By David Gonzalez. The New York Times, May 30, 2001
HAVANA — Manuel has two jobs: one that the government provides and
another that provides for him.
By day he is a carpenter renovating once-elegant buildings into hotels and
shops for the state, earning the equivalent of about $7 a month. By night, after
having slipped a third of his pay to his foreman to leave work early, he steers
tourists to private restaurants or sells them black-market cigars and rum.
Every dollar he earns in whispered deals helps buy food and other
necessities that his monthly wage never covers. To the government he is a
delinquent, but he thinks of himself as a survivor — both of his youthful
idealism and the hard times since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and its
aid.
"When I was young, we went to the square to sing and chant slogans for
the revolution," said Manuel, 26, who declined to give his full name. "We
did not understand. But now we feel deluded. If we had real work and good pay we
could live like people anywhere else."
But Cuba is unlike anyplace else. Though billboards proclaim "Victorious
in the New Millennium" and Fidel Castro still clings to the revolutionary
ideals of an earlier generation, the unending scramble to make ends meet and the
voices in the streets tell another story.
What economic growth there has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union
and its subsidies has come through a painful invasion — not the gun-toting
soldiers Mr. Castro always warned about but hordes of camera-carrying tourists.
Their money, however, serves more to remind Cubans of the gap between them
and the outside world than to better their lives. Little trickles down to those
who drive cabs, clean rooms or tote luggage, or to people like Manuel who hustle
on the fringes. It is an encounter that pits the socialist promises of a
class-free, egalitarian society against the realities of daily struggle.
"In any other country, working honorably, I could support my family,"
said Manuel. "Here, I have no future. This is not what my parents expected.
Yes, what the revolution accomplished here was done nowhere else. But we need to
improve. We need to open new paths."
Ever Loyal to Castro
There are those, like Alberto Estévez, who still believe in the old
paths. A retired military officer, 59, he dismisses any doubts about his
country's direction. He spends his days in his house in Matanzas, where he sells
sodas and snacks from a counter in the doorway. "I think that little by
little we will get out of this period," he said. "Besides, any country
in the world facing a blockade like ours without a revolution like ours, it
would not have survived for so long. For that, we have to acknowledge the skills
Fidel has as a statesman."
Unlike younger people who recall only the hardship of the "special
period" after the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Estévez remembers
images of poor, barefoot children and destitute peasants from before the
revolution. So while the country may not be able to give its citizens everything
they want, he says, it also has to have its priorities.
"Everybody may want a car, but there would not be enough gas," he
said. "The country would have to spend money on luxuries, when it really
needs to spend it on education and other fundamental needs."
Upstairs his daughter-in-law, Victoria, prepared dinner of vegetables and
chicken. A Ukrainian who married a Cuban and moved to Matanzas a decade ago, she
is able to squirrel away a few dollars, taking advantage of her Ukrainian
passport to travel to Mexico where she buys bogus designer shirts for $2 apiece
to sell back home for $8 or more.
"You can't compare it to Cuba," she said of the Soviet Union in
which she grew up. "Russian society was stronger. But not in ideology,
because in ideology Cuba is stronger."
Joel, a family friend, dropped in for a visit after having spent the morning
selling plastic bra straps downtown. He used to sell sandwiches, but when the
government suggested that he bake pizzas, he decided to become a street vendor
because it offered more freedom.
"To develop ourselves, we have to have capitalist means," said
Joel, who is 28, "to take from it things like marketing and competition,
because if we did not we would not get ahead. In capitalism the economy is about
business and coping for yourself. But socialism will also stay with us. We have
to have solidarity with our family and neighbors, to help them, not to dominate
them or humiliate them." In some ways, he said, the hardships of the 90's
helped prod Cuba into adopting economic reforms that rewarded individual
initiative.
"We were parasites of Russia, sending them sugar while they gave us oil
and other things," he said. "If we had done in 1965 what we are doing
now, we never would have had the crisis that came after the fall of the
socialist camp."
