Fidel Castro and the rebeldes met with a fair amount of early success in their drive to improve the quality of life in urban areas of Cuba — especially in Havana.

Rural-urban imbalances diminished a great deal during the decade of the 1960s, although the demographic growth of Greater Havana continued until 1963.

Improvement occurred mainly because of the political-administrative reorganization of Cuba and the creation of new state enterprises. There was also an initial emphasis on improving the city’s existing educational facilities, a policy which attracted numerous students from the interior.

Gradually, the demographic growth of Havana was stabilized, particularly after the implementation of the Urban Reform Law.

In 1963-1964, the first socialist master plan for the city of Havana was created as an attempt to address the problems of the city in a centralized manner. The master plan created six regions which were to be treated as a metropolitan entity. Previously, the six municipalities had worked independently, each with its own mayor and separate municipal agencies.

The master plan took effect when Havana had 1.5 million inhabitants, and one of its main objectives was to strive for a decrease in the city’s rate of population growth.

In an effort to slow migration from the countryside, strategies were devised to redistribute maritime and port activities as well as noxious industries to points elsewhere in Cuba. Development of infrastructure was planned to support these economic activities. This decentralization slowed the rate of Havana’s annual population growth which had previously included the annual arrival of 17,000 in-migrants from the interior of the country as well as a natural increase of 23,000. However, improvement was not uniform.

A reduction in population density in the overcrowded areas of Central Havana was not achieved. The reallocation of resources for infrastructure outside of Havana meant that the area had no new housing construction. Also, physical deterioration accelerated due to the lack of routine maintenance, especially that of streets and buildings which required periodic repair and painting.

Areas left vacant by emigrants such as Country Club, Miramar, Kohly, and Nuevo Vedado provided a situation of privilege for the new residents. These districts were soon identified as ‘frozen zones’. This meant that they were to serve as housing for high-level government officials, dignitaries, foreign experts, and diplomats. Nevertheless, the character of the neighborhoods, known for their high levels of physical segregation was beginning to break down.

Some housing was assigned to those with low income and many of the larger structures were carved up into schools and dormitories.

As students poured in from the countryside, their relatives soon followed, setting up residence in the boarding houses which were established in some of the abandoned housing. Over the decades, the area was impacted by the economic problems which plagued the city as a whole. Isolation and deterioration were the end result, affecting Miramar particularly.

As the decade closed, a humbled Castro determined to shift the revolution in a more conservative direction.

Soviet advisors flocked to Havana, and Soviet economic models became the norm.

The age of Fidelian voluntarism was over  . . . at least for the moment.

In 1972, Cuba joined COMECON and, in 1975, Cuba began implementing the Soviet-directed “System for Economic Management and Planning.”

Havana’s fate would now be dependent on the imperatives of Soviet central planning.

Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

From 1965-1974, the United States and Cuban governments administered the Vuelos de la Libertad or Freedom Flights. The two governments jointly determined who would migrate and, as a result, emigration during this period was coordinated, orderly, and focused on family networks. The immediate family of exiles already in the United States received priority.

Certain categories of Cubans — young men of military service age, professionals, and technical and skilled workers — were not permitted to leave the country.

Unlike preceding flows which consisted of upper and upper-middle class Cubans, this wave of emigrants was largely working class and “petite bourgeoisie” — employees, independent craftsmen, small merchants, and semi-skilled workers.

Only 12% of this second wave of migrants were professionals or managers as compared to 31% of migrants leaving Cuba in the early 1960s. In fact, 57% of the arrivals in the United States were blue-collar, service, or agricultural workers.

The thousands of Cubans anxious to leave their homes and start a new life were an indication that, by this time, large sectors of the middle class had discovered that they lacked the effective political institutions, ideology, and experience with which to defend their interests.

As Castro veered leftward, growing numbers were willing to uproot their families.

Yet while the Cuban exodus was organized and concerted with planes leaving daily from Varadero to Miami, it was not an easy process for prospective emigrants. Life became quite difficult for those who had declared their intention to leave. Individuals lost their jobs, were ostracized as enemies, and were forced to do hard labor in agriculture.

