On Cuba
Our Man Hits HavanaThought about Cuba lately? Odds are not. A hostile U.S. policy built around a near-total economic embargo continues to treat Cuba as a mortal enemy of the American republic. But this has been going on for so long – approaching four decades – that most Americans probably see Cuba more as a dusty island museum of obsolete communism than a serious threat to any immediate U.S. national interest. The septuagenarian Fidel Castro may still be able to deliver a rousing five-hour speech, but his regime of state socialism will eventually follow the path of the former Soviet republics in Europe into Cold War history books. That’s a popular theory, anyway.
I’ve been thinking about Cuba, having just returned from four days in Havana. One of the striking discoveries of my journey came to light only after I returned to the States, as I spoke to friends and colleagues about the experience. I expected polite disinterest – "You were in Cuba? Cool. Did you bring back cigars?" That sort of thing. What I found instead was unexpectedly animated inquisitiveness – "What’s going on there, anyway? What are the people like? What do they think of Americans and U.S. policy?" Even the U.S. Customs officer who vetted my return was far more interested in discussing Cuban-American relations with me than probing my luggage for contraband. There is, it seems, much pent-up curiosity about this mysterious vestige of Cold War foreign policy lurking just south of the Florida coast.
Political dialogue in the U.S. about Cuba is dominated by modest numbers of conservative Cuban-Americans, who through rhetorical volume and well-placed campaign contributions have made it treacherous for politicians to invest much effort or political capital in a thawing of U.S.-Cuba relations (much less elimination of the economic embargo). It also doesn’t hurt that Florida, where staunchly anti-Castro Cuban-American interests are concentrated and particularly influential, is a populous state and also a swing state in recent national elections. Republicans, many of whom remain partially or wholly unreconstructed cold warriors, have curried more political favor than Democrats among Cuban-Americans. But even as many Democrats advocate closer ties with Cuba, most do it sotto voce, and are slow to back up words with deeds. The Clinton administration has sounded conciliatory themes, but has also backed new measures – most notably the notorious 1996 Helms-Burton Act – that seek to intensify rather than ease Washington’s economic isolation of Havana.
Coming from this political climate and the prevailing messages it fosters, one travels to Cuba anticipating a Third World basket-case of a nation in deep decline. The city of Havana is crumbling, we are told, with substantial poverty, widespread political repression and overall social decay, not to mention a lot of really old cars on the street. Of course, if a primary objective of the economic embargo is to foment misery into rebellion, it is clearly in the interests of those who favor the embargo to paint a dire picture that suggests it’s working.
The Cuba you see first-hand is far more complex. Yes, there is an extraordinary amount of physical decay of Havana’s buildings (many of them architectural treasures), but also a surprising amount of restoration work in progress and new construction. Yes, Castro’s well-bureaucratized model of state socialism has collapsed the wage scale to levels that startle an American visitor (physicians, for instance, are paid the equivalent of $40 per month; college professors half that). But at the same time, all Cubans are guaranteed not just basic food rations and housing, but also health care in a country with more doctors per capita than just about any other in the world, and free education in a country with the highest literacy rate in Latin America.
A flourishing tourist economy keeps hard currency coming into the country, although it is having an odd effect on the class structure of Cuban society: those working for tips in bars and restaurants catering to tourists can take home more in a day than physicians earn in a month. There are black markets in just about everything, giving Cubans decent access to goods both material and cultural that we might otherwise assume to be unavailable. Domestic economic growth and foreign investment are on the rise, a sophisticated new banking system is rapidly unfolding and Cuba is aggressively developing free trade zones within its borders as a way to participate in new international markets and import new technology. (And yes, there are a lot of old cars, and where they get the parts to keep all those ‘57 Chevy’s running is beyond me.)
None of this is to glamorize what remains a one-party state limiting many fundamental freedoms Americans take for granted. As it happens, the embargo may be doing more to reinforce autocracy than to undermine it. This is hardly a country buckling under U.S. pressure to reform itself; it’s a society that is basically functional in the face of an irrationally spiteful American policy. Walking through the narrow streets of Old Havana toward the city’s splendid harbor and the open sea, one easily grasps the enormous potential of this beguiling place. It is far more difficult to comprehend America’s political intransigence – which arguably hurts individual Cubans far more than it threatens Fidel’s Cuba.
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