Havana ... Iconic American automobiles from the 50s
One week in Cuba taught us a lot about being spoiled westerners. Can Cubans ever have what we do? Can it happen in our lifetime?
It’s lunchtime in Valle de Viñales. We’re on the veranda of Finca Agroecologica El Paraiso, a family restaurant with its own vegetable garden the size of a football pitch. Framed by a backdrop of limestone monoliths, this tourist destination reminds some of us of China or maybe Vietnam. Instead, it is located in the most verdant part of Cuba where copper colored soil produces the best tobacco in the world.
There are twenty of us at the table, but only six in our immediate party. The others are from Mexico, Spain, Florida and California. Spanish is the dominant language except for English and Danish/Norwegian at our end of the table. We’re all tourists. There are no Cubans eating with us because very few could afford it. Lunch is charged at tourist prices for tourists who want an authentic Cuban tourist experience. Large platters are brought to the table and we share – family style - roasted pork, chicken and fish served with a variety of homegrown vegetables.
Suddenly the sky clouds over, thunder rumbles and rain turns torrential. We’re drinking a blend of fruit juices - mainly coconut – that we top off with a splash of rum. This is an ”anti-stress beverage” and it works. Nobody minds the ferocious thunder and drenching monsoon. We’re sheltered and sitting safely with simpatico people, eating extremely well on an ordinary Friday. Later, we’ll remember this lunch as a highlight of our visit.
Cuba is the biggest of the Caribbean’s islands. It’s been attracting tourists since the Eisenhower Era when it was a playground for Hollywood hedonists and a cash cow for the American mafia. Ernest Hemingway came to deep-sea fish and stayed for two decades. The island’s history is sad and complicated. At the time of the 1959 revolution, American companies owned 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands, almost all the cattle ranches, 90 percent of the mines and mineral sources, 80 percent of the utilities and practically all the oil industries. America supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports. When Batista fled Cuba in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve, 1959, he took a personal fortune with him of more than $300 million that he had amassed through graft and payoffs.
When Fidel Castro nationalized American economic interests, Cuba’s fate was sealed. The US instituted a punitive, calamitous embargo against 95 percent of their exports, a calculated restriction designed to economically strangle the revolution and force a regime change. It never happened. La Revolución cubana survived … even after more than 60 years of American sanctions … and the collapse of its one-time supporter, the Soviet Union.
Cuba survived but barely. Its citizens have free university education and free access to a first-class health care system while limping through daily life on an average salary of 687 pesos or $20 per month. The top 20% earn up to $200 a month. Cuba, which imports 60% to 70% of its food, already had a system of rationing, but now – just a week after we returned from our visit - there are new restrictions on chicken, eggs, sausages, rice, beans … all staples of the Cuban diet.
Cuba is where doctors and other professionals drive taxis in their off hours to supplement their income … where thousands rent out rooms (casa pariculares) … where ordinary soap is a luxury … where there are two currencies: one for its citizens and one for tourists.
Pegged to the American dollar, CUCs - an abbreviation for Cuban convertible peso – are what tourists use to pay for restaurants, taxis, a Che Guevara T-shirt, a cup of coffee, or a bottle of rum. Tourists seldom use the Cuban pesos and this means prices in Cuba for tourists are similar to what you’d find in major American cities.
It doesn’t take long to see the obvious: Cubans cannot afford to experience the same Cuba that tourists do and understanding this means that your discomfort grows by the day. The Cubans you meet are warm and gracious people, well educated and cultured. You want them to earn a living wage … to eat as well as you do … to drive in vehicles that are safe. To visit Cuba as a privileged westerner guarantees an unpleasant confrontation with your personal values because it’s difficult … very difficult … catering to your health needs while simultaneously acting in solidarity with the Cuban people. Take hotels and taxis as examples.
Hotels are operated by the state and if you have progressive politics, you want to support the people, not the government. According to the State Department, Americans are not even allowed to stay in these hotels … and yet … when you’re over 70 years of age and long past your backpacking days … it is nothing less than a relief to pay for a room in the state-owned hotel in Valle de Viñales - a room not with a view - but a quiet air conditioner, soap in the bathroom and an abundance of soft toilet paper.
