Voices from the island (1)

February 18, 2008

Dalgi is a believer in the system. She is a tall, slender woman, a professional who speaks exceptional English. Over a drink, which she cannot afford from her salary, she opens her heart.

"In Cuba, we have wonderful health care, excellent education, and for children everything is provided. We have a daughter and every day the state provides a kilo of cow's milk and all her food.

Dalgi is proud that children like this receive free food and milk, free schooling until they end university, and free health care. But there's not enough money to go round, she says.

"We don't have rich people in Cuba, because that's not the equality, but"... she pinches in her cheeks to gesture starvation... "you can see that nobody is starving. If there are beggars on the street, and I know there are a few in Havana and the tourist areas, then they are unpleasant people, trying their luck. They are not in need.

"Cubans are much better off since the Revolution. Before that we were all but a star on the Star-spangled Banner. And that's almost what we were. We were an American colony. Everything was owned by the Americans. Cuban people, if they had work at all, worked in the interests of America. The Revolution was very popular."

In that case, I asked, if things were so much better, why would so many leave Cuba if they had the chance?

"Because Cuba is a poor country compared to the big industrial giants. Make no mistake, it always will be poor, like everywhere else in the Caribbean. But Bob Marley explained it. It is the envy, human nature, of people who believe paradise is somewhere else. And a lot of Cuban people have relatives in America who say you can earn $30,000 - if you can get it - but see what happens when you start paying."

She slaps the back of her fingers against a palm...

"The apartment, the car, the taxes, the health costs - then see what you have left."

The nice thing about Dalgi, beyond her friendliness and her superb English - "I wanted to speak English even as a child when I heard my grandfather speak it and it is my measure of self-worth much more than money or material possessions"- is her recognition that the system is not perfect, even though she approves of it.

She has the right to talk of Cuba and its politics, to judge, compare and evaluate, but not to challenge the principle. She doesn't want to attack it, to be a counter-revolutionary and therefore a criminal, but she acknowledges that the Cuban system is difficult for an outsider to understand.

"We don't have communism," she says. "Communism would mean that we wouldn't need a barman to serve us these drinks. I would just take the drink that I wanted and leave the rest. You wouldn't need a cashier in a clothes shop because I would take only the blouse that I needed. But human nature isn't to do that. What we have is socialism, our own form of socialism not like Russia or China but our own special form of that has survived 50 years, although heaven knows how."

Fifty years of revolution and victories - but you can't vote for anyone else but a communist. "Why would you want it any other way?", Dalgi asks.

I point out to Dalgi that elections here are hardly democratic, in that there is only one permissible party - the communists - and that the communist party provides all the candidates. You can't vote against communism, therefore. "Why would you want it any other way?" she asks. "It perpetuates a good system."

We move to matters of daily life on the island.

She owns her own house, she says, just as farmers own their own land. She inherited the house from her grandfather. What she doesn't have is the right to sell it. If she wants to move, she has to find someone who will exchange his house for hers.

Farmers can own the land they work, says Dalgi. Until the Revolution many countrymen were little better than sharecroppers. They are now better than they were but often they live in elementary houses.

She needs government permission to buy a car, a measure I didn't quite understand which I think is related to a preference to have just a few cars rather than rich people hogging them all. If she had a car, she wouldn't be able to sell it. Only cars built before 1960, which in practice means the great Detroit monsters of the 1950s, can be bought and sold. Other cars must stay in the family until they finally grind to a halt, which in resourceful, repair-anything Cuba is clearly a lengthy process.

Cars built in the 1950s and earlier can be bought and sold. Newer cars must stay in the family until they crumble. And you need government permission to own one.

Nor is there enough food. Although here you have to be careful. The system is so different from what we in the west accept as normal that it takes some understanding. When a Cuban says there's not enough food, he means that the ration he receives from the government each month is not enough to delight. It is healthy, nutritious and it supplies human needs. But the thing to remember, that it took some time to grasp, is that it is provided so cheap that it is virtually free. The wages that a Cuban receives, and on which he pays no tax and from which he pays no medical costs, no education charges right to the end of university, minute housing costs and, Cuba being in the tropics, next to nothing on heating, pays for the rest.

"The problem is that we are paid in domestic pesos. But you need international convertible pesos to buy much more than the basic ration. It is very difficult for people who do not work in the tourist trade or who don't have contact with tourists to get convertible pesos. There should be a way that makes it easier."

The problem, Dalgi says, is that the very things Cubans most like to eat, especially meat, are the things that cost them most.

"And no Cuban thinks he's had a decent day's food if he hasn't eaten meat," she says.

When goods, including food, are imported, they come through Mexico and that pushes up the price.

International brands are available in Cuba, but they have to be imported through countries such as Mexico, says Dalgi.

"They can't bring it direct from elsewhere because any ship that docks in Cuba is banned from American waters for six months. The American embargo hits us hard. Russia saved us when that happened. It bought all our sugar at top prices and it supplied all our needs and you could take a shower in oil in those days. It was running in the streets. All the trucks, the tractors in the fields, they all date from then.

"America maintains its embargo through political pride and because it wants Cuba as a colony, because it is strategically important. But so much is just obstinate pride. It is America that imposes its embargo against us; we want to be friends but they reject us. You saw that with Hurricane Katrina. Cuban doctors were all prepared to fly there to do what they could for the suffering. For free. But George Bush, he wasn't going to accept help from Cuba, even for his own people."

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