Posted on Fri, Sep. 05, 2008
Associated Press
LA PALMA, Cuba --
The United States has offered Cuba $100,000 in emergency aid for the
victims of Hurricane Gustav and is willing to send far more if a
U.S.-approved disaster assessment team is allowed to tour the
hardest-hit areas.
All aid would be provided through international relief organizations,
with none going directly to the communist government, said Gregory
Adams, a spokesman for the U.S. Interests Section in the Cuban capital.
''We're awaiting a response from the Cuban government, whether they say
yea or nay,'' Adams said. ``It's not a shift in U.S. policy, it's a
response to a humanitarian emergency.''
The Cuban government has not commented on the offer from its traditional
foe.
Gustav damaged 100,000 homes, so the initial U.S. offer works out to
only about $1 per home in need of repair.
But Cuba's government is facing sky-high expectations from those who
lost everything in the storm. Yanet Pérez, for one, is convinced the
government will build her a new home.
''I have faith. Other times when catastrophes have happened, they have
mobilized and rebuilt,'' said the 28-year-old, who was slumped in a
rocking chair with her 1-year-old daughter in front of the skeletal
remains of her home in La Palma. ``Those with children are given priority.''
Such sentiment sounds much like the propaganda that clogs
state-controlled radio and television -- but also reflects the genuine
expectations of people who have always been promised that the communist
system will provide for them, especially when times are hardest.
Living up to those expectations is an important test for Raúl Castro,
who succeeded his brother, Fidel, as president six months ago.
While Gustav killed at least 122 people, including 26 in the United
States, Cuba reported no deaths, thanks to mandatory evacuations. Still,
the Category 4 hurricane will worsen an already severe, island-wide
housing shortage.
Thousands who moved into temporary housing after Hurricane Michelle in
2001 still live in the decrepit apartments without proper water and
sewage, and many are skeptical about quick recovery from Gustav as well.
''You have to keep pestering the [Communist] Party or they do nothing,''
said Josefa Fuentes, 52, who complained that officials won't fix the
hole the hurricane left in her roof in Batabanó, a low-lying fishing
community south of Havana.
Russian planes carried tents, floor tiles, pipes and food to Havana on
Thursday, and several Latin American countries have pledged to send aid.
But Fidel Castro wrote this week that repairs could cost billions -- on
an island where the average state salary is only about $20 per month.
The U.S. government offered aid after Hurricane Michelle, too, and Cuba
turned it down. But Cuba took advantage of a 2000 U.S. law allowing
direct-payment sale of U.S. food and agricultural products to the
island. Today, America is Cuba's top supplier of food.
Havana offered 1,600 doctors to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, which
devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in August 2005. The State Department said
that Cuban help was not needed.
Gustav's center roared close to La Palma, a banana-growing town flanked
by breathtaking green, limestone mountains, leaving piles of sticks
where homes once stood. The region is where Cubans plant their finest
tobacco, though the crop won't be affected because Gustav hit before
planting season.
Work to rebuild homes is still days off, but trucks loaded with metal
sheets for roofs and other flimsy construction materials have begun
arriving.
Much of the recovery will fall to the military and brigades of students
and young communists forced to work hard and fast for little or no wages.
In the one-room Batabanó home that Maria Elena Araujo shares with her
wheelchair-using husband, the hole Gustav punched in the roof allows
sunlight to shine at jagged angles on the bed. Araujo said officials
told her it didn't require urgent attention.
''We don't have any support from anyone,'' the 54-year-old said. ``I
don't see a solution. I hope it doesn't rain.''
Back in La Palma, Pérez and her family are living in far worse
conditions. Hurricane Gustav tore off the roof and crushed the walls and
floor. ''It's a total loss,'' she said.
They sleep in a wood hut crammed with furniture salvaged from the house.
There's no electricity. A truck rumbles by every day with potable water
and milk for the baby. But the family has to cook on a camping stove,
subsisting on rice and beans it stored up before the storm.
''The food is the hardest thing. There's not enough of it,'' said Pérez,
who said she'd like to slaughter one of the chickens her husband raises,
but that a lack of refrigeration means eating all the meat in one sitting.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/673659.html
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