June 15, 2008
Cubans flee island over 'sham' reforms
Optimism within Raul Castro's Cuba is fading as his new freedoms make
little impact on the poor
Tony Allen-Mills
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
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4138127.ece
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