I arrived in Cuba two days ago with a group of 21 social
work faculty from schools in the US.
It’s an interesting, diverse group.
At least three members of the group are originally from other countries
(one from the former USSR, two from Argentina).
We represent schools in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado and Utah. But I don’t really want to write about the
group or what we are supposed to be doing here—I want to write about my
impressions of the country so far. We
are staying in Havana, so my observations to this point are of the capital
city.
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| 1950s Ford in Old Havana |
Outside the airport, friends and family were waiting to
greet their arriving visitors. We were
met by staff from the tour company, which is one of several—all of which are
run by the government. The government also
operates many of the hotels and a good number of the restaurants.
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| Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a key figure in the Revolution |
On the way to our hotel, we received the first orientation
to Havana and Cuba from our guide. We
passed various monuments and the University of Havana. The city clearly has several historical
sections, some dating from Spanish colonial days, like many cities in Latin
America. I think I expected to see
“Soviet bloc” style high rise apartment buildings and the like, but
didn’t. There are, however, high rise
buildings, apparently built in the 1950s, some of which look quite well kept-up
and some of which seem not to be. There
was a little traffic on the street, but not much. We arrived at the hotel which is large (9
stories or so) and looks a little bit like an old hospital. Later I decided it looks somewhat like a
prison except without the perimeter fencing, guard towers, or bars. We had a little tour and then it was off to
one of the restaurant/bar areas for a welcome mojito, the signature cocktail of
Cuba. The mojito was good enough and the
gardens of the hotel, plus the close proximity to the seafront, are very
pleasant.
Let me tell you about the Russian “taxi”. The official, authorized taxis are modern
cars (not necessarily brand new, but probably not more than 10-15 years
old). Some of the 1930-50s American cars
are also special taxis. One night I went
to a restaurant with several other members of the group. We left the hotel in two official taxis. One woman got the taxi driver’s number to
call when we were ready to return to the hotel.
After dinner, she asked the server to call this taxi and the server said
there’s a taxi right outside that will take you—he’ll make two trips. The car was a Soviet-made model from about
1980. One door had no handle on the
inside. There was no “interior” to speak
of (whatever padding or material that had originally covered the insides of the
doors was long gone), the windshield was shattered, there were no headlights
and only one taillight. What could go
wrong with this? The exhaust also seemed
to come directly into the backseat. The
driver took side streets and let us out outside the entrance to the hotel
grounds. I can only assume that this is
part of the relatively small informal economy.
It cost the same as the official taxi.
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| The name of this soft drink is "Your Kola" |
Some of the food we were served was worse than prison food
(yes, I have eaten prison food while recruiting research participants). Some, however, was very good. Cubans apparently love ice cream, and it was
very good. The national beer is good (at
least the brand I tried). My companeros
enjoyed the various versions of the national soft drinks. The bottled water tasted funny to me but that
didn’t stop me from drinking it. There
was almost no snack food available. I
did see for sale what I assume were “Pringles-like” potato chips—in cans that
from a distance looked like Pringles cans, even down to the face logo. (I never looked at it up close—possibly it
wasn’t a face, but it was something black and white in approximately the same
size/shape and orientation on the can).
I had a good hamburger, complete with shredded carrots on it. The coffee was excellent and 7-year-old rum
quite smooth. These last two products
are not allowed to be brought into the US; the other specific prohibition is
against cigars. “Informational materials,”
including CDs and DVDs, ARE allowed, and I brought back several.
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| Theater where the opera performs |
Cuba is the land of the Royal Palm. The Royal Palm is the national tree and it is
a majestic one. Within a group of other
trees, it stands taller than any other. Many
other species of palm grow here, as do bananas, mangoes, and other tropical
fruit that may be unfamiliar. The
country has been through a very challenging economic situation since the fall
of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet
Union existed, Cuba exchanged sugar for oil and most of the other resources
that the country needed. As Cuba
struggled to adapt to new conditions and retool the economy, there were food
shortages, changes in transportation (the bicycle was introduced as a major
mode of transportation in the absence of oil), hitchhiking became so prevalent
that it is institutionalized through several policies, and many resources
formerly widely available virtually disappeared. There were frequent, 12-hour power blackouts.
This is called the “special period”.
Education at all levels was maintained as was medical care. These two resources are considered critical and
they have been exploited as exports, both for humanitarian and for economic
purposes. When suddenly oil became
unavailable, the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers ceased because
these also require petroleum. Thus, Cuba
now has a lot of experience with organic farming.
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| Artificial lake within a sustainable community west of Havana. One of the activities of the community has been planting trees for reforestation. |
The US refers to Cuba as a “communist” country, but Cuba
calls its political ideology socialism.