The case of one individual is illustrative. He states that he applied to leave Cuba in 1962, but was not allowed to leave until 1966, by which time he was suffering from malnutrition, diabetes, and high blood pressure as a consequence of his decision to leave:

We had applied for an exit permit. This meant that I would lose my job at the newspaper. We had planned for a few months of unemployment. It was unavoidable . . . Then, slam . . . The door closed and I was inside. Unemployed. We finally left in 1966. Can you imagine that? Four years knocking around doing “volunteer work” on weekends in order to get the food allowance. We lost our belongings. Everything we owned was sold or traded for food. We ended up living with my friend Jacobo who took us in at great risk. I lost eighty pounds in those four years.

Despite continuing difficulty, however, migrants continued to seek exile. In fact, 41% of all Cubans who migrated to the United States after the revolution left the island during the years of the airbridge.

Emigration served the purposes of both Cuba and the United States. From Castro’s perspective, the exodus served the positive function of externalizing dissent. And for the United States, the ‘open door’ policy of welcoming refugees from communism served to legitimize Cold War foreign policy.

In the end, emigration of dissenters served to further consolidate the revolution. Now Castro’s most important challenge was to work out the ground rules for Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union.

Castro’s relations with the Soviets were often stormy for, despite its dependence on the USSR, Cuba was not a complaisant satellite.

In the mid 1960s, Castro balked at siding with the USSR in the Sino-Soviet dispute for leadership of the world communist movement.

In 1968, the Soviets were forced to withhold petroleum shipments to win Castro’s approval of their invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Castro was contemptuous of the communist parties that Moscow sustained in Latin America, perceiving that many Latin American communists were timid middle-aged intellectuals who had no interest in making revolution.

The Cubans argued that the policies of their revolutionary government were unique, and not patterned on Soviet policy.

The Cubans argued that they were driven to adopt socialist structures by the logic of their own indigenous reform agenda, especially the requirements of the Agrarian Reform Law. They further argued that Cuban leadership employed socialist mechanisms early, not in reaction to hostility from the US, but as a response to national economic needs. Of course, these economic needs were, in part, a function of the US trade embargo.

Those sympathetic to Cuban nationalism have argued that:

. . . the Cuban embrace of Marxism-Leninism, no less than the decision to ally the island with the Soviet bloc, was a different kind of strategy, and must be seen as a function of North American policy. Faced with the threat of extinction from a vastly superior adversary, Cuban leaders took the steps necessary to guarantee their survival.

Photgraph by Photograph by Gideon

The video below is the second in a two part series that takes you quickly through the last 50 or so years of Cuba’s political and economic history.

Here are the salient points:

• By 1990, when the Russians were gone, things were really tough. It was becoming very clear that the Cuban people could not sustain life at such a minimal level indefinitely.
• Castro and his advisers came up with a new strategy. Agriculture was one of three areas of focus.
• Acquisition of scarce hard currency through tourism and biotechnology was also central.
• The key was to develop things that would produce a high rate of return.
• Cuba’s economic decision-makers wanted to allow capitalist investment and enterprise to operate within Cuba itself.
• They counted on the appeal of Cuba’s beautiful beaches.
• They also believed that historic attractions like Old Havana could be used to promote the tourist sector.
• Prostitution has increased and inequality between those working in the dollar economy and others has become a reality.
• Multiplier effects include sales of tobacco and rum.
• In mid 1990, the first joint venture hotel opened in Varadero beach with profits to be split 50-50.
• The hotel, built with foreign capital, had construction costs of $30 million.
• The growth of the tourist industry has been accompanied by large investments in construction to enlarge hotel facilities.
• Today there are well over 2 million tourists, many more than before the Revolution.
• Joint venture capital includes major investors from Spain, Germany, Austria, and Finland among others.
• Cuba’s military is highly involved in the tourist sector.
• There has been substantial construction of tourist facilities within Havana itself, which retains its position as the main tourist attraction within the country.
• Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is particularly attractive to tourists.
• Old Havana, the colonial core, is known for its lovely old buildings.
• Finance was centered in Old Havana in an area known as ‘little Wall Street.’ This was a symbol of North Americanization.
• Most activities was centered around the various plazas.
• In Havana, rather than displacing residents of the old core, the area is being redeveloped with a concern for the integration of social services and living quarters.
• While commercial activities are in place on the first floor of many buildings, renovated housing is available on the upper levels.
• Due to a shortage of classrooms, elementary school classes are held in the public space of recently reconstructed museums.
• Joint ventures and foreign real estate investment insure that resources are available to redevelop historical commercial structures.
• UNESCO continues to assist with the renovation of convents, cathedrals, and other designated buildings.
• Despite strenuous US objections, tourism alone is ensuring Cuba a fair amount of success in its efforts to be reintegrated into the regional economy of Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Jamaica, Mexico, and other Latin American nations are involved in substantial joint ventures related to tourism.
• Other Cuban trade efforts are also meeting with regional success.
• The relaxation of US sanctions would provide a definite boost to the Cuban tourism industry.
• Raul says: “We have to eliminate forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where one can live without working.”
• He goes on to say: “Without an increase in efficiency and productivity, it is impossible to sustain definitively the enormous social expenditures of our socialist system.”
• Right now Cuba’s economy is stagnant.
• The real value of wages in Cuba remains at around 40% of the 1989 level.
• Cuenta-Propistas — the self-employed — have become the designated saviors of the Cuban economy.
• Raul diplays remarkable faith in micro-enterprise and the “Gospel of Productivity.”
• The key question: Can the micro (and cooperative)-enterprise sector absorb 500,000-1,200,000 apparently redundant workers?
• The Fidelista model is discredited.
• We will have to wait and see what happens.

