Why are there two Cubas?

[RadioRaheem84]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhmalpR__o&feature=channel

Apparently, the tourist spots aren't just fancy hot spots for Europeans and Canadians, they're actually two different world in which Cuban society is split apart.

Is this the result of the Cuban government liberalizing their market, a response to the embargo, I mean what?

And to the people that have visited Cuba, are they really world's apart different?

[bricolage]

Well I can't see the video but yes there are bits of Cuba that are pretty much shut off from ordinary Cubans (well at least when I was there), the islands off the south and the beach resort of the north coast of the island (I can't remember names). Also there are hotels in Havana and Miramar, both places that tourists/high up party members can visit and walk around easily but for many Cubans it is not so.

Wikipedia has a bit on it and it appears things have changed a bit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Cuba#Impact_on_Cuban_society_and_touris m_apartheid)


The policy of restricting certain hotels and services to tourists was ended by the government of Raúl Castro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Castro) in March 2008.[31] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Cuba#cite_note-30) As well as officially allowing Cubans to stay in any hotel, the change also opened access to previously restricted areas such as Cayo Coco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayo_Coco). However, access remains very limited in practice, as the vast majority of Cubans do not have access to the hard currency needed to stay in such hotels.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I would think the Cuban government would justify this as a response to the embargo. I don't think this can make any of their actions justifiable to revolutionary leftists. I have heard people say they are working within the constraints of a US embargo but this does not cut it for me.

[RadioRaheem84]

But are we talking about the difference between Cancun and the rest of the area in that Mexican state or are we talking about about a tourist area that's just a bit ritzier than some other areas but not world's apart, because that's going from the promotion of Cuba as an egalitarian society to one of third world conditions; where money and tourism promote a spot world's removed from the life of ordinary citizens two miles away. When I went to Cancun, it was like visiting Southern Cali or Miami Beach and I knew it was a tourist trap while the rest of the State was in utter misery. I am asking if this is the same situation in Cuba, where the Cuban tourist resorts look like something out of South Beach Miami while the rest of the country is in ruins?

Because that changes the whole dynamics of looking at the Cuban situation.

[bricolage]

where the Cuban tourist resorts look like something out of South Beach Miami while the rest of the country is in ruins?

No idea to be honest, I never went to any of the tourist-only areas. I know places like Miramar in Havana are a lot more done up than other bits of Havana but to be honest go to any capital city in the world and it's like that.

[FSL]

I would think the Cuban government would justify this as a response to the embargo. I don't think this can make any of their actions justifiable to revolutionary leftists. I have heard people say they are working within the constraints of a US embargo but this does not cut it for me.


But at the same time North Korea is evil and it lets its people starve, right?

[Ismail]

Plenty of tourist spots in capitalist countries have it so the "dark" people don't "interfere" much with tourists. Why would state capitalist Cuba be any different?

[RadioRaheem84]

Why would state capitalist Cuba be any different?

Because Cuba is supposed to be a state that pays considerable attention to providing the basic necessities to it's citizens. There is supposed to be a difference in Mexico or the Dominican Republic's way of setting up tourist destination's because it only cares about the concentration of wealth among an elite where as Cuba is supposed to only resort to such measures because of the embargo.

The tourist situation in Cuba diminishes the argument that it's major woes are because of the embargo. That's why I was asking if they were world's apart different from the rest of the country.

[Robocommie]

I will say this, tourism is a major industry for Cuba, which brings in much needed revenues to help it's economy. If the hotels were kept off limits to Cuban citizens, it could be because the Cuban government wanted to keep them free so more foreign citizens could bring in foreign currency.

Without that foreign currency, Cuba's exchange rate would go to shit and it'd be in the exact same rut as Haiti or even Zimbabwe, forced to take out massive, depreciating loans in order to fund its industrialization.

[KurtFF8]

It's interesting to see this argument brought up by people who believe that capitalism needs to be brought to the island: See, Cuba has unfair inequality so it needs to do away with it's state!

This is a similar thing that Zizek points out with the anti-Communist paranoia in Eastern Europe: when the conditions of capitalism make things so bad, anti-Communists point to some evil Communist plot when of course in reality, they're just pointing out the evils of capitalism to justify capitalism (strange logic of course)

I'm not saying, however, that Cuba is "State Capitalist," I think that theory holds little water, and isn't logically consistent.

Cuba obviously isn't a "Workers' Paradise" and has never claimed to be. What it was and still is is a revolutionary state that is run like almost no other place. There has been countless discussion on it of course that would be off topic here. But the fact is that while Cuba has some serious problems, and the revolution has some contradictions (like any revolution has, and will), it's still something that needs to be defended.

It should be the fact that Cuba has to resort to allowing Capitalist exploitation that should be condemned, not that Cuba has resorted to it. Granting access to luxury-style tourism to more people seems to be an admition of an inability to break away from bourgeois ideology to me.

[Robocommie]

I think Cuba is in the process of building socialism, and it's accomplished some impressive things. Certainly I will say there have been mistakes, and I also think that it's quite possible to point out these mistakes in a constructive manner while still supporting the Cuban Revolution at large. But given what Cuba's done with the resources it had available, in the situation it found itself in, I think it's done pretty well under Castro's leadership.

Like I said, it's far from perfect, but it's an ongoing process.

[Chambered Word]

Plenty of tourist spots in capitalist countries have it so the "dark" people don't "interfere" much with tourists. Why would state capitalist Cuba be any different?

I didn't know a Hoxhaist would say that. Or was it sarcasm?

[FSL]

I didn't know a Hoxhaist would say that. Or was it sarcasm?


Hoxhaists tend to view the countries that were aligned with the Soviet Union post-1956 as state-capitalist and the Soviet Union itself as social-imperialist.

So, assuming he's a typical Hoxhaist, that was no sarcasm.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

This is news to me. Perhaps i've been a bit ignorant recently.

I'll be visiting in 1 months time, so i'll report back then.

[Glenn Beck]

Not to deny that there are serious and real issues of uneven development and dependence on foreign capital in Cuba, because there certainly are, but...

Does that video not completely fail at making Cuba look bad? I really fail to see the point besides that there are nice restaurants in the city center and casual bars out in open wooded areas where sometimes they run out of cups. Also shit is cheaper in Cuban pesos than in foreign money and this is a problem (?).

[Nosotros]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhmalpR__o&feature=channel

Apparently, the tourist spots aren't just fancy hot spots for Europeans and Canadians, they're actually two different world in which Cuban society is split apart.

Is this the result of the Cuban government liberalizing their market, a response to the embargo, I mean what?

And to the people that have visited Cuba, are they really world's apart different?My understanding is that It's a way of hiding the real Cuba from tourists and outsiders.

[Robocommie]

So, I just actually watched the video. Um, what the hell is the problem? Cubans pay less for the same things while tourists pay more. How is that a problem? Cubans pay into their system, tourists are just visiting.

Edit: Radio, buddy, these people are counter-revolutionaries. This is from an episode titled "Cuba: Waiting for Revolution."

[brigadista]

i think the dual economy is a problem in some ways but then also tourists cannot go into cuba and convert their money into cuban pesos and buy up lots of things for next to nothing because they have foreign currency. I am not really sure what else the Cuban gov is supposed to do given that we live in an internationally capitalist world

I went across the whole island. Yes there are tourist spots but cuba is very diverse depending where you go. I stayed with families and met some great people .

However you do see young cuban girls with old white men and vice versa ... my friend that travelled with me has been to Cuba 4 times incliuding in the brigades and in the special period- she said Cuba has changed a lot but then that is because of the embargo.

If you can go - go and ,make your own mind up- I loved Cuba - hope it doesnt turn into a theme park for the US like puerto rico....

[Robocommie]

The thing about Cuba, I really feel compelled to say, is that it's often really unfair to talk about how damn poor Cuba is and how there's a dual economy, particularly when this talk of "two Cubas" comes from capitalists. Cuba before the Revolution was in an awful state. People all over the country lived in little shacks, enormous numbers of people couldn't read and didn't have plumbing or electricity - the economy was dominated by wealthy landlords, and Batista ran a repressive dictatorial regime.

Decades later, things HAVE improved for Cuba.



Following the Cuban Revolution, the country made economic progress. In the period 1960-85, real income growth per capita averaged 3.1 percent per year, compared to 1.8 percent in the rest of Latin America. As a result of this growth, Cuba's per capita income in 1987 exceeded $3500, compared to only $2200 in the rest of Latin America.

Unemployment in Cuba is minimal. Basic services for Cuban citizens have been maintained and improved. Lower income groups have experienced a rise in their wages and state-set prices have remained stable for Cubans.

The share of agriculture in the GDP fell from 25 percent to only 10 percent in 1985. The country also has had immense industrial growth, with manufacturing's share in the GDP rising from 23 to 36 percent. In the 1980s, with the exception of Argentina, Cuba's manufacturing share was the highest in Latin America. Branches of industry such as machinery and transport equipment have had significant growth, as their share of manufacturing output rose from under 2 percent in 1961 to over 20 percent in 1986.

Between 1980 and 1985, Cuba introduced over 100 new products for export and had significant growth in exports of citrus fruits, steel products, gas stoves, paper products, transport material, radios, batteries, among others.

Cuba also has succeeded in reducing poverty and equalizing the distribution of wealth. According to the United Nation's Economic Commission for Latin America, the decile ratio (share of total income for the top 10 percent of wage earners divided by the bottom 10 percent) in Latin America was 45 to 1, while that of Cuba was only 4 to 1. Cuba's income distribution was more than 10 times more equal than the rest of Latin America in the 1980s. Before the Revolution, Cuba's decile ratio was 65 to 1.

During the Revolutionary period, Cuba was one of the few developing countries to provide foreign aid. Foreign aid began with the construction of six hospitals in Peru in the early 1970s.

Foreign aid expanded later in the 1970s to the point where some 8000 Cubans worked in overseas assignments. Cubans built housing, roads, airports, schools, and other facilities in Angola, Ethiopia, Laos, Guinea, Tanzania, and other countries. By the end of 1985, 35,000 Cuban workers had helped build projects in some 20 Asian, African and Latin American countries.

For Nicaragua, Cuba pledged to provide over $130 million worth of agricultural and machinery equipment to the country, as well as some 4000 technicians, doctors, and teachers.

Don't compare Cuba to the US or even the Soviet Union to see how well the Cuban Revolution is doing. If Castro could turn Cuba into that kind of economy with the resources he's had to work with, he wouldn't be a socialist, he'd be a wizard.

Instead, compare Cuba to the conditions that people face in El Salvador or Honduras or any other Latin American economy dominated by capitalist latifundia. The Maya peasants who live in El Salvador oftentimes still live in shacks - if that - and get paid obscenely low wages to make coffee-growers extremely wealthy. But even those low wages are reliant on the season - if the coffee harvest is particularly high, and prices are too low, the landlords won't even bother to hire field hands to pick coffee beans and they can't even rely on that money.

Like I said, there's room to criticize Castro for his mistakes, there's room to constructively point out mistakes that have been made. But just don't listen to those people who call Cuba a third world socialist hellhole, because there's a lot of capitalist countries in it's position who are way worse off, and those same people who are so quick to judge the Cuban Revolution will look at El Salvador or Honduras and say and do nothing.

[RadioRaheem84]

I didn't make this post to just criticize Cuba. I made it because I figured there had to have been an explanation for the tourist traps in Cuba. I mean the revolution was fought for because Cuba was a playground for the ultra wealthy of the US and the Mafia. I just didn't want that to be happening to Cuba too.

[Robocommie]

I didn't make this post to just criticize Cuba. I made it because I figured there had to have been an explanation for the tourist traps in Cuba. I mean the revolution was fought for because Cuba was a playground for the ultra wealthy of the US and the Mafia. I just didn't want that to be happening to Cuba too.

I understand completely, and I don't mean to make you out to be a jerk in this thread, so I apologize if I gave that impression. And you're right, of course, though the Havana nightclub culture was really just part of the problem in Cuba. You could easily argue that most of the problem was that Cuba's entire economy was nearly owned by the US - 90% of it's sugar and tobacco exports went to the US, it's mineral resources were almost entirely owned by US conglomerates, and US capital likewise owned almost the entire Cuban finance industry.

