It is easy to tell you about all the beautiful things we saw on our trip to Cuba. (We traveled with the Cuba Travel Adventures Group). The amazing classic American cars from the 1950s and the Spanish colonial architecture, the domed limestone mountains of Vinales and the clear blue ocean waters. The people of Cuba are warm and welcoming, the food delicious (at least what tourists have access to), and the music, some of the best in the world.
It’s equally as easy to list Cuba’s challenges, visible even to the most ignorant tourist. Top of the list is the dangerous deterioration of buildings across the country, multistory apartment buildings literally crumbing to dust, trees growing through living rooms and walls long gone. A lack of available housing has left inhabitants with little choice but to stay in their homes and hope they are not crushed by them, as happened last October. It is hard to imagine many of the buildings could survive more than a few years with the increase in severe weather events.
And then there are the lines, easily a quarter mile long for gasoline; lines at the banks, the grocery stores, and the bus stops. Hordes of society rendered inactive, their lives on hold, their energy, willpower, and hope withering in the sun.
Cuba is an incredibly complicated country, our tour guide Yosvany Hernández liked to remind us, frequently. A country with universal education and a free health care system, with a populace full of love and passion for their island. A country ruled for centuries by other nations (including the US), with millions of people brought in as slaves to grow and harvest sugarcane. A country now in a deep economic tailspin, with no end in sight.
The “revolution” led by Cuban Fidel Castro and mentioned on billboards everywhere has largely failed, often in stunning ways, particularly when you consider the nation has been cut off from much of the world and needs to feed itself. A costly “super cow” breeding program, for example, resulted in the breeding of a single cow (Urbe Blanca) who broke world records in milk production, lived in a lavish air-conditioned barn and was euthanized after her third calf was born. None of her offspring repeated her successes and the island’s people still lack milk today (almost all of it is powdered).
And then there was the plan to plant coffee around the city of Havana to serve the urban populace. Volunteers joined in on the ecological “revolution,” spending their evenings cutting down all of the existing trees and planting coffee plants. But the ill-conceived project focused on the wrong variety, and the coffee plants never thrived. All the work, the trees, and the much-needed investment evaporated into thin air.
In the meantime, Cuban residents still receive rations from the government to supplement their low salaries, also set by the Communist party. As NBC News explained in their coverage of the current economic crisis in December of 2023:
Shortly after the 1959 revolution, Cuba rolled out the monthly ration book, known as the “libreta” (notebook), and provided all Cubans with heavily subsidized staples like eggs, rice, coffee and sugar. Though the rationed food is not enough to last a month, for those who depend on a minimum monthly salary of about $17 U.S., the subsidies are a lifeline. Under the announced measures, only those deemed vulnerable would qualify for food subsidies.
As a result of new government policies, prices for gas, electricity, and water have soared, exacerbating the fact that there is not enough of anything to go around in the first place. And things are slated to get even worse: while we were in Cuba the government announced even higher gas prices, beginning March 1, 2024.
There is a basic premise in Political Science that says that keeping a populace fed is a key to maintaining peace. Hungry people rebel, the theory goes, while those with full bellies tend to remain at rest. Yet there is an added component to that principle I learned while in Cuba: supplying people with the bare minimum requirements for life means they occupy the rest of their time trying to get ahead. If you wait in line for 2 hours to buy milk or gasoline, there is little time and energy left for organizing an uprising.
For many Cubans, the current economic situation has become unbearable. More than 400,000 Cubans have left the island in the past two years headed for the US, a larger out-migration than was recorded in even the 1980s when Cubans came en masse to Florida and other states. And while our guides, drivers, restaurant owners, and pension hosts may still be in Cuba, almost everyone they know has now left. A Pastor in one small town told me she thinks perhaps half of her entire town has left—perhaps an exaggeration of the truth, but her comments also get at how dire the situation feels for those who have stayed.
The current US Embargo on Cuba means that no company that does business in Cuba can also do business with the United States, killing much of the foreign investment that would come to Cuba. Ironically, this extreme policy is exacerbating our own problems at our southern border as more Cubans try to flee to the US, looking for some trace of opportunity and hope.
It is true, as our guide Yosvany pointed out, it will take more than money to fix Cuba’s situation. It will take good leadership and a renewed participation in the government by her people, issues we too struggle with in the United States. And perhaps that was the most interesting, and complicated, thing we saw in Cuba: the steadfast resolve by people like our guide Yosvany and others to stick it out and improve life for the millions of Cubans still on the island. A desire to create hope where there currently is none; the drive to make the world a better place.
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Beth --
What a transformative travel experience! Thank you for your very informative blog summarizing your trip noting the food shortages, the housing in ruins, and how governmental policies are suppressing its own people in many ways.
Enjoyed your take on Cuba, Beth. I have great photos and memories from being there in 2016 – and lots of notes! From your reporting, it seems that Cuba has lost the promising momentum it had gained. The people there have such great heart, it’s sad that their lives are so difficult.