalled Cuban journalist Mirta Rodriguez...
...W HILE THE GOVERNMENT PRESENTLY prefers the illegal inequalities generated by the black market to the legal inequalities that accompany formal market mechanisms, it is openly encouraging joint ventures with foreign businesses-a decidedly capitalist institution-in the sector of the economy that generates hard currency...
...As economist Andrew Zimbalist summarized, "Low sugar prices, plummeting petroleum prices (Cuba's re-export of Soviet petroleum provided roughly 40% of its hard currency earnings during 1983-1985), devastation from Hurricane Kate, several consecutive years of intensifying drought, drastic dollar devaluation, the tightening of the U.S...
...Luckily, I had the option of leaving the country, and I did so in 1983...
...DOR chief Carlos Aldana confirmed this reassessment...
...When I brought up the gripes I'd heard about tourism, they protested vehemently...
...This is the baggage I carried with me on my recent research trip for NACLA-the first time I have been allowed back to Cuba since I left in 1983...
...Things Fall Apart 1. Andrew Zimbalist, "Perspectives on Cuban Development and Prospects for the 1990s," manuscript to be published in Cuba and Western Europe: Breaking the Blockade (forthcoming), p. 31...
...clothing factories used foot pedals to make their goods...
...In 1989, these exports were worth $100 million...
...A further blow to the economy was the U.S...
...I'd rather die under socialism than live under capitalism...
...The level of productivity is abysmal, and the bureaucracy is still maddening...
...15, 1989...
...She showed me her house across the street...
...Five to six million U.S...
...Caribbean Insight, Vol...
...The flirtation with the market was short-lived...
...blockade...
...That was useful in the 1960s, when people really believed the rhetoric...
...Rectification was meant to tighten quality controls and work norms, weed out corrupt administrators, and drive home the work ethic...
...Aldana went on to say that they are looking into Japan's "democratic formulas" for labor relations...
...Giving administrators and workers more control over the work process could create an incentive to produce and allow the government to cut subsidies to inefficient enterprises...
...In a debate at the national farmworkers union, one state farm manager complained: "The administrator of a company cannot administer, because the people who run things are the ministry, the visiting delegations and the supervising committees...
...With the government's new push for Cuba I moral and collective incentives-and the critical shortage of housing-the microbrigade concept was resurrected...
...UNLIKE MUCH OF LATIN AMERICA, CUBA'S economy grew from the mid-1970s to the mid1980s...
...Other Cubans defend the tourism push...
...The head of the Nutrition Institute laughed when I told her I wanted to work with malnourished children...
...Manchester Guardian, March 11, 1990...
...Probably 90% of the people are involved in the black market," estimated Damidn Femrnndez, a professor at Florida International University.'" The black market is perhaps comparable to the informal sector in many Third World economies, and it is so pervasive that the government basically tolerates it...
...This whole goddamn place is falling apart...
...Day after day the front page heralded Fidel Castro meeting with a noted dignitary from South Yemen or Mongolia, or glorified a state farm or factory for surpassing its production quota...
...20, 1989...
...And after waiting 40 minutes for a bus, Inds got even more agitated...
...With tourism we have a new class division, the have-dollars and the have-no-dollars, and an entire repressive apparatus designed to keep the two classes apart...
...Homeowners could sell their property directly without the state as intermediary...
...4,No...
...People wait anxiously for the day that the few abusers living too well are caught and "dethroned...
...While there is a severe housing shortage, no one is homeless...
...In fact, this concession has led Cuban officials to re-evaluate their "right to work" policy in other sectors...
...and state-set prices have remained stable.'" 2 5 If the crisis continues to deepen, a precipitous decline in living standards is inevitable...
...One person I interviewed, a university professor in her mid-thirties who participated in numerous studies of the Cuban economy, was cynical...
...Unlike Nicaragua, where the Sandinista campaign slogan was "Todo serd mejor" (Everything will be better), the Cuban government is calling on its people to prepare for a "special period in peacetime"--wartime economic measures without an actual war-which would be declared if Soviet oil deliveries are reduced from the present 12 million tons to 8 million or below...
...This relegates Cuba to the bottom of the list...
...For most Cubans, the rectification campaign is a big joke," she told me in confidence...
...Most of these facilities are open to us during the off season," one yelled, "so we, too, benefit from them...
...Bit with the changing times, the Eastern Europeans have adopted capitalist criteria, according E ia 'A V VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990) preferential treatment not to poor countries but to those with access to hard currency...
...A lot of people resent what we call 'apartheid tourism,' a friend told me...
...A T A BUS STOP ONE MORNING IN OLD HAvana, I struck up a conversation with Inds, a middleaged secretary on her way to work...
...In late 1987, the Cuban magazine Somos Jdvenes published a controversial article denouncing the existence of a thousand prostitutes working in Havana...
...7 UBA'S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS DID NOT begin with the upheavals in the socialist world...
...But if the Cuban "safety net" further deteriorates, will the people continue to cheer in the face of adversity...
...Officials claim rectification is the tropical version of perestroika...
...They weren't dreamers anymore, and the revolution had become rhetoric to them...
...Given the greater headaches," the report questioned, "what is the point when [an enterprise] is going to get the same rubles from Cuba as it does when working for domestic consumers...
...Being kicked out of Cuba's Communist Party paper, however, gave me a VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990) 13R *Cuba AmerieA4 Cuba I black mark that stayed on my record...
...In the early years of the markets, official government figures cited significant increases in the production of vegetables, root crops, rice, beans and pork...
...There is no such animal as an "objective journalist," and certainly not when it comes to Cuba...
...Unfortunately, greater use of the market is rarely discussed these days...
...The materialist phase left people tired and confused, especially the young...
...3 Soviet upheavals have also taken their toll on the island...
...For most of the Third World, the 1980s was "a time of cruel reversals...
...It infuriated me to see the government promoting meanspiritedness and selfishness in people...
...For a discussion of the private markets, see Medea Benjamin, Joe Collins and Michael Scott, No Free Lunch: Foodand Revolution in Cuba Today (New York: Grove Press, 1986...
...2 Light bulbs from Poland disappeared...
...If they are no good or not qualified, they should go work somewhere else...
...Sugar still accounts for 75% of export earnings, and the world market price continues to barely cover production costs.'" With lower oil prices, one of Cuba' s major income earners -the reselling of Soviet oil-plunged from $600 million in 1985 to $180 million in 1989...
...Whereas Cuba is trying to maintain 1984 living standards, other countries have regressed to the levels of 1960...
Vol. 24 • August 1990 • No. 2
