An island of ambiguity, as
incongruous and incoherent as its claim of freedom and democracy. An
island of stark contrasts between what is, what is perceived, and
what it claims to be. That is Cuba. But if we are able to see past
the incomprehensible and appreciate the people that inhabit the
island country, we will find some of the best that humanity has to
offer. Humans are resilient and resourceful, and there is nothing
like shortages and difficulties to awaken that aspect of our being.
Cubans don't just endure and survive their Revolution, they do it
with a contagious smile and spreading the happiness with which they
are born. They are communists in that they live in true communities
where helping one another is as normal as a group of neighbours
gathering on the sidewalk to chat and share.
Everyone in Cuba goes to
school, at least up to high school level. And universities are also
public and free, though not as many people attend them. But sorry, my socialist friends, that is no longer a social
feat. I'm pretty sure public education is a birthright of every
person born in America. I did my under graduate degree in Argentina,
free of charge at the excellent Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. So
what else does Cuba offer? A public health care system? All or most
American countries also have that (and I'll ignore all of the
socialist European countries just to keep it within Che Guevara's and
Simón Bolívar's pan American dream). Both my children were born in
Canada. Total cost of both deliveries? CAD$30 for parking. My
daughter had surgery and a 3-day stay at the prestigious Hospital for
Sick Children in Toronto, where parking was, again, the only cost I
incurred. And here's an anecdote I heard in Cuba: a little girl
needed to have an appendectomy done. And she did have it done at a
public hospital, probably saving her life. The cost to her parents
was nil. Unless we include in the cost the pain of having an
appendectomy done without an
anaesthetic (sorry, little girl, it's just not available).
It's
difficult to write negatively about Cuba because Cubans are so
wonderfully friendly and good-natured. And not everything about the
Revolución is bad. Like Che said, in 1959 they won the war and the
Revolución was to follow. Batista didn't just institute a brutal
regime chock-full of political persecution, torture, imperialist
US-backing, and all the niceties of a proper dictatorship. He buried the lower class deeper in its hole while he and his chums,
both in Cuba and in Washington and Miami, continued to get richer.
There was no education for the lower class, health care was unheard
of, and the people in rural areas (most of the population of the
country) could only aspire to a life of very hard work for very
little reward. The Revolución changed all of that.
Che
Guevara actually started an education movement himself while fighting
the war. In the Sierra Maestra and later in the Llanos, he did not
tolerate guerrilla fighters who could not read and write. So he
taught them himself. Rifle in one hand, pen in the other. Mind you,
he also indoctrinated them in his rigid communist doctrine. Marx and
Engels were enshrined. He was a doctor (much like myself, he had
benefited from Argentina's free public universities), and although he
didn't favour the practice of personal hygiene, he did provide basic
health care services to the people of Cuba: the fighters of his own
8th
Column, enemy wounded, farmers, villagers, he saw everyone.
Incomprehensibly, he also killed a good number of people under charges of
treachery; he wasn't just killing people in combat.
A lot changed thanks to the Revolución. Most Cubans were better off, although we have to keep in mind the conditions from which they came: they came to be better off because they went from barely eating and being completely left behind, to eating every day and getting an education and having their own self worth valued by society.
The trouble came later (and by later I
mean a few days after the war was won),
when Fidel, Raul, Che, and even Camilo, failed to realize that they
themselves were the biggest obstacle to Cuban development. They
started playing country. Communist country. Everything was
centralized. Everything went through various ministries and government offices; the necessary bureaucracy grew unhindered. While the CIA and the Cuban elite in
exile plotted and organized a counter revolution feverishly, these
guys were in Cuba, tools in hand, trying to bootstrap a country while
defending against a very real and tangible threat. Washington did not
want to lose its grip on the politics of every other American
country. We have to acknowledge and give these revolutionaries credit
where it is due. Fidel and his crew managed to become America's
rebellious child and maintain that status through the Red Scare of
the Cold War.
Fast
forward 30 years and the Soviet Union collapses. During that 30
years, Camilo died mysteriously, Che finally got himself killed
satisfying his hunger for violent revolution, while Fidel and Raul
continued to sink Cuba under the weight of bureaucracy and inefficiency,
but always touting the values of the Revolución: now we all eat
(true), now we all go to school (true), now we own our own land and
resources (somewhat true, except that we
is not really the Cuban people, but the bureaucrats in La Habana),
now we have freedom and democracy, unlike those poor sods living
under the yoke of capitalism (except that Cubans haven't had freedom
or democracy; ever).
While
Fidel continued to talk about the Revolución and
incessantly fed the people paranoia and fear (he must have loved Orwell's 1984), the Cuban economy ceased to exist. He ran it
into the ground further and relied heavily on ships full of every
necessity that came from the Soviet Union. God, who doesn't exist,
bless those Russians. The Soviet tit fed Cubans and allowed Fidel to
continue his grandstanding grandiloquence.
Of
course, in 1989 the trouble that had been brewing in the Kremlin for
a few years (roughly since a certain couple of days in October 1917)
became more than just apparent to the world media; it became an
unavoidable reality in the Soviet Union. The Communist Party and all
its apparatchiks disbanded and became more concerned with their own
future than that of a few million island people on the other side of
the World. The ships stopped coming. Thus began in Cuba the Período
Especial (Special Period; not of the feminine type, more of the
hunger and absolute lack of everything type).
Even
though the Período Especial is now considered finished, in Cuba I
saw and heard some rather sad things; things that evidence the
constant scarcity and grave difficulties that make living an
unwelcome adventure. I've had a border official ask me for
toothpaste, I've seen fishermen who venture out on the water on inner
tubes (boats used to be a forbidden asset, now they're allowed but
very few people can afford one). Cubans, at least the ones I met,
live from deal to deal, constantly trying to satisfy basic needs like
food, clothing and school supplies. In a country where owning a refrigerator isn't the norm, people
have little chance to stock up on food. They buy what little is
available and what even littler they can afford, which is not
necessarily what they need the most.
As
harsh as this sounds, I think that in the long run the collapse of
the Soviet Union was good for Cuba. The appearance of normalcy
disappeared with the cargo ships. People were hungry. Cubans had to
become even more resourceful. But, more importantly, the government
had to start allowing certain capitalist freedoms:
private businesses were slowly given permission to operate
legitimately. And the freedoms have continued to grow in quantity and
quality. Not just economically, but also socially (e.g., hanging out
with tourists is no longer an offence to the Revolución). The black
market continues to thrive under the acquiescent gaze of
the government, but it might be underway to inevitable extinction.
While in La Habana I
visited a childhood friend who lives and works there. He is one of
many foreigners who has come to iron out inefficiencies and train
Cubans in the proper functioning of services. Raul's government is
actively trying to open up this wonderful country to the world, but
it's doing it in a controlled manner. They are not selling up the
country to foreign capitals. They are protecting their revolutionary
values (sovereignty, education, health care) while entering the world
stage no longer as a rebellious child but as a strong-willed one.
I have come away hopeful.
I think good things may happen in Cuba. They could easily become the
socialist paradise of which Che Guevara dreamed and for which he
fought and died. Well managed, Cuba could retain its social justice
(or should I say attain?)
while also allowing its people to have freedom of choice, freedom of
voice, freedom of movement. They just need to drop the fundamentalist
attitude and allow their people the right to think for themselves.
Revolución is no longer a necessity, much less a solution.
Cubans
will have to re-educate themselves. It seems like the government has
already accepted that and is acting accordingly. I am hopeful and I will
come back.
