From the Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling

From the Ground Up, Cuba Is Crumbling
Physical decay worsens by the day. For many, theft is their Mr. Fix-It.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
September 19, 2006

HAVANA — At the intersection of Marina and Jovellar streets, more than
50 people wait along a potholed sidewalk and broken curb for a bus that
wheezes up to the stop already full.

Somehow, a dozen or so manage to squeeze into the windowless contraption
that dates to the days when Moscow provided much of the means to keep
the Cuban economy moving. Today, the buses barely keep Cubans moving.
Many people spend as much as two hours each night getting home from
their jobs in the center of Havana.

Their homes are also in a sad state, with at least 500 buildings in the
capital collapsing each year, by the government's own count. Their
utilities are decrepit too: Water and power distribution systems are
corroded patchworks predating the 1959 revolution, and olfactory
evidence of the state of the sewer system wafts throughout the city.

Cuba is falling apart — literally.

Even as its economy booms thanks to a thriving tourism industry, brisk
nickel exports and cheap oil from ideologically aligned Venezuela, the
social benefits are difficult to see at street level. Except for a few
high-profile historical restoration projects such as the Art Deco
buildings of Old Havana, the country's structural decay seems to worsen
with each month.

"It's not a question of repairing anymore. Everything needs to be
rebuilt," says Julio, a construction worker who spends more time as an
unlicensed cabdriver than on state building sites. "There is no material
and no money to buy it, so nothing has been maintained."

Some blame the decrepitude on the U.S. economic embargo that has blocked
travel and the flow of goods to the island for nearly 45 years in an
effort — through nine U.S. administrations — to starve Cuba into
abandoning what Washington sees as a ruinous adherence to communism.

Few Cubans will talk openly about what might be wrong with a political
and economic system that even in boom times can't keep the wheels of
public transportation turning or the lights on — especially since
President Fidel Castro turned over power to his brother six weeks ago
for surgery deemed a state secret. But they complain quietly that there
is more to their urban squalor than the embargo or the loss of Soviet
aid 15 years ago can explain.

"The problem is that the government owns everything, and people only
take care of what is their own," says another moonlighting cabdriver,
Arturo, who buzzes his plastic-encased motorbike around basketball-sized
craters in the asphalt where the Malecon seaside promenade meets 23rd
Street. "Cubans are very clever and improvisational. We can fix
anything. But there isn't the will to do it unless it is to improve your
own conditions."

In self-improvement mode, city dwellers resort to pilferage to "resolve"
their problems.

Resolver, Spanish for "to resolve," has long been a euphemism for
getting around the system, be it a restaurant cook setting aside a few
frozen French fries to take home from each tourist's order, or the
filching of park bench planks to patch a gap in the deteriorating walls
of an apartment.

The lack of available or affordable parts, tools and building materials
has had a cancerous effect on the alreadydegraded infrastructure.
Doorknobs disappear from public buildings, screws from wall-mounted
shelves and dispensers. Along the Malecon, not a single storm-drain
cover survives to prevent rubbish from clogging the sewers, the square
metal grates apparently useful to screen windows.

Rampant theft has engendered more bureaucracy, with office workers
having to lock their doors when they go for coffee out of fear someone
will snatch the wastebasket, stapler, lightbulbs, pens and paper.
Inventory lists are posted in government offices, a hedge against the
contents disappearing.

But it is the buildings themselves, as well as vehicles and farm
equipment, that are at risk of collapse from the pilfering. A tow-truck
driver describes how the vehicles he pulls tend to lose their spark
plugs, air filters, lug nuts and rear-view mirrors from the point of
collection to delivery. Because most cars and trucks are state property,
they are seen as fair game by Cubans hoping to make a few dollars by
selling the purloined parts.

Even the tourism industry cash cow is vulnerable to widespread theft and
minimal investment. Ancient air conditioners blow the smell of mold into
"five-star" hotel rooms where renovations have been limited to the lobbies.

Rail tracks link most major cities, offering an affordable means of
transportation, but the lines are rusted, engine breakdowns frequent and
passenger service so primitive most travelers prefer to hitchhike.

Hope for repair of Cuba's housing, roads, transportation and utilities
has risen with the multibillion-dollar investments made by Venezuela in
the last few years, including a deal signed this year for Venezuelan
engineers to complete the Cienfuegos oil refinery abandoned by the
Soviets in the early 1990s.

That and other joint projects to upgrade the electricity grid, in
addition to crude-oil-burning power plants, have had the effect of
lowering the number of blackouts and power failures this year compared
with the prolonged outages that left Cubans sweltering without fans or
elevators the last two summers.

Decades of stoically making do with shortages and dysfunction have
engendered a paralyzing passivity among Cubans, at least about the
quality of their administrators and the political system that guides them.

"It's very tranquil here, very safe. We like it that way and don't want
things to change, at least not suddenly," says Monica, a 30-something
engineer asked if the conditions of urban life are frustrating. Like
many asked about their expectations for the future, she claims not to
have given it much thought, even with the only leader she has ever known
now uncharacteristically in the background.

While Cubans succumb to the daily demands of resolving their food,
shelter and finance problems, their former countrymen across the Florida
Straits say they expect to be called on to help when the next leadership
takes on the massive task of reconstruction.

Frank Nero, head of the Beacon Council, a public-private consortium of
400 Miami-area businesses, says that Cuba's dearth of lumber, hardware,
tools, flooring materials, paints, electrical supplies and other
do-it-yourself materials could mean that U.S. construction firms "are
going to be very much in demand post-embargo."

Cubans have been taught to fear economic overtures from the exile
community in Miami, where some who lost property to the revolution
nurture hopes of reclaiming it after the Castro regime comes to a close
and — they believe — a more democratic and free-market society emerges.

But with every third family thought to have relatives among the 1.2
million Cuban exiles in the United States, the younger generation has
expectations of cross-straits collaboration.

"My brother-in-law has a construction business in Florida. He would help
us if it was allowed," says Julio, who would like to replace the broken,
grimy tiles on the staircase leading to his Havana apartment and put
glass in the windows. "It will be faster to rebuild if there is goodwill
on both sides."

carol.williams@latimes.com

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