Thursday 8th February, 2007 Posted: 16:45 CIT (21:45 GMT)
'Can I have your bones?' the old woman asked my eight–year–old daughter,
pointing to the gnawed remains of the chicken leg that had been her lunch.
Seeing that my daughter was perplexed, the old woman displayed a box of
chicken bones that she had collected from other customers at the lunch
counter of the department store, a respectable establishment frequented
by locals in Old Havana's main shopping street.
My daughter provided the bones after the lunch counter staff gave its
consent – the old woman was evidently a regular at the lunch counter,
and this was how she earned her supper.
Do not be fooled by the Communists or the Communist sympathizers...
Nothing is more important than freedom and the chance to succeed in a
country like Grand Cayman. Cuba has suffered greatly under a
dictatorship for so many years.
Welcome to Cuba, 46 years into the revolution that was to industrialize
the economy, eradicate hunger and eliminate the gap between rich and
poor in this island nation, previously the most prosperous in the Caribbean.
Today, the once–muscular Cuban economy is in tatters and its much lauded
social safety net a cruel joke. The poor, in reality, are bled to
support the lifestyles of the government elite, which lives in luxury –
the driveways of the Havana honchos sport Mercedes – while its populace
goes hungry.
Some Cubans outside government – increasingly those who obtain patronage
positions in the tourist industry, where they receive tips and other
payments in US dollars – manage comfortable, if meagre, existences. With
dollars, they can shop in the many dollar shops, where they can obtain
some of the consumer goods, medicines and dairy products that most
Cubans, prior to the revolution, could readily obtain.
The great majority of Cubans, however, are left to fend for themselves
in a pitiless system. Most must do business to survive, as Cubans put
it, because most cannot subsist on the typical wages – the equivalent of
about 50–cents a day – that the government sets for them.
The old woman at the lunch counter begged for food; other Cubans beg for
old clothes or for medicine, or sell peanuts on street corners. Young
men sell cigars and other goods in the burgeoning black market; young
women sell their bodies in the burgeoning sex trade.
Without dollars, life is grim. People line up at dimly lit government
distribution centres, ration books in hand – libretas, the government
calls them – for their monthly allocation. The books, which were
established in 1962 to guarantee the equitable distribution of food
without privileges for a few, entitle Cubans to 2.5 kilograms of rice, 1
kilogram of fish, 1/2 kilogram of beans, 14 eggs and sundry other basics
at subsidized prices.
Through the libreta, each Cuban also gets one bread roll a day. Every
two months, a Cuban is entitled to one bar of hand soap and one bar of
laundry soap. Fresh fruits and vegetables come infrequently; meat might
come once or twice a year.
Until the mid–1990s, children younger than seven were entitled to fresh
milk, but fresh milk, like butter, cheese and other dairy products, is
now off the shelves. Before the revolution, two litres of fresh milk
cost US15–cents, well within the means of the poor.
Cuba, a country with a coffee culture, produces fine beans in its
Oriente province, but not for average Cubans.
The good stuff is sold to tourists and exported to earn dollars, or
reserved for the Cuban elite, while the government imports cheaper
beans, grinds them, mixes them with ground chickpeas, and doles out 28
grams per month – less than one ounce – to Cuban citizens.
The government also exports high quality Cuban rice for dollars while
importing low–grade rice from Vietnam for its citizens. It exports 90
per cent of its fresh fruits, directing much of the rest to tourists and
others who can pay in dollars.
Nowhere in the world does the Almighty Buck more separate the haves from
the have–nots.
The Cuban government has adopted the US dollar as an official currency
that co–exists along with the peso and cleverly keeps the poor in their
place.
The multinationals operating in the country – Cuba now courts them to
earn dollars – are forbidden to pay their Cuban workers directly in
dollars. Instead, they must turn over the workers' wages to a government
agency, which pockets most of the money and gives the workers a pittance
in pesos.
Cuba's communists have perfected the Double Currency Standard and the
double standard: One currency for the rich, another for the poor, and
the rich determine the means of exchange.
Cuba's poor are also squeezed in the other necessities of life.
Even in central Havana, people commonly carry water by bucket from
standpipes in the street to their homes, and then lift the buckets by
rope to the higher floors, because their buildings' broken water pipes
go unrepaired. Those lucky enough to have working water pipes can get
water at the tap – but only at certain times.
In one dense urban neighbourhood that I visited, the water flowed from
7pm to 10pm, during which time families scrambled to fill pots and pans
inside their homes for drinking water and former oil drums outside their
homes for washing. About the time that the water came on, the
electricity went off – it, too, is rationed by daily blackouts.
In buildings where one or two families might have once lived, today live
many.
The inner courtyards of Cuba's residences have become miniature shanty
towns, cinder block housing units or other improvisations piled on top
of one another. The units – often two small rooms totalling 200 square
feet – can house an extended family of seven, 10 or even 12.
The rooms are often windowless or near–windowless, the ceilings low and
oppressive. Among these buildings packed with people lie many identical
buildings, but appropriated for government use. In the space that might
house 50 or 100 people will sit one government functionary, bored and
idle at a desk, the premises otherwise near–empty.
'For the first time in the history of our country, both the state and
the government left aside the rich side and joined the poor side,' Fidel
Castro proclaimed after assuming power in 1959. Forty–four years after
the revolution, the poor side are talking of another revolution, in
which the government will do much, much more for its people by doing
much, much less.
Jerry Burton
No comments:
Post a Comment