Likewise, it’s good for your health to sit in a taxi without toxic fumes, with windows that can be rolled up or down and doors that don’t suddenly fly open as you round a curve. And as any chiropractor will testify: it’s undeniably healthier for your back and neck vertebrae to ride in a taxi with suspension.
Automobile transportation in Cuba comes in three types: (1) state-owned yellow taxis with air conditioning and seatbelts that are clean, modern and mechanically maintained. (2) the iconic vintage American cars that were abandoned after the revolution: Fords, Buicks, Chevrolets, Chryslers, Dodges and Cadillacs that are painted in primary colors like purple, mint green, ”Barbie doll” pink, cherry red and cobalt blue. The convertibles among these classic cars are usually in good mechanical condition. Tourists hire these convertibles at a daily rate equivalent to a monthly salary for some Cubans.
Some of the American classic cars have solid roofs, however, and they are the ones that function as taxis or almendrones. Condition wise, they range from passable to indisputably dangerous. (3) These dilapidated cars, if not a Chevrolet, Chrysler or Dodge, might be a Russian Lada or a Moskvitch. They are not pretty. They emit suspicious sounds and smell like toxic dumps. Many of them have no suspension or back doors that can be opened from the interior. These are what the Cubans use for local transportation, often shared with strangers going in the same direction. Since buses require waiting, many Cubans prefer these colectivos because they are inexpensive and easy to flag down.
Riding in these cars is a clear demonstration of solidarity with Cubans and I know socially conscious Americans who’d ride in nothing else. Not me. I’d rather feel safe. While in Havana, I rationalized: I told myself that by traveling in a yellow taxi and supporting the Cuban state I was contributing to the care of a Cuban child with measles or a Cuban woman with a complicated pregnancy or maybe a Cuban man who needs attention for his diabetes.
But the point is this: all Cubans should be able to travel safely. This is what haunts you. Call it Cuba takeaway point number 1.
Cuba, a Culture of Artists
Art is a loose cannon in repressive cultures because artists tell the truth. They describe human experience and life under contemporary conditions and not all messages are welcome. Since censorship is still firmly in place, one might expect Cuba to avoid artistic expression and yet 2019 was the 13th year that Cuba hosted a Biennial Art Festival to which hundreds of artists from over 40 countries were invited.
We saw many pieces in Cuba - sculpture, painting and graphics - that could easily open risky conversations. While eating dinner in an old town Havana restaurant, for example, we sat in a dark room with just enough light to see paintings on the wall. Above our heads, we recognized a man who was a dead ringer for Lenin. Whoever he was, he was enjoying a sexual fantasy about a woman.
Along the Malecón, Havana's 7km-long sea drive, we saw a very distressed turtle on its back with a grotesquely sunburned face of a human.
At another place on the Malecón is an installation piece: empty chairs facing the sea. (Where are the people? Drown at sea, trying to get to Miami?) And in another exhibit, there is a poignant statement about pregnancy.
Art and Cuba are inseparable. We visited Havana’s Escuelas Nacionales de Arte, one of the most important educational institutions of the Cuban nation and declared as a "National Monument." Now known as the Instituto Superior de Arte, it is considered by historians to be among the most outstanding architectural achievements of the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba takeaway point number 2: artistic expression is carried in the Cuban genetic code. Art. Music. Dance. Everyone’s an artist. We rented two rooms through Airbnb in Havana where our host Huberto works in glass. He’s created a lush and colorful environment for his guests.
I said earlier that ordinary Cubans can’t afford to live in the same Cuba that tourists do. This is what makes some of us uncomfortable. We hated feeling like rich, spoiled patronizing westerners.
I felt this strongly when we drove to Varadero, a stunning seaside community that is located on the skinny 20 km-long Hicacos Peninsula. Most Varadero tourists buy their vacation packages overseas, flying directly to Gomez International Airport and avoiding Havana altogether. As the largest resort in the Caribbean, it features an ugly group of modern hotels – maybe as many as 65 – with shops that offer merchandise that no Cuban could afford. Varadero looks a little hideous and while it may be essential to the Cuban economy, it offers very little in the way of an authentic Cuban experience. The only natives you see are bartenders, waiters and shopkeepers.
