A clapped-out Russian Lada delivered us to a dilapidated building in the
Vedado district of central Havana. We slipped in through a side gate and
followed our guide up a narrow, ill-smelling stairwell. On the first landing
Vladimir, a youngish man with shaven head, ushered us quickly into his abode
and shut the door.
The dismal, cramped interior took our breath away. Six people — three
generations of one family — were crammed into a tiny one-bedroom flat.
The bedroom and living room had been divided horizontally with rough wooden
platforms to create extra sleeping space. There was a minuscule kitchen and
spartan little bathroom. The flat's only window looked directly on to a
blank wall, and the rest of the dingy rooms were lit by fluorescent tubes.
There is an acute shortage of housing — and of almost everything else —
in Cuba. Theoretically, in the western hemisphere's only communist country,
Vladimir's family should be able to exchange this flat for a bigger one
whose occupants need less space. In practice, they could do that only with a
hefty under-the-table payment, and they have not got the money. Indeed, they
can barely afford to feed themselves. “Life is very, very difficult,” said
Isabel, Vladimir's sister.
The national assembly will unveil tomorrow a successor to Fidel Castro, who
announced his resignation this week after 49 tumultuous years in power —
and in Vladimir's flat The Times found what might well be described as
Castro's legacy.
We met a family that reveres “El Comandante” and is proud of his revolution,
but for whom that revolution no longer delivers the basic necessities of
life. It is a family that believes the time has come for a younger, more
dynamic, reform-minded leadership; a family that craves more freedom. It is,
in short, a typical Cuban family in every respect but one: in a police state
whose people fear to speak their minds — even to friends — it
took the considerable risk of talking to a Western journalist in its home.
“It is not counter-revolutionary to tell the truth,” insisted Vladimir, who
asked only that The Times did not use the family's surname or photograph
their faces.
The matriarch is Elisa, 79, who was born in the flat, long before the
Revolution, when her parents rented it from its Spanish owners. After Castro
ousted the Batista regime in 1959, the flat was appropriated by the State
and allocated to Elisa's family. Today she shares it with her brother
Manuel, 77, her son, Vladimir, 39, her daughter, Isabel, 42, Isabel's
husband, Michel, 38, and their daughter Jennifer, 15.
They lack more than just space. The combined income from Elisa and Manuel's
pensions, and the salaries from Vladimir, Elisa and Michel, is less than
1,500 pesos a month — barely £34 — and they have no
relatives sending remittances from the United States. “That's not even
enough for a week,” says Isabel, who earns about £6 a month as a school
receptionist.
Like all Cubans, they get free housing, free healthcare and free education
from kindergarten to university. They also get monthly rations from the
State for which they pay a token amount. Last month these consisted of 7lb
(3.2kg) of rice per person, 20oz of beans, 5lb of sugar, one piece of
chicken, a small packet of coffee, crackers, cooking oil, a box of matches,
ten eggs and one bread roll a day. Women got sanitary pads. As pensioners,
Elisa and Manuel qualified for four packets of cigarettes and Elisa, because
she has a medical condition, for 4lb of fish and some powdered milk.
But those rations do not go far. “They run out within a week or so,” says
Isabel, who throws open the door of her bulky, 33-year-old Russian fridge to
reveal an interior empty except for some black-market tomato paste, the
previous day's leftover rice, a bag of soya bean yoghurt, and some
vile-looking sausage meat she had brought home from her school.
Additional food costs far more, and for “luxuries” like shampoo or detergent
Cubans pay almost Western prices.
To make ends meet they cheat. Isabel was fired from her previous job in a
cigar factory for smuggling tobacco leaves out in her panties. Vladimir now
works at Havana airport, but used to work in a hospital from which he stole
bottles of cleansing alcohol to sell on the black market. Fellow employees
pilfered sheets, towels, even mattresses. “Everyone is making money on the
side. They have to,” he says. The family's only transport is Vladimir's
ancient 50cc Russian motorbike. There is an old Russian washing machine and
a colour television that Manuel, as a military veteran, was offered at a
subsidised price. The flat boasts no telephone, and certainly no computer.
