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No lack of anger, frustration
in Cuba
But voices won't be
heard in government-run media
By Sean Federico-O'Murchu.
Editor MSNBC.
Updated: 1:18 p.m. ET Oct. 6, 2004.
HAVANA - The two young men leaned on their
bikes outside a school in the Marianao neighborhood
of Havana, sheltering under trees from the
scorching afternoon sun, eager to talk about
what they don't like about Cuba.
Raidel wanted a better job, complained
that the Cuban peso is worthless and was
upset that his pal Levis can afford to buy
Adidas sneakers worth $50.
Raidel is 26, earns 320 pesos a month,
the average salary in Cuba, and gives part
of his meager salary to his divorced mother.
At the exchange rate of 26 pesos to the
dollar, Raidel calculated it would take
at least 10 months working in his job with
an extermination company to save up for
the shiny footwear.
Levis, 19, wore his sneakers proudly, status
symbols in a communist country awash in
Western influences.
The government-run dollar stores are filled
with fashionable shoes, clothes and electronic
items, all with hefty price tags and beyond
the means of most Cubans.
The stores aim to bolster the government's
access to foreign currency, but they have
created a growing gulf between the haves
and the have-nots.
Seeking changes
Levis said economic problems have stacked
the odds against him and other young Cubans.
He didn't buy the sneakers with his salary
at a government-run produce warehouse -
he also earns around 320 pesos, or $12 a
month.
Instead, he sells some of that produce
on the black market to earn dollars, brazenly
breaking the law to feed his appetite for
some glamour.
Despite his illicit gains, Levis is far
from content. "I would like to change
everything," he said. "I would
like to go to another country, get a better
life."
At Parque Central in another part of the
capital, Humberto Montayas lamented mounting
inequality. "I think that it's exploitation
that I'm being paid in one currency and
most of the goods are in dollars,"
he said.
The 38-year-old said he quit his job as
an engineer because of the low pay. He said
black Cubans like himself faced the brunt
of the hardships because most of those who
went into exile - and could now send dollars
to their families - were white.
"We have been making sacrifices for
45 years and we've got nothing," he
said.
Sound of silence
It's not really difficult to find dissenting
voices in Cuba. From disaffected youth to
artists and the political opposition, there
is anger, of various degrees, at the policies
imposed by Fidel Castro.
What you can't hear is any of that fury
in the media.
The government owns all the newspapers,
TV, Web sites and radio stations in Cuba,
and only trusts party loyalists in top editorial
positions.
This stranglehold means there is no way
of gauging the scale of opposition to Castro,
the longest-serving leader in the world.
People in Havana grumble about their salaries,
the pothole-ridden roads, the crumbling
public transportation system, the daily
power cuts, the lack of basic products on
the store shelves, the dual economy caused
by the influx of dollars.
But few will point the finger at Castro,
and most will at least partly blame the
43-year-old economic embargo imposed by
the U.S. government.
"We have everything we need, although
we have a lot of problems that come from
the U.S. embargo," said Miguel, a resident
of Habana del Este, a working-class neighborhood
outside the capital. "But we enjoy
our solidarity."
Yeneli Martinez, lining up for desert at
the famous Coppelia ice cream parlor near
Havana University, was confident that she
was getting all the news about Cuban life
from the media.
Asked what she would to change in Cuba,
she didn't hesitate, "The U.S. embargo;
because then we would not have the problems
we have now and a lot of things would be
different."
Castro opponents in Florida and inside
Cuba say the embargo is a non-issue, that
unhappiness is widespread, but muted through
terror.
"Cuban society has a sense of fear,
mixed with hopelessness and lack of viable
options in their minds," said Camila
Ruiz of the Cuban American National Foundation,
the largest of the exile groups in the United
States.
Listening to the people
Government officials, for their part,
admit that life is hard, but say they are
listening to the people.
"This social project [the revolution]
has the support of the majority of the Cuban
people," said Gustavo Machin, head
of the North American desk at the Foreign
Ministry.
He said Castro and his ministers hear the
complaints of ordinary Cubans through internal
channels. He noted how the Cuban leader
himself appeared on television recently
to answer public anxiety over power cuts.
But Machin has no patience with the handful
of opposition groups, those who get attention
in the Western media but who are little
heard in Cuba.
He defended the jailing of 75 dissidents
last year - a move that drew stinging criticism
from human rights groups - as a righteous
response to provocation from people he sees
as U.S. puppets.
"The main hope [of the United States]
has been to destroy the revolution,"
he said.
Overnight, the wives of some of those same
dissidents held an open protest in Revolution
Square. Not a word about the rare act of
political defiance was reported in Cuba's
official media on Wednesday.
For many of the country's reporters, that's
the way it should be. They justify the censorship
in language that mirrors that of government
officials.
Tubal Paez, head of the Cuban Journalists
Union, said reporters face "special
pressures" because of Washington's
ultimate aim of destroying Castro's government.
"For the journalist himself, a psychological
negative mechanism is produced so that he
must be careful in case any information
he writes could help the [U.S.] embargo,"
Paez said.
Rogelio Polanco, head of Juventud Rebelde,
the daily newspaper for Cuba's young population,
said lively debate was part and parcel of
the country's media.
But Polanco said there were limitations;
his paper, like the rest in Cuba, supported
the revolution and would never print an
article advocating changes in the system.
"It would be naïve for use to
give a weapon to our enemies, to the ones
who want to destroy us."
© 2004
MSNBC
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