CASTRO’S ISLAND EFFECTS OF SHORTAGES ON CUBA’S LIVING STANDARDS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 16

CASTRO’S ISLAND EFFECTS OF SHORTAGES ON CUBA’S LIVING STANDARDS

(By

CLAUDE REGIN,

Reuter's correspondent in Havana.)

(Reprinted from the "Neiv York Times" by arrangement)

What first strikes visitors these days to Havana, once a playground of the Americas, is its run-down look, 15 years after Fidel Castro’s revolution. With its cracked and peeling buildings, its spluttering fleet of 1950’s cars and its shops nearly empty of luxury consumer goods, the capital looks like a city that has come under siege. Cuban officials, however, say Havana was always a “parasite” on the rest of Cuba.

enjoying its wealth at the expense of the cane cutters and others in the rural population. They stress that the real achievements of the revolution are to be seen in the interior, with its new schools, its industrial areas and agricultural projects.

The revolution has certainly spread Cuba’s wealth around. New industrial towns have sprung up on the island’s most remote and impoverished areas. Few new industries have started in the capital. But redistribution has been a levellingdown process due to the failure of the revolution to, create new wealth—a result of various economic mistakes, bad management and low productivity.

These factors, added to the trade embargo imposed on the island by the United States in the early 19605, make it easier to understand why life in Cuba offers few material rewards. Those who have most benefited from the revolution are the rural poor, in particular agricultural worers who used to cut cane three or four months a year and look for badly paid jobs the rest of the year. The fishermen and young people also have benefited. In Las Villas Province, fishermen say their living conditions have dramatically improved since the fishing industry was nationalized. Before the revolution, they say, they lived precariously, never knowing whether they would sell their catches. Now, through a cooperative scheme, inhabitants of the sleepy villages are provided with bigger boats by the state, which also guarantees to buy the catch at fixed prices and to pay them a regular salary. On the whole, people seem to live better in the provinces than in Havana.

It was not always so. Before the revolution in January of 1959, Cuba traded almost exclusively with the United States. From the moment President Kennedy decided to pur.ish Cuba for nationalising American assets by applying a trade embargo, it became impossible to find spare parts for cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, elevators and scores of domestic appliances, which were all "Made in the United States.”

The revolution survived this, as well as the Ameri-can-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, economic sabotage and a trade boycott by most Western Hemisphere nations

Regime’s survival

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the remime has been its survival, best explained by the determination of the Government to get results. It can be seen in the streets where there are no longer those ragged and barefoot children who once earned a pittance cleaning other people’s shoes. Gone, too, are the beggars, the ostentatious rich, and the pimps.

All children now go to school, wear shoes, are well fed and get medical treatment, all paid for by the i state. Cubans are particu-

| larly proud of their health J system, which is one of the major successes in the revolution. In 1958, Cuba had 54 I hospitals and a handful of I private clinics. It now boasts 235 hospitals and 314 rural clinics. Most of the new facilities are in areas that offered little or no medical care before the revolution. According to World Health Organisation figures, Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America with a figure of 27.7 per 1000 births a year. An equally impressive Cuban achievement, in the view of some observers, is the school system. The total attendance at schools and universities in 1958 was 834,900. Now, more than ; three million go to school. In 1958 only half of the country’s school-age children attended school and many did not get much beyond primary school. The attendance figure is now 98 per cent.

Generally speaking, however, educational standards in Cuba are rather low. This is mostly attributed to an insufficient number of welltrained teachers. Neither in high schools nor at universities is there room for dissent. In order to obtain a normal university education, students must show a “correct political attitude” and they must totally identify with the revolution’s aims.

Consumer goods

The emphasis at universities has tended to shift from law and the arts to technical studies. This compensates for the exodus of highly skilled people in the first few years after 1959. An estimated 500,000 emigrated to the United States alone, most of them professionals, doctors, engineers and skilled workers.

The scarcity of most consumer goods, the rationing of nearly all foodstuffs and ceaseless political propaganda makes life drab and irritatingly limited for those sectors of the former middle classes who decided to stay on or who applied too late for exit visas. But rents in Cuba are low, never exceeding 10 per cent of salary. With free health, education and other services, many Cubans have adequate purchasing power, even if there is a limited amount to buy. This state of affairs, however, has harmed the economy. It has been one of the major causes of low productivity and an increasing wave of absenteeism, which the Government started to tackle three years ago.

The Prime Minister Dr. Castro also decided to democratise Cuba’s political life, and revive a dormant workers movement. He encourages material incentives. The Government has put more consumer goods on the market, some luxury items being sold at exorbitant prices. This reversal of policy has produced results. The state has recovered sl4.Bmillion in two years and a half. Economic growth was 5 per cent in 1971, 9

I per cent in 1972 and 13 per cent last year.

I Consumer goods continue ■to be restricted to deserving i workers who have to “earn" 'the right to buy items such as television sets, refrigerators and pressure cookers. Dr. Castro said at the closing of the Trades Union Congress late last year that Cubans will eventually be able to buy cars. i This more pragmatic approach is believed to have | been strongly encouraged by the Soviet Union, which has la vested interest in seeing I that the Cuban economy recovers from the planning j errors and the idealism of [the past. The Russians pump | an estimated $1 million a day jin aid into Cuba and the island’s leaders have 25 years to repay the debt.

Despite its economic dependence on the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern European bloc, Cuba feels its political and economic future lies with Latin America. Dr Castro’s government is ready to establish diplomatic links with any country of the hemisphere which defies the Organisation of American States and acts independently of Washington. The Organisation remains in the eyes of Cuban leaders a “Ministry of the colonies” of the United States. But Cuba has many friends in Latin America and has increased her trade links with several Western European countries, Japan and Canada in the last few years. Cuba enjoyed particularly warm relations with the regime of the late President Salvador Allende Gossens of Chile and last September’s military coup came as a strong blow to the Castro Government. Yet Dr Castro admitted recently that Cuba was not ready for communism, and was entering the socialist phase of its revolution. But he added that Cuba would never renounce its ultimate 'objective of communism. Dr Castro is First Secretary of the party and Prime Minister but he is also directly responsible for the armed forces, of whicn he is commander-in-chief, the Ministries of the Interior and Health, which also have ministers, and the General Secretariat of the Government.

His younger brother Raul is “Revolutionary Armed Forces Minister, Second Secretary of the Party and First Deputy Premier.” He is the regime's Number Two man. The Head of State, President Osvaldo Dorticos, is Number Three. Far from being a mere figurehead, President Dorticos, a former lawyer, supervises the “national planning group,” the country’s main economic planning body.

Dr Castro remains the undisputed leader and the one man who symbolises revolutionary Cuba. Many independent observers agree that despite 15 years of shortages and rationing, a majority of Cubans would vote for him if he were to stand in a free and democratic election.