Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Life under Castro Date: Wed, 28 Oct 92 15:01:10 EST Message-ID: \SE A \HD Life under Castro \SH Iron fist hasn't crushed Cubans' spirit \BY Tom Carter \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT HAVANA HAVANA - It is neither as good nor as bad here as most Americans think. Defenders say Fidel Castro has created a socialist paradise where schooling and health care are free and whose only problem is that the United States won't allow it to exist. Critics say it is a police state, hell on earth, with repression, no food and no freedom. There is truth in both views. From the man on the street to the most vocal critics of the regime, everyone agrees that the repression of civil liberties in Cuba is increasing, creating a permeating atmosphere of fear. In the past few weeks, in addition to the normal arrests and harassment of regime critics, several dozen Communist Party leaders were purged, including the third-highest leader in Cuba, Carlos Aldana. Most people believe he was sacked for becoming too visible and too powerful and for making overtures to human rights activists. As one Western diplomat stationed in Havana said, "There is no No. 3 in Cuba, only No. 1 and No. 2," referring to Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul. The opposition in Cuba is small in number, politically divided over the U.S. embargo and simply not much of a factor, according to several Western observers with long experience in Cuba. Of course, the opposition disagrees. While the military is unhappy over Cuba's economic decline and its own loss of influence since its overseas missions were ended, a U.S. State Department official in Washington said "we see no evidence of any cracks within the military" that might lead to a coup. As for the economic situation, it is bleak, but the Cuban people know there are many worse places in Latin America. Food is scarce, but no one seems to be starving. People line up everywhere, for food rations, a bus, entry into a restaurant or a scoop of ice cream. Havana, once among the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere, is literally crumbling as a result of 33 years of socialist neglect. The narrow side streets smell not of garbage, but of structural decay, damp and mildew. Still, clean water runs from the faucets, and the newer concrete apartments in the outlying areas, while small, spartan and even substandard by American measure, are neat and clean. Everyone talks about rising crime in Havana, but what shocks them is the snatching of tourists' purses and cameras. When told of brutal carjackings and random killings in the United States, horrified Cubans say they fear that will come here if socialism is defeated. The racial tensions common in the United States barely exist. Black Cubans have less access to good jobs than whites and are more likely to be stopped by police, but on the neighborhood level one sees a rainbow of relationships, with dozens of shades of skin color, hair texture and eye color, sometimes all in one family. It is a police state, with uniformed security forces constantly checking people's papers and obvious plainclothes thugs waiting to punish any breach of revolutionary decorum. But unlike the drab socialist countries of Eastern Europe before the fall, Caribbean Cuba is full of color, which comes out in the clothes (all bought on the black market) and in the ready laughter. The socialist regime has not beaten the life out of these people; there is a sassy Hispanic defiance in the eye, usually displayed toward the regime though sometimes toward the "Yankee imperialist aggressors." The U.S. embargo on Cuba is 30 years old, but for most of that time Cuba was supported by a Soviet bloc subsidy amounting to $6 billion a year, mostly in cheap oil. In 1989, the East bloc was responsible for 85 percent of Cuba's trade. Today that is gone. Even Mr. Castro has said the collapse of the Soviet Union has reduced Cuba's purchasing power by 70 percent in two years. Many Cubans said that, three years ago, almost anything they wanted was available in the stores. Today there is next to nothing. The squeeze could become even tighter when the United States implements its Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 - the so-called Torricelli Bill, designed to tighten the embargo and bring down Mr. Castro's government - which passed both houses of Congress last month and was signed by President Bush on Friday. Bill Clinton also has endorsed the bill, and some 80 percent of Cuban-Americans are for it. But a totally unscientific sampling in Havana showed roughly the same percentage of Cubans in Cuba are against it. Backers of the embargo include most of Cuba's self-avowed dissidents. But about the only ones speaking out in public are what Cubans call the "freakies" - long-haired rebels who sit along the seafront boulevard called the Malecon and listen to music from such bands as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Of the hundreds of people interviewed, most were for changes in the regime. Most were also for lifting the embargo. When told that most U.S. lawmakers believe they are helping the Cuban people by tightening the embargo because it will force Mr. Castro from power, time and again the reponse was the same: "Never." There is also frustration in the diplomatic community. "Generically, all policies are up for review when a new administration comes to town, and whether it is Bush or Clinton, the new administration will be no exception," said a Western diplomat stationed in Havana. "Torricelli will make it more difficult for a new administration to consider any kind of new Cuba policy with any more flexibility." Meanwhile, Cuba is being forced, for the first time since the revolution, to survive on its own. The biggest loss is oil, cut from 13 million metric tons in 1990 to about 6 million this year. There is little fuel to make electricity or run automobiles and buses. There are daily blackouts throughout the city, except for the tourist area in Vedado. Bicycles are everywhere; one Cuban, pointing to her Forever-brand Chinese bicycle, called it "our car." The economic crisis has forced Mr. Castro increasingly to open up the island to cash-paying foreign tourists. This has created a two-tiered system the Cubans know as "tourist apartheid." Foreigners are allowed to pay for the best of what Cuba has to offer - its food, its women (prostitutes are rampant), its hotels, its taxis, its beaches and resorts, and its entertainment. Though access is enshrined in the Cuban constitution, Cubans are virtually shut out. They are forbidden to have foreign currency, go into many hotels and restaurants, or shop in the tourist and diplomatic stores. Foreigners eat Cuban lobster, drink Cuban rum and consort with beautiful Cuban women while barefoot children, their noses pressed against restaurant windows, beg foreigners for chewing gum and change. Needless to say, there is deep resentment. Can Mr. Castro last? He is only 66, in pretty good health, and even his enemies say he has at least 20 percent of the people solidly behind him - and they are the ones with the guns. Another large group of people would rather live with the devil they know than the devil they don't. These are the people who are living in houses confiscated from middle-class and wealthy Cubans (now living in the United States, Mexico and Spain) and who have never done a productive day's work. While recognizing a need for change, these people are afraid of what that change might bring. They see the economic hardships being wrought in the former Soviet Union and other East bloc countries and worry what perestroika and glasnost might bring. They worry about losing the homes they have lived in for 30 years. They worry about a return to the inequalities of Fulgencio Batista's regime. On the other hand, discontent is widespread and grumbling is constant. Anti-Castro jokes are regularly traded, with much laughter, by supporters of the regime. And no one is discounting a miracle on the order of what happened in Eastern Europe. "In the Cuban context things are very bad, but in the Third World context things might not be that bad here. What is the quickest way and the way to accomplish a peaceful change in Cuba? I don't know," said a Western diplomat. "I know Fidel doesn't want change and I'm not aware of any element in society that can effect a change, even though there are millions of unhappy people here. "Perhaps the only way is to allow Fidel to live to a ripe old age and then work with his successor. But I can't advocate that choice with good conscience, because he is destroying the island." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM