Castro's Revolution Turns 50

CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum: Despite Obstacles, Communist Cuba Endures

(CBS) 

And for Hernandez the 50th anniversary “is a celebration about the Cuban society, about how Cuba has reached throughout all these years independence, sovereignty, dignity-the sense of citizenship has been strengthened tremendously and a fierce sentiment, a fierce feeling of national pride. This is about all that.”

Still he admits that one of Cuba’s many problems today is a labor force that either works half-heartedly or doesn’t either work at all. “A new, more disciplined, strict work ethic is needed.”

At the year-end parliament session last week it was said that there are 186,000 Cubans of working age who neither have a job nor are enrolled in school. Most people here feel that number is conservative.

Turning this situation around is an uphill battle. As long as doctors, white collar workers, teachers and factory workers feel they are underpaid, there will be frustration and often, a turn to illegal or black market activities. They justify this by pointing out their salaries simply don’t cover their basic needs, mostly a reference to food, clothing and utilities, since rents are low and a high 85 percent of the population owns their own homes, mortgage-free.

In his closing remarks to Parliament, President Raul Castro said austerity measures would have to be taken, including cutting freebies for workers.

A program giving free vacations to reward good workers, which cost the government some $60 million a year, will be nixed. Cubans also receive heavily subsidized rations of basic food items that last about 15 days. Transportation and, of course, free education and health care are also tremendous drains on the state budget.

But Cubans struggling to get by on government salaries did not welcome the announcement. A university professor and single mom tells me she is thinking about learning how to crochet so that she can supplement her income by making and selling sweaters and other items. She is close to tears as she speaks of the struggle to keep her three children fed and in shoes. If prices of necessary food items were to go up, she says, it would be the end of her. I’m not using her name because I don’t have her permission to share her story.

But this woman, like many of my neighbors, is resentful that the Cuban pesos in which they are paid are not valid in all shops and restaurants. The dual currency existing in Cuba since 1993 is a sore point with all Cubans who need the cooking oil, bath soap and other items available only in convertible currency stores.

The government is reeling from a horrendous hurricane season in which three storms raged from one end of the island to another, wiping out nearly a third of the food crops and partially or totally destroying the homes of some 500,000 people. The official damage estimate is nearly $10 billion. On top of this, the price of Cuba’s main export, nickel, has dropped over 40 percent

So the issue for the cash-strapped government is how to provide incentive to workers in all sectors of the economy. In a bid earlier in 2008 to raise agricultural production and replace imports, farmers were offered more land, easier access to farm implements and higher prices for their products, such as milk. The measures appeared to be working but then Hurricanes Ike, Gustav and Paloma set the process back by at least six months to a year.

Maggie Alarcon, a translator and daughter of Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon, lived for over a decade in the United States when her father was Ambassador to the United Nations. She says both societies have good aspects and can learn from each other. Asked what Cubans could learn from the U.S. she replies,

“I think a more conscientious sentiment of the work force. I think people here in Cuba need to appreciate a little bit more their job, the time spent on their job. I think one of the biggest errors in a socialist system with so many guarantees is that people tend to take education, health care, housing, utilities for granted and then they end up becoming complacent because everything is there and then the economy on the island in this country, this system tends to suffer because the government has to end up taking care of certain issues. In the United States people tend not to take their job for granted, people there work.”

Raul Castro, with his reputation for efficiency and economic acumen, raised expectations when he took over from his ailing older brother Fidel. The reforms in agriculture were warmly received. People also liked when he opened up the sale of computers, cell phones and electric appliances such as microwaves, previously only available to foreigners. He also removed the foreigners-only restrictions on the main tourist hotels and resorts, making it possible for Cubans with access to convertible currency to spend their vacations or at least a weekend there.

Will his latest belt-tightening measures reduce his apparent popularity? Hernandez thinks not but he also thinks Cubans are “not ready to wait forever.”

