Castro's Cuba 'Revolution' Becomes 'devolution'
I played deaf a couple of times in Cuba. After four weeks the hustlers had put me in so many socially awkward situations that it became my game to turn the tables on them. I gave them blank, uncomprehending looks and pointed to my ear when they asked for money. Then I watched them try to extricate themselves from the situation and slink away.
Please don't think it's cruel. After four weeks I felt like a pretty young girl strolling past a prison yard. Often as soon as I left the confines of my house the catcalls would begin.
"Hey Amigo! Amigo! Listen to me! Amigo! Where you from, amigo? Look, amigo! What time is it, amigo?"
If I paid no attention and kept walking, they cut to the chase, "You want cigar? Rum? Chica? Chica?"
In Havana, several polite "no's" would often send them away after they listed all of the available products and services.
But in Santiago de Cuba, the country's second-largest city and the provincial capital of the east, the hustling proved more aggressive. They'd get in my face, sit at my restaurant table and follow me into stores. Sometimes customers in front of me in the checkout line would turn and plead with me to buy their groceries. Small children would silently stick out their hands while slurping on an ice cream cone.
Often the hustling took more subtle forms. While sight-seeing inside a church in Santiago de Cuba, two women pleading for a few greenbacks approached me. If I looked lost, the elderly would offer their help - and then ask for dollars, a T-shirt or a bottle of vegetable oil.
I became wary of everyone's motives, unable to separate genuine hospitality from a stealthy hustle. When anyone made forays into friendly conversation, I braced myself for a sales pitch or solicitation.
Fidel Castro set the precedent. For 30 years he capitalized on Soviet assistance, receiving $4 billion a year to sustain Cuba's weak economy. In that era of Soviet subsidies he forged Cuba's health and education systems into the best in Latin America. Unlike in Guatemala or Mexico, the sick do not wander the streets. Literacy rates have become the highest in the Western Hemisphere - including the United States. Cuban doctors have earned accolades worldwide, and Cuban scientists have invented vaccines their American counterparts have been unable to replicate.
For the faithful, the Revolution had succeeded. Then came 1991 and the implosion of the Soviet economy. The subsidies stopped and Cuba entered its "Special Period." Cubans have endured shortages of everything from food and fuel to medicine and machines.
The economic shortfalls forced Castro to tinker with his communist system. Taking a cue from Fulgencio Batista, the free-wheeling, Western-friendly dictator whom he deposed, Castro opened the island to tourism. He signed with Spanish, Italian and Canadian companies in joint ventures for the tourist trade and mining industries.
In exchange for a business-friendly Cuba, these foreign companies pay their workers' salaries in dollars to the communist government. In return the government keeps, by some estimates, 95 percent of these payments. It converts the remainder into pesos and pays the workers.
But a green tidal wave of American dollars has swamped the Cuban economy and eroded the peso's value. In an attempt to recoup some of the dollars floating through the black market, Castro legalized it in 1993 and now Cubans desire only American cash.
While the peso stores sit dark, dusty and empty, Cuba also has dollar stores that accept only American currency and sell everything from toothpaste to TVs.
And although the legalization of the dollar has opened up new markets and new, sometimes illegal, means for Cubans to earn a living, it has also separated those who can earn bucks from those who still labor in a peso economy.
Those with access to dollars eat full meals and wear the latest clothing from Adidas.Those who earn moneda nacional stand in line for hours to change their peso paychecks into dollars and then find less-than-legal ways to supplement their income. A doctor in Cuba earns the highest salary of 480 pesos a month, approximately $24, while a cigar roller brings home 220 pesos, or $10 a month. Cubans also receive monthly rations including rice, sugar, beans, flour and salt. Most people say they eat their allotment within three to four days. A small chicken in one of the government shops still costs $4.50.
The Special Period has also brought unemployment, previously unknown in communist Cuba. Those without jobs try to live off their rations, spreading six pounds of rice over a month's worth of meals and using their allotted five pounds of sugar to sweeten their water.
In this environment, Cubans have come to covet tourism jobs because a single night of serving tourists nets more money than the average Cuban's monthly salary. Doctors, college professors and scientists - the pride of the Revolution - are now happily underemployed as bellhops, waiters and tour guides. As a stopgap to this brain drain, the government has decreed that doctors who leave their practices cannot regain their medical licenses.
Yet for most Cubans, a tourism job has become an unattainable aspiration, and the government tries to restrict their access to western visitors. Laws ban Cubans from entering tourist hotels, and the police selectively forbid them to talk to foreigners.
The Cuban police have periodically cracked down on prostitution in the more frequented areas such as Havana and the beaches of Holguin, but in Santiago de Cuba, they never look twice at the Italians and Germans sitting in cafes surrounded by jiniteras (a euphemism that literally translates to female jockey.) The prostitutes' pimps, often older men and women waiting on the outskirts, urge the younger girls to approach strangers with batting eyelashes and a coy "Como se llama?"
Castro decried prostitution and the corruption of the Batista regime during the Revolution, and the rhetoric propelled his popularity among the people. Now he has acknowledged the resurgence of prostitution and spun the phenomenon by bragging that Cuba has the healthiest and best-educated prostitutes in the world.
Paolo, a 55-year-old Italian man, said he just enjoys their companionship and ability to speak several languages and tutor him in Spanish.
But, he admitted, "If you want a girl you should always ask for ID so you know they are as young as they say they are. If they're over 18, they're old for Cuba. They're not worth anything."
Cubans, many of whom are hesitant to criticize the government publicly, will not criticize prostitution but Juan, a 60-year-old Cuban veteran, believes it is one of the biggest problems Cuba faces.
On a warm night Juan and his wife, Gabriella, showed me the house where Batista's goons murdered one of the Revolution's promising young leaders, Frank Pais.
"When there is only one Cuban who believes in this Revolution, that Cuban will be me," read his words on a plaque posted on the house.
The quote reverberated with Gabriella and Juan as they, too, had once believed in the Revolution. They benefited from previously unattainable university educations and a comfortable life. Now they bemoan the fate of Castro's Cuba. They talked wistfully of the days of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Camilio Cienfuegos. Would it be the same if they were still living? Oppressed by dictators and outside powers throughout its history, Cuba was taking control of its destiny.
The Revolution had a moral center, and they believed it would provide for the people. And for 30 years the Revolution did - with the support of the Soviet Union.
And here it is 40 years later - the "devolution." Prostitution, corruption and the black market pervade and pervert Cuba. Everyone scrapes by except for the black marketeers, the politicians and the lackeys who receive the spoils of the tourist trade.
City water systems go dry for days at a time. Youths succumb to scrounging on the street. No one can live solely on a meager government salary.
"They want control of everything," Juan said of the government.
But no one would dare question Castro. When referring to El Maximo Lider, Cubans pull their chair close and stroke an imaginary beard, mimicking the dictator. They do not mention his name for fear that one of his minions, perhaps the local block captain of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, may be listening in the street.
Yet they can be bought, too, said Iban a 40-year-old construction worker. With his government job, he earns $15 a month. But his family doesn't live off his salary. Iban supports them with a clandestine winery run out of his back yard. He even grows the grapes. The sweet, watery wine will not win any international prizes, yet Iban never lacks for customers.
"I sell to everyone." And he doesn't worry about getting caught. Rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, Iban adds, "The block captain has to eat, too."
Because in Cuba everyone needs to turn a deaf ear or a blind eye - including Fidel.
Copyright © 2005 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.