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Title: Adios, Socialismo Author: Walker Lane Date: 2010 Language: en Topics: Cuba, Fifth Estate, Fifth Estate #383 Notes: Originally published in “Fifth Estate”, Summer 2010, Vol. 45 #2, 383
We entered the elevator on the ground floor of Havana’s renowned FOCSA
building in the city’s Vedado district and were quickly whisked,
non-stop, to the 32^(nd) floor. When the doors opened, tuxedoed waiters
welcomed us to La Torre, an elegant, candle-lit restaurant with floor to
ceiling windows overlooking the city and harbor twinkling in the night
below us.
“Damn,” I thought, “if the communists come back, we’re screwed.”
Of course, they never left, but the incongruity of eating an expensive
meal (by Cuban standards) in opulent circumstances seemingly contradicts
the island’s slogan of “Socialism or Death,” but it actually neatly sets
the context for what may be the country’s future.
Also, if you happened to be one of the “Ladies in White,” who were
recently protesting the imprisonment of their dissident husbands,
brothers, and sons, you also realized that the communists are no more
tolerant of opposition than they have been in the past. [See Page 26 for
Dinner at an improbably elegant restaurant occurred on the final night
of my third trip to Cuba with a Toronto-based tour group. After having
previously traveled with them to the eastern and western sectors of the
700-mile long island, this trip featured a week in the nation’s capital.
I was the only American among 25 Canadians, mostly professionals in
social services who were anxious to see how their Cuban counterparts
work in related fields of medicine, social work, juvenile crime, women’s
issues, etc.
I am able to circumvent the U.S. blockade which prohibits Americans from
going to the island by an exclusion from the law allowing journalists to
travel there. [More on this at the end.]
Through fortuitous occurrences, I wound up with accommodations at the
Hotel Nacional de Cuba, an historic luxury hotel located on the Malecon,
the broad esplanade, roadway, and seawall that runs along Havana harbor.
The building’s lobby and rooms are so steeped in Cuba’s
pre-Revolutionary history that one can almost feel the presence of the
multitude of American gangsters, movies stars, athletes, writers, and
corporate managers who lodged there during their stay in the corrupt
Latin playground for the wealthy. Some of the rooms are even named after
the famous, such as the “Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner Room,” which a
couple from our group was able to score.
Stories set in the National fill books, but one hit me particularly as I
was reading The Mafia in Havana by Enrique Cirules during my stay. The
tripartite ruling powers of the island from the 1930s through to the
1959 revolution were the Mob, U.S. intelligence agencies, and American
corporations, all abetted by the criminal state whose last president was
Fulgencio Batista.
In 1946, the U.S. mob called a summit meeting, convened by Lucky Luciano
in Havana, to decide how to split up the American rackets and the newly
expanding ones in Cuba. They reserved all of the National’s 500 rooms
for their meetings, and were met by chauffeured limousines at the
airport to transport them to the hotel.
The gangsters’ first big meal at the National consisted of grilled
manatee, roast flamingo, and turtle. From then until they were run off
the island in 1959, the Mob increased its revenues ’ as it expanded into
casinos, hotels, and entertainment, much of it connected with Hollywood
stars such as George Raft and Sinatra.
As on my other visits, we were bussed around by an able crew of guides
and interpreters to local projects that showed the ingenuity and spirit
of a people living under great economic and political stress. City
residents reacted to us like the tourists we were and none offered
political opinions. They were pleased, however, to show us their
projects.
For instance, at the Organoponico Vivero Alamar, on the outskirts of
Havana, the director and several workers proudly explained how the vast
urban gardens on Havana’s outskirts, of which this was one component,
provided the majority of the city’s vegetables. Many of the workers were
retirees from other sectors of the economy and used their labor at the
farm to supplement their pensions and to continue as part of the social
fabric of the area.
Workers are paid wages by the state and the farm has a small retail
outlet for local consumption.
Back in the city, we took a walking tour of Old Havana, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, with its restored colonial buildings housing museums,
shops, and restaurants which mostly cater to tourists. It is here that
one encounters panhandlers and scam artists not usually seen elsewhere
on the island.
In Cathedral Square, where mostly Canadian and European tourists
congregate to drink mojitos, smoke Cohibas, and take in the sights, it
occurred to me that if Americans were permitted to visit, which looks
like it may happen soon, there would have been thousands of people in
the square rather than hundreds. One thing glaringly missing are the
normally ubiquitous signs with revolutionary implorations for socialism
that are present everywhere else in the city, so as perhaps not to
offend the capitalist sentiments of visitors.
