Sun, Rum, and Problems: The Cuban Paradox.

The plane shuddered disagreeably, as we left the Florida Keys behind us and headed across the sea to Cuba. As though, leaving US territory behind and heading to the communist island, we were breaching into the embargoed territory. It is a short forty-minute flight from Miami the United States government indeed makes difficult for tourists. Going to Cuba for tourism is simply not amongst the permitted options of travel from the US. To get there, one has to profess their purpose of travel is in ‘support for the Cuban people’, a certainly noble cause, even if many using it prefer the beach and the party to charity. For US citizens, it is additionally prohibited to spend money at government establishments (of which there are many in communist Cuba), a law which has customs officers allegedly demand for receipts, and has me questioning the esteem the US government really has the Cuban people in. What seems like a merely dissuasive pretext implemented under the Trump administration in fact only proves to show the clearly outdated foreign policy the US still has to Cuba.

The island has a long history. Indigenous Cuba is peaceful and minds its own business. When Christopher Columbus claims it as Spanish territory, the indigenous populations are decimated and replaced by a largely creole people with strong Spanish cultural influence. The island initially serves as a stop-off point for ships heading towards the New World, and the bay of Havana becomes the ideal location for a fortification to guard Aztec gold, destined to enrichen Spain and impoverish central America. As the surrounding region develops a flare for independence in the turn of the 19th century, Cuba remains loyal to the Spanish crown. The vacuum in agricultural production that newly independent Haiti leaves, Cuba gladly takes, becoming one of the largest sugar cane and tobacco producers in the world.

A mural in the Havana Bus Terminal, depicting Cuban historical figures such as Jose Martí or Fidel Castro.

It is only in the later 19th century that creole Cubans become tired of the segregated and colonial Spanish society, for which they engage in two independence wars. It is not José Martí, one of the many Cuban revolutionary figures, who brings this cause to fruition. He dies for independence which, at a bitter cost, Cuba later takes it out of the offering hand of the United States. Havana becomes the party town for North Americans, where taps offer rum, the earth cigars, and money is abundantly spendable. What is to foreigners a land of paradisiacal hedonism and delight, is to locals an authoritarian and corrupt regime. In the hearts of Cubans, a new revolution blossoms. Fidel Castro delivers it in 1951, ousting the Bautista government with the help of Camilo Cienfuegos, Abel Santamaría and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. The latter, notoriously famous on American t-shirts, becomes a global icon for freedom and anti-imperialism, as well as of course a national Cuban hero alongside Fidel (despite his well-known Argentinian origin). Yet, in the 1950s, becoming an enemy of the United States government means becoming the friend of another global force striving for ‘Peace, Land and Bread’.

Moored in Havana are ships that look old and neglected. Will they ever leave? Just like the Cuban people, they seem captives of an island to which many want to come, few want to remain, and most cannot leave. When I visited Cuba last May, the people there assured me that the word ‘socialism’ hadn’t been uttered until two years after the Cuban Revolution. How much truth I can lay to that statement is another matter entirely. And yet, Fidel Castro’s ambitions were clear: that the revolution was above all else, a matter of anti-imperialism.

Today, Cuba is well known as one of the few remaining Communist countries in the world. Of course, many lay claims to such a lofty title, but few honour it as loyally as Cuba does. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, imports to the country have struggled to meet the needs of Cubans. And under the current embargo, a trip to Havana will bar a cargo ship from entering the United States for at least 180 days. There are not many sailing through the straights of Florida who pass on a visit to Miami to see Havana (as tempting as it may be for some of us). This means that if you want a car in Cuba, you will have to be contented with one that has long outlived your parents.

Life in Cuba has a 1950s feel – the embargo affects all areas of Cuban society, not just the cars. The average Cuban owns and lives in the same home (I should say quarters) assigned to their family since the revolution, which happened over 70 years ago. In order to get their basic needs, they visit the local tienda assigned to them, where they can obtain a specific monthly ration of goods for their household at a heavily subsidised cost. When you look inside such a shop however, the only items that seem to sufficiently stack the shelves are vegetable oil and wash-powder. Peering into one pharmacy in new-Havana, I saw meagre shelves, ornamented with but a few medicines here and there. The only recognisable thing to my eyes, was the large portrait of Che which hung behind the counter, above a slumped pharmacist, who told me off for taking a picture.

If Cuba struggles to have sufficient goods for its population, then it is in large part because of the money, of which there is, simply put, not enough. The Ministry of Finance has a bleakly abandoned looking facade, featuring broken windows, and peeling plaster – a condition which mirrors the state of the economy. A high inflation rate in the region of 30% to 40%, along with economic under-activity and a complicated foreign currency system, have devalued the Peso Cubano drastically – especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Front facade of the Ministry of Finances in Havana, Cuba.

Cuba’s economy depends heavily on exports of the few but precious riches it manufactures – namely cigars and rum, but also raw sugar and minerals such as nickel or zinc. This is how a country with very low economic productivity can afford to buy the imports the country is so dependent on (namely food, medicine, fuel, and power). Cuba’s politics and weak currency make it difficult to trade internationally, which is why it has become very dependent on foreign remittances and tourism as a way to acquire foreign currencies. Since I hadn’t been made aware of ‘cub-onomics’, I landed at Havana Airport with little cash. To my surprise, I was nonetheless able to get a taxi, paying with 20 pounds, 5 euros and 5 dollars.

