 |
| Cubans going after their daily routine |
By Michele Chase, The Nation, October 20, 2011
When
Cuba held its Sixth Communist Party
Congress in April -- the first since 1997 -- the rituals felt familiar. It
kicked off with a mass military parade through the streets of Havana and closed
with a rousing rendition of the “Internationale.” Raúl Castro, who in the past
few years has assumed the reins of power from his ailing brother Fidel, praised
the revolution and promised he would never permit the return of capitalism.
Politics as usual? Yes and no. Despite appearances, major -- if gradual --
changes are afoot on the island.
Cuba is undergoing
a kind of silent transition. A series of economic reforms are shrinking the
size of the state-run economy and making room for a greatly expanded private
sector. The socialist dream isn’t over, but it’s been sharply redrawn. That
Cuba is becoming a mixed economy is no longer under debate. What is under
debate is what exactly that new economy will look like, how widely the benefits
will be spread and why the reforms are proceeding so slowly.
One year ago Raúl
Castro announced twin initiatives: mass layoffs to relieve the state’s budget
and a long list of newly approved categories in which people can start small
private businesses. After a draft version of the reforms was released, massive
assemblies were held throughout the country, organized in places of employment
or neighborhood associations. In April the final draft of the reform package
was passed in the Communist Party Congress.
Since the policy
began, the government has granted some 330,000 licenses, and for the first time
since the 1960s the newly self-employed (known as cuentapropista) are allowed to hire other Cubans, not just family
members. The government’s stated goal is to have nearly half the populace
working in the private sector by 2015. For a country where nearly 90 percent of
the economy was once in state hands, that will be a major about-face.
Several weeks ago a
new law permitted the sale of cars, with some restrictions. Additional
proposals on the table would permit the sale of houses, establish a system of
government-provided credit and eventually eliminate the food rationing system.
These are all staggering announcements in the Cuban context.
But the biggest
change of all may be how the role of the state is reconceptualized. Cuba’s
leaders now argue that the state can no longer afford the “paternalism” of the
country’s socialist heyday. They imply that citizens are a burden on the state,
enjoying costly social services and goods at negligible prices. In his
speeches, Raúl has downplayed the old themes of Cuba’s heroic struggle against
imperialism and its bright socialist future. The new mantra stresses
efficiency, productivity, the need to work. And so, unable to maintain its “bloated”
payrolls, the state has begun shedding workers. Although Raúl assured Cubans
that no one would be “abandoned to their fate,” he also sternly warned that the
idea of Cuba as “the only country in the world where you can live without
working must be erased forever.”
Cuba has
experimented with liberal economic reforms in the past, most notably in the
1990s. Battered by the fall of the Soviet Union, the government encouraged
private foreign investment and granted licenses for small private businesses
such as family restaurants and bike repair shops. But these concessions were
viewed as a necessary evil. By the end of the decade, as the economy
stabilized, they were scaled back. The difference now is that the leadership
actually embraces the notion of a robust private sector. According to Omar
Everleny, a professor at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy at the
University of Havana, this time the reforms won’t be temporary. “When you read
the Guidelines and Raúl’s speeches, you realize he’s determined to change
things. At the same time, I also realize he’s committed to the past, and that’s
the complicated part -- his commitment to history,” he said. “But he’s made the
decision not to turn back.”
* * *
Despite all the
fanfare, the reforms have proceeded slowly. In fact, the changes are not always
immediately perceptible to ordinary Cubans. When I asked a friend what she
thought of the economic reforms, she rolled her eyes. “When I see them, I’ll
let you know,” she said. Her response was typical and reveals one of the state’s
major challenges: how to get an exhausted, often pessimistic citizenry on
board. It’s not that Cubans necessarily oppose the reforms, but many express
legitimate concerns about when and how much they will benefit.
Since the fall of
the USSR, which had subsidized the Cuban economy, much of the population has
been consuming at subsistence level. “I’m not living; I’m just surviving,” is a
frequent refrain. Those who can’t tap into the tourist sector and don’t receive
remittances from family members abroad are weary of the daily struggle to make
ends meet on minimal state salaries.
For many Cubans,
the long-term benefits of the economic reforms seem distant. But the impact of
rising food prices and diminishing rations is immediate. During my visit to the
island in May, new signs outside shops in Havana announced prices for the
so-called “liberated” products -- that is, foods previously available at
nominal cost on the ration book. Considering that many families were already
spending nearly 80 percent of their salaries on food, it’s hard to imagine them
tightening their belts even further.