In a corner of the square, four elderly Cuban men were playing and
singing traditional island songs. Suddenly, a group of school children
rushed up and stared at the music makers for a second, and then began
enthusiastically along with them, obviously familiar with the song,
thought, there’s still a traditional folk culture here that hasn’t been
superseded by the global industrial music machine.
However, later that night, still in the Old City, we witnessed the
Cañonazo, the Cannon Blast ceremony, a tradition dating from the Spanish
colonial days, when shots were fired signaling the closing of the gates
of the walled city and the raising of the chain across the entrance to
the harbor. The tradition of firing a cannon every night at 9:00 pm has
been maintained as a pageant even though the wall was torn down a
hundred years ago. Re-enactment performers marched to the rampart and
fired off the cannon to the delight of several thousand assembled
Havaneros and a few dozen tourists.
As the dark encompassed the centuries old Morro Castle, we trekked back
to our bus and came across about a hundred or more Cuban young people
dancing wildly under a canopy. Upon listening, I realized it wasn’t the
Cuban rumba or cha-cha-cha animating them, but the music of the
LA-based, hip-hop band, The Black Eyed Peas; the young people knew all
the words and loudly sang the choruses in unison.
It’s not news that American popular culture has become globalized to the
point of total domination at the expense of other countries’ traditional
forms, but in Cuba, even a seemingly innocuous song can be seen as one
of the many signals of re-penetration of U.S. capital. Washington and
Wall Street have never given up their goals of moving the island back
into its military and investment portfolios.
Such occurrences, even small ones, are usually hailed as signaling the
end of a dour, authoritarian “failed state,” one “stuck in the last
century.” Liberal critics, at least, are willing to allow that there are
many admirable features on the island such as the always vaunted Cuban
universal health care system and other state provided social services.
The government’s domination of most aspects of economic activity, to say
nothing of its vice grip on the political apparatus, is something all
critics agree is a vestige of another era, one long ready for “reforms”
and “transition.” Or, so goes the narrative by all but the most
unreconstructed leftists who see little or nothing wrong with the
current state of Cuban affairs, and are blind to the changes occurring.
Leaving aside the question of which nation, the U.S. or Cuba, suffers
worse from a creaky bureaucracy, a repressive police apparatus, and more
readily qualifies as a failed state, it’s worth a look at what so-called
reforms advocated for Cuba would look like. One only need recall the
collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern and Central Europe to
realize how quickly the transition from state to private ownership can
occur.
Are the former Soviet bloc people better off today? Probably not in
Mother Russia from whence the state socialist forms were imposed on its
satellite nations, but in many of the latter, life has improved for
most, but certainly not all.
Most countries under Soviet domination had already achieved a status of
modern industrial capitalist economies, so their transition back to
private entrepreneurial economies wasn’t difficult, particularly when
Party bosses quickly grabbed the reins of the previously socialized
enterprises.
Castro and his band wrenched an island with little modern infrastructure
other than in big cities, an impoverished peasantry, and an economy
looted and corrupted by foreign imperialists, gangsters, and domestic
elites from the hands of U.S. corporate and military interests.
Following the Revolution, attempts to build a modern industrial economy
under the auspices of the state, and now, increasingly utilizing the
market, all the while surrounded by a hostile major power, has proved
and continues to be daunting for the little island.
The results were and are a fragile state capitalist economy, albeit with
equitable forms of benefits for the population, and a rigid,
authoritarian political command structure. There are more democratic
modalities on a local level than is generally realized, but ultimately,
policy is top down.
Recent media accounts celebrate that “[Cuban president] Raul Castro is
trying to modernise the system without jumping to full-scale
capitalism.” This in a BBC News web site report about how Cuba is
turning over hundreds of state-run barber shops and beauty salons to
employees “in what may be the start of a long-expected privatisation
drive.”
The article notes that “other communist countries such as China and
Vietnam have long since pushed through market reforms while maintaining
political control.” If those countries are a model, it’s not much to
look forward to for the Cuban people.
Cuba recently turned over a quarter million plots of unproductive
state-owned land, laying fallow since mass sugar production ceased to
private farmers. Some taxi drivers are allowed to work for themselves.
