Viva La Evolution!

Does a taste of free entrprise mean the end for Fidel's Cuba?

Mack Tanner & Larry Grupp from the August/September 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 5)

Nowhere was the socialist failure more obvious than in the rural areas. Cuba has a rich agricultural base of fertile land, water resources, and a long growing season capable of producing up to three crops a year on the same land. The country could feed its population, without having to take sugar-cane land out of cultivation, if it had the market incentives that drive successful agricultural production.

Everywhere we drove through the countryside, we saw large numbers of people working the fields of collective farms with hoes or harvesting by hand. In some parts of the country, children go to school for half the day and work in the fields for half the day. But no matter how many people are sent to the fields, production continues to decline. Modern agriculture stands on three legs: high-yield seed varieties, chemicals, and mechanization. Human labor can take the place of machines, but it does nothing to alleviate shortages of high-yield seed and chemicals.

Larry Grupp, now a trained agricultural specialist, spent the summer of 1958 in Cuba, and he remembers seeing only one pair of oxen plowing a field. A Cuban friend pointed out the spectacle, noting that there were still a few farmers mired in poverty. On our recent trip we saw fewer tractors pulling plows than we saw teams of oxen. And every ox team we saw was tied to the plow by the horns. One of the more important inventions of the Middle Ages was the shoulder yoke, which doubles or even triples the amount of work a team of oxen can do in a day. Any carpenter can make an ox shoulder yoke in no more than an hour's time. Mack Tanner's wife, who is from Thailand, can make one out of bamboo, rope, and a couple of pieces of leather. Yet the bureaucrats who manage the collective farms of Cuba apparently are unfamiliar with such modern technology.

Speaking Freely

We met only one defender of communism during our visit, a taxi driver whom a hotel desk clerk called for us. Eduardo Gadea told us he grew up in New Jersey but went to Cuba in 1958 to fight for the revolution and has lived there ever since. He was driving a government-owned taxi, an air-conditioned 1983 Mercedes. It was the last day we spent in Cuba, and we suspect he was a government ringer sent to check us out because someone on the hotel staff suspected we might not really be tourists.

Castro's 35-year anti-American propaganda campaign has not translated into anti-American sentiment on the streets and rural roads of Cuba. During our trip we talked to dozens of different people, sometimes in conversations that lasted for several hours. Not once did we hear an anti-American statement. The Cubans proved to be the most friendly, easy to meet people we've encountered in years of traveling in dozens of different countries. Many of those we met talked so frankly that we have had to disguise their identities as well as the specific circumstances of our conversations.

The Cuban system of neighborhood snitches is still in place, and a Cuban can lose his job, forfeit his ration cards, and even go to jail if the wrong person hears someone say the wrong thing. "We're not watched all the time or spied on like Radio Martí claims," Antonio Salazar, a university graduate and high-school science teacher, told us. "We can do anything we want, as long as we don't break the law." He paused, thought a minute, then added, his voice suddenly sad, "One thing we can't do: We can't say how we feel out loud. That's what I miss most, being able to say how I feel out loud."

On our visit we saw no mobilized troops anywhere. There were no military or police checkpoints on the highways and no military personnel carrying weapons in public except for those guarding the entrances to military bases. The only tanks or armored personnel carriers we saw were parked deep in military compounds. Uniformed police were no more obvious than they are in most countries in the world, and less obvious than in some. By contrast, in the summer of 1958 even a 17-year-old like Larry Grupp could see the unrest and the coming revolution. Batista's troops were everywhere, and the roads were punctuated with military checkpoints where soldiers waved automatic weapons as they searched vehicles for contraband.

Everywhere we went, we could see, feel, and hear the frustration and desperation of people trying to survive while an economy collapses. "Things were hard, but we could get by until about two years ago," said Antonio, the science teacher. "The rationing was tight--each person only got five pounds of rice a month and one piece of meat a week--but we could find the rice and the meat if we had the ration coupons and the pesos. Now I've got pesos and coupons, but I can't find food in any store. I can buy food on the black market, but a crate of 30 eggs costs 200 pesos. I make 230 pesos a month."

"So what's the solution?" one of us asked.

"The government is finally letting the farmers legally sell their surplus," he answered. "Now that they can make money, they'll grow more food. The prices will eventually have to come down." Antonio was born after the revolution. Dedicated communist professors taught him economics, but he understands how the free market works. "Let's hope they let the reforms last this time," he added, his voice worried. "There are a lot of people around Fidel who still believe socialism has all the answers. Before, the government opened the door a crack for the farmers, then slammed it shut again."

In the late '70s, a deteriorating economy forced Castro to legalize private farm production and small business enterprises. The result was a significant increase in food and consumer goods. But when a few people started making real money, Castro, who believes all profits are immoral, announced in 1984 a policy of "rectification," which again prohibited all private economic activity.

Castro must realize that releasing the free-enterprise genie threatens the long-term survival of socialism. He apparently thinks he can command the genie, but the government's past behavior indicates that he will move quickly when he suspects he's losing control. Many people in Havana recently started raising chickens on balconies and pigs in backyard pens for personal consumption or quick sale on the black market. In early March, the authorities in Havana rounded up 26,000 pigs inside the city limits, claiming they were doing so for public-health reasons. Every such crackdown can only increase frustration and further loosen Castro's grip on the soul of the nation.

Collapsing Communism

"We can't let happen here what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe," Pedro Infante told us. Pedro dropped out of the university to follow his first love, music. Now he sings with a band in a luxury hotel on Verdadero Beach built with Spanish joint-venture money. "We have to take it a step at a time," he said. "We can't give up what we have gained with our revolution. We don't want crime like you have in America, and we don't want civil war like what is happening in East Europe." Pedro was parroting the standard government propaganda as explained on the Radio Progreso and Radio Rebelde broadcasts that we listened to every morning while in Cuba.