“I think Raul is completely aware of that because he talks about that when he speaks, the need to go on, the need to take decisions, the need to introduce changes, not any kind of changes but changes that are clearly influencing and improving people’s lives," says Hernandez. "It is not just about beans, it’s not just about food, it’s not just about transportation, it is not just even about housing, which is a key, critical question. It is also about people believing that they are participating and their views are taken into account.”

The Cuban Revolution has outlived nine American presidencies and is about to outlive the tenth. There is some optimism among the population, if not the government, that the new Obama administration will be different, less hostile and more open to the island just 90 miles off its shores.

Valdes thinks Cuba would, in fact, be a more open society were relations between the two countries to normalize.

“U.S. policy has had unintended consequences," he says. "Usually it’s tough as a way to change them. Actually the way to change the domestic situation in Cuba is to allow a much more normal relation. Then the surrounded fortress mentality would have to be replaced by something else."

President-elect Obama has said he will reverse the restrictions imposed by the Bush White House in 2004 limiting Cuban-American family visits to just one every three years and also limiting the amount of money they can send to relatives on the island. But he has said he will maintain, for the time being, the economic and trade embargo.

Maggie Alarcon, like many ordinary Cubans, says it's time to lift the embargo and to allow “all Americans”, not just Cuban Americans, to visit Cuba freely. “Just lift the whole thing, have Cubans go up to the United States and have Cubans come down here.”

But like the Cuban Government, Hernandez warns not to expect too much when the new President moves into the White House. “We have had Democratic presidents before, nothing happened, nothing substantial happened.”

The poor relations between the United States and Cuba are an exception not the rule, he points out, adding, “We have more relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. We have more relations with Canada, with the European Union; we have more relations with Africa and Asia and other countries including Russia and China. Cuba is less isolated than ever.”

[erasmus606]

"this is because kennedy decided to follow your typical liberal text book strategy in dealing with dictators "

Posted by LordSunTzu at 01:48 PM : Jan 01, 2009

MY "typical liberal textbook strategy"?

You like talking out of your a-s-s?

I''m not a liberal.

[erasmus606]

"I think 90% will not! Anything including Cuba''''''''s so called revolution can seem successful under the barrel of a gun!" Posted by spinproof

You obviously have not travelled much, otherwise you would know about the difficulties for anyone not rich to obtain permanent residence in another country.

Posted by brianbwb at 05:10 AM : Jan 01, 2009

I could be wrong, but I think the point spinproof was trying to make was that IF they were able to leave and live somewhere else they would. AND he/she would be exactly right in saying that 90% would not return.

I know of several people that have been to Cuba many times. They do not go to the resorts, they stay with the "people", in their homes. These people cannot do ANYTHING without being watched. The have to be very careful about what they say and do. If they send out packages or if someone sends them packages, or letters, they have usually been opened and gone through before they get them. That''s IF they get them.

A Cuban''s main goal is to get out of Cuba. A lot of Cubans befriend the tourists in hopes of being able to marry one of them, to get out. And who can blame them?

[lordsuntzu]

Posted by erasmus606 at 01:46 PM : Jan 01, 2009
+ report abuse
******

this is because kennedy decided to follow your typical liberal text book strategy in dealing with dictators

[lordsuntzu]

It seems that it is a good thing for Cuba that the US has not been allowed to economically re-colonize the island. Perhaps it is better that the US not normalize relations.


Posted by brianbwb at 05:06 AM : Jan 01, 2009
+ report abuse

************

for a person WHO DOES NOT LIVE IN CUBA NOR EXPERIENCED ANY ATROCITY..that would be a good idea

[lordsuntzu]

It seems that it is a good thing for Cuba that the US has not been allowed to economically re-colonize the island. Perhaps it is better that the US not normalize relations.


Posted by brianbwb at 05:06 AM : Jan 01, 2009
+ report abuse

************

for a person WHO DOES NOT LIVE IN CUBA NOR EXPERIENCED ANY ATROCITY..that would be a good idea

[erasmus606]

"You can hear them at bus stops, in coffee shops, over the clink of dominos and certainly any doctor or physicist living in a building without running water is complaining."

