Hello to parents, peers, school officials, and any random strangers who have happened upon this blog and are now reading this post. Before I feed you the substance of this post, I believe I owe you all a brief preface in an attempt to adequately explain the content and structure of this long-ish report. Thus far, I assume (as I have not read any) all blogs, with few idiosyncratic omissions, have been about the events of the day and the significance of said events. This is the critical facet in which I will not be able to meet the standard set by my peers as they have had the privilege of writing about a full 16 hour period stocked full with activities that have been carefully coordinated by our guide, Paige, and choir director, Daniel Doughty. I, on the other hand, have chosen to speak about an eight hour day, with four of those hours dedicated exclusively to sitting in either an airport or a plane. However, the day that I have chosen is not without merit: I have been granted the unique opportunity to write about the trip from a holistic perspective, a conclusion of sorts, if you will. Thus, to avoid reporting on the mundane (if you must know: we ate, sat, stood, and sat again), I will focus on the political realities of Cuba. And to avoid sounding didactic, I will try to be as interesting and nuanced as a tired 16 year old boy sitting on a plane while writing this post in the notes app on his phone can be. ¡Vámonos!
Yesterday (Thursday) I was walking with my good friend Kayla while having a lively discussion centered around the qualities of autocratic and democratic regimes. Our discourse began with my remark on the authoritarian tendencies of the Castro autocracy and quickly evolved into a battle of merits between Cuba's socialist regime and the United States constitutional democratic-republic. I was surprised by the outcome: for a regime that (fun fact!) steals ~90% of its electorate's wages through currency transfers, Cuba compared almost favorably to the United States, whose record was scarred by neocon politics in economics and foreign policy. We came to an interesting conclusion: the stigma surrounding Cuba and its staunch socialist economy was, and is, entirely unwarranted. Here's why:
Coming into Cuba, I expected to see slums packed with crumbling infrastructure, and starving dogs with owners struggling to feed themselves. Meanwhile, I thought, would be a wealthier area composed of a few high ranking government officials living the lavish life of plutocrats. What I found was astonishingly different. While there were a few starving strays that broke my heart, there was not a single person sitting in a muddy puddle on the street begging for food or spare change, an unfortunate commonality seen far too often on the sidewalks of NYC. It is true, Cubans do live on the average wage of $20 (or CUCs, which are pegged to the dollar) a month, but this money can go an exceptionally long way.
The government provides a multitude of services that range from food subsides to full on housing to free education and social services—standard functions of any true socialist state. These features, as our wonderful tour guide Denis explained to me on one of our walks to dinner, are multi-faceted. He told me that they decrease inequality via limiting free market influence (the Cuban government owns ~80% - 90% of the economy, though Raúl Castro is beginning gradual liberalization reforms) and subsequently increasing the human capital of the masses—something which the United States ought to consider doing.
This system of wealth distribution, a counter of sorts to the neoliberalist friedmanite ideology which plagued the 80's through Reaganism and Thatcherism, seemed to form a dichotomy between the U.S.'s current market doctrine: corporatism. I digress briefly: the rise of a corporatocratic state began with Reagan's tax cuts on big business and was marked by the creation of the Military Industrial Complex through the seceding of power towards special interest groups like private military contractor Halliburton, and "rent a government" Lockheed Martin (both of which had direct connections to Dick Cheney). Back on topic, I believe that the U.S.'s market structure favors a select few who control the economy through speculative investments and immense political capital. This has lead to the creation of a state in which the top .1% of wage earners get (as of 2011) around 103 times more than the arithmetic mean of the bottom 90%*. Such inequality manifests itself in brutal, insidious ways. Picture the scene of a billionaire driving towards his large apartment complex in TriBeCa, passing a group of society's unfortunate, huddling around a fire to keep themselves warm. You may substitute the actors or the objects, but the contrast of the scene will always remain, just as the immense wealth disparity in the U.S. has. In Cuba, while no one owns a Ferrari, it is also true that there is no one (according to my brief exposure to the urban and rural sectors of Cuba) starving on the street without a sanctuary in which to sleep at night. I draw these comparatives for you in the hope that you can visualize one thing: there is a qualitative difference in the types of poverty seen in the U.S. and in Cuba (the former being far more severe if you didn't catch that).
Perhaps that can explain Cuban's opinions on both their government and ours. I asked a few locals in Havana about their views on the efficacy of the respective governments, and the results were similar with only one dissenter. (Warning!! I am godawful at Spanish and thus I likely fudged some of the details and warranting that the five Cubans provided to back their opinions). The general consensus was that Castro wasn't an evil, maniacal man who planned his coup for self-benefit; rather he was a man who looked out for his people as best he could under the hardships imposed by the Helms-Burton Act. They believed that the government had their back—but they did want larger food rations and more political liberties like those granted in the U.S.’s bill of rights. When asked about the U.S. government, their answers completed a full 180 turn: they thought the U.S. was under immense mismanagement (all five pointed out our recent right wing shift to Trumpism) and had done a poor job with market management. The one differing opinion came from a middle aged man who was displeased with Castro's ¡Cuba libre! movement and called it "¡Cuba encarcelada!" citing his frustration with the state controlled print and broadcast media and their censorship of the internet. His response on the American government was nearly identical to those of the other four.
While I did only ask five natives—hardly a representative sample—I was able to notice that their sense of nationalism was the common climate: buildings that we passed along routes in Havana had nationalist graffiti on them that promoted the work of the government, and the shirts being sold had images of Ché Guevara or Fidel.
All of this is not to shame the U.S. and draw Cuba as a perfect state. No, my aim is far from that. The U.S. has done good things (like the Marshal plan). And Cuba is still a kleptocracy ruled by a corrupt idealist. It’s people do have frustrations with the government and the regime, and stringent state regulations on speech seem to be a difficult burden placed upon its people. The people are trapped; our very own tour guide, Denis, tried to leave three times to visit his family in Florida but was denied his visa by the government each time. Ultimately, I do intend to share my opinion on the the U.S. political dogma regarding Cuba: it’s asinine.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope I didn’t sound too boring or pedantic. Anyway, my personal experience was great. The trip was both educational and immensely fun.
My dearest gratitude to all those who made this trip possible for me and my peers. Thank you!
-Julian DeMann
*Ritholtz, Barry. "Forget The Top 1% - Look At The Top 0.1% - The Big Picture". The Big Picture. N. p., 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2017. http://ritholtz.com/2011/10/forget-the-top-1-look-at-the-top-0-1/
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