For The Southern Illinoisan
March 4, 2001
First I want to acknowledge that no one can be any sort of "expert" on Cuba based only on a five-day visit and reading a few books and articles.
What follows is my initial impressions based on my first-hand observations of the island and interviews with and lectures by a broad range of people there. Nevertheless, I like to think that I am a close and trained observer and that I can listen and observe carefully.
Also, I have visited a range of other countries so I have some experience which provides a comparative context.
Finally, my field is American government and politics, a subject which looms large in Cuba. As the President of the Cuban National Assembly said to our group, "Cuba is just a minor irritant to the U.S. For us, the U.S. is the No. 1 presence and problem in our lives."
With that caveat entered, what follows is my initial analysis of what I saw and heard in Cuba, tutored by a professional lifetime of social science study.
1. The Cubans have clearly taken care of the population's needs for education and health care. They emphasized repeatedly that those were their two highest objectives. The people appeared to be healthy in general. No obesity and no starvation evident at all. The people were all reasonably well dressed. No uniforms -- except on military, police and school kids. They claimed a 97 percent rate of literacy.
2. There were very few beggars on the streets except in and around the Old Havana marketplace where the tourists congregate. The panhandlers were adults and/or disabled. No children begging in public places. A few prostitutes on rare occasion were evident downtown. None in any other places that I saw.
3. The uniformed personnel looked like local police -- all armed -- but their presence was not oppressive. Most seemed to be on traffic control and general crowd control downtown. We saw one young man arrested apparently for underage consumption. He had an open beer can and they called him out of the crowd and examined his papers. He was hauled away in the police wagon. Very little military personnel in evidence.
4. The Cuban government has certainly not created a "classless society" or a "workers Utopia" in classic [Marxist] terms. There are many empirical signs of a stratification system.
The houses, cars, and clothes showed a wide range of costs and value. The professional classes looked well-dressed and very Western. There were some fine homes, many apparently owned by Embassies and foreigners. Other housing was decidedly mixed, ranging from fairly OK middle class and working class neighborhoods to the really ugly, Soviet era concrete high-rises that were ugly and overcrowded, much like you see in Russia.
Some of the housing was evidently very poor, especially in the rural areas and in some parts of Havana. But, there were no shanty-towns and places where people were living in packing crates like you see in other Latin American cities.
Nevertheless, they have apparently reduced the discrepancies in income and wealth significantly. There is no real, grinding poverty evident of the type you often see in Third World countries.
No barefoot children begging. No drunks and mentally ill on the street. The few beggars downtown were not "in your face" panhandlers of the type you frequently encounter in Washington or New York.
The schools were orderly and well run although not extremely up to date and modern in buildings and equipment.
The people's basic needs for health and education were probably being met -- although they did cite some serious malnutrition at the start of the "Special Period," i.e., around 1990-92, when the Soviet Union pulled out and left them with no subsidy. That period was certainly an indelible mark on their collective mentality and it was referred to often in their lectures.
The range between rich and poor appears to be much smaller than in the U.S. or European countries. It obviously took great power, focused in the political party, to reduce originally the advantages and wealth of the upper classes and to enforce this egalitarianism.
There is undoubtedly some accumulation of wealth and privilege at the top, but they go to great lengths not to show it.
The Governor of Havana Province, Pedro Saez, was dressed in jeans, nice cotton shirt, and work shoes, although it was not a uniform.
He talked at length about the egalitarian nature of their society. He was one of 12 children who grew up in poverty in the rural area. He credited "the Revolution" with giving himself and his brothers and sisters a good education, and several siblings were professional people.
Since he was a "black man" (actually dark brown) he said those options would never have been available to the dark-skinned before the Revolution. He was very color conscious.
He was very charming, with a ready smile and wit, and close to Charismatic. He is one of only 22 people on the Politburo and is at the top echelon of running the country. Since he is young, about 40-45, he is clearly well-positioned to be in the next generation of leadership. He would probably be a successful politician in any system.
5. Socratic question for the day -- How much discrepancy in wealth and privilege is functional for a system and is there a point where great discrepancies in both become dysfunctional?
The Cubans have certainly reduced the range of wealth and brought the bottom strata up some and the top down some. They are more homogenous by far than the U.S. is.
But, they know they must plug into the global economy. Their money must be convertible and their business practices and communications protocols must meet world standards.
They are allowing more and more free enterprise and private ownership. They also have the "dollar economy" which brings in lots of hard currency through tourism and other forms of trade. They want to export more, e.g., oil and gas exploration is moving forward and they sell nickel and cobalt and agricultural products.
All of this fits them into the global economy despite the U.S. embargo. As all of these trends continue, will they create a more highly stratified society? Will they continue to stress the collective good as much as they apparently do now?