“The reforms are
facing a huge challenge,” said Roberto Veiga González, a progressive Catholic
intellectual and editor of Espacio Laical, a lively and sophisticated journal published by the Archdiocese of
Havana. Veiga explained that the leadership is constrained by current
conditions -- the global recession, constant conflict with Washington -- and
consequently wants to implement reforms gradually. Veiga himself approves of a
gradual transition, describing it as the most “responsible” decision. “But the
populace can’t take it anymore. They need those reforms now. Immediately. And
only insofar as they see those reforms benefiting them will they support the
changes and help the country transform. How can those two realities be
reconciled?”
The slow pace of
the reforms partly reflects the fact that the state has had to undertake a
delicate balancing act as it negotiates the economic transition with different
sectors. Among poorer Cubans, anxiety about the reforms is palpable. Although
the leadership has stated over and over that despite the planned layoffs and
diminished social services no one will be left behind, Everleny admits, “there
will be winners and losers.” During my visit I noticed more indigents on Havana’s
streets than in the past. Their number is minimal compared with the misery one
finds in other Latin American capitals, but the specter of the dispossessed is
something of a shock in Cuba and serves as a stark warning of the potential
social costs of privatization.
Cuba’s professional
class is also anxious. The new small-business licenses in the cities are
largely artisanal and service-oriented. How, then, will young professionals --
doctors, engineers, graphic designers, educators -- enter the expanding private
sector without de-skilling? One friend was toying with the idea of opening a
consultancy to advise fledgling cuentapropista on marketing strategies. Considering all the
first-time business owners in the making, it wasn’t a bad idea. But under the
current provisions, it wouldn’t be legal.
* * *
Even for those best
positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities, many questions remain.
How sustainable will the new businesses be? Without access to credit or
wholesale markets, most new entrepreneurs have been taking the path of least
resistance. As a result, small businesses requiring almost no start-up capital
have proliferated in Havana, especially pirated-DVD stands and tiny home-front
eateries selling sandwiches, coffee and soda. The ensuing competition can be
fierce. A friend told me about one sandwich kiosk that opened in his
neighborhood, only to be quickly trumped by another across the street, which
offered better food, a more varied menu and twenty-four-hour service. “Now how’s
the first guy going to survive?” he asked.
Many probably won’t.
In fact, 25 percent of the new cuentapropista licenses initially granted were relinquished
within a few months, defeated by high taxes, low profits and, in most cases, no
savings to weather the inevitable period of adjustment any new business requires.
The government is studying ways to tweak the reforms, for example by giving new
entrepreneurs a six-month tax exemption, lowering tax rates on certain forms of
revenue or extending small loans. Still, it’s clear that some who left state
jobs to try their hand at private businesses will soon seek to be
reincorporated into government payrolls.
Yet state
employment is shrinking, not growing. The only growth areas are the two sectors
the government has designated as strategically important: construction and
agriculture. Persuading Cuba’s highly educated population to accept jobs in
these sectors won’t be easy, but the government is trying to change attitudes.
During my visit, the University of Havana lowered the number of spots available
for humanities majors and raised the number for agricultural engineers. The
same week, the state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde featured an interview with a young dairy and
cattle farmer. He assured readers that the quality of life in the countryside
was much higher than they thought: “I have everything a young person living in
a city would have. A color TV, DVD player, electric fans…. Today’s farmers aren’t
like those from half a century ago.”
The Cuban economy
has been struggling for years. Actually, with some ups and downs, for decades.
So why is the transformation happening now? There are external reasons, such as
the global economic crisis and the costly hurricane damage of 2008. But mostly
the reforms are the result of Raúl Castro’s gradual consolidation of power. The
political shift may seem subtle, but it is important. Raúl’s style of
governance is more procedural and institutional, less charismatic and
spontaneous than Fidel’s. He’s less of a crusader, more of a planner and
negotiator. And it’s clear that he wants to implement the reforms with the
widest possible consensus.