Video by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

FOR MORE ON CUBA BE SURE TO CLICK THE ‘CUBA TAB’ IN THE NAVIGATION BAR.

BE SURE TO CATCH PART I. VIEW IT HERE.

As most of you probably know, this week Panama will host the summit of the Americas, an important meeting of heads of state from our Western Hemisphere. The summit, inaugurated by President Bill Clinton in 1992, is a historic happening this year because it is the first time that both Cuba and the United States will attend. So, I thought this would be a good time to review what’s been happening in Cuba over the past 50 or so years.

The video below will give you the insight you need to understand Cuba’s sociocultural, political, and economic conditions.

It is the first of two parts that will take you quickly through the last 50 or so years of Cuba’s political and economic history.

Here are the highlights:

• Fidel Castro – popularly named “Savior of the Fatherland” and “Maximum Leader” – reached Havana on January 8, 1959.
• President Batista fled Cuba very early in the morning on January 1, 1959.
• Opposition to Batista first emerged in 1955. By December 1958 most Cubans despised his government.
• Even the Eisenhower Administration wanted Batista out of office.
• At the time of the Revolution, Havana was home to the privileged, hardworking, and marginalized.
• A great deal of American investment was in the Vedado section of Havana where the Hotel Nacional was located.
• In the 1950s, Havana was the center of commercialized vice, much of it underwritten by US organized crime.
• The city was famous for its glitzy atmosphere.
• At first everything was fine between Castro and the American government. But soon bad blood ensued.
• When Cuba nationalized US petroleum properties, Eisenhower eliminated Cuba from the US sugar quota.
• As the 1960s progressed, Castro was preoccupied with developing a model of socialist self-government that was uniquely Cuban.
• Castro wanted to “ruralize the city” and “urbanize the countryside.”
• Resources poured into rural areas for electrification and the construction of new towns.
• Roads and buildings in Havana suffered from a lack of upkeep and maintenance.
• In 1972, Cuba joined COMECON, the economic arm of the Soviet bloc, and in 1975 Cuba began implementing Soviet economic and planning principles.
• Soviet models of economic and social planning facilitated Havana’s social, cultural, and political integration with the Soviet bloc.
• 1986 marked the beginning of a new period called the Period of Rectification. By this time, Cubans were disillusioned with the Soviets.
• Cubans were pressuring their government to return to the core Revolutionary project with its significant gains in the status of women and blacks.
• Unfortunately for Cuba, glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union put an end to any hoped for reforms.
• In 1990, with the end of the Cold War, Cuba entered a challenging period known as The Special Period (of War) in Time of Peace.
• Cuba had an oil driven economy and 98% of the island’s petroleum came from the Soviet bloc.
• Aside from oil, 66% of Cuba’s food, 86% of all raw material, and 80% of machinery and spare parts came from Soviet dominated trading partners.
• Factory closures became common, food scarcity was widespread, and the already inadequate technology base began eroding.
• Exports were also affected since 66% of Cuba’s sugar, 73% of the island’s nickel, and 98% of the country’s citrus fruits had been exported to the Soviet bloc.
• Cuba’s abandonment by the USSR was further complicated by a tightening of US sanctions.