Spending foreign currencies in Cuba is not something which only benefits an array of hustlers seeking large exchange rate profits from naïve tourists. The government, which owns many hotels, restaurants, shops, bars, etc., also depends on the income of foreign currencies to trade internationally. Although a separate exchange coin existed as a substitute currency for tourists, this eventually devalued the Cuban Peso, which is why the two were unified in 2021. However, recent sanctions from the United States government have counteracted the efforts of the Cuban government to emerge out of this situation.

Alejandro Gil, Cuba’s minister of the economy, has blamed the difficulty in recent years on a reduction in exports during the pandemic, as well as sanctions put in place under former US president Donald Trump, restricting transactions with Cuban military- and government-controlled companies. The declared concern for the wellbeing of Cubans in the face of the Cuban regime, as well as the intention to empower Cuban’s to ‘develop greater economic and political liberty’ rings hollow. By sanctioning tourism and remittances from US territory to Cuba, Trump's policy curbs the amount of dollars that enter Cuban circulation, in an attempt to suffocate the governments ability to turn to international markets for basic commodities. This makes Cuba the victim of a political game it neither has the ability to sustain, nor explicitly asked for.

The politics of Cuba, which is still very one-sided and authoritarian, does not help this problem. Discussion of market-reforms have been ongoing for some time now, yet communism proves to be an ideology which loves to flaunt its virtues and tolerates criticism little. More recently, the population has taken to the streets to protest chronic goods shortages, economic instability, and authoritarianism. Of course, civil disobedience is not tolerated and severely suppressed by the authorities. Yet, the destitute situation of many Cubans is hard to ignore when visiting Havana.

Citizens of Havana queue outside a tienda.

Talking to Cubans on the Malecon seafront, they decry their meagre lives to me – one man tells me he is a teacher who barely gets by, complaining that he can no longer get milk for his child because she has passed the age of seven years which the government rations allow milk for. He stops to scan the surrounding area to make sure police doesn’t see us interacting, while his friend tells me of a leg injury he can’t get treatment for. To be sure, it is not impossible they told similar tales to the next passing impressionable tourist, also in the hopes of getting 400 pesos out of them. Yet their situation is not exaggerated: the state minimum wage is set at 2100 pesos per month (equivalent to less than 100 dollars, depending on the exchange rate) – which is significant in a communist country, where many workers are public sector employees.

Malecon seafront at sunset.

Cuba is of course an immensely beautiful country, with a vibrant culture and a spirited people. Ando a la ‘my love’ (literally ‘I go to my love’) is a phrase Cubans use when describing the carefree and relaxed attitude they have to living. This is where the Cuban people and culture compliments the nightlife. Havana by night, characterised by the marvellous decors of the 1950s and colonial architecture, deserted establishments, unctuous street vendors, or locals simply living everyday Cuban lives, leaves hints of surrealism to dazed memories.

Indeed, the rum makes foreigners immutably blind to the living conditions they find themselves in. Asking the man who held a small bodega and restaurant in the parlour of his Havana apartment, and who had become a friend, wether I could use his bathroom, I was disquieted to find three small rooms piled with foam mattresses, furnishings and a bathroom, which his family lived in. Especially since the Cuban people are so warm and joyful, as this man was dancing salsa with his wife for demonstration, it is easily and quickly forgotten that while one is a guest, they actually live there.

One night, as I walked out of a salsa nightclub which hadn’t changed since the days of Lucky Luciano, I saw a group of soldiers hanging out on a streetcorner. They were casual, their faces tired, and their postures relaxed. Suddenly, they all looked down the street at an approaching military truck. They hurried to the other side of road to form the line in attention they were meant to be holding – as if they’d been stood there the entire time. I smiled at the irony of this very Cuban moment, emblematic of the deceptive quality in which an entire country is coated, from the architecture to the military. A Potemkin village which we tourists love to relish in, and in the process blind ourselves to the problems, plain to see.

Interestingly however, Cubans I spoke to rarely blame the US for the political difficulties at home. It is the authoritarian regime, which they call both corrupt and incompetent, that makes life in Cuba so hard. America, which is less than 100 miles across the Sea, is a land they can only dream of one day reaching. Although their opinion certainly has validity, it is however also clear when visiting Cuba, that the sanctions imposed under the Trump administration made it difficult for Cuba to navigate a global pandemic. While Obama’s open policy towards Cuba encouraged economic reforms and diplomacy with the United States, Trump’s reversal of this has left an island which hopes to modernise and globalise, in dark waters.

For Americans, this matters little. For Cubans, it’s a condition of life. When there is no more hope, Cuban’s say: No te salva ni el medico Chino (‘Even the Chinese doctor cannot save you’). The situation in Cuba is certainly desperate at the moment. But where there is a smile there is always hope. In Cuba, there are many.

Published in ROAR NEWS 9th March, 2024.

https://roarnews.co.uk/2024/sun-rum-and-problems-the-cuban-paradox/