Martin Henry THE US dollar is far more visible and used as general currency in Cuba than in Jamaica. And the exchange rate is much better at US$1:26 pesos. The government calculatedly pulls on the US$ economy by offering some commodities, which we would consider basics, only in US$, among them soap. People in the craft markets were canvassing us for soap and cosmetics.
The state rations given to every Cuban are: Six pounds of rice, six pounds of beans and seven eggs per month, and a small bread roll daily. Children are given a ration of yoghurt and a free meal in school.
The American presence is palpable. The streets are full of pre-1960s cars and trucks, a testimony to Cuban automotive ingenuity. The housing stock has many units of the American pre-revolutionary era. The newer buildings tend to be soulless apartment towers. All now equally run under the austerity of the blockade and the "Special Period" caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East Bloc. As America has Nine-Eleven as a great divider between then and now, Cuba has 1990, the year of the collapse of its major ideological and trading partner.
INVESTORS
Thousands of Americans are coming in as tourists and students, and even as investors, via third countries. There were passengers on our return flight en route to New York. Immigration does not stamp passports but monitor entry and exit by a tourist visa. La Universidad de la Habana runs a joint Masters Programme in Caribbean Studies with the University of Buffalo and is interested in partnership with a second Caribbean country to deliver part of the programme. Education costs to foreigners are ridiculously low. An entire master's degree programme costs only US$4,500 (J$270,000) for tuition.
Cuba is among the last holdouts, alongside China and Vietnam, in the collapse of Marxism. As the USSR learned, the economic opening of the system is particularly dangerous to the political ideology. Cuba really has no choice in the new world but to open its economy to free trade both externally and internally. Those 1950s Chevvies can go on for only so much longer and there is no barter of sugar for Ladas today. A vigorous tourist trade is emerging as the backbone of the struggling economy.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Both the Cuban and American governments tacitly recognise that the blockade is full of holes. Maintaining each other as enemy is of enormous ideological and political significance. It is very doubtful if La Revolucion can survive the death of the Leader or the end of the blockade. A witty professor of Humanities at La Universidad de la Habana declared Cuba to be in a time of intellectual and ideological ferment. One of the billboard slogans says the revolution is a triumph of ideas. The Pioneers Youth Movement which takes youngsters in at age six has ideological studies as one of five areas of activity.
Cuba has a small oil industry on its north coast in partnership with Canada. Their oil is sulphur-rich and it smells in the exhaust fumes of their high-priced gas -- prices up to US$0.75 (J$45) per litre. It is a patriotic duty to conserve energy.
Way back in 1961, a mere three years into the Revolution, Cuba declared itself an Illiteracy-Free Territory after an intensive eradication campaign.
Colonial Old Havana is beautiful and was a principal reason for my wanting to visit Cuba. The plazas and parks, promenaded streets, and statuary. The grand public buildings and imposing forts around the harbour. The museums. Cuba proudly documents and celebrates its culture on a massive scale.
REVOLUTIONARY SPEECH
The controlling hand of the state is everywhere present: in the allocation of housing, in job placements after university, in exit permits at US$150 if approved, in political organisation down to the level of streets, in the heavy ideologising of education (the student who welcomed us to the Angola Basic Secondary school fired off at machine gun rate a revolutionary speech that Fidel would have been proud of. She ended, 'We will be like Che!' And the classes we visited chorused revolutionary recitations). It is the state, not the individual university which grants doctoral degrees.
The potential for corruption when authorities control scarce benefits is quite evident. There is a sign at the entrance to the toilets at the airport that the services are free, and a pretty girl hands out toilet paper. A talented young salsa singer, the son of a teacher who had worked in Jamaica, belting out snatches of Bob Marley's 'No Woman Nuh Cry' says he wants to perform here. He will have no problems with the exit permit, he feels, because he knows an official in the permits department.
But the society is safe. We walked through inner-city neighbourhoods in the middle of the night under the watchful eye of the ever-present policeman. A British newspaper, The Telegraph, has carried a report that Kingston is one of the most violence-prone tourist destinations in the world, and we are killing up ourselves.
HEALTH AND EDUCATION
Ambassador Stewart Stephen-son (with whom I served on the Copyright Tribunal here at its inception a decade ago) identified for us the critical Cuban priorities as Security, Health and Education. He is not only busy with our students but with Jamaican prisoners in Cuban jails, mostly drug smugglers.
The backbone of the public transport system in Havana is the mighty camel double-humped coaches hauled by trailer heads and corked with rather unhappy looking people like in our pre-JUTC days. But everything, from bicycle and bike taxis, moves people. We even got a robot taxi late at night, dodging the police and collecting US$3.00, not pesos. Orderly lines form 'spontaneously' for public transport. There are not enough vehicles to create traffic jams on Havana's wide streets.
Pricing is crazy. A bottle of water ranged from US$0.40 to $2.00 in one neighbourhood. In fact the $2.00 store generously directed us to the $1.00 store a few doors away! One of the dilemmas of socialism, a critic pointed out long ago, is the inability of the system to set fair price in the absence of a market. No system has ever been able to eliminate the market. Cuba has a very lively, if chaotic, free market. Some would say it is the real economy.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