Things were very tough. Learn more in Part II.

Video by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.

FOR MORE ON CUBA BE SURE TO CLICK THE ‘CUBA TAB’ IN THE NAVIGATION BAR.

BE SURE TO CATCH PART II VIEW IT HERE.

 

 

The Sugar Campaign directly impacts Havana.

In 1968, in conjunction with the campaign to achieve a record breaking sugar harvest, the revolutionary regime mounted a final assault against private enterprise in Cuba’s capital city, Havana. The remaining 57,000 private businesses — principally small retail shops, handicraft stores, service and repair centers, bars and cafes — were nationalized. Efforts were also made to expand the distribution of free goods and services.

• Fees were no longer charged for health services, daycare facilities, education, funeral services, utilities, local bus transportation, and local telephone service.
• Rents were fixed at a maximum 10% of income. In fact, by 1969, an estimated 268,000 households paid no rent and the government even contemplated its eventual abolition.

All possible urban resources were diverted to the sugar campaign which proceeded at the expense of all other sectors of the economy. (For more on the ten million ton crop check out this post.)

Projects in the built environment now centered only on road maintenance and on repairs along principal sugar transportation routes.

Port installations and harbor facilities designated to handle increased sugar production were expanded to the detriment of others.

Sugar mills were overhauled and emphasis given to the manufacture of mill equipment.

The labor needs of the harvest were met by the massive mobilization of the population.

An estimated 1.2 million workers from all sectors of the economy, as well as 100,000 members of the armed forces and 300,000 sugar workers, participated.

The effects of this effort on other sectors of the economy were disastrous.

• Production of consumer goods declined.
• Basic foodstuffs of every type — milk, vegetables, fruit, meat, poultry — were in short supply.

The goods that were produced often faced shipping difficulties, for much of the rail and road transportation was diverted to sugar.

The nationalization of small business in 1968 had adverse and unforeseen consequences.

Large numbers of businesses were consolidated into sizable operations or eliminated all together.

As another 50,000 businessmen joined the ranks of the disaffected, renewed discontent swept the island, leading to additional population outflow and a marked loss of managerial personnel. State enterprises couldn’t adequately replace the goods and services that were eliminated.

Bottlenecks in distribution followed, exacerbating old shortages and scarcities.

The suppression of 3,700 street vendors in urban centers effectively destroyed informal food distribution networks across the island and state stores were unable to make up the difference.

Food lines at stores and restaurants lengthened  and absenteeism increased as workers took time off to wait in line. Absenteeism also increased as the incentive to work diminished, approaching 15% in some sectors.

Tardiness increased.

Appeals to self-sacrifice and moral incentives failed to sustain consistently high productivity levels.

Low productivity was exacerbated by poor performance.

Quality was often sacrificed to assure savings and meet production quotas. Poor quality was also due to the absence of adequate raw materials and poor manufacturing.

A scarcity of consumer goods and services and the abolition of wage differentials caused widespread demoralization.

Almost 100 acts of sabotage against industries, warehouses, and government buildings were reported, most of which were not committed by counter-revolutionaries from abroad but by disgruntled citizens at home.

Obviously, the disengagement of the Cuban economy from North American capitalism had been disruptive and caused a great deal of dislocation.

After 1961, one of the key elements of US policy against Cuba was to isolate Cuba economically as a way of disrupting the economy, increasing domestic distress, and encouraging internal dissent — all designed to weaken the regime from within. This was a logical objective since, for the better part of the previous sixty years, virtually all machinery, equipment, and supplies used in Cuban industry, agriculture, mining, transportation, communication, and utilities — more than 70% of total Cuban imports — came from the US.

The US trade embargo after 1961 had jolting effects. Many plants were paralyzed. Transportation was especially hard hit. For example, nearly one-fourth of all buses were inoperable by the end of 1961, and one-half of the 1,400 passenger rail cars were out of service in 1962. Almost three-fourths of the Caterpillar tractors stood idle due to a lack of replacement parts.

