Category Archives: Political

What has changed in Cuba?

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Since that handshake between President Obama and President Castro in November 2014, changes have happened in Cuba. There are more tourists wanting to spend more money. There are more modern coaches carrying groups from tourist destination to tourist destination. There are more visits from US sporting and cultural groups. The biggest change for Cubans has been easier access to the internet. Most things, however,  for most Cubans are unchanged.

What do Cubans think of the changes taking place? It depends who you ask. Some are suspicious, about the US’ motivations, some are wary of renewed US exploitation. Many are hopeful for improvements in their living conditions and an end to the economic blockade, bu most realise that Obama cannot remove the Congress-imposed trade embargo.

Since the historic meeting between the presidents in November 2014, change has been in the air. Since then, working groups from both countries have met quietly to work to normalise the relationship that has been testy since Cuba rid itself of the US backed dictator Fulgencia Batista in 1959.

The US flag flew prominently around Havana when President Obama paid a visit in March 2016

The US flag flew prominently around Havana when President Obama paid a visit in March 2016

Viewed from Australia, the changes seem momentous i.e. the fact that the two nations were meeting and working together. Embassies have been opened in each country, one in Havana and the other in Washington. President Obama has relaxed the restrictions on Americans sending money to help their families in Cuba, and on Americans visiting Cuba. And most recently, he and his family visited Cuba – arriving on 21st March 2016 .

Cuban flag on the Malecon

Cuban flag on the Malecon, looking towards the USA across the Florida Straits

So, what has changed in Cuba?

After visiting Cuba many times since 2002, and travelling extensively through the island, I returned in February this year to see first hand what was going on – excited by the prospect of positive changes for the patient, long-suffering and beautiful people.

After visiting Havana, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Varadero, Trinidad, Guantanamo and Baracoa, and speaking with Cuban friends and families that I have known for 10 or more years – sadly,   daily life is unchanged and just as much of a struggle as before – for 99% of Cubans.

The most obvious positive and significant change since I was last here in May 2015 is that access to WiFi is now available in public places around the country. Hundreds of people, their faces lit by the glow from their smart phones, tablets and laptops, can be seen sitting by day and night on steps and on park benches in places where WiFi reception is strongest – usually outside large international hotels and central plazas.

WiFi is available throughout Cuba, from Havana to Guantanamo

Cubans absorbed in using WiFi in the central park of Guantanamo City

Everywhere young, computer-literate people are selling cards for $US3 to give access to the internet for one hour. One example, Fernando, who I met one evening outside Hotel Habana Libre, helped me download Facebook onto my smart phone. He is 22 and studied information science at Pre-University College before doing his compulsory two year military service. He told me that when he finished “I just wanted to earn some money, and so decided not to go back to study at University”.

Cuban using WiFi to connect to the World

Cubans use the WiFi outside the Hotel Habana Libre, to use their mobile phones, tablets and laptops

Access to the world wide web is a huge change in a country where previously only tourists could afford $US10 per hour to use the computers available in big hotels. Even so, $US3 is a week´s wage for most Cubans. But this technological change is a heartening sign that more things may follow to ease the burden on Cubans in general, for many of whom life continues to be a struggle – la lucha sigue!

Chinese-made modern air conditioned buses await the tourists

Tourist buses line up waiting for groups of tourists

The other obvious changes are that tourism from the USA is booming and there are many more groups of “yumas” (as white Anglo-Saxons are called here) on the streets of Old Havana. Most of these tourist groups stay in government owned hotels in Old Havana and Vedado, and travel in organized groups in air-conditioned buses (“Yutongs” bought by Cuba from China). They visit the national monuments, like the Museum of the Revolution (formerly the Presidential Palace), the National Museum of Cuban Art, Ernest Hemingway´s home, the Revolution Square, El Morro – the World Heritage listed Spanish colonial fortification that dominates Old Havana, and the plazas of Old Havana, including Plaza Vieja, Plaza de Armas and Plaza del Catedral. Rows of restored luxury US cars from the 1940s and 50s still wait outside these tourist attractions, now joined by rows of Yutong buses.

Cadillac beside Central Park, Havana

Cadillacs, Dodges, Plymouths, Oldsmobiles… luxury US limousines from another era take tourists around the sites of Havana

As well as the authorised groups in hotels, many people are making their own way from the US, via Mexico or Canada, and staying in private bed and breakfast Cuban homes – by far the best way to meet Cubans and be well cared for. AirBnB now operates in Cuba and is a great way to find a place to stay and get to know a Cuban family.

So, the visible changes initiated by that meeting of Obama and Castro are few. A lot of extra tourist dollars are flowing into hotels – which benefits the Cuban government and economy in general. The Cubans who benefit privately are those who own restaurants – and the number of good quality restaurants is soaring, bed and breakfast businesses (casas particulares), old American cars… and the callejeros, who make their living on the streets among the tourists, encouraging them to go to this bar or that restaurant, or buy black market Cuban cigars etc.

For most of my Cuban friends, life only gets tougher. Aunt Maria needs to find a boarder to help make ends meet because her son has married a New Zealander and left for a better life abroad; Rafael has got 3 days of back-breaking laboring work for $US10 – but has to pay $US60 per month for his tiny bedsit in a “solar” in Havana; José is a skilled tiler-builder in Guantanamo, where there is no paid work, so he works for meals alone.

So, “Welcome President Obama – thanks for what you are doing (and please try to do more)”. What do Cubans think of it all? Their hopes for positive change have been raised and dashed many times over the past 50 odd years. Cubans are not sceptical – but realistic, and patient. Nothing much will change for them in the short term. They continue to hope and pray to their God, saints and Orishas, that, step by step, little by little, their lot in life will become easier.