Initially, as I understand it, they were going to shut down the nightclubs and beach resorts, but then they suddenly found the tourist industry was one of the few sources of foreign capital they had left.

[RadioRaheem84]

Instead, compare Cuba to the conditions that people face in El Salvador or Honduras or any other Latin American economy dominated by capitalist latifundia.

So it's basically like an El Salvador or Honduras, only that the people are better off because their basic needs are met?

[Robocommie]

So it's basically like an El Salvador or Honduras, only that the people are better off because their basic needs are met?

It started off exactly the same, but I'd say it's gone even further than just meeting their basic needs. Don't get me wrong, they're still a poor country, but a lot of that is due to the US embargo (which also extends to any US trading partners who might also want to trade with Cuba, in Europe or Canada) and some of it due to the loss of Soviet development aid when the Soviet Union collapsed in '91.

[Glenn Beck]

So it's basically like an El Salvador or Honduras, only that the people are better off because their basic needs are met?

I don't know what you mean by "like an El Salvador". In terms of the resources available one can certainly compare, but the policy differences go beyond simple social welfare.

To answer your prior question as to why there are tourist traps in Cuba, let's outline Cuba's economic situation. Cuba is an island nation whose entire economic history under capitalism consists of production of cash crops for export. Cuba was unable to adequately industrialize, although advances were made during the period of Soviet subsidies. Regardless of the degree of industrialization in Cuba, the labor regulations and capital controls of the government strongly discourage foreign investment (in other words Cuba protects its workers too much to be able to compete with sweatshops in a country like... El Salvador).

Cuba happens to be 90 miles from the world's biggest economy and importer, making the USA a natural trading partner. Unfortunately the US has decided it would be better to impose an embargo on Cuba which includes provisions to discourage companies in other countries from doing business with Cuba. This, along with Cuba's general lack of economic advantages like a large supply of a valuable extractable resource or a highly exploitable labor force makes it extremely difficult to find alternative trading partners. Even if Cuba completely liberalized its economy, it's exports are mostly agricultural products of low value (sugar, coffee aren't what they used to be) and the markets for those goods are full of heavy competition. Cuba doesn't have significant energy reserves and does not produce sufficient quantities of many of its staple foods, so Cuba is heavily reliant on imports and thus has a negative current account balance and a foreign debt of about a quarter of its GDP.

So, in a nutshell, the Cuban economy fucking sucks and there isn't really much they can do about it but try to get their hands on hard cash in whatever way they can. Without the hard cash to buy imports, the lights all go out and people starve. Incidentally the latter isn't a problem for countries like El Salvador or Honduras with 30% and 60% respectively of their populations under the poverty line. It's also noteworthy that the liberalized economies of these nations are not really doing any better than Cuba. All of them have been hit by the recent crisis, but Cuba maintains a barely-above-homeostasis growth rate while the other two economies are contracting. Cuba has a per capita GDP slightly higher than that of El Salvador (it was lower during the 90s and early 00s) and almost double that of Honduras. Both Central American countries have Gini coefficients above 50%. The U.N. only keeps track of the Gini index sporadically for Cuba, but from what I was able to find the last times they did were 1986, before the fall of the USSR (.22, would be the best in the world today, dunno about back then) and 1999, after several years of the massive post-Soviet crisis (.41, not fantastic but still the lowest in Latin America; comparable to the U.S.). The Human Development Index for Cuba is .863, comparable to Argentina or Latvia and 8th best in the hemisphere. For El Sal and Honduras: .747 and .732, comparable to Syria and 6th and 7th worst in the hemisphere. Not very awesome, but it's definitely something in context.

One can certainly have an opinion on the role of tourism in Cuban society and economics; I have one, and it's pretty fucking negative. But there are few realistic alternatives left open to a Cuba surrounded by a world sorely lacking in thriving socialist economies to hook up with and burdened by a major embargo.

[RadioRaheem84]

Don't get me wrong, they're still a poor country,

But what is it that makes them a poor country? I mean, I understand that it's lacking in valuable trading partners but if its so high in the social indexes of human development than what makes it such a poor country comparable to that El Salvador?

