Cuba Libre

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 8^th 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.