I wasn’t sure before I went there whether the ideology was widely shared
or being imposed on people. It seems
that it IS widely shared and that people are very proud of the country and its
achievements, even if they are disappointed with some of the current conditions
or changes. We heard many times, for
instance, that the greatly lenghthened life expectancy (80 for women, 78 for
men) is an achievement attributed to the medical system, but it is now also a
challenge for the economic system as the aging population requires more and
more expensive health care, which is free for everybody. The birthrate is extremely low, divorce rate
higher than in the US (we were told), and inequality is growing because of
economic changes. These are some of the
internal threats to the population and the state.
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| Two senior women who are participants in a program called "university for older adults". |
The external threats to the state remain the same as they
have been since the revolution: the
actions and political power of the Cubans who migrated to Miami at the time of
the revolution and the policies of the US government. I’m going to explain more about this because
I think that these are issues that many of us in the US don’t know much about
(I didn’t until very recently).
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| These are CUCs--convertible Cuban pesos, which is valued the same as the US dollar. However, you can't get one peso per dollar when you exchange currency. It's more expensive for Cuba to exchange dollars since they can't use US banks, so there is a 10% fee (on top of the usual commission). I took Mexican pesos to exchange! |
Although I understand the ideology of socialism, I didn’t
know much about how the economic system functions in terms of the very concrete
representations of the economy: money,
salaries, home ownership or rental, pensions, etc. What I learned is that after the revolution salaries
were paid by the state as all of the jobs were in state-run services or
establishments. Salaries were not equal
across the different types of jobs, but the difference between the highest
salaries and lowest were relatively small, compared to other economies. The lowest would have been 200 Cuban pesos
and the highest 1200. With
state-provided free education, free health care and subsidized food, 200 pesos
was adequate. Now, however, some
government jobs are paid substantially more (although I’ve forgotten the
figure). A bigger source of economic
disparity, though, is that some workers, because of the type of job they have,
have access to not only Cuban pesos but also the other national currency that
is directly convertible into other world currencies and has 24 times the value
of the Cuban peso. Workers in the
international tourism industry, for instance, may still be paid salary in Cuban
pesos but receive tips in the convertible currency (informally called “CUCs”). Thus, people who perform services such as
cleaning in hotels may have greater income than doctors. It is increasingly important to the
population to have a source of CUCs because there are some goods that are sold
only for CUCs. I’m not sure what all of
these products are, but cooking oil was given as an example. The government has allowed the development of
several types of private, small businesses for the tourism sector: restaurants in homes (limited to 12 seats)
and guesthouses in homes. More types of
small businesses will soon be allowed.
These isolated examples of private enterprise function much as in
countries with capitalist economies. The
government licenses them (at least in the case of the home restaurants and
guesthouses) and taxes them. There is
also a fairly small informal economy.
I mentioned earlier that education and health care are being
exploited as resources for economic as well as humanitarian reasons. In humanitarian terms, Cuba provides doctors
for developing and/or poor countries.
Sometimes Cuba works with other countries to provide specialized medical
services, such as eye surgeries, to people who are needy in other South
American countries. One project
transported people from Bolivia and Peru to Cuba for the surgeries. Venezuela provided fuel for the airplanes and
Argentina provided food for the patients while they spent time in Cuba
recovering. There also is a medical
school outside Havana that provides free medical education to people from other
countries who otherwise would not be able to afford it. Students come from Africa, from Latin
America, and even a few from the US. For
economic terms, doctors from Cuba go on medical missions to various other
countries where there are shortages of doctors.
Cuba is paid for the doctors’ services.
The government retains a portion of the money paid and the doctors
receive a portion in CUCs. After serving
for a period of time in international missions, the doctors are given a house
or apartment in Cuba, if they don’t already own one. Until recently, home ownership came from
inheritance only (car ownership, too). Now
both cars and houses can be bought and sold.
It's somewhat difficult for people from the US to go
to Cuba. This is primarily because the
US maintains an economic embargo against Cuba.
Although certain aspects of the embargo have been relaxed somewhat in
recent years (e.g., it’s now possible to get a license from the US Dept. of
Treasury to travel to Cuba for educational purposes and for research of an
academic, non-commercial nature), after the fall of the Soviet
Union the embargo was strengthened to further isolate Cuba. Ships that visited
Cuban ports were banned from entering US ports for several years after a visit
to Cuba, for instance. The embargo also
is the reason it’s not legal to bring certain products from Cuba into the
US.
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| An elementary school--parents were gathering outside to pick up the kids |
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| Two of my colleagues posing with bust of Lenin |
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| During the rehearsal of a children's theater group |
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| A Soviet tank on display outside a museum and a row of antique American cars |