It seems unfair that ordinary Cubans can’t enjoy the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. Denmark’s northern beaches on Jylland are just as white and expansive but the color of the North Sea is dark, almost navy blue. The sea in Cuba comes in four shades of turquoise.
As Americans, we feel shame about the sanctions and embargo. As Scandinavians, we feel exasperated that Cubans have so much and yet so little. We are used to a welfare state that is not compromised by low wages and poverty. We know that many Cubans feel they are well off by comparative standards, but relative is only that … relative. Yes, Cubans are better off than North Koreans or Nicaraguans, Hondurans or many South Africans … but they deserve better.
If you’re married to a professional political scientist, as I am - one with a specialization in Third World Development - you have ample opportunity to talk about Cuba and speculate. What do Cubans need? What does Cuba have to do to give its citizens a better life?
This is what we know so far: In March 2016, Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Cuba since 1928. This followed deshielo cubano, a warming of Cuba-USA relations that began in December 2014, ending a 54-year stretch of hostility between the nations. Then we got Trump. He announced that he was "canceling" the Obama administration's deals with Cuba and in November 2017 he announced that business and travel restrictions would resume and go into effect immediately.
This is bad news for Cuba’s future. There are Americans - primarily Republicans - who still believe that only one type of economic model has legitimacy: the unencumbered free market. The “P” word is an abomination to these Americans because P means planning and this means centralized power in an authoritarian government. Central planning has never worked in Cuba but free markets have not worked very well either.[1] But there is another model for economic development that involves another kind of planning, what the French call la concept d'État développeur. [2]
And here is Cuba takeaway point 3: Rather than submitting to free market forces, the Cuban Government needs to build the solid institutional framework that has been termed ”the developmental state.” So this means more state involvement, not less. Temporarily, at least.
As leading development economist, Ha-Joon Chang argues: ”no state has succeeded in reducing poverty and inequality without being actively developmental, i.e., getting involved.”
(Think of FDR during the Great Depression; why some Americans called him a communist, although historians have shown how The New Deal actually saved capitalism.)
People a lot smarter than I am know how to do it: Economists, Milford Bateman and Jonathan Glennie say this in their analysis of Cuba’s economic future: “Cuba’s world-leading biotech sector is an obvious candidate to take the lead in this regard. Like Chile’s state-owned copper mining company Codelco, it (biotech) should be used to underpin the wider development of the Cuban economy … rather than being sold off cheaply to US and European pharmaceutical companies.”
Putting state assets in cooperative ownership involving current employees is the best plan. The Cuban government is beginning to convert state-owned small and medium businesses into genuine worker cooperatives. That’s the first step. The second step is to re-establish the full range of human rights beginning with a free press.
Enough speculation about Cuba’s future. Let me close with a few things that surprised me.
- Che Guevara was Irish. His father, whose full name is Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was proud of his Irish roots, claiming that his family fled Irelandduring Cromwell’s era.
- Granma, the famous yacht that carried Fidel and Che to Cuba from Mexico in 1956, and also the name of the Communist newspaper, was in fact named after the original owner’s randmother. Granma is on exhibit at the Revolutionary Museum in Havana.
- Salsa, an umbrella term to describe many musical genres, is not necessarily Cuban in origin, but American from New York City when the 60s and 70s saw a blend of jazz, son and rumba .
- Cigars are sweet and mild.
- Ceviche: the very best version I’ve ever had is found in Havana at Lo De Monik at the intersection of Compostela and Chacón. Next time I’m in Havana, I’ve promised myself to eat lunch there every day the next time I’m in Havana.
I hope Cuba continues to get tourist visitors to fuel their struggling economy. I regret that the Trump Government has reversed Barack Obama’s deshielo cubano … but maybe that will change after 2020. Maybe. The embargo and sanctions are cruel and merely abstractions until you see the consequences.
[1] Cubans must be aware of the transition from central planning to capitalism that took place in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Under the leadership of the World Bank, the IMF and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the transition has proved to be another disastrous experiment in free market economics. Russia put state assets into the hands of narrow elites through a more traditional East-European style privatization that created oligarchs.
[2] The developmental state is associated with the leading role played by the state in promoting industrialization such as we saw in Japan and East Asia in the post-World War II era. There the state was pro-active, pursuing a series of policies, including tariff protection, subsidies, and other types of controls aimed at developing selected sectors.