The Triumphs Wear Thin
Tony, a 35-year-old former construction worker who now gets a $1 commission
for every tourist he sends to a private restaurant in Old Havana, also wonders
what more could have happened if Cuba had changed in the early 60's. He is
tired, he said, of hearing that health and education are great triumphs.
"We have been saying that for 42 years," he said. "What else
is there? The revolution had great ideas in the beginning. It was brilliant. You
have to admit, Fidel was a brilliant organizer. But he stayed in the past."
Tony grew up hearing about how bad the United States was, and how much
better off Cubans were than the residents of impoverished third world countries.
But there came a point when the comparisons just did not ring true anymore, he
said. He left school when he was 17, saying it didn't make any sense to
continue.
"I'm not saying I suffer like in Africa, but Africa did not have 42
years of a revolution," he said. "If you are comparing us for 42 years
with the United States only in bad things, why not the good also? Don't compare
me with those children who die in Africa. Compare me with the children who go to
school in Miami on motorcycles. Compare me with the children who have food in
their stomachs."
Yet the relentless propaganda about the evils of the United States has had
an effect.
The Critical and the Curious
Marisa, a schoolteacher in Santiago, said she could not think of living in a
place like New York.
"In the United States the children can't play in the street because
they'll be stolen," she said. "Here they can go to the movies, to the
beach, because nothing like that happens. There they kill them to steal their
organs."
She knows that other people leave for political reasons, but she stays away
from political discussion, saying the dissidents are a small community with no
following. She is more concerned with finding a way to support her two sons, who
live with her in one dingy room; every day after school she sells soft drinks to
help feed and clothe them.
"I'll go through many things, but I'll never leave Cuba," she
said. "Life in the United States is very violent."
Not that she has ever been there. On the radio, one of the few luxuries in
her otherwise spartan place, the singer Marc Anthony crooned. "I need to
know," he sang. "I need to know."
Indeed, there is a great curiosity about the United States and its culture.
People manage to get videotapes of popular Spanish-language television shows
from Miami, and young people often sport shirts with the Fubu or Tommy Hilfiger
logo. On weekends, many people look forward to the latest American mystery or
action movie on state television.
That eagerness worries Raúl Rivero, one of the island's few
independent journalists.
"There is a fascination with the United States which is very dangerous,"
he said. "It has been produced because the propaganda against the United
States is wasted and tired. The government spends all week attacking the United
States, and on Saturday they put on two movies, North American thrillers or
gangster movies. As bad as they are, they have a social aspect. You hear people
say, `You saw the car the bad guy had?' "
His fear is that young people will reject all things Cuban when there is a
change in the government.
"Here, culture is controlled," he said. "The worry is that
when there is a change there could also be a transformation from the most anti-
American place on earth to an invasion where people embrace a culture that is
not theirs."
A Sour View of Castro
Ángel, a 36-year-old resident of Santiago, already embraces American
culture and 70's rock, playing his Deep Purple tapes, jumping up to mimic an
air-guitar version of "Smoke on the Water." He lives with his wife and
son inside a sparsely furnished apartment. In the back, a bucket serves as a
toilet bowl; a piece of cardboard covers an open sewage drain.
Ángel understood that life before 1959 was hard. But this was not
what he had expected. He left his job as a messenger to work as a mechanic,
although that did not pay much because customers were scrimping and doing
repairs themselves. Sometimes he tries to sell cigars to tourists.
In his apartment, there was no milk for his infant son, nor cement to finish
building a bathroom. The apartment reeked of urine from a storm that flooded the
sewage pipe.
"As long as he is here, nothing will change," he said, stroking
his chin in silent reference to Mr. Castro. "How many socialist countries
are left? The Soviet Union fell after 60 years. What does that mean? If this
hasn't prospered in 42 years, what would you conclude? That socialism does not
work.
"They tricked us into thinking capitalism is bad. But what did
socialism accomplish? That is what he is scared of."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | 