Cuba under Batista

[Nolan]

I found a site that claims that Cuba was better before Castro.

From the site:

Myth No. 3: Cuba, before Castro, was a backward country. According to the 1953 census, the last before Castro, Cubans had the highest socioeconomic level and income per capita in all of Latin America. There was one physician per 1,000 inhabitants, more than 70 percent of the adult population could read and write, more than 50 percent of the pop ulation was urban, and radio, TV, newspapers, roads and railroads covered the entire country.

How should I respond to outrageous claims that the GDP and standard of living was higher in the 50's than that of Italy?

Does anyone have any sources that dispute this?

[Random Precision]

Eh there's a grain of truth there, Cuba was one of the more prosperous Latin American countries before the revolution. I seriously doubt 70% of the country was literate, but if true, the revolution's literacy campaign made a huge improvement on that.

But really who cares about indicators like GDP and standard of living? Who cares about this alleged prosperity in a capitalist society?

[Nolan]

I've just found another source that disputes the literacy rate. Why can't you post links until you have so many posts?

You have to keep in mind, most of Cuba was owned by foreign, mostly American, investors and the average Cuban was very poor. True, it had one of the best economies in Latin America at the time, but that's not really saying much, is it? The elite and foreign companies had all the wealth.

[Random Precision]

I've just found another source that disputes the literacy rate. Why can't you post links until you have so many posts?

It's to thwart spambots. Just put a space in the address like h t t p : or something. :)

[IsItJustMe]

The wikipedia article on Cuba is actually fairly good. But there are a few other points that are worth making:

1. GDP measures TOTAL consumption, but it doesn't measure distribution. In Cuba in 1950, as in most of Latin America now, distribution was extremely uneven. Many, many people had no decent housing, no food, etc. Capitalist economists don't care about distribution. A dollar is a dollar to them, and of equal value whether it is the thirty billionth dollar in Bill Gates's net worth or a dollar's worth of rice for a starving person. This is a fundamental flaw in capitalist economic analysis. You will hear about it in your first macroecon class in college if you take one, but it's not taken into account in most economic analysis day to day.

2. GDP is a poor measure of even total consumption in a socialist country because GDP measures only things which are bought and sold, and in Cuba, many fewer things are bought and sold than in the United States. For instance, one major component of U.S. GDP is rent, both commercial and residential. In Cuba, rent is nearly always nominal... Perhaps a dollar a month for an apartment. Health care is also free, and so is much food. Many other things are in effect heavily subsidized. For this reason, the Cubans have abandoned GDP as a measure of their own economy.

3. The Cuban economy in 1950 was very heavily dependent on sugar. As of 1990, sugar was not as dominant, but it was still important. The world sugar market has been destroyed since then, largely as a result of subsidies paid to first world sugar growers. This is the reason that Haiti -- which always was poor -- has now completely fallen apart. It is also the reason that sugar production has almost completely disappeared in Puerto Rico, where it was for centuries a key part of the culture. The Cuban economy has suffered from this as well. If Cuba had not diversified as much as it did under socialism, the effects would have been far worse.

4. Total Cuban consumption fell by about 35% over the course of a few years in the early 1990s, as a result of the collapse of its major trade partners. Until then, Cuba was performing much better compared to other comparable economies.

5. One of the few second tier industries in Cuba in the 1950s was tourism. The overwhelming majority of tourists to Cuba at that time came from the United States. Although Cuba still does quite well out of tourism, they are working at a huge disadvantage in that the most natural source for tourists has banned its citizens from visiting the island. If that ban were lifted, the boost to the Cuban economy would be huge.

6. Concerning medical care, it is worth understanding that Cuba now has one of the highest ratios of doctors to population in the world, significantly higher than even many first world nations. The British government conducted a study of Cuba and found that this was one of the huge advantages of the system. We are talking here about a third world country with a national health system that has so many doctors working for it that there is virtually no wait to see one. Very few of even the European social democracies can boast that. The Cuban health system is not just good for a third world country: It is good by first world standards. The minimal difference in life expectancy with the United States is almost certainly due to the unavailability of certain very expensive drugs and equipment in Cuba.

[BIG BROTHER]

Just a quick example:

Mexico under the Dictator Porfirio Diaz was also, at least until a certain time very rich a prosperous. But this wealth was just like in Cuba's case accumulated on the hands of the oligarchy and foreign investors.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

Cuba: Vanguard of the worker's movement

Under Batista Cuba was like many South American countries; struggling under american economic imperialism, and thus, increadibly poor due to all the wealth going into the foreign elite and not invested in Cuba unless to increase profit/exploit workers more.

[ComradeMan]

When you break it down to figures Cuba under Batista with casinos and brothels, all the bootleg money invested by bootleggers in the prohibition and a very rich few may have been as a country "wealthier" but then who was wealthy and who was poor? That is the problem.

All the Castro regime has its critics, I don't think you can set up the Batista regime as anything to write home about.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Pretty simple point here. 'Trickle down economics' is false bullshit that hasn't worked, doesn't work and never will work. It is a useless, unsurprisingly lame argument, even by Capitalist standards. Rather easy to combat Cuba supposedly being a well of nation under Batista, if the conclusion of it's relative wealth is drawn from the evidence of less bad GDP figures and the like.

I've argued for a long time that GDP is vastly overplayed as a measure of growth. That it is often the sole indicator of economic growth is quasi-criminal, as it misleads the public hugely. Another weapon in the Capitalist inventory.:rolleyes:

[manic expression]

Peasants joined Castro's rebel army in droves because they had nothing to lose:
• 75% of rural dwellings were huts made from palm trees.
• More than 50% had no toilets of any kind.
• 85% had no inside running water.
• 91% had no electricity.
• There was only 1 doctor per 2,000 people in rural areas.
• More than one-third of the rural population had intestinal parasites.
• Only 4% of Cuban peasants ate meat regularly; only 1% ate fish, less than 2% eggs, 3% bread, 11% milk; none ate green vegetables.
• The average annual income among peasants was $91 (1956), less than 1/3 of the national income per person.
• 45% of the rural population was illiterate; 44% had never attended a school.

Even for most city dwellers, life was not all that rosy.
• 25% of the labor force was chronically unemployed.
• 1 million people were illiterate ( in a population of about 5.5 million).
• 27% of urban children, not to speak of 61% of rural children, were not attending school.
• Racial discrimination was widespread.
• The public school system had deteriorated badly.
• Corruption was endemic; anyone could be bought, from a Supreme Court judge to a cop.
• Police brutality and torture were common. http://www.thegully.com/essays/cuba/000305cubastats59.html

Further reading (and the source for those stats) are in the link.

[Manifesto]

Cuba was mostly only prosperous for major cities and they were used as vacation hot spots for rich Americans while everywhere else had rundown "houses" and I highly doubt literacy rate during Batista was 70% still irrelevant since now it is ALMOST 100%.

[pranabjyoti]

Concerning medical care, it is worth understanding that Cuba now has one of the highest ratios of doctors to population in the world, significantly higher than even many first world nations. The British government conducted a study of Cuba and found that this was one of the huge advantages of the system. We are talking here about a third world country with a national health system that has so many doctors working for it that there is virtually no wait to see one. Very few of even the European social democracies can boast that. The Cuban health system is not just good for a third world country: It is good by first world standards. The minimal difference in life expectancy with the United States is almost certainly due to the unavailability of certain very expensive drugs and equipment in Cuba.
It is very much clear that by imposing sanctions on Cuba, the US imperialism had forced their own citizens, mostly the working class with a much less efficient and much more costly health-care system.
What is amazing is the behavior of some so called THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES like INDIA. Despite the existence of Cuba and its very efficient health-care system, most of the political leaders, at the expense of their poor taxpayers, like to be medically treated in countries like UK and USA.
Actually, in my opinion, Cuba is capable of far higher GDP, just by medical tourism from USA and other European and North American countries alone. What I fear, the medical lobby of USA is one of the strongest supporter of US blockade on Cuba.
Arguments like "Cuba had higher GDP during Batista regime than Castro" seems to me as "women can have higher income by prostitution than a decent job".

[RED DAVE]

Being, probably, the only person on these boards who visited Cuba in the 1950s (when I was 9 in '53), let me tell you that in Havana anyway, visible signs of poverty were everywhere. Street beggars were common. The tourist areas were manicured and gorgeous, but the neighborhoods looked grim. No one was surprised when Castro began guerrilla warfare, nor that his forces won.

RED DAVE