Some, anticipating the re-introduction of private capitalist forms, are
almost delirious with anticipation. Timothy Ashby, an official in the
Reagan and Bush, Sr. administrations, and a specialist in privatization
issues, writing in Travel Wire Industry, says, “Cuba is positioning
itself for a China-style economic leap forward.” The island, he writes,
“remains a hugely untapped market of 11 million consumers.”
So, it’s, adios, socialismo, or, what passed for it. Ashby sees the
lifting of the 50-year American trade and travel embargo as benefiting
the economies of both countries — creating a modern, efficient economic
infrastructure for the island and a shot in the arm for the U.S.’
beleaguered employment situation. He estimates “that lifting travel
restrictions alone would increase [U.S.] domestic output by between $1.2
billion and $1.6 billion annually, and create between 17,000 and 23,000
new jobs — yes, in tourism, but also in real estate, retail, food
processing, transportation and associated sectors.” He further reports
that the Cuban government, with foreign partners, is planning 14 new
condominium and golf resorts, part of a new, massive tourist
infrastructure.
“The same projections see U.S. airlines, cruise ships and tour operators
generating more than $522 million from Cuban trade add-ons in the first
year alone, increasing to $1.6 billion by the fifth year, and creating
more than 10,000 jobs. An estimated 60 cents out of every dollar spent
by Americans in Cuba reliably would end up back in the United States.”
This all has a familiar ring, doesn’t it? It sounds just like the
equation which immiserated the Cuban people during the period up until
1959. Cuba as the recreation zone for Americans and others with the cash
to vacation there while the people of the island will mix mojitos and
make beds in resorts for them.
Definitely, the Mob wont be allowed back in, but the other control
sectors formerly excluded certainly will. But, what about the almost
6,000 American corporations and businesses the Cuban revolution
nationalized for which the U.S. still demands compensation? Lawyer Ashby
has a plan for that as well.
He writes, “American law requires that claims against Havana for
1960’s-era U.S.-owned property that was seized, must be resolved before
full relations can be re-established.”
So, the new Cuba will enter the modern capitalist world in debt to the
corporate gangsters who looted the island unrestricted for years. Maybe
Cuba could get an IMF loan to pay off its debt and impose a little
austerity along the way as the bankers almost always demand.
Ashby is quite enthusiastic about the future “once American visitors
descend on the island.” And, descend they will just like before and just
like they do on other Caribbean island resorts, Jamaica, perhaps being
the best comparison.
As I noted in the Summer 2008 Fifth Estate article about another Cuba
trip, “Socialism or Cell Phones,” there is a growing class of Cubans
with disposable incomes thirsting for all of the technological gadgets
and fashion available to modern citizens. The process Ashby advocates
and the direction in which it looks like the Cuban government is headed
will lead to the Jamaicaization of the island — another swell tourist
destination.
But, there’s no reason to think that the rising class stratification
won’t also produce the worse elements of Kingston which in late May
necessitated a state of emergency declared by the Jamaican government
following clashes between police and heavily armed narcotraficantes
which left 30 people dead. A lot like that other bastion of tourism and
democracy — Mexico. Right now, Cuba has none of that.
In a new, reformed Cuba, IMF-imposed austerity would undoubtedly mean
that the extensive social services extended to all citizens will
disappear, as would state subsidies. Currently, prices for most basics,
such as food and housing, are now subsidized or very cheap.
For instance, at Havana’s famed HeladerĂa Coppelia, a solid block of ice
cream shops, a 4-scoop sundae costs about 20 cents in the local
currency, but often entails a 45-minute wait. Fast service is available
using CUCs, the tourist money, but the cost soars to $3–4. The same is
true for venues such as the Morro Castle where cañonoza takes place,
which also has two-tier pricing. No one goes without on the $20
guaranteed monthly income the U.S. media never fails to mention as proof
of how poor the country is.
Much of the social services operate at a local and neighborhood level.
We visited a Casa de OrientatiĂłn a la Mujer y la Familia, a center for
the guidance of women and the family, where support and information are
supplied. The all-women staff explained the programs that deal with
women’s issues including health and violence in the family. Cuban
television airs ads against family violence which they define, besides
the obvious, as the withholding of affection.
In a Mother’s Day Index, the international charity, Save the Children,
rated Cuba, among less-developed nations, as the best place to be a
mother based on access to education, jobs, and health care for women and
children. By contrast, the U.S. came in 28^(th) on the index of
developed nations.
