
La Habana
In Cuba it was the usual story. Last year’s cyclone season had been marked by more frequent and intense winds, and now a prolonged winter chill - a cold totally out of keeping with the Caribbean even in the winter months - had settled on Havana’s night streets. Global Bloody Warming! Nowadays, are there any countries from where you do not hear anecdotal evidence about the climatic consequences of environmental degradation to Planet Earth? In Cuba you can’t help feeling that the locals have reason to be a bit sorer about this than most.
Cuba’s endemic economic poverty and its accompanying food shortages meant that last year’s cyclone-flattened fruit harvest hit the people hard. What little survived the brutal winds is earmarked for export, as the State desperately shores up any opportunities to earn foreign currency - so important to an island country unable to produce all essential products whilst operating within a globalised free trade environment with a US trade embargo tied around its neck. Cuban Economic Ministers have the world’s most askew balance-of-payments spread sheet.
But hey the Revolution – with a big proud capital R – is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Surely the Cubans are willing to sacrifice a bit of fruit for the cause, on top of all the other deprivations they have suffered since the 1959 upheaval. They probably are pretty well nourished in truth - despite the recent lack of fruit - and, despite the problems, when push comes to shove, many Cubans think things were far worse pre-1959, and are judicious on the subject of the global recession.
While the rest of the world argues over the economic effects of drastic falls in output, at least the Cuban Government can serenely cock a figurative leg to General Motors as the US car manufacturers’ output drops by half in 6 months, pointing to their educational achievements, their medical provision and expertise, and their sporting prowess as proof that the art of governance is not only about upholding consumer capitalism. In Cuba you cannot legally sell a car. Therefore having one, you tend to keep it forever. It is likely to be quite difficult to get one in the first place through various State - or other - channels. The result is that everyone keeps their car on the road; the concept of renewing, changing or upgrading is simply not part of the equation. But the winds still blow harder. While sales of electrical tape soar in Cuba to protect windows during cyclones, in America, GM’s sales plummet. It begs the question: In the final analysis, is it good or bad news about GM?
Meanwhile, the most common form of locomotion in Cuba is public transport, and it is on the buses that the sights and sounds of the Latin reggaeton music explosion are evident, even if its key motifs have little in common with this country’s brand of socialism and citizenship. Super-produced music videos (or films as they are coined) express a formulaic “Miami Vice” scenario, replete with manicured girls and slick boys in and out of love at fast parties, set against an expensive and gaudy materialistic backdrop – in fact everything the Cuban State demonises and rejects. But, and here is the crunch, the young and not so young Cubans cannot get enough of it, just as they salivate over the material grandeur of their favourite Brazilian soap operas. Fifty years of solid, if unspectacular, socialist indoctrination has seemingly failed to dim the human individuals’ attraction to glitter and gold. Are the hallmarks of the Revolution - solidarity, inclusiveness and equality - far less enduring than the passing fashions and glitz of Western style consumerism carried on malevolent and destructive winds.
Phillip Wigan 03/09
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