Many small and inefficient plants were closed and their operations transferred to larger and more efficient factories so as to pool equipment.

• By 1965, nine sugar mills had been dismantled to provide an inventory of spare parts for other mills.
• The 106 pharmaceutical factories had been reduced to 18.
• Textile plants declined from 153 to 63.
• Less than half of the paper factories were functioning.

Cuban dependence on raw material imports from the US also created vulnerability.

• Denied rubber and petrochemicals, the manufacture of automobile tires halted.
• Without ready access to pancreatic enzymes and tannin, Cuban tanneries suffered.
• Paint factories depended on imports of oils, pigments, and solvents.
• Pharmaceuticals depended on imported serums and antibodies.
• The manufacture of soaps and detergents required imported caustic soda and tallow.
• A newly constructed $4 million factory for the production of synthetic fiber could not operate for lack of cellulose acetate.

The reorientation of Cuban trade with Eastern Europe created problems of a different sort.

The greater distance of Cuba’s new trading partners required extensive investment in infrastructure facilities, including the expansion of port facilities to accommodate long-haul trade and the construction of new warehouses and storage facilities.

The Cuban port system, including the design of docks, the depth of water at dockside, and the nature of the unloading equipment and facilities had originally been designed to accommodate short-haul-trade from the US by ferries and sea trains, not oceangoing freighters. Storage facilities were also designed for short-haul traffic. There was little warehouse space either at the ports or in the interior. The arrival of large freighters carrying huge shipments of supplies created monumental unloading and storage problems.

The substitution of socialist bloc replacement parts was also complicated because old machinery had to be adapted to metric system parts and new equipment imported from the Soviets had to be converted to the US electrical currents in use in Cuba.

Language and cultural obstacles further hindered the preparation of import orders.

During Cuba’s conversion to new spare parts, new machinery, and new productive techniques, large sectors of Cuban industry remained underutilized or idle altogether.

The 1960s were also the years when Cuba suffered the greatest effects from US covert operations.

Throughout the 1960s, the CIA conducted punitive economic sabotage operations against Cuba, the principle aim of which was to foster popular disaffection with government policies.

• Paramilitary missions were organized to destroy sugar mills, sugar and tobacco plantations, farm machinery, mines. oil refineries, lumber yards, water systems, warehouses, and chemical plants.
• Communication facilities were attacked.
• Railroad bridges were destroyed and trains derailed.

The US was also successful in disrupting Cuban trade initiatives with Western Europe by blocking credit to Cuba, hindering the sale of sugar production, and contaminating Cuban agricultural exports.

European manufacturers were discouraged from trading with Cuba:

• cargoes were sabotaged;
• corrosive chemicals were added to lubricating fluids;
• ball bearings were manufactured deliberately off-center;
• defective wheel gears were manufactured.

Rain clouds were seeded before they arrived over Cuba as a means to induce drought.

These activities intensified between 1969 and 1970 as a way to stop the 10 million ton sugar crop. The CIA is also charged with having been instrumental in the outbreak of African swine fever in Cuba in 1970-71, requiring the slaughter of 500,000 pigs.

Security and defense requirements associated with the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis also disrupted Cuba’s planning and development.

Military expenditures continued to receive high priority. Vital equipment of all kinds — construction, transportation, maintenance — was diverted to defense. The expansion of the army and militia meant that tens of thousands of people were intermittently removed from productive activity.

The economic reversals of the 1960s had a sobering impact on the Cuban leadership, even though the decade closed with a lot of goodwill for the revolution still intact. This was partially due to US policy.

Instead of promoting internal dissent and discontent, most Cubans responded to the US embargo with solidarity. However, limited opposition did develop and by the late 1960s an estimated 20,000 political opponents of the revolution were in prison.

As a response, in 1965, the government established the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), designed principally to draft dissidents and “social deviants” into the army for “rehabilitation.” (The UMAP was disbanded in 1967.)

During this period, also, discontent continued to find expression through emigration. Between 1966 and 1971, another 200,000 Cubans left the island.

Photography by Kayugee.

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