Reconciliation with Cuba
Reconciliation with Cuba
by John M Repp
On December 17, 2014 Barack Obama announced that he wanted to re-establish normal diplomatic relations with Cuba and on that very day there was an exchange of prisoners. He admitted that U.S. policy toward Cuba since 1962 had been a failure. This announcement raised the expectations of citizens of both countries. Then on March 9, 2015, Obama issued an Executive Order declaring that Venezuela was “an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy.” In April before attending the Summit of the Americas in Panama, Obama walked back that statement. Venezuela is Cuba’s closest ally and provides Cuba with the oil to keep their electricity grid functioning. In exchange, Cuba sends thousands of doctors and medical supplies to help the poor in Venezuela.
After Obama’s December announcement, Fidel said he hoped the U.S. would not try to use “the carrot and the stick” in their negotiations with Cuba. He meant that if the U.S. takes the position that Cuba must change its form of government and “recognize human rights” in order for the U.S. to end the trade embargo, no progress will be made. There is no evidence that U.S. foreign policy has stopped using a combination of rewards and punishment to bend other countries to its “interests“. If you wanted to make a new friend, would you use the carrot and the stick on that person?
I was able to visit Cuba for two weeks in February 2015 with a group of five. We traveled as researchers and community activists: two University of Washington Global Health professors, a retired veterinarian, and my wife Cindy and I. It remains illegal to travel to Cuba as a tourist. We were serious in our intent to do research. As life-long peace and justice activists, Cindy and I were intensely curious about Cuba. We had made our plans before Obama gave his December announcement. As the Internet is not widely available in Cuba, it was difficult to contact “informants” (in an anthropological sense, not a political sense) before we arrived. However, Stephen, one of our party, who was researching the health outcome differentials between whites and blacks, was able to set up a meeting with a professor from the University of Havana. We were able to spend two evenings with Enrique, and the five of us asked him as many questions as we could think of about contemporary Cuba. We also visited several types of farms because one of the other topics I wanted to research was the Cuban transition from industrial/chemical agriculture to local low-input organic agriculture.
Cubans are a proud and healthy people. Their life expectancy is higher than ours and their infant mortality rate is lower. The health outcome difference between blacks and whites is the lowest of any comparable minority/majority in the world. We did not see any homeless people or crazy people like we know so well from Seattle’s streets. We saw a few drunks. Cuba is a still a poor country, but without the grinding poverty of Third world countries. Its economy is not as productive per hour as Cubans want, but the country is one of the few countries in the world that is sustainable and developed in the sense of high literacy, education and health.
When communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989 to 1991, Cuba faced a very difficult economic crisis. Americans consider the former Soviet Union an empire, but with respect to Cuba, the Soviets subsidized it generously, about $5 billion a year. When Raul Castro became President in 2008, many of the large state farms were broken up and formed into cooperatives. The direction of reform seems to be getting the government out of managing the economy. The state retains ownership but leases the productive property to individuals or cooperatives. They will regulate but not manage. They are starting to tax. There is resistance from the middle layers of the bureaucracy about these reforms because those officials stand to lose their power , function, and even their jobs, so the plans of the top leaders are not always carried out. Many of the reforms have been made after meetings held all over the country where the government listened to the complaints and suggestions of the people.
The socialist system set up by Cuba after 1959 provided free health care, free education, a job, a pension, and a subsidized basket of groceries each month. Renters got title to their houses. Land reform limited the amount of land one family could own. Foreign companies were expropriated with offers to pay compensation with Cuban bonds but their owners refused. Health care, education, housing, a pension and a job are considered human rights in Cuba and are not left up to the vagaries of the market. The media is controlled by the government. There are local elections in which any citizen can run but there is only one political party. About one million people or one out of eleven are members or young members of the Communist Party.
Nearly a million middle and upper class Cubans left the country because of the Revolution, many going to Miami and this provided more upward mobility for those who stayed than in the fastest growing economy in the capitalist world. Many of the Cubans we met in the course of our travels like hosts, local guides, and taxi drivers had degrees in professions like engineering or law, and after working at least five years at their profession in exchange for their education, they started working in the tourism sector because they could make much more money. There is growing inequality between people in contact with tourists and the rest of the Cuban people. The health care system based in primary care with clinics in every neighborhood has been adversely affected by the absence of many doctors who go overseas to practice in Venezuela or in Africa fighting Ebola. Those doctors are paid more than those who stay in Cuba.
We found the Cuban people to be very good hosts. We stayed in casa particulars, private rooms with separate bathrooms in ordinary people’s houses. The rooms were $25 a night for a couple. Several had sumptuous breakfasts for $5 a person: fresh pineapple, guava nectar, bananas, and papaya with a small omelet and bread and cheese, and in the evening, a lobster dinner for $12. The hosts of the casa particulars were networked, so when we wanted to travel to another town, they would make arrangements for us, getting bus tickets or a taxi. We rode in those old American cars. With five of us it was perfect: two in front, three in back, and our luggage in the spacious trunk. The old cars had been refitted with Russian diesel engines, maybe a Czech transmission, or an East German differential. We took several guide books with us. Cindy and I spent less that $100 a day each, much less than had we gone with a licensed group like The Nation sponsored tour. We flew to Mexico City and then to Havana. I hear that direct flights will be available as soon. If the U.S. takes Cuba off their list of countries supporting terrorism, it will be possible to use a U.S.-issued debit card to get cash in Cuba. We took Canadian money in cash and always felt safe. The Cubans did not stamp our passports, and upon returning to the U.S., no official asked where we had been and what we were doing in Cuba.
If you are an activist or community leader and are curious about Cuba, you don’t have to wait until there is full reconciliation between the U.S. government and the government of Cuba to go to Cuba. Right now there is enough ambiguity in the U.S. law about visiting Cuba and at present no enforcement (unless you are trying to make a buck) that you should assert your human right to travel to Cuba. The Cubans will welcome you.
April 13, 2015 jmrepp@q.com