Food rationed, but Cuba begins to blossom

Press, 19 July 1976, Page 16

Food rationed, but Cuba begins to blossom

By

STEPHEN ARIS

in the “Sunday Times,” London

Two scenes capture the essence of the Cuban revolution: In downtown Havana, on a shelf of the coffee shop of George Raff’s old hotel, the Capri, an American-made ice cream machine lies neglected, unused since the day the American customers left 17 years ago. Upstairs the old casino has been renamed "La Casa Rojo” and only the plush wallpaper and the chandeliers remain to remind the visiting Eastern bloc delegations of its former Western decadence. On a mountain top, some 60 miles east of Havana, Ramon Castro, Fidel’s elder brother, waves his cigar over the neat countryside far below, dotted with grazing cattle. "This is what the revolution means,” he says, pointing to the tall stack of an abandoned sugar factory. "When we came here you couldn’t see the ground for the undergrowth.” Now the trees have been uprooted, the ground has been renewed with thousonds of tons of topsoil and where American-owned sugar once grew, there are now herds of fat Cuban Holsteins, specially bred with imported Canadian stock to withstand tropical conditions. ‘‘l thought it couldn’t be done,” says Ramon. “But Fidel persuaded me otherwise. He sees 100,000 kilometres further than I do. And besides,” he added with a grin, “Fidel is very persuasive.” The exact measure of the achievements of the Cuban revolution remain buried in a welter of confusing official statistics. But two things are immediately noticeable: over the past 10 years the face of the countryside (but not the towns) has been transformed out of all recognition. The system built apartment blocks that have risen among the fields may be less picturesque than the grey-walled thatched huts they replaced, but they are incomparably better to live in. The other change is less

apparent but just as real: it is an air of growing self confidence; a feeling that hard times are over and that success, if not actual prosperity is just around the corner. On the surface there seem to be few grounds for optimism. By Western standards, life in Cuba, particularly in Havana, is still drab and unrewarding. Seventeen years after the revolution Cuba is still a nation at war, and its nine million eople live under the rigours of a siege economy. In one sense the hardships are self-im-posed. Castro’s answer to inflation has been to introduce a strict system of rationing for all essentials while leaving the price of luxuries, like television sets and cars to find their own dizzy level. Most basic foodstuffs like beef, milk and rice are on the ration: the standard allocation is one tin of fresh milk every 15 days and three quarters of a pound of beef every nine days. Official statistics show that meat consumption actually fell between 1970 and 1974. Textiles too are in short supply which perhaps explains why the mini-skirt remains in fashion. And though Alfa Romeos and Argentinian Fords are beginning to appear on the streets, these are reserved for Government officials: others must make do with the 1950 s crocks the Americans left behind. Havana must have a higher proportion of clapped out Cadillacs than any other city in the world. While the countryside has blossomed, Havana, a city of 2.4 m, once the playground of the Western world, has been left to rot. After nightfall, the Malecon, the broad boulevard that sweeps across the face of Havana bay is deserted, '•.nd in the old quarter the Spanish colonial houses are only saved from collapse by rickety wooden scaffolding. With half a million people packed into the old quarter, Havana

is certainly one of the most densely populated cities in the Caribbean. The Cubans make no attempt to play down their housing shortage. Castro himself has said that Cuba needs at least Im houses. Here again, though, it is a matter of priorities and the needs of the urban consumer have been put firmly at the bottom. “The people decided,” says Waldo Reyna, deputy minister of construction, “that all the resources should be devoted to the development of industry and agriculture.” One of the unique Cuban features of the revolution is a decision to build up selfsupporting communities around farms and factories in the countryside and at least for the time being, to let the towns fend for themselves. It is only now that Castro and his planners are beginning to turn their attention to the long suffering city-dwellers. The steps taken so far illustrate the Cuban talent for self-help. The hand of the State may "be visible everywhere, but much of Cuba’s vigour and enthusiasm of Cuban society derives from Castro’s willingness to allow people to help themselves. Take the concept of the micro-brigades, for example. About four years ago, the legend goes Castro, who unlike most Communist leaders does not govern by remote control, was talking to a group of factory workers. They complained about their housing conditions and asked him if they could be allowed to build their own houses in their spare time. From this small beginning something extraordinary, and, it now seems, highly exportable, was born. It works like this. In each factory where the system operates, a group of workers are detached from their normal work to bund what amounts to a small new town. The raw materials are supplied by the State along

with a certain amount of skilled labour and supervision, but the rest is do-it-yourself. To ensure that factory production is not affected, the remaining workers undertake to work overtime. When the job is completed, apartments are allocated by the workers themselves to those whom they regard as most deserving. At first sight this might appear a recipe for disaster. There have indeed been some accidents, say microbrigade workers I talked to. But there have been genuine achievements too. Just outside Havana, a brisk young woman, a woodcarver by trade, is supervising the construction of what will eventually be an entire new town, with work, schools, shops, creches and accommodation for up to 150.000 people. This is just the first stage in a huge Government plan to solve Havana’s housing problem by shifting the focus of the city several miles to the east, "eventually providing work and housing for about 500,000 people. From the Government’s point of view the microbrigade has a number of attractions: it helps solve the housing problem; it gives the worker a real incentive to better his own lot; and most important of all, by marrying work with housing, it ties the worker ever more firmly to the system. This is the outstanding feature of Castro’s Cuba where everybody is supposed to work for the common good and nobody for himself. “I used to be a big landowner,” says Ramon Castro, “and I worked for myself. But now I have more because I have all of Cuba.” Of all Communist countries, Cuba has probably gone further than any in eliminating private initiative and enterprise. Under the mercurial guidance of its founding father, universally known as Fidel, the State controls almost every facet of the country’s social and economic life, down to the smallest detail. The taxis, the restaurants, the bars and the nightclubs

are all in public ownership. The telephone service is free, as is schooling, and medical services. Two-third’s of the nation’s houses are still in private hands .but their owners are not allowed to sell them when they die and can only pass them on to their relatives if they can prove they were living there at the time. Rents on new housing are fixed at a flat 6 per cent of salary.

Yet beneath this seemingly monolithic structure, the Cubans remain remarkably pragmatic and openminded; willing to snatch ideas and expertise from wherever they can and to modify Communist dogma wherever necessary. They have not, for example, made the Russian mistake of trying to force through a wholesale collectivisation of agriculture.