Notes on the Cuban Revolution

NOTES ON THE CUBAN REVOLUTION Saul Landau I recall standing high on the tribune in the Plaza of the Revolution on January 2. 1961' just as I did twenty-eight years later and straining my neck unsuc- cessfully to see the end of the crowd. And Fidel. with five microphones, the number he still uses to ensure that his words will reach even the far end of the rally, denouncing the imperialists with the same fervour and some of the same language as he used on December 5.1988. So much in Cuba has changed in thirty revolutionary years. Fidel at 62 and gray in hair and beard no longer shows that spontaneous grin of wonder. The casinos, beggars, sex shows and aura of free and dirty third world capitalism remain only in the film archives, captured on celluloid. So much remains the same, not just the same as before the revolution, but the same as the 19th Century, and even before. Cuba is Spain and Africa, the old world and the new. It is U.S. gangsters and gamblers, baseball players and novelists. A little of Cuba is the Soviet Union, much of it is Caribbean and Latin American. It is culturally diverse and provincial. It is also. in Fidel's mind. the last bastion of socialism left in the world. The visitor sees the superficial, members of the Cuban militia - more than a million strong throughout the nation - fastidiously dressed, occupying the front position of the crowd. the crack troops. including the Special Forces marching by with precision movements. as they do every five years. Under thousands of the neatly pressed military blouses militia members wear santerioz beads. In the countryside new homes for peasants dot the landscape, some of them five story apartment buildings. But try. as I have done several times, to use the bathroom in one of the new peasant flats; inevitably the peasant will regret that the facilities are not working. I discovered after several rural refusals that breakdown is a result of the pig being illicitly kept there. despite clear 'health' prohibitions. Bohios, the thatched huts that Columbus found and that the settlers copied because they kept out heat. still remain-in the countryside. In the Plaza of the Revolution the cold and white architecture (built before the revolution) pres- ents a facade of European civilization. Watching the goose-stepping troops or SAUL LANDAU 279 the MIG's flashing by overhead, one would not think that Cuba is just out of underdevelopment. The mass meeting on December 5, 1988, marked the thirty second anni- versary of the landing of the Granma, the yacht on which Fidel and 82 guerrillas embarked from Mexico to Cuba to launch their war against the Batista regime. Normally, every five years missiles and tanks pass under the reviewing stand. Not in 1988. They were not necessary. Cuba had won major battles against South Africa3 in Angola, and 500,000 Havaneros showed up to watch the troops march and listen to Fidel speak - for four hours, the last one in a pouring rain. The parade and the people were symbolic reminders to the White House and Pentagon that an incursion against Cuba would be costly; and to Soviet President Gorbachev that Fidel's brand of socialism - not glasnost or perestroika - has wide popular backing.4 Underneath the display of military power, the symbolic demonstration of support for the Commander-in-Chief, lies a complex, troubled, confused and still superstitious population. The Cuban Revolution is, on the one hand, a glaring success. Compare Cuba's current health and education statistics to those of the Dominican Republic, or to pre-Castro years. Or consider the foreign policy accomplishments of an island nation of ten million people. Cuba today has relations with more than 110 nations, including most from Latin America, which the United States has tried to prevent for twenty five years. Beneath the surface, however, the revolution is in trouble. The economy is not performing as Fidel expected. Although some sectors remain productive, others falter. The distribution of goods and services to the city dwellers is a source of despair, both for those who must wait for hours for buses, months or even years for certain home repairs, and those who have organized the economy. Fidel knows and feels the pain when the Cienfuegos oil refinery due to be finished in 1985 is still not finished in 1989, or when a Pinar del Rio hospital takes eleven years to complete, because of forms of economic organization and use of the labour force that would drive an ordinary person to madness. Construction enterprises would contract with other parts of the economy to build an edifice, which is to cost, say 5 million pesos. The housing is pronounced completed, the construction firm declares itself to have made a profit of say 3 million pesos and the recipient of the housing declares that its plans have moved ahead. In reality, the housing is inadequate, and therefore useless. For purposes of show, however, both the construction firm and the recipient declare success. On other occasions, construction enterprises begin operations and then cease. The excuse may be lack of necessary parts, or tools. Half-done structures became common from the mid 1970s on. And with this kind of systematic fraudulence, which the Soviet onion knew too well, and which in part it had exported (the system) to Cuba, comes demoralization, corruption and the variety of cover-up schemes that inevitably accompany crime. The 280 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1989 system breeds contempt for the kinds of ideals that Fidel has proclaimed, for the image of a self-sacrificing Che Guevara. Yet, the managers and execu- tives of the companies that perpetrated fraud were often in the vanguard of slogan shouting and outward displays of revolutionary fidelity. Sectors of the labour force work in ways that would make efficiency experts despair. I witnessed a team of sweepers at an outdoor site at the Cienfuegos oil refinery. From afar I saw them sitting in the shade of a storage tank. When they saw the film crew approaching they became very busy sweeping dirt from one place to another. The wind would come up and blow it back, but they kept sweeping. At stores a passive-aggressive attitude often characterizes the personnel. In December, 1988, I stopped to film a long line of people, waiting to buy green vegetables. At the front of the line sat two lethargic clerks torpidly making change with computerized cash registers. A woman shopper noticed the video camera and shouted at me in Spanish: 'Look at the crap we have to put up with.' I asked the cameraman if he had caught it, but since he spoke no Spanish he didn't see any significance. I asked her to repeat what she had said. She asked me if I was with Cuban TV. When I told her I was a foreigner she said forget it. 'I wanted Fidel to see what we have to go through to get a few greens. For foreigners, no.' Like other Cubans I have talked to, this woman is defensive before out- siders. If proof were needed that Fidel has at least brought a feeling of nationalism, pride in country, experience of the collective 'we', just try to get critical Cubans to voice their complaints to the outside world. And it is not for fear of repercussions so much as it is fear of revealing the depth of the problems after thirty years of revolution. Cubans have long pretended that the problems didn't exist or were easily soluble. In fact, such a fasade worked to confuse their own situation. Who or what is to blame for the fact that goods don't reach the stores, that people have to stand endlessly in line, especially for transportation, that home repair is almost impossible to get in a short time, for the low quality of parts of Cuban - produced goods, and for the amount of corruption that people privately acknowledge? The CIA can no longer be held responsible. Cuba's enemies have begun to call it the Albania of the Caribbean. That is unfair, given the immense international connections that Fidel has forged. But the odious comparison contains a germ of insight about the inflexible nature of the Cuban revolutionary government. While hierarchies break down even inside some multi-national corporations, they maintain their rigidity inside the Cuban bureaucracies. Cuba at the end of 1988 is not experiencing the information revolution. Only the top is let in on information; even minor decisions are made atJhe highest levels. When I landed in Cuba, in late November, 1988, I had already read in the Miami press that Fidel would attend the transfer of presidential power in Mexico. But members of Cuba's Foreign Ministry did not - or they lied- have SAUL LANDAU 28 I that information. It had not appeared in Granma, the official Party daily. In Cuba. routine information exists on the street. in buses and barbershops, but not in the media - unless it is officially authorized. While routine information - much of it idiotic - floods the rest of the west- ern and considerable areas of the third world. and Soviet leaders encourage it, Cubans operate on war psychology - need to know. The notion that information-sharing will aid the enemy still dominates the consciousness of revolutionaries. And Fidel use military language when he talks about the obligations of the Cuban work force. 'Cada trabajador a su puesto de trabajo.' Fidel exhorted the half million people. At certain ministries the telephone is answered 'Ordenes.' Cubans remain suspicious of all non-routine activities.

Load more