Last Thoughts

In blogging about my semester in Cuba, I’ve tried to stay as close to the truth the way I see it (as in, my opinion as to what is the truth) as possible. But I have left out some major thoughts on various topics. I want to write about these now that I’ve left the country. I might be acting overly-paranoid, but 100% freedom of speech does not exist in Cuba. One cannot publicly express negative opinions of the government if they want to live peacefully. Or at least, many here are too afraid of possible consequences to talk. So just to be perfectly sure I didn’t get in trouble with the Cuban government while still living in Cuba, I waited until now to express a few of my opinions.
First of all, I think the Cuban government is the most hypocritical ruler I have ever encountered. Exhibit A: Cuba has a communist economy. Cubans are paid more or less the same amount of money whether they work as a doctor, lawyer, or janitor, which is roughly 15 US dollars a month. Everyone has a chance. Except that most don’t feel they can live without cheating the system. The black market is a thriving business and almost everyone is involved it seems. I’m not saying this is anti-communist; it is simply an example of the failure of the “legal” economy in Cuba. It goes deeper than that. The government itself doesn’t believe they can survive in the economy either. The fact is, Cuba relies heavily on tourism from capitalist countries. Tourism is the primary source of revenue for the Cuban economy. In 2004, Cuba earned 2.3 billion USD from tourism, more than 1 billion more than any other revenue source. This is not Cuba’s fault. Tourists love Cuba because it is a tropical paradise that is so completely different from everywhere else in the world. The problem I have with the situation is how Cuba has reacted to their popularity. The Cuban system has begun to value its tourists so much it has assigned them a higher value. Cuban citizens have become second-class people compared to the capitalist tourists. I touched on this a little in a previous entry, when I mentioned the double currency (moneda nacional and CUC). I won’t go into it again, but just as a reminder, way more things can be bought in CUC. A more visual example is the health care system, which everyone says is superb. That’s true for the most part, but health care is significantly better for foreigners (as in, patients who pay). The hospital that specializes in foreigners looks like a state-of-the-art US hospital. In contrast, the hospitals for Cubans are scary-bad. They look like run-down barracks. The attention is still great I hear, and there are plenty of hospitals, but the difference makes it clear how the government treats guests. As another example, most hotels do not let Cubans enter, not even the lobby. Even if they can afford to stay in the hotel, they can’t. This can be explained as a way to keep guests safe from money-hounds, but it ends up discriminating against a whole country of people. I’m not sure that would fly in many places. And all this discrimination of Cubans in favor of foreigners is because tourists are the main source of Cuba’s money. Plus, this money earned seems to go to improvement of things for tourists! Go back to the hospital example for that evidence. To me, tourists are a representation of capitalism, from capitalist countries, spending money earned in a capitalist economy. Therefore, the Cuban government makes it quite obvious that it relies on capitalism, maybe even has an obsession with capitalism. And all at the expense of its people.
The economy and its effect on the people is the biggest hypocrisy of the government, but its manner in governing Cuba in general also strikes me as hypocritical. For instance, government was formed on the basis of freedom back in the late 1950s. Under Batista, there was a serious lack of freedom of all kinds, from speech to just plain living, and the revolutionaries wanted to create a better country for all Cubans. While there seems to be more freedom in Cuba these days, the government still governs in a very limiting way. Cubans can’t speak badly about Fidel or his government, so there isn’t much freedom of speech. Freedom of the press is limited too, or at least it appears limited to me. The government is never criticized in the newspapers. Instead, the front-page stories of the national newspaper are of important people who came to visit Fidel, or meetings that are happening. Privately, people say the only worthwhile use of the newspaper is as toilet paper. This is one way of keeping Cubans uninformed, and the other is the lack of internet. Cubans have intRAnet, which only goes to Cuban sites and Cuban mail, but it is supposedly impossible for the majority of Cubans to access full intERnet. Thus, one cannot reach internet news sites, nor can one research anything online. Another form of control is that the government practices ways of keeping the people mobilized. The biggest example of that right now is the practice of fumigation. This is a huge campaign to minimize Dengue fever by regularly gassing everything to kill mosquitoes. Houses are fumigated weekly, streets and cars regularly, and fumigation planes fly over the cities every now and then. Oddly, no one knows what is in the gas. First of all, this practice is horrible for people. Fumigators never wear masks and are breathing in this toxic gas all day long, every day, plus, residents have to breathe in the fumes once a week. Furthermore, the effect this will have on the environment is sure to be devastating. I’m thinking DDT. I’m not an expert, but I’m don’t believe it is effective in reducing the dengue risk because it doesn’t attack the source. All over the city, there are still tons of still-water pools that are perfect for breeding mosquitoes. I believe that this fumigation campaign is designed to mobilize the people for a random cause that will keep them preoccupied. With everyone worrying about fighting dengue, no one will think about their other problems. I don’t know, this is just my theory. My point in writing about all these lacks of freedom is, the Cuban government keeps their people under strict control by causing fear of voicing opposition and preoccupation with a worthless and harmful campaign.
These beliefs don’t lesson any of the good things I’ve written about in the past. It is only that these aspects of my life in Cuba affected me hugely, and my account of my semester is not complete without them. All in all, I had a fantastic four months. I learned a huge amount from so many different facets and I had lot of fun in the process. And I do love Cuba, even with all its problems. But hey, no one is perfect.