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 5 of 5)

Opening these stores to ordinary Cubans is part of the government's attempt to collect as many dollars as possible. Tourist dollars may circulate through several hands, but most eventually end up in the government bank to pay for more government-sponsored imports. Although we saw no signs of a black-market trade in smuggled goods, as more dollars flow into private hands, a smuggling industry may develop to serve an expanding demand for the consumer goods--jeans, cosmetics, musical recordings--that a socialist government will not buy with scarce foreign currency.

In May, recognizing the potential threat that a black market poses to his efforts to collect all foreign earnings, Castro announced a new law providing for the confiscation of goods acquired by illicit means. He did not explain how he expects to enforce such a law. Castro may think he's going to continue to use the dollars he earns from tourism to buy supplies and equipment for the military, the bureaucracy, and state-run industries, but the people with dollars in their hands will make other choices if offered the opportunity. In this connection, the embargo does Castro a favor. It puts the U.S. Coast Guard on his side in preventing the development of a smuggling trade in consumer goods between Florida and the Cuban coast.

If the Cuban people survive this Special Period, if they eventually succeed in turning away from a discredited 19th-century economic philosophy that has failed every time it's been tried,
it won't happen because of a violent change in the Cuban government. It won't happen because of the American embargo nor anything else American diplomats might try. It will happen because people like Antonio Salazar, Pedro Infante, Marta Garza, Carlos Encinas, Juan Barquín, and even the friendly jineteras stop waiting for the government to provide them with every necessity and instead do whatever has to be done to make their own lives better.

The Cuban people need a democratic government, but they also need a viable economy. Every one of the people we talked to in Cuba would pick more economic freedom over more political freedom. They will risk jail by dealing in the black market but not by playing politics. And there is strong evidence that free, democratic government can thrive only in a prosperous economy. That's how it happened in ancient Greece, in England, in colonial America, in modern Europe, and in Japan; that's how it's happening in places like Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Poland, and the former Czechoslovakia.

The meanest thing we could do to Castro would be to unleash an invasion of American tourists on his island. The dirtiest trick we could pull would be to close our eyes to the smugglers who will sneak U.S. consumer goods into Cuba to trade for the dollars the tourists leave behind. The embargo inhibits the kind of people-to-people exchange that might encourage more free enterprise in Cuba, and it gives Castro an excuse for the failure of socialism. Furthermore, it sets precisely the wrong example for people struggling under the burdens of socialism. In a free society, the government doesn't tell people where they can go or how they can spend their money.

If the embargo has any impact on the Cuban economy, it accelerates the flow of refugees rather than altering the country's internal politics. In Cuba, the politically discontented don't risk their lives to make war on the government. They risk their lives in small boats on 90 miles of open water.

During our trip to Cuba, Emilio Baeza, a hotel assistant manager, learned that his sister-in-law, her husband, and their three small children had arrived safely in Miami after six days in an open boat. "I can understand why he did it," Emilio told us, obviously relieved that his wife's relatives were still alive. "I don't criticize him for taking his family on that boat, but I couldn't risk the lives of my children like he did. Better we stay here. Things have to get better."