If the nation has such a high literacy rate, low numbers of malnourished children, low infant mortality rate, universal health care, free education and a high employment rate coupled with workers rights, than that does not make it comparable to El Salvador.

So what makes it poor? The embargo and the lack of foreign direct investment?

Isn't Cuba's biotechnology industry only second to the United States?

Is basically Cuba representative of what a nation would look like minus foreign direct investment that wants an exploited labor force and wants to extract natural resources?

[brigadista]

i went to the US for the first time 2 months after i went to Cuba. poverty was far worse in the US

[Robocommie]

i went to the US for the first time 2 months after i went to Cuba. poverty was far worse in the US

Really? Interesting. Would you mind saying more?

[RadioRaheem84]

In 2005 Cuba had exports of $2.4 billion, ranking 114 of 226 world countries, and imports of $6.9 billion, ranking 87 of 226 countries.

How is the little island keeping it's head above water?

[Red Rebel]

Comrade RadioRaheem84? Tourist apartheid no longer exists in Cuba. It was a temporary measure because the the Special Period but President Raul Castro ended it in March of 2008.

End of Tourist Apartheid in Cuba (http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/viewtopic.php?f=132&t=43926)

[chegitz guevara]

I find it amazing that there are people who think that a revolutionary state which has few natural resources engages in ways that are less than egalitarian in some ways, in order to get hard currency in order to prop up their egalitarian system in others.

Who the hell do you think pays for Cuba's world class health care, the Keebler Elves? It's tourists, and tourists don't like to be bothered with locals. They want everything perfect, except when they want to go see some local color.

[bricolage]

i think the dual economy is a problem in some ways but then also tourists cannot go into cuba and convert their money into cuban pesos and buy up lots of things for next to nothing because they have foreign currency.

Foreigners can get Cuban pesos, you just have to change Convertible Pesos into them. They are only really worth having if you want to buy food off street vendors or go to the cheap restaurants, I'd recommend both but most tourists aren't interested in that at all.

[RadioRaheem84]

The press likes touting the 20 dollars a month statistic the Cuban people live off of. How do they reconcile this with the fact that there is relatively no hunger problems on the island?

[Kléber]

Tourist apartheid no longer exists in Cuba. It was a temporary measure because the the Special Period but President Raul Castro ended it in March of 2008. Unfortunately there was nothing progressive about the "reforms (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/cuba-a17.shtml)" of 2008. The apartheid is still there, just like racism still exists in the US, because ordinary Cubans can't afford to go to the tourist hotels and beaches which were legally desegregated. Cuban workers can't afford the cell phones and foreign luxury goods that all Cubans can now legally buy. There is definite social differentiation going on and the reforms have facilitated it; something else they did in 2008 was abolish the maximum wage, one of the greatest gains of the Revolution, which - even though corrupt bureaucrats probably got paid more than the maximum 800 pesos - kept the "two Cubas" from moving too far apart.

[RadioRaheem84]

How is the average worker in Cuba treated? Do they work long hours for low pay? What gains do they have that separates them from the rest of the developing world?

[Red Rebel]

Unfortunately there was nothing progressive about the "reforms (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/cuba-a17.shtml)" of 2008. The apartheid is still there, just like racism still exists in the US, because ordinary Cubans can't afford to go to the tourist hotels and beaches which were legally desegregated. Cuban workers can't afford the cell phones and foreign luxury goods that all Cubans can now legally buy. There is definite social differentiation going on and the reforms have facilitated it; something else they did in 2008 was abolish the maximum wage, one of the greatest gains of the Revolution, which - even though corrupt bureaucrats probably got paid more than the maximum 800 pesos - kept the "two Cubas" from moving too far apart.

Old WSWS article on wages (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/corr-j08.shtml). Also: Cuba's wage changes have nothing to do with a return to capitalism (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/cuba) and Cuba lowers reform expectation (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7503099.stm).

Not going to argue that "beach vacations" are the number one goal of the Revolution nor should it be. Also according to the CIA factbook (..i know.. the source...) less than 1/10 of the Cuban population has mainline telephones in their house, so I'd argue that the Cuban government should be focusing more on that than cell phones.

I'm curious though has any "neutral" source come out with information stating that their is growing inequality post 2008?