Posted on Wed, Apr. 02, 2008
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
HAVANA --
It's not the stuff of Lenin or Marx, or even of Fidel Castro, but it's
hardly free-market capitalism, either. In fact, steps to encourage a
Cuban spending spree may help the communist system and its new president
survive.
In rapid-fire decrees over the past week, Raul Castro's government has
done away with some despised restrictions, lifting bans on electric
appliances, microwaves and computers, inviting average citizens to enter
long-forbidden resorts and declaring they can even legally have their
own cell phones.
More could be on the way. Rumors are rampant the government could ease
travel restrictions and tolerate free enterprise that would let more
people start their own small businesses. And hopes that it will tweak
the dual-currency system that puts foreign products out of reach for
most Cubans have sparked a run on the peso.
''We're going to get out and buy more and more,'' said retiree Roberto
Avila. ``That's the future in Cuba, and it is a strong future.''
Cuba is still far from a buyers' paradise. Nearly everyone holds
government jobs, earning an average of $19.50 a month, though many get
dollars from tourism jobs or relatives abroad. It would take the average
Cuban five months to earn enough to buy a low-end DVD player that
someone could buy in a U.S. store with five hours of minimum-wage work.
By doing away with rules ordinary Cubans hate, Raul Castro may defuse
clamor for deeper economic and political change in the single-party
communist system.
On the other hand, the small changes could just whet Cubans' appetites
for more.
''These measures to allow Cubans to buy DVDs and everything else are
just to entertain the people,'' said Maite Moll, a 45-year-old state
engineer. ``It's not really important because it resolves nothing.''
Some Cubans worry that even the small measures already taken will create
class tensions and increase resentment between those earning state
salaries and those with access to dollars, given the new opportunities
for conspicuous consumption. Raul Castro is clearly hoping that greater
buying power will distract from any friction.
Certainly, the 76-year-old president has bolstered his popularity,
addressing for now the doubts that Cuba's government can survive without
his charismatic brother Fidel.
''If low-income groups have access to essential goods like food,
clothing and construction materials, and can sell and buy homes and use
them as collateral, it doesn't matter if you have a significant income
gap. People are better,'' said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics
expert at the University of Pittsburgh. ``That's what happened in China
and Vietnam.''
The new president is said to be an admirer of free-market reforms that
allowed those countries to revolutionize their economies while
maintaining single-party communist political control, though top
officials have said Cuba isn't about to follow a Chinese or Vietnamese path.
The food part of the equation could be profoundly affected by another
initiative promoted this week. The government is lending uncultivated
state-controlled land to private farmers and cooperatives to plant cash
crops such as coffee and tobacco, while paying producers more for basics
such as milk, meat and potatoes.
Over time, this could reduce chronic food shortages and change the face
of Cuban farming.
It's not new for the government to let private farmers take a crack at
putting state land to good use. But this time the government is letting
farmers more easily buy equipment and supplies at government stores,
removing a key impediment to their success.
The changes implemented barely a month into Raul's presidency are all
measures Fidel bitterly opposed for decades, publicly declaring that
even the smallest initiatives to increase economic and social freedoms
could create a Cuban ''new rich'' and destroy the island's hard-fought
social and economic equality.
Raul has pledged to consult his brother on all major decisions, but if
the elder Castro doesn't like what's going on, he has kept his views to
himself. Recuperating from an undisclosed illness in a secret location,
the 81-year-old Fidel has written essays every few days focusing on
international issues, making no mention of daily life in Cuba.
The latest changes are a far cry from perestroika or glasnost -- the
political opening and economic restructuring of the Gorbachev era in the
Soviet Union. But there are movements for greater freedoms among Cuban
intellectuals as well.
Raul Castro presided this week over the Congress of the Union of Cuban
Writers and Artists, hearing their call for more open debate about
``mechanisms of control and institutional censorship.''
''It seems clear that there is a disconnect between the cultural project
of the revolution and the references that broad sectors of the people
establish for themselves,'' said the group, an arm of the Communist
Party which in the past has been used to enforce ideological discipline.
And that disconnect could lead to unrest if more changes don't quickly
benefit the vast majority of Cubans. While people are excited to walk
around stores and hotel lobbies, they will soon become frustrated that
they can't afford to do more than look, said Juan Antonio Blanco, a
Cuban academic based in Ontario, Canada.
''This government is totally myopic and shortsighted if it doesn't
understand that it's sitting on dynamite,'' he said. ``They have to do
more than the things that will play in the international media.''
------
Associated Press writer Katherine Corcoran in Mexico City contributed to
this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/480355.html
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