Posted on 07/10/2002 3:02:51 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Even the prostitutes outside the Havana nightclubs look bored. Business in Cuba is not booming. Tourism, the country's main foreign currency earner and the basket into which the government has put so many of its eggs, is down by something like 20 per cent in the first six months of this year. Hundreds of hotel rooms remain empty.
Cuba's biggest employer, the sugar industry, is also suffering as world prices stay low. Figures released by the US Agriculture Department estimated that the country's sugar exports, which average about $550m (£359m) annually, last year fell to $476m.
The government is closing almost half its ageing, decrepit sugar mills and cutting industrial capacity by about 50 per cent. The authorities say workers will not suffer but it is a bitter pill to swallow for an industry that has shaped Cuba's rural and economic landscape for centuries and has been at the heart of Fidel Castro's revolution.
Foreign analysts say Cuba, still the world's fourth largest sugar exporter, is doing the right thing by downsizing but President Castro has never really cared for outside advice. As if that were not enough Venezuela, which was one of the island's main oil suppliers, with 53,000 barrels a day, has suggested that it is unlikely to resume exporting much-needed fuel to its Latin American neighbour until it sees some money for previous deliveries.
In a rare admission that there are difficulties, the state-run media have urged consumers to con serve energy - a sure sign that Cubans will suffer much of the long hot summer with power cuts.
Foreign investors keep complaining that the Cuban state partners they must work with are taking their money but do not always want to listen to their advice. The European Union has sent a report on behalf of investors to the Cuban government with a list of complaints and suggested solutions. It says there are too many rules and regulations applied to foreign companies that are often not applied fairly.
The investors keep coming because they see a potentially attractive market just a short hop from the US, a market with which Washington prevents its own citizens from doing business.
The question is when will they see some return on their investment? Mr Castro has made it clear that they will not see any fundamental changes soon. The 75-year-old has even been trying to ensure that his achievements of the past 43 years remain long after he is gone.
More than 99 per cent of Cuba's registered voters, more than 8m people, last month signed a petition supporting an amendment to the constitution that makes socialism on the island "irrevocable".
"I twisted and turned all night," said one Cuban, "telling myself I shouldn't sign. But of course, in the end, I did. I've got too much to lose. I've got to think of my husband's job, my children."
While no one was frog-marched to the signing stations the fear, or perhaps tired resignation, in the air was almost palpable. The revolution has ensured that no Cuban goes hungry and all have free education and healthcare. Everyone has a little something that they cannot risk losing.
For many others, change is the last thing they want. The streets are safe and Mr Castro keeps at bay what he calls the evil Yankee imperialist who, many Cubans have come to believe will, given half a chance, flood their streets with fast-food outlets and send a screaming crowd of Cuban exiles back to claim houses they would say they had lost in the 1959 revolution.
Mr Castro is left performing a delicate balancing act, allowing in a little controlled capitalism to keep his battered economy afloat but not too much that it will poison what he sees as the purity of his socialist system. All previous predictions that he was about to topple have proved wide of the mark.
With the 145km-wide Florida Straits, which separate Cubans from their traditional refuge in Miami, calm and Fidel firmly signalling that nothing was about to change, rumours recently began circulating of another huge exodus.
Similar incidents have proved to be a way for Mr Castro to wash away the disbelievers and purify his socialist revolution. The last exodus was in 1994; before that, in the huge 1980 Mariel boatlift, thousands of Cuban exiles sent boats to pluck their family and friends, and a fair few prisoners released from Cuban jails, from the beaches west of Havana. But However, the Cuban authorities have made it plain that they will not allow a boatlift. Scores of police have been patrolling the normally bustling Havana seafront, the Malecon.
With the way out blocked, all that those unhappy with the system can do is wait and complain under their breath. Mr Castro, one or two senior ministers have recently been bold enough to suggest, will not live for ever.
But love Mr Castro or hate him, change is a hard concept to grasp for most Cubans, since they have known nothing else but him for 43 years.
According to Castro and Ralph Nader, the U.S. model inhibits the wonderfulness of communism.
Cuba last year devalued its currency by 18 percent and fell behind in debt payments of $500 million to private banks and firms in France, Spain, Japan, Canada, Chile and Venezuela. (This does not include the repayment of government trade credits to France for the last four years and the principal on foreign debt of $35 billion.) With export prices down in nickel, sugar and tobacco, along with a fall in tourism and remittances from abroad, Cuba will remain an economic basket case. Doing business in countries that violate labor rights is not considered good business practice.
In Cuba, workers in foreign joint ventures are paid $400 to $500 a month, except that the Cuban government contracts the workers and pays them 400 to 500 pesos, or $20 a month, instead. Exploitation of child labor is officially tolerated, and it is commonplace to find children as young as 8 who are working. Finally, liberalizing exports to Cuba will produce a revenue windfall for customs brokerages, wholesale, distribution and retail stores -- all government-operated. This will provide increased money for Mr. Castro's intelligence and security services and neighborhood vigilante organizations, further postponing democracy and economic freedom in Cuba.
There are a score of countries in the Caribbean Basin that embrace free markets, political democracy and institutional reforms, thereby offering far greater opportunities than Cuba.***
Cuban Economic Downturn Deepens Island's Hardship - Duh, it's the communism. *** HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba's economy has been battered by falling tourism, low export prices and shortages of oil that will make life harder on the Caribbean island, experts and business sources said on Monday.
President Fidel Castro's government plans to shut down almost half of Cuba's inefficient sugar mills, which cannot compete at today's rock-bottom world price of about 5 U.S. cents a pound. The drastic measure will leave tens of thousands of Cubans out of work in Cuba's largest industry, which for decades was the backbone of its socialist revolution.
Cuba's pressing need for hard currency to pay for essential imports of food and oil led the government to jack up prices for consumer goods sold in dollar shops by up to 30 percent. The price hikes angered Cubans, most of whom earn local pesos but need dollars to buy a fan, a refrigerator or other basic consumer goods in the state-run shops.
"It is going to be a very hot summer in Havana, which can only mean more push for migration and more social tension," said Damian Fernandez, an expert on Cuba at Miami's Florida International University. ***
Perhaps the good people living under such a wacko will get sick enough of such abuse to hasten Mr. Castros' retirement from public life - one way or another (I can think of several possibilities.)
This ridiculous election result still has not been reported by CNN. BTW, the CNN correspondent in Cuba, Lucia Newman, hasn't been filing ANY reports from down there lately. Perhaps she is too embarrassed to report anything since there is no way to put a positive pro-Castro spin on the latest events in Cuba such as reports about the Varela Project or the 559 to 0 vote by the rubberstamp National Assembly to make communism "irrevocable."
The Media Research Center recently did a big report about Lucia's patheticly biased reporting and perhaps this is having an impact with the result that she has gone into a clamshell mode rather than risk making any reports from Cuba. Anyway, something is definitely strange going on with the CNN Cuban news bureau.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.