For news, the family has to rely on Granma, the state-run newspaper, or the
five state-run television channels — all mouthpieces of the regime.
The police check the roof periodically for the aerials that Cubans use
clandestinely to listen to Radio Marti, the Miami-based Cuban station.
The family would not be allowed to go abroad even if it could afford to. Like
most other Cubans, it is barred from hotels and beaches used by foreign
tourists.
In this neighbourhood, as in every other one, a Committee for the Defence of
the Revolution watches for activities that might be deemed subversive. If
Isabel, Vladimir or Michel failed to join periodic marches or demonstrations
their lack of revolutionary fervour would count against them when it came to
getting jobs or promotions.
Vladimir and Isabel resent their lack of money and lack of freedom, but the
curious thing is that they do not resent Fidel Castro. They regard him not
as a dictator, but as the father of the nation, an ascetic and incorruptible
man who gave everything for the revolution. Castro certainly avoids
self-aggrandisement. There is not a statue or a street named after him in
the whole of Havana, and scarcely a billboard bearing his picture. When he
announced his resignation, “I was almost in tears,” admitted Vladimir. “He's
close to a god,” said Isabel.
They are also proud of Castro's revolution, of its provision of free universal
healthcare and literacy, of its creation of an egalitarian society, of its
survival in the face of a crippling 40-year US trade embargo. Like most
Cubans, they have no wish to see Cuban communism collapse like the Soviet
Union's and be replaced by rampant, unbridled capitalism. They have no
desire to live in the United States.
But the revolution has stagnated, says Isabel. “It has come to the point where
it needs to be renewed and readjusted,” agrees Vladimir, who says he would
welcome greater foreign investment so long as Cuba is not exploited. “The
old revolutionaries should open their minds and eyes to the realities of the
world. They should realise the Cuban people are also among the poor people
of the world and that we require changes.”
Walking around Havana, it is hard to disagree. Unlike Soviet communism, Cuba's
brand of Caribbean communism has not extinguished all gaiety from life.
People live outside. They love to sing and dance. They enjoy a vibrant and
distinctive culture. But the capital is stuck in a time warp. Though its
fine Spanish colonial buildings are now crumbling, Hemingway and Graham
Greene would have little trouble recognising the city they frequented in the
1950s.
Battered old Buicks and Chevrolets from that pre-Revolution period still
trundle along the unclogged streets. Shops are thinly stocked. There is not
an advertisement or commercial hoarding in sight. Hardly any Cubans own
mobile phones, and even fewer have internet access.
The parlous state of the Cuban economy is everywhere apparent — in the
so-called “divers” who rummage through rubbish bins for plastic bottles to
sell, in the hawkers of stolen cigars who beg you to buy so that they can
feed their children, and in old men like Estavan Muro, 87, who supplements
his £5 monthly pension by flogging copies of Granma for a couple of pennies
more than the cover price to those who fail to buy one before the day's
limited supply runs out. Amazingly, even Mr Muro insists that Castro is a
great man.
When the National Assembly unveils the new president and 31-member Council of
State tomorrow, Castrologists will analyse the list minutely for hints of a
change of direction.
Castro's brother, Raúl, 71, is expected to be the new president, and during
the 19 months he has stood in for his ailing brother he has at least spoken
of the need for structural reforms. But the real interest will lie in the
roles allotted to the next generation — notably Felipe Pérez Roque,
42, the Foreign Minister, and Carlos Lage Dávila, 56, presently one of five
Vice-Presidents. Mr Roque, Castro's former personal secretary, is a die-hard
communist in the mould of his old boss.
Mr Lage is considered a moderniser. In the 1990s he helped to save the regime
after the collapse of its sponsor, the Soviet Union, by teaming up with
foreign investors to develop a lucrative tourism industry. More recently he
has visited China and Vietnam, two state-run economies that have carried out
free-market reforms while retaining strict political control.
A more prominent role for Mr Lage would be encouraging, but it would not offer
Vladimir and his family swift relief. Though old and ill, Castro will
assuredly veto any moves that would seriously challenge his baleful legacy.