There is clearly room for individual initiative and achievement now. Those qualities must be rewarded and reinforced. That is a basic tenet of the human condition.
The equilibrium point is hard to define -- or perhaps it is Aristotle's "Golden Mean."
Also, societies are dynamic and always in a state of flux. Cuban society is certainly evolving and is becoming more and more plugged into the world economy despite the U.S. embargo. If the embargo were lifted, they would see tourism and trade grow dramatically.
In some cases the stratification system helps determine the government's form and the operational rules of the economic system (e.g., to a degree in the U.S. and Western Europe). In others, the government has defined the level of stratification allowable and that is apparently what has happened in Cuba.
6. The Cubans divide their history into phases, i.e., the Colonial era under Spain, post Spanish-American War when the U.S. came to dominate the nation and the economy more and more, then the Revolution.
Since the Revolution, they divide their history as before "the Special Period" when they became dependent on the Soviet Union and after the Soviets left (1989-1990). This was a traumatic shift for them and caused great hardship.
Now they have slowly moved into a more mixed economy, allowing more free enterprise, private ownership, and greater diversity of the economy. They are slowly getting back on their feet economically and appear to be prospering despite the U.S. embargo, which gives them real hardships but which they have learned to work around.
One economist said, "We were dependent on the Spanish and then they left. We were dependent on the U.S. and then they left. We were dependent on the Soviets and then they left. We are determined never to be dependent again!"
Thus, the need for an import/export market-oriented economy. All world economics are now a mixture of private enterprise, quasi-public/private enterprise, and state-controlled enterprise. The Cubans now fit on one end of that continuum and the U.S. on the other, but both are mixed economies.
7. The visit with Ricardo Allicon, President of the National Assembly, and No. 3 man in the government was the single most interesting event for me.
Paul Simon as the leader of the delegation, we were able to talk with Allicon for approximately 11/2 hours. Allicon is the Cuban government's spokesman frequently on U.S. television, most recently during the Elian Gonzalez incident. He is very fluent in English and very knowledgeable about the U.S. He appeared eager to tell Cuba's story but impatient with U.S. policy and a little sad about the impasse between our countries.
Simon opened with a declaration that U.S. policy toward Cuba makes no sense, but Simon asserted we need to find small incremental steps that can be used to change it. He suggested that Cuba make some gestures to the U.S., perhaps on human rights, as an opening.
Allicon clearly did not much like the suggestion. He reviewed U.S.-Cuban relations and said that the fundamental problem is that the U.S. did not accept Cuba as a sovereign nation.
"You may not like Mongolia's social policy or another nation's method of organizing their government, but you recognize them and respect their sovereign right to organize as they see fit. In Cuba's case you tell us how to organize society and government."
The much despised Helms-Burton Act does great harm; it is entitled, "The Democracy for Cuba Act." It punishes not only Cuba but also U.S. allies for our assertions of our own sovereignty -- our right to organize our country.
While the President can suspend one part of Title I 11, and Clinton has, it is only one part of a four-title act. You must accept Cuba's right of existence and that we are not a part of the U.S. Cuba is only a small thing to the U.S. but you are an enormous part of our lives. The embargo does great harm, Allicon asserted.
Paul and I and others tried to explain how the U.S. system works. I put it in terms of public opinion and interest group politics. Public opinion often leads U.S. policy as it does now on Cuba or policy lags behind shifts in opinion.
American public opinion has recently become more positive on Cuba. You need lots of groups like this one to visit Cuba and see it for themselves. Then those people, plus American farm and business groups can help change U.S. policy.
They see themselves as literally at war with the Cuban-American community in Miami, who are dedicated to the overthrow of the Cuban government.
This fear then feeds their siege mentality and justifies almost any defensive mechanisms they may want to employ.
Lordes talked about organizing a counterweight to the Miami Cubans in the U.S. to help lead public opinion. She thinks Paul Simon could be crucial in that effort. She also wants to take a role in that effort, but the Miami Cubans have a lot of money and are entrenched in the American system.
In general we had an excellent give-and-take with Allicon and he seemed to listen to our points. He also mentioned several other high level delegations he'd hosted recently. He seemed to think those delegations could help, but was still impatient with the U.S. policy.
The United States and Cuba probably anchor the extreme ends of a continuum of nations arrayed according to their emphasis on the individual and their emphasis on the community or the collective.
The U.S. emphasizes and celebrates individual achievement, initiative and reward. Our brand of rugged individualism is close to unique in the developed world.
The Cubans continuously speak the rhetoric of working and sacrifice for the community, for the common good. They repeatedly said that their top two priorities were health care and nutrition and education.
Our trip explored the proposition that each country may have something to learn from the other. I believe that sharing to be the major reason such exchanges are useful.