The week visiting Havana was exhausting with days filled with stops such
as at the Antonio Nuñez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Humanity,
founded by the cartographer for Castro’s rebel band. It is in the
forefront of creating sustainable development and ecological
consciousness which probably puts it at odds with the planned
centralized official vision.
A trip to development centers for children, the “House of Grandmothers,”
and neighborhood community centers, demonstrated a highly organized
society. How much of it serves the political apparatus is a separate but
important question.
We also were guests at a moving ceremony recognizing the 20^(th)
anniversary of Cuba’s treatment of victims of the Chernobyl nuclear
accident. Up to 800 children at a time from Ukraine, many with crippling
conditions still being caused by radiation poisoning, were present in
their wheelchairs. The Ukrainian ambassador to Cuba spoke and
entertainment was provided by La Colmenita, a Cuban children’s ensemble
who played and sang as well as any adult group. The songs were all
traditional.
A trip to one of the poorer barrios brought us to the Muraleando
Cultural Project where local artists have festooned the neighborhood
with wall murals and sculptures created from cast off junk. Some of it
was reminiscent of Detroit’s Heidelberg Project which also makes art
from society’s detritus. One mural featured quotes from American
socialist and labor leader, Eugene V. Debs.
After three visits to the island, one of my friends remarked that I’m
“getting soft on Cuba.” I definitely am, but towards its people,
certainly not its government.
Even as the rulers act like bosses and cops, there are many Cubans who
take the island’s official ideology of socialism and creating a new
world seriously. Their results are in the many scattered exciting
projects in education, music, art, ecology, science, culture,
agriculture, and other endeavors that in many ways we mirror in our
small efforts in this country.
However, the small projects we found admirable are a weak bulwark
against the massive economic forces howling at Cuba’s door. It is much
more likely, sad to say, that the island’s future is already determined
by its re-integration into global capital. And, perhaps it is a mistake
to suggest that the island’s economy has previously been independent of
global economic forces. From the misery engendered by Columbus’ visit
which presaged the arrival of the Spaniards and slavery, through the
island’s colonial period, its domination by the U.S., and then its
dependence on the Soviet Union, Cuba has had little capacity for
self-reliance.
Since the early 1990s, following the Soviet Union’s collapse,
increasingly the island’s economy has been based around tourism and
foreign investment. Even with the U.S. trade embargo in place, Cuba
still imports hundreds of millions of dollars worth of American goods
yearly. The dinner I ate at La Torre had as its main course fish
imported from Canada.
Octavio Alberola, active with GALSIC (Support Group for Libertarians and
Independent Trade Unionists in Cuba), a support and information network,
and the Cuban Libertarian Movement in Exile (MLCE), remains a steadfast
opponent of the Castro government. In an interview with the Kate
Sharpley Library available on line, he recognizes there is little or
nothing left in Cuba today of the organized anarchist workers movement
that Castro ruthlessly suppressed.
This publication desires, as I assume most readers do — a Cuba which
experiences a real revolution that abolishes all forms of capitalism,
private and state, and the government apparatus along with it which is
what anarchists have always fought for. We should support our Cuban
comrades when possible, but I doubt if their day is near.
I checked out of the National at 6am, boarded a Chinese- made Yutong bus
and roared across the Cuban countryside to Varadero 90 miles away to
catch a plane for Toronto. Sixteen hours later, I was crossing the
border from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, arriving at a snow covered
customs booth staffed by grim faced, heavily armed border guards at the
ready.
Been to Cuba? Out of the car. You’ve violated the terms of the Cuban
Assets Control Regulations.
I’m a journalist qualified to travel there. I write about the island as
well as do radio broadcasts about my visits.
You don’t qualify. Empty your pockets. Get up against the wall. Spread
your legs.
I bet you don’t do this to reporters from NBC.
You’ll hear from the Treasury Department.
Welcome home.
Of the many monuments that dot Havana neighborhoods, two in particular
often surprise visitors. One is a memorial commemorating Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet
Union, and executed following a judicial farce. The words on it read,
“For Peace Bread And Roses We Will Face The Executioner. Ethel And
Julius Rosenberg. Assassinated June 19, 1953.”
The other is a life-size statute of Beatle John Lennon sitting on a
bench in a park named for him. At his feet is the inscription in
Spanish, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one,” from the
song “Imagine.” The Beatles were banned from Cuban airwaves from 1964–66
when the government promoted indigenous music as revolutionary. The
statue was unveiled in 2000 with Fidel Castro in attendance.
