APRIL 26, 1999
By ERIC MARGOLIS, Contributing Foreign
Editor
Toronto Sun, April 25, 1999
HAVANA -- This crumbling, but still magnificent colonial city gives me a sense of double deja-vu.
The last time I visited Cuba was with my parents, in the almost unbelievably remote years before Fidel Castro. We stayed in the stately Nacional Hotel and went each evening to the Floridita Bar, where I amused myself by making sketches.
I recall vividly sitting there with a burly, white-bearded man, and his olive-skinned lady friend, who had become fast friends with my parents. He gave me a copy of his book, A Farewell to Arms, which I still have, autographed, "To Eric, the painter, from his friend Ernest Hemingway, Havana, 1953."
Forty-six years and a lifetime later, I returned to Cuba to discover a nation that was eerily similar to the dying communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union I had seen in the late 1980s. Faded slogans proclaim "We shall overcome" and "Death to Yankee imperialismo!" Pictures of Che Guevara, the Cuban communist saint, are displayed like religious icons.
People queue up for hours to buy the few scant goods in nearly empty state stores. Food is rationed; everything from gas to toilet paper is in desperately short supply. Per capita income is only US$2,300, less than that of China. While I was there a large gathering of party officials was listlessly celebrating Lenin's birthday, and proclaiming "fraternal solidarity with our communist comrades in anti-imperialist Serbia."
To see Cubans, long known as the "aristocrats of the West Indies," reduced to penury is heartbreaking. Havana is more than a century older than New York; Cubans are a notably hard-working, talented and cultivated people. In the late 1960s, I saw penniless Cuban refugees transform Miami from a decaying swamp of crime into a commercial miracle and Latin America's leading city. People today forget Cuba was always the most important and advanced nation of the West Indies -long before Castro.
In spite of Cuba's wretched condition, a majority of its 11 million people still seem remarkably attached to their absolute leader, Fidel Castro, who has run the country since seizing power in 1959. Fidel still commands widespread respect as a national father figure, particularly among Cuba's minority blacks, but the rest of his regime is held in contempt and treated with derision. As one Cuban put it to me, "Castro does crazy experiments, but we know he means well." Another said, "We are a totalitarian state with high morals."
Cuba has achieved a good record in health and education, but the price has been high: a totalitarian state that controls every aspect of people's lives. The regime that provides all housing, employment, medicine, education and pensions can easily take them away at the merest suggestion of "anti-state activities" from the legions of informers, party cadres and security police that closely watch every citizen.
In recent months the regime has significantly increased the number and salaries of police, blanketing Havana and other major cities. The few dissidents who have dared call for free speech have been thrown into prison. As the economy goes from bad to catastrophic, and Cubans grow more restless, the regime is digging in, and tightening security at all levels.
Four decades of socialism, the U.S. embargo and the loss of Soviet aid worth US$6 billion annually left Cuba a ruin. Without Canadian and European tourist dollars, and oil from Mexico, Cuba would collapse.
The regime has already mortgaged its sugar crop for the next few years and reneged on a $40 million loan from chief benefactor Canada. As a result, Castro has been reluctantly forced to allow a parallel dollar economy. Cubans with dollars eat and live fairly well; those unable to obtain hard currency through tourism, prostitution or the burgeoning black market, are stuck with worthless pesos and ration cards. Inevitably, corruption is growing quickly at all levels of government - save the very top.
A new generation of "RUMMYs" - Rich, Opwardly Mobile Marxist Yuppies - has appeared: sons of Communist party bigwigs who drive flashy cars, frequent hard currency restaurants and go for shopping sprees and vacations in Mexico. Like the spoiled "jeunesse d'ore" of the Soviet "nomenkaltura," they are a sure portent that the same kind of generational revolution will soon hit Cuba that brought down the Marxist dinosaurs of European communism. Young Cubans want cars, jeans, and MTV, not more Lenin.
Yet it seems likely Fidel will remain in power until illness or death removes him from the scene. Efforts by Europe to get him to gracefully leave office have failed. King Juan Carlos told me Castro had declined his offer of comfortable retirement in Spain.
However, after Castro, le deluge. Heir-apparent and brother, Raul Castro, commands no respect. Fidel has cut down anyone he considered a threat, leaving a power vacuum around him. There will almost certainly be chaos and political infighting after Fidel departs, which will be compounded by the return of Cuban exiles from the U.S., whose squabbling leaders all see themselves as the next president of Cuba.
What we should do about Cuba is a very difficult question. It's intolerable watching this beautiful island suffer from the twin evils of a police state and poverty. Many voices call for constructive engagement that will cause Castro's regime to liberalize and allow political rights. But Canada has followed this policy for years by promoting tourism and giving Cuba aid, and the result has been a total failure. So was the Pope's visit to the island. In fact, political repression has increased.
The U.S. embargo has also failed to bring down the Castro regime or to force it liberalize.
Embargo crumbling
The four-decade-old embargo now seems to be crumbling. The best recourse seems a gradual loosening of U.S. trade and travel restrictions. But even if the American embargo were totally lifted, Cuba would still be in a mess.
Restoring Cuba's leading role in tourism means building new hotels and infrastructure and old-time Marxist Castro refuses to allow private property. Many investors won't sink money into Cuba unless their assets are protected. Powerful American interests will block entry of Cuba's main export, sugar, into the U.S. market.
Still, when the Cubans of Florida finally return from exile, they will eventually restore the island to the tourist paradise and centre of commerce it once was. There will be a giant sucking sound as tourists forsake the seedy, abusive islands of the non-Spanish West Indies in favour of glorious Cuba and its friendly people. Cuba of the early 21st century will not return to the sleazy Cuba of the early 1950s, as communists warn. That time is long past. A better comparison will be made with booming Ireland, Chile, or Singapore.
Today, a strong sense of "fin du regime" permeates Cuba. The era of Fidel is coming to an end. Cuba's Maximo leader failed to turn his nation into a socialist paradise, but at least he accomplished one very important goal. Before Castro, the U.S. routinely bullied Latin Americans, and treated them with contempt and bigotry. Castro's long defiance of the mighty, arrogant gringos gave Latin Americans pride and self-respect.
Equally important, Castro helped create a new sense of respect among Americans for their Latin neighbours, and convinced the U.S. to encourage democracy and free markets in South and Central America. This, ironically, may be Fidel's greatest and lasting achievement.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
Copyright © 1999, Canoe Limited Partnership.
[ BACK TO THE NEWS ]