Yeah, but they ain''t complaining too loudly and they are very careful on who hears them. There are people that have DISAPPEARED and are never seen again.

[louiville2]

Che spoke these words: "hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine."

The results of Che''s utopian agenda aren''t much to admire either. As author Paul Berman explained in 2004 in Slate, "The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster."

The miserable Argentine was killed in 1967 in the Bolivian Andes while trying to spread revolution in South America. But his vision of how to govern lives on in the Cuba of today. It is a slave plantation, where a handful of wealthy white men impose their "morality" on the masses, most of whom are black and who suffer unspeakable privation with zero civil liberties.

[spinproof]

I''''m a Christian and so my definition of poor may be different than most. I don''''t define rich or poor based on material assets or money...
_____________________-

Tell that to George Bush, who claims to be a Christian, and yet brags how the US is superior based in part on material wealth.

Posted by mtee12 at 09:38 AM : Jan 01, 2009

I''m not a religious fanatic like some and Religions rarely turn anyone who want to identify with them away. Many suicide bombers are Muslims, many religious fanatics are Muslim and Christian but this does not mean that millions of other good Muslims and Christians should be tarnished and guilty by association, even Adolf Hitler claimed he was a Christian. Real Christians know Jesus Christ and his works, people also know a good Christian from a fake Christian! People can claim to be anything they want, its their deeds that matter and count! A persons deeds will easily identify that person as a Christian or not, just because someone claims to be a Christian doesn''t make it so.

[spinproof]

Many Cubans are dirt poor and impoverished, you don''t get to see those Cubans in the News Media...

____________________

Many Latin Americans are dirt poor. What''s your point? Does the fact that many Latin Americans are dirt poor and the fact that most Latin Americans live in capitalist countries mean that capitalism is a failure? This is a topic that is never discussed in the US media. Wonder why?

Posted by mtee12 at 09:23 AM : Jan 01, 2009

I''m a Christian and so my definition of poor may be different than most. I don''t define rich or poor based on material assets or money, I define rich or poor based on a persons relationship with God, a person with the proper relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ may be poor in material assets and money but rich beyond their wildest dreams! brianbwb is an atheist and can''t relate, I don''t know what your religious status is but if you are "Saved" and have your ticket punched for "Heaven" by the grace of God you have all the riches you will ever need. Didn''t mean to turn this into a religious discussion but its true! Rich and Poor are relative terms based on a persons spiritual enlightenment, development and orientation.

[downtowner97]

If we lifted the embargo against Cuba, Castro would be run over like a Wal-Mart greeter on Black Friday.

[spinproof]

The main idea in the FREE WORLD is FREEDOM! Born Free! Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Choice, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Movement and tolerance in those things in groups and others! Let Freedom Ring!!!

[spinproof]

Compared to that other impoverished, capitalist Caribbean island of Haiti, Cuba is indeed a paradise.

Posted by mtee12 at 09:11 AM : Jan 01, 2009

Cuba is a paradise to some Cubans but many in Cuba don''t enjoy that version of paradise. Many Cubans are dirt poor and impoverished, you don''t get to see those Cubans in the News Media, they are hidden away, must keep up appearances of success.

[spinproof]

Perhaps it is better that the US not normalize relations.

Posted by brianbwb at 05:06 AM : Jan 01, 2009

Many sick Cubans might beg to differ! Cubans with HIV or AIDS are permanently segregated from the rest of the population and live out the rest of their lives in Cuban medical prison camps for fear they will infect the rest of the population! Imagine that brianbwb, getting HIV or AIDS in Cuba results in life in prison! Cuba is also a prison and now getting sick places you in a prison within a prison! No thanks, I''ll pass, you go live in Cuba, you won''t have much life but you''ll be smart as hell from all that free education! Normal relations with the U.S. might free those detained in Cuba medical "prison" centers.