The Challenge of Cuba

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Cuba is a complex, exciting place and contrary to some observers, Cubans are eager to express their opinions about Cuba and the Cuban situation – with trusted friends. English language information is available on the government site (www.havanatimes.org/) and the famous “dissident” journalist Yoani Sanchez writes her blog called Generation Y for a wide audience (generacionyen.wordpress.com ). The Havana Times describes itself as “open-minded writing from Cuba” and gives its own version of Cuban reality (http://www.havanatimes.org/). Coming to understand Cuba better demands some knowledge of the diverse perspectives within Cuba, let alone outside. For starters, here is what Osmel Ramirez Alvarez wrote last week in Havana Times (www.havanatimes.org/?p=116024 ):

The Challenge of Understanding Cuba

Osmel Ramirez Alvarez

HAVANA TIMES — Speaking about Cuba can stir up controversy. It is a truly unique country, surrounded by many myths and filled with antagonistic ideologies, natural beauty, overwhelming cultures and unparalleled contradictions. It is a country that is at once highly nationalistic and divided, where we come across extreme poverty and invaluable resources, revolutionaries who flee from their revolution, badly-paid talent and values lost in the daily struggle for survival.

This is a country like no other. Not even we Cubans understand Cuba so, how could we expect a foreigner to quickly grasp our situation? It would be a veritable feat to do so. However, despite all this, we are an interesting people with a beautiful country.

Our country faces two major challenges: first, consolidating a social model that is genuinely fair, democratic and inclusive, and, second, defining an economic development strategy that will afford us the social wellbeing we need. All other needs or national aspirations are subordinate or dependent on these two things.

The revolution came to power 56 years ago, and it did so, precisely, to overcome these problems. It’s clear it hasn’t accomplished it. The Cold War and ideological extremism imposed certain rigid formulas on us, the ones that have brought us to this point: an economically devastated country and the indefinite rule of a revolutionary government that isn’t steered by the people’s votes.

We’ve grown stagnant and, in Cuba, everyone repeats the same phrases again and again: “No one can fix this, no one can topple this.”

Why so much pessimism? The answer is both simple and complicated, so it’s best to try and illustrate it: imagine an elderly person whose boss treats them like a child. This boss doesn’t let this person make any decisions and forced them to wear an uncomfortable, out-of-style suit that does not fit them. Worse still, this boss won’t let the person quit his/her job, because, in the past, having earned their trust, they had to sign a document that gave the boss such power, disguised as good intentions. Our people are that poor fellow and the leadership of the revolution is their capricious supervisor. The tight-fitting suit is orthodox socialism and the fateful document the Constitution of 1976.

Milk for children. Photo: Juan Suarez

Faced with this state of affairs, we have only two options: to resign ourselves to it or try and fix it. Let us start with a very basic analysis of the situation. We consider that it is both unjust and illegal to violate a person’s human rights, so, how serious is the offense when an entire people is involved? A person’s born rights can be trampled on, but not usurped, not even through their consent. They cannot be transferred to others. This is a very old battle and humanity had already won it through its bourgeois revolutions. How is it that socialists, who seek to move beyond capitalism, should end up trampling on such basic rights?

In our country, the people constitute the sovereign only by natural and nominal right, because the constitution says so. But the laws that are practically applied in the country transfer this sovereignty to the Communist Party. The people do not choose anyone with real power, nor do they advance their own candidates – they merely approve the only options given them by commissions controlled by the Party, electing deputies who also only approve the sole options given them.

Everything has been designed so that there’s no true margin of choice and a small group will continue to make decisions. Only the neighborhood representative is directly elected by the people. “Incidentally,” it is the lowest position, and such representatives have no real power to decide or utilize any resources whatsoever. The further removed from the popular vote that Cuban politicians are, the more power they have and the more resources they control – a sign, as I see it, of how disrespectful towards the people this system is.

The Cuban Communist Party has proclaimed itself the eternal mentor of the Cuban people, but this is an illicit title, even if it is backed by existing laws, as this encroaches upon a natural right: the sovereignty of the people. The most a party can legally and morally aspire to is to be a “representative” of the people. To be anything more than that is a human rights violation.

Putting out the wash to dry. Photo: Juan Suarez

There is no one conception of socialism out there. There are different forms of socialism and only radical socialists deny the people the right to representative democracy. Who could deny that socialism seeks social justice? I believe most Cubans on the island, be it because of habit or wisdom, feel more comfortable with the idea of continuing to espouse a form of socialism than to return to a form of bourgeois-styled representative democracy.

Here, radical socialism manages to hold on to power thanks to the strict social control afforded by the old Soviet model, and it benefits no other class other than the political class that wields power. The rest of the people are stifled by it. Popular wisdom has baptized this situation as the “internal blockade”, which is ten times worse than the US blockade and Obama can do nothing to lift it.

A moderate form of socialism, respectful of all human rights, espousing a democratic political formula, protective of the rights of social majorities, promoting non-predatory forms of capitalist development, allowing for national reconciliation and opening the doors of the nation to Cubans abroad, would, however, be more than welcome. I am not talking about utopia, but about something objective. Anything else would be dangerously violent.

We can’t continue to move down a road beset by tension and extremism. It doesn’t matter if one is a liberal, a centrist or socialist, we need only respect one another and live in peace. Many Cubans probably have more than enough reasons to be wary of the word “socialism.” Others are afraid to even think about a multi-party system and free enterprise. But the country belongs to everyone, it needs to find a new way and the will of the majority must be respected. The new Cuba must be “for everyone and for everyone’s benefit.” That is precisely what Cuba needs.