T.K. Arun on Cuban crisis

By T.K. Arun in Economic Times
We have no future.”
That bald assessment of her life by Maria (name changed), an average Cuban in her twenties, should serve as a chilling warning for all opponents of globalisation around the world, particularly in India.
For Cuba has lived out the anti-capitalist dream in all its many-splendoured glory and yet that dream has now gone sour — to an extent where many prefer to be eaten by sharks while braving the 90-mile, illegal sea passage by small boat or raft to Miami to slowly melting away into the bleak lethargy of hopelessness that life has come to mean on this Caribbean paradise.
Cuba’s ‘socialist’ achievements are truly impressive: compulsory and free education for all up to 15 years of age, free further education for anyone keen enough to pursue it, healthcare that is accessible to all, racial integration (up to 400,000 Africans had been brought to Cuba to work on the island’s sugarcane plantations before the slave trade was abolished in the latter half of the 19th century), vigorous cultural output, enviable achievements in sports, the ability to help other countries with teams of doctors and teachers and independence from domination by other countries.
If Cubans had been content to compare themselves with their counterparts on the neighbouring island of Hispaniola, where lawless Haiti and dominated Dominican Republic snuggle together, or with the residents of Yucatan province of Mexico, to the west across the Gulf of Mexico, or even with the people of Jamaica and Cayman islands to the south, they would have been not so desolate.
But human nature being what it is, Cubans compare themselves not with what they have left behind in their own history but with the lived prosperity in their giant neighbour to the north, the United States.
Prosperity is sadly missing from Cuban life. Cuban good times had been underwritten by sugar purchases by the Soviet Union at fancy prices and transfer of assorted subsidies from the erstwhile east European bloc, including armament and training. With the collapse and demise of the ‘second world’, the Cuban economy crumpled. That the Cuban nation did not follow suit is testimony to the political will, tenacity and rootedness of Fidel Castro’s leadership. However, the people lead a miserable life.
A feature of the ‘Special Period’ announced with the onset of the economic crisis post 1991 is a system of two currencies: local Cuban pesos and convertible units of currency (CUCs) pegged at an exchange rate of 0.9 CUC per US dollar. Salaries are paid in local pesos, incentives for good work in CUCs.
Elementary food rations can be purchased in pesos, but to buy anything else, even toothpaste and soap, leave alone the luxuries of life, you need CUCs. Apart from the meagre CUCs doled out as incentives, there are three ways Cubans can lay their hands on CUCs: remittances from the Cubans who have made it to the US, providing (all kinds of) services to foreign tourists and, ubiquitously, corruption including pilferage. The people of Cuba resent having such degradation being foisted on them.
Apparently, Raul Castro — Fidel’s brother, comrade-in-arms in the revolution along with Che Guevara and Camilio Cienfuegos, head of the ministry of revolutionary armed forces and anointed heir apparent — has visited China and favours introducing economic reforms of the market kind.
However, Fidel would suffer no such neo-liberal nonsense. So, socialism in one island continues to shrivel. What is not widely appreciated in India is Latin America’s native mythology about revolution. Practically every one of the 20 countries of the region has a tradition, going back to the time of local resistance against Iberian colonial rule, of yearning for revolutionary change.
Fidel traces his revolutionary lineage from 19th century Cuban prophet of revolution Jose Marti and fighters like Antonio Maceo. Only Cuba under Fidel Castro has lived out that revolutionary dream. So Fidel’s Cuba enjoys immense prestige in the entire region. Latin American leaders cynically pay homage to Cuba and Fidel, to shore up their domestic image, whether to prove that they are not puppets of the US or to boost their own pro-poor credentials.
This widespread popular admiration for Cuba across Latin America, drawing upon the region’s historical commitment to revolution and change, is a major factor restraining the US from launching any direct attack on the island, apart from Cuba’s own capacity to wage a prolonged war against any occupying force.
So Cuba survives. Not as a beacon of revolutionary light for the world but as a negative example of the limits of achievement of human resource development sans a market economy that can put those resources to work. Socialists pride themselves as the future, not bemoan being deprived of one.