By David Abel, Globe Correspondent
The Boston Globe
01/01/98
Cubans continue to struggle with tattered economy
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba - Forty-two years ago, Reinaldo Gonzalez Santana learned through the peasant pipeline that a band of bearded men combing through the Sierra Maestra mountains not far from his small shack were leading a rebellion against the island's thuggish dictator.
As he heard more about the uprising and saw many of his neighbors head into the hills with rifles, the destitute farmer was swept up in the call for a return to democracy and social justice. So it wasn't long before Gonzalez himself was roving the countryside with the armed rebels and launching attacks against the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista.
When the guerrillas' two-year campaign met success on New Year's Day in 1959, the hardened rebel returned home to cheering crowds. But the euphoria quickly wore off as Gonzalez watched his revolution for democracy veer off toward one-man rule and communism.
''They lied to us to get our support,'' said Gonzalez, now 74, who adds he would have left if he had the money and could take his whole family. ''For 40 years we have this guy. He's worse than Stalin. It's time for a change.''
As Cuba observes the 40th anniversary of Fidel Castro's ascension to power - a reign longer than any other Latin American leader's this century - most Cubans struggle to put enough food on the table, dwell in crumbling buildings, and thousands plunge regularly into the seas hoping to join the 1.3 million Cubans living in the United States.
While the island's economy remains in tatters, devalued by as much as 40 percent after its long benefactor, the Soviet Union, dissolved in 1991, a cadre of loyal Fidelistas remain steadfast in support of their leader's call for ''socialism or death.''
One such Communist is Jose Martinez, 54, an engineer from Santiago, the island's second city. Martinez is the president of his neighborhood's Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, an organization often cited as playing a crucial role in perpetuating Castro's regime.
''The revolution has done a lot for the people of Cuba,'' said Martinez, who added that the organization serves the purpose of helping needy neighbors, not turning in dissenters, as it's known for. ''Fidel has accomplished a lot, in spite of the blockade.''
The US embargo, cited by Castro and his cohorts as the chief reason for Cuba's woes, began in 1962 after tensions crested in US-Cuban relations. Castro believed his northern neighbor planned to subvert the revolution. And, in fact, it tried.
The United States lost faith in Castro after his rebels executed about 200 Batista officials within three weeks (British historian Sir Hugh Thomas estimates Castro's government executed 5,000 people by 1970), expropriated almost all US and foreign-owned property, and began silencing media and critics.
Four decades later, the Cuban leader, now 72 years old, has survived multiple invasions, including the botched Bay of Pigs assault planned by the United States in 1961, countless assassination attempts, and the isolation and enmity of eight US presidents.
Today, Castro is credited by loyalists with improving the island's health care and education systems.
Castro touts the island's 96 percent literacy rate, the highest in Latin America. But because of the government's lack of accountability, critics question the accuracy of the claims.
There is also the tendency for the Communist Party to rewrite history. Most recently, the party announced that the revolution was never antireligious, despite years of exiling priests, persecuting worshipers, and banning believers from its ranks.
But despite the grip of socialism, Cuba has changed. Castro has opened the economy to a form of capitalism that permits the operation of small businesses and the sale of farm produce. He has allowed some foreign investment, and has created a dual economy that legalized the US dollar.
Beneath the awnings of the Maximo Gomez Domino Club in Miami's Little Havana, clumps of counterrevolutionaries - aging men who have schemed much of their lives to end Castro's reign and still dream of returning - slap scuffed dominoes on tables and mutter in Spanish.
Norberto Pino, 70, a retired factory worker who fled Cuba in 1962, like the many exiles who come here to play dominoes or cards, once fervently supported the revolution. But like Gonzalez, his enthusiasm soured.
''I have four brothers and cousins who still live on the island, and they have nothing. It's his fault,'' Pino said of Castro. ''And my daughter and son have to live with the mark of the revolution every day. It's a shame what has happened.''
This story ran on page A02 of the Boston Globe on 01/01/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company