[spinproof]

You are not as "spinproof" as your sig claims.

Posted by brianbwb at 05:10 AM : Jan 01, 2009

Let me see brianbwb, free education in Prison Cuba or freedom to come and go and choose as my heart desires, I would still choose Freedom! As a free person I could have it all, I could also be educated anywhere in the World including Prison Cuba! Your idea that because Cubans enjoy free education they should be happy hostages living under the barrel of a gun is even a stretch for you, this is like saying women captured and held hostage in the s e x trade should be happy because they are well fed, well dressed and live in nice environments, all they have to do is keep themselves clean and let men bang their brains out! Anything done under slave conditions in unacceptable brianbwb and Cubans are slaves to Casto''s Communism, no matter how well meaning Castro is! If a person can''t come and go as they please, they are held against their will, a prisoner to someones ideology, a hostage and a slave, if you don''t have free will you are a prisoner plain and simple, and nice prisoner benefits don''t make it O.K.!

[brianbwb-2009]

%u201CIt is impossible to think that with so many Cubans going to class, reading books and learning and that they don%u2019t think, they don%u2019t think with their own heads."

It is not only not impossible to think so, but is a common practise among ignorant Americans to think so.

"...And they think that they have rights and those rights include the rights to education, to health, to have a house, to have a job and to be able to travel, to be able to use all those capacities they have developed,%u201D

The nerve of these people to think they have a right to things Americans don''t even have. (sarcasm intended)

[brianbwb-2009]

"If the people there desire freedom, then they should take arms again....Aganist Castro." Posted by MrNrgmizer

But it should be their struggle, not ours.

"Ask any Cuban on American soil why..." Posted by MrNrgmizer

And what you will hear amounts to "they took our land and our slaves from us". They blew it because they mistreated the majority of the population, so the majority gave them the boot, had they been humane, there would have been no need for revolution.

"Ask any Mexican what they think of America having open arms for Cubans, but closed doors to Mexicans..." Posted by MrNrgmizer

And the answer will be the same as if you ask a "Black" American about expanding economic opportunities for foreign slave states, but closed investment doors for "Black" Americans.


"Down with Castro, invade Cuba and kick Venesuealan influence out..." Posted by MrNrgmizer

Go do it yourself, it seems to be your problem, but is not ours.

[brianbwb-2009]

"I think 90% will not! Anything including Cuba''''s so called revolution can seem successful under the barrel of a gun!" Posted by spinproof

You obviously have not travelled much, otherwise you would know about the difficulties for anyone not rich to obtain permanent residence in another country.

I remember the promises made to Iraqis who aided the US invasion, that they would be granted admittance to the US, a promise that was predictably reneged upon by the US.

You are not as "spinproof" as your sig claims.

[brianbwb-2009]

"It would be hard to dispute the fact that the Cuban population today is a highly educated one thanks to the Revolution%u2019s establishment of free education running from primary school through the university, whether you%u2019re studying literature, civil engineering or medicine."

While the exact opposite is true in the citadel of capitalism, the US, one can also include music, medicine, and recycling in the list of things the Cubans do better than the US.

It seems that it is a good thing for Cuba that the US has not been allowed to economically re-colonize the island. Perhaps it is better that the US not normalize relations.

[Michael Arnold]

And after all this time we finally realize we were socialists, too!

I think we should just call a spade a spade, change our name to "The United Socialist States of America", finish bailing EVERYONE out by pressing the "print money now" button, and just chill.

We are what we are. Thanks GWB, Obama, Nancy and Harry. Now, let''s Rock and Roll!

[spinproof]

Until Cubans can come and go freely, travel freely around the World like other grown ups in other nations if they can afford to do so, Cuba is nothing but a Prison Camp and Castro is nothing but a hostage taker and holder! The true test and success of the Cuban Revolution is if Cubans are allowed to leave Cuba freely. If so, will Cubans return?, I think 90% will not! Anything including Cuba''s so called revolution can seem successful under the barrel of a gun!