ON a routine patrol off the Caribbean resort of Cancun earlier this month, the
crew of a Mexican naval vessel spotted unusual activity aboard an arriving
yacht. When officers inspected the boat, they found 33 Cuban migrants on
board.
The Cubans were heading for Miami by a roundabout route - instead of braving
the short but heavily policed crossing from western Cuba to Florida, they
were planning to be escorted by professional smugglers overland through
Mexico to the US border.
Authorities in both Mexico and America have reported a recent jump in the
number of Cubans attempting to flee their home-land, despite widely
publicised economic and social reforms introduced by Raul Castro, who
succeeded his ailing brother, Fidel, as president last February.
The younger Castro has won international attention for a series of
eye-catching reforms that seemingly marked the beginning of the end of the
rigid communist orthodoxy bequeathed by his 81-year-old brother.
Yet the lifting of bans on mobile phones, improved access to computers and
other consumer goods, and the removal of unpopular restrictions on wages and
foreign currency have so far had a limited impact on a poor population
reeling from the effects of rising fuel and food prices.
Cubans have been voting with their feet, and those who succeed in reaching
Miami have raised serious doubts about Raul Castro’s intentions as he tries
to defuse mounting public criticism.
“It’s just a big facade to impress the people,” claimed Yhosvany Carmona, a
popular young Cuban television actor who fled Havana via the Dominican
Republic and Puerto Rico and arrived in Miami last week. “Who are these
people who can now afford to buy computers, cellphones and DVDs? They are
the same people who could afford to buy them on the black market before.” In
one sense, Castro, 77, has had little choice but to embark on a radical
restructuring of a Caribbean economy that has been struggling to rebuild
itself since the collapse of the Soviet Union robbed it of its principal
banker.
Forced to import at least half of its food and fuel requirements, Havana has
begun to acknowledge that revolutionary fervour and ideological purity are
no match for a global financial melt-down. The Cuban vice-president, Carlos
Lage, complained earlier this month that “the blind laws of the market have
converted the world economy into a casino”.
Lage revealed that Cuba’s food imports this year will cost £1.3 billion (€1.5
million), up from £750m last year. Its fuel costs have risen from £4.5m a
day to £6m a day. Fearful of stoking revolt by passing these costs on to
Cuban consumers, the government has been heavily subsidising prices, forcing
it to cut back on other projects.
Cracks in communist ranks have already begun to appear, and Maria del Carmen
Concep-cion, a senior member of the party secretariat, warned publicly last
week that the Fidelista revolution might “self-destruct” if economic
problems were not resolved.
The pressures appear to have persuaded Raul Castro that he cannot afford to
wait for his brother’s death to begin dismantling his legacy. Many
Cuba-watchers have been stunned by changes they believe that Fidel could
never have countenanced, most notably the first stirring of critical debate
in the govern-ment-controlled media. Some have concluded that the giant of
the Cuban revolution must now be so ill that he does not know what is
happening.
Yet other analysts have noted that the reforms announced so far have been more
about style than substance. Cuban citizens are now allowed to stay at beach
hotels that were previously reserved for foreign tourists, but there has
scarcely been a flood of local pleasure-seeking. The average salary of
Cuba’s 11.4m citizens is £8.70 a month, and hotel rooms cost up to £100 a
night.
The government has also removed a ceiling on wages. Originally intended to
prevent social inequalities from emerging, the low salaries paid to Cuban
professionals have driven thousands of them from the island. While the
Castros are proud of the reputation of Cuban doctors, who staff hospitals
across South America, sources in Havana say many of the doctors are forced
to work abroad because they can barely feed their families at home.
US analysts believe that Raul Castro has little choice but to woo foreign
investment, encourage private initiative, and address popular discontent.
“What people used to say in low voices in the corridors they are now saying
out loud at public meetings,” said Carmona.
Younger Cubans have been taking risks that were unthinkable when Fidel was in
his prime. At a meeting with students at Havana University in February,
Ricardo Alarcon, the government’s third highest-ranking official, was
stunned when several lined up at a microphone and challenged government
policies.
One student, Eliecer Avila, wanted to know why workers were paid in a
worthless local currency, while most consumer goods were priced in a
convertible currency pegged to the dollar. He also wanted to know why Cubans
couldn’t travel to Bolivia to see the site where Che Gue-vara died.
Alarcon’s response showed how desperately out of touch the Cuban leadership
has become after decades of relying on failed Marxist slogans. In a barely
coherent 30-minute response, he defended the ban on foreign travel: “If all
the world, some six billion people, could travel whenever they wanted, the
jam in the skies would be enormous.”
Avila was duly arrested for his cheek, and conspicuously absent from Raul
Castro’s reforms has been any move to free political prisoners or to
tolerate serious political dissent. The regime has turned a blind eye to a
number of critical blogs that were surreptitiously started on the island,
but when Yoani Sanchez, author of the popular Generacion Y blog, won a top
Spanish award for her writing, she was denied a travel visa to collect her
prize.
Some analysts believe that Raul may be attempting to engineer a transition to
Vladimir Putin-like democracy, with a new class of Cuban oligarchs emerging
from the ranks of the communist and military elite. Others are more
optimistic that Raul can bury a bankrupt political system alongside the
brother who built it.
The European Union will this week consider lifting its sanctions against Cuba
in the hope of encouraging further political change. Barack Obama, the US
presidential candidate, has said he is willing to meet Raul Castro, although
he will not lift a US trade embargo immediately.
Yet before anyone got too carried away by Castro’s tentative reforms, the
Communist party organ, Granma, warned in an editorial that the reforms were
aimed at “strengthening socialism” and would not lead to the kind of change
sought by “adversaries, fifth columnists and internal mercenaries”. The
editorial was entitled: “There will not be room for subversion in Cuba”.
New freedoms:
Cubans can now
■ Earn more than one another
■ Carry mobile phones legally
■ Stay in luxury hotels
■ Visit resort beaches
■ Rent cars
■ Buy DVD players
■ Grow and sell coffee and tobacco
To be a reformer, the Castro brothers must reform. Cubans will never be free unless they can:
1) Vote the ruling party out if they wish, and even investigate their leaders for crimes;
2) Have economic opportunity, the only real measure of public power and freedom;
3) Spread the truth.
wymck, Florida, USA
You might do an accompanying article about the dangers awaiting anybody, from whichever country, attempting to reach the US through Mexico.
Jhozae, Miami Beach, USA