Lucas Garve, CPI
HAVANA, July - During the months of July and August, Cubans enjoy special TV
programming. Entertainment increases; movies and soap operas are anxiously
expected.
There is a Spanish movie, with Julio Iglesias, that Cubans have liked for
three decades, "Life Remains the Same." The title and the song by the
same name, were so popular that they became symbols of persistence over time.
For Cubans, certain constants of daily life reaffirmed since then that there
were no changes. To continue life in the same neighborhood, living in the same
abode, receiving the same and insufficient food quota, fighting against the
thousand and one daily difficulties, listening to the same slogans exhorting to
a never-ending battle, all have contributed in one way or another to confer on
life an inalterability that's suffocating for many.
While the individual economy remains the same, the economy of the country is
changing.
According to data from sources such as CEPAL, productive activity since 1999
has increased, 6.2% in that year. Inflation remained under control (3%) and
controlled prices remained stable, free market prices even went down. After the
first half of the decade, Cubans could buy a little more.
Foreign investment continued growing in real estate and energy, and the
banking system was restructured. Investment volume of over 4 billion dollars
contributed to back up tourism, nickel production, oil extraction and
telecommunications.
In 2001, the Cuban government expects to extract 4 million tons of oil and
an unknown amount of gas.
Some 1,200 companies are undergoing what's been called the program for
entrepreneurial improvement, a new system of enterprise that starts from the
premise that certain public concerns should be self-financing. These companies
decide what to do with some of their profits and could reinvest them to improve
working conditions for their workers.
Even though not up to the levels of the 80's, sales in controlled price
markets have increased by 6.5%, in the free agricultural markets by 36%. Sales
in hard currency in the internal market increased by 9%. By 1999, 62% of the
population had access to dollars. The median monthly salary was 249 pesos, while
the unemployment rate went down to 6%, was 5.5% in 2000, and is expected to be
5.8% this year.
In the political arena, massive mobilizations set the beat in the life of
the country. There is a campaign of auditing and control against the diversion
of resources, lack of financial control and corruption.
The opposition, composed of numerous small organizations, survives without
real public support and without being able to broadcast its objectives, thanks
to foreign support.
Repressed, politically disoriented and dependent on groups in Florida, most
opposition groups appeal to exhausted methods and procedures of resistance,
while their membership decreases, whether due to repressive action or to the
continued exodus of its most experienced activists.
However, a factor that affects opposition activity is the lack of knowledge
of the country's internal conditions. By paying attention to concepts and
indicators coming from the Florida exiles, they neglect the essential logic that
move the country toward a more advanced transition.
Meanwhile, the measures recently adopted by the Bush government accentuate
the economic difficulties of those who receive help from their families abroad
and in the long run only stimulate the decision to emigrate to Florida and to
limit visits by Cubans to the island. These help transmit first hand knowledge
of reality in Cuba. It would be better that foreign policy makers in the U.S.
take into account changes in the island and not the criteria of power groups in
Florida, without a real base among Cubans here and many there, who undoubtedly
prefer a gradual rapprochement to the habitual confrontation between the two
governments on both sides of the Straits of Florida.
Versión
original en español
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