That search for
consensus may be one reason behind the slow pace of the rollout. Within
government circles alone, there are different camps. Some fully embrace the
reforms, seeing China and Vietnam as positive models. The economist Everleny,
for one, was struck by the vibrancy of the Vietnamese economy when he visited,
and was hopeful that Cuba could learn from the successful reforms implemented
there. It’s a view that is probably shared by many powerful stakeholders in the
government and the armed forces. Others want Cuba’s reforms to be tailored in a
way that would give priority to small, worker-owned cooperatives, resulting in
a new, sui generis model of decentralized socialism. One young economist I
spoke to was inspired by cooperatives and worker-generated enterprise in other
Latin American countries, where the “pink tide” has rejuvenated the left. “This
is an opportunity to improve our system,” she said of the reforms. “But there’s
a risk that the prevailing paradigm here will be privatization and the market
socialism of Vietnam and China.”
Beyond government
circles, some see the political moment as an opportunity to make Cuban
socialism more democratic, representative and plural -- proof that the old
dream of a more democratic socialism has not been extinguished. Within Cuba’s
small but growing circle of independent organizations, some warn that with
major economic transformations on the horizon, open debates about Cuba’s future
are more urgent than ever. For example, members of Observatorio Crítico, a
network of small working groups dedicated to issues like racial justice, labor
and the environment, have warned of the costs of Cuba’s economic transformation
for the country’s most vulnerable. Others have called for a re-elaboration of
the fraying social pact. As Veiga has argued in Espacio Laical, Cuban society needs to collectively redefine
concepts like sovereignty, democracy, social justice and human solidarity: in
essence, to rethink the revolution from the ground up.
* * *
A final factor
slowing down the reforms is undoubtedly the US embargo. The embargo has a
toxic, distorting effect on internal Cuban politics. Washington’s openly stated
goal of destabilization and regime change creates a sense of permanent crisis,
a siege mentality, in the leadership. This has long had the effect of limiting
internal debate and bolstering hardliners who view any critique as a dangerous
prelude to subversion. On the economic front, that siege mentality inevitably
retards the reforms’ progress. To give merely one example, during my visit in
May the word “microcredit” was on everyone’s lips. It is clear that for Cuba’s
small private sector to really get off the ground, cuentapropista will need access to credit. In theory, the
cash-strapped government could allow international NGOs -- some of whom have
already expressed interest -- to float tiny loans. But the State Department’s
continued funding of USAID programs openly dedicated to destabilization
campaigns has made the Cuban government wary of foreign funding.
So far, Washington
has barely reacted to the economic reforms, even though they clearly raise new
dilemmas for the embargo. As Cuban-born political scientist Arturo Lopez-Levy
points out, many of the new cuentapropista licenses are for tourism-oriented services. But by blocking American
tourism, the US government is in effect slowing the growth of Cuba’s private
sector, “something that is counterproductive to our stated policy.” Lopez-Levy,
co-author of a new book about Cuba under Raúl, explains that the embargo is
based on the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act. The question now, he adds, is
whether the United States will treat the Cuban nonstate sector, including
Cubans working to promote market-oriented growth, as enemies too.
Opposition to the
embargo has been slowly building, especially among agricultural and other
business interests. The prospect of oil drilling off Cuban shores has sparked
intense interest among US oil companies, which have watched from the sidelines
as China and other countries have bid for drilling contracts with the Cuban
government (for example, Halliburton has been lobbying the US government to
ease Cuba sanctions since at least last year).
But for the moment,
at least, US policy-makers have their hands tied, because Miami’s
Cuban-American leadership and their Congressional allies have established
nearly insurmountable conditions for formal re-engagement. For example, the
1996 Helms-Burton Act specifically prohibits the United States from recognizing
a transitional government that includes one of the Castro brothers or that
fails to compensate major properties nationalized after 1959. The rise in
Congress of two Florida hardliners, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Marco Rubio, after
the 2010 midterm elections has made the prospect of normalization even more
distant.
Yet looking back at
the developments of the past few years, one could plausibly argue that a
transition of sorts has already happened in Cuba. Raúl Castro has consolidated
power. He and his cohort now openly embrace market reforms and have implemented
measures to foster a larger private sector. A small but growing class of
entrepreneurs will take advantage of the government’s new pro-business mood. In
addition, with the Catholic church serving as intermediary, the government
recently released most political prisoners. New interest groups and power
brokers are emerging: the church, cuentapropistas, the more pragmatic and market-oriented “Raulistas.”
If there has ever been a time for the US government to acknowledge internal
reforms and reciprocate with increased diplomacy, that time is now.
Michelle Chase, who
teaches Latin American history at Bloomfield College, is writing a book on the
role of women and gender during the Cuban Revolution.
No comments:
Post a Comment