In March, Cuban police broke up a protest by the Ladies in White, women
with family members sentenced to prison for opposing the government. The
images of the women being dragged to a bus, their white clothes smeared
with mud, were broadcast world-wide as proof of the repressive nature of
the Castro government.
The women’s action was instigated by the death of a well known
imprisoned dissident, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who had been on a hunger
strike since December.
News reports stated that as many as 30 women marched through Havana’s
Parraga neighborhood with 200 government supporters following them,
shouting, “Worms, get out of here. Viva, Fidel! Viva, Raul.”
According to news reports, as the pro-government crowd became more
menacing, state security agents repeatedly offered to take the Ladies in
White away, but when they refused, the women were shoved and pulled into
a bus and driven to the leader of the group’s house.
In Miami, a week later, newspapers reported, “Tens of thousands of Cuban
exiles wearing white, and carrying gladioluses and flags marched for
blocks along Calle Ocho with singer Gloria Estefan in support of Cuba’s
Damas de Blanco, Ladies in White...”
The Cuban Commission for Human Rights estimates there are currently 180
political prisoners on the island. The government brands all dissidents
as disloyal and agents of the U.S.
Given the nature of attacks on demonstrators by police around the world,
it is surprising that the Cuban response was as mild as it was. Often
public protests there can land participants in prison. The Ladies in
White marched again in Havana at the same time as the Cubans in Miami,
and are now permitted to march.
Media response to this incident ignores the fact that all governments
are repressive; some less than others; some more, but all worthy of
condemnation. A slogan often seen posted on walls throughout Cuba is
true for all governments: “With the Revolution: Everything; Against the
Revolution: Nothing.” Just substitute “Government” for “Revolution” and
you have the motto of all nation states.
How brittle a particular government’s rule is determines how it reacts
to those who act “against” their power prerogatives. Countries with
formal democratic rule usually permit a great deal of political latitude
(for instance, publishing this magazine). That is, until the rulers feel
threatened by what they have allowed. And, even when their rule is not
directly at risk, power often reacts reflexively to quash dissent.
The U.S. regularly criticizes Cuba for its repressive measures and
prison con-ditions which bolsters the mythology believed by so many
citizens here about this nation as America the Good. But, this is a
state of wilful ignoranace.
Police in the U.S. routinely attack peaceful demonstrators, often
carrying out mass arrests as evidenced by the level of force used
against protests at recent political party conventions. Going back a
generation, National Guard and police shot student demonstrators to
death on several occasions, plus killed dozens of Black Panther Party
members. Further back in U.S. history, cops, and soldiers murdered
hundreds of union members and labor organizers between 1870 and 1950.
During World War I, civil liberties took such a hit in the U.S. that the
Wilson administration made that of George W. Bush seem eligible for ACLU
membership by comparison. During World War II, it was concentration
camps for Japanese, but not for German-Americans.
Cuban prison conditions are righdy criticized for their harshness and
squalor, these definitions equally describe those of the US. as well.
Plus, the increasing use in the U.S. of private contractor prisons and
horrid conditions in immigration detention centers, make a mockery of
American claims to criticize Cuba. Add to this, U.S. secret torture
sites, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram in Afghanistan, and one sees a discernible
pattern, but one usually ignored beneath a wall of national
self-righteousness.
By combing the back pages of the few newspapers that still report
international news, one can note the frequency of police attacks on
peaceful protests in other countries, often with deadly results. When
massive violation of civil liberties, routine torture, and brutal
attacks on demonstrators occur in countries such as Israel and Egypt,
staunch U.S. allies and recipients of billions in taxpayer dollars, the
incidents rarely rise to the level of concern or criticism by either
politicians or the media. Israel’s cruel wars or its May 31 massacre at
sea are exceptions.
But to be clear in the case of Cuba, all of its political prisoners
should be released immediately and all Cubans should have the right of
free expression. Obviously, some of the dissidents have right wing
politics such as the ones who assembled at a 2005 protest in Havana,
shouting, “Viva Bush.” But among the 75 dissidents arrested in 2003,
several of those related to Ladies in White were independent labor
leaders who received outrageous prison terms.
It is important to oppose the repression carried out by the Cuban
government, but it is equally important to not allow criticism of Cuba
to act as a diversion from opposing what this country does here and
abroad.
The Miami Cubans, for instance, would seem more credible if they were
also critical of the abuses they condemn in the country in which they
reside.
Only those who criticize all state violence deserve to be taken
seriously.