Cubans - still screwed in 2015?
I tried to buy potatoes in Cuba last week. The experience taught me that what hurts the people there more than the US embargo are the limits imposed by the Cuban government. We should lift the embargo because it will reveal that the Cuban government has lied for decades about why their economy is on the ropes and encourage entrepreneurship.
For New Year’s Eve, Cuban families will do what they’ve always done gathering around meals of Ajiaco (corn soup) or Picadillo (beef stew). Fresh potatoes are key ingredients for these dishes and getting them requires operating on the black market. Despite loosening of controls on agriculture, the Cuban government still takes most of a farmer’s potato crop for its own government production of processed foods. The remaining fresh potatoes are so expensive that they don’t appear at the government sanctioned markets.
When I asked for potatoes at the market, I was told they are prohibited and not available. Then, after a whisper, a look askance and a shout out the back window; a young man ran up and offered a small white plastic bag of medium white potatoes at the totally ridiculous price of fifty cents a piece.
The Cuban government uses the trade embargo as an excuse for their mismanaged economy, which has struggled since the collapse of subsidies from the Soviet Union in 1989. Its a standard response from everyday people when asked why common items like potatoes are not available in markets. I saw a prominent government billboard that went further, calling the US embargo “genocide.”
Everyday life in Cuba reflects a suppressed economic life. An early act of the Castro-led communist government halted the private sale of cars. If the car wasn’t already on the road, it could not be purchased or sold without the express government permission, which was rarely given. Consequently, cars from 1950s still roam the streets of Cuba today. The rules were relaxed in 2011, but the streets are still largely traffic free because of stratospheric government prices on automobile. Fish on this island nation are very expensive because access to a boat is restricted to those trusted by the government not to use it to flee the country. And beef is hard to get because government bureaucrats long ago deemed milk more valuable than beef and restricted the killing of cows more rigidly than India. Is milk still more important than beef for Cuba? Who knows, but now the rules are in place and its almost impossible to change them.
Hope thrives in Cuba despite the constraints of a communist government struggling to hang on to power and its failed economic system. With the loss of subsidies from the Soviet Union and the rise of Raul Castro, entrepreneurship has blossomed in Cuba. Most Cubans and Cuba-watchers say it was only because of the near-starvation of the post Soviet “special period” that the government opened to small scale entrepreneurship. Small farmers are allowed to sell a portion of their product. Owners of those 1950s cars can operate taxi services for tourists. People have opened “paladares” -private restaurants- often converting a floor in their home to serve the meals. Like the sharing-economy phenomenon in the rest of the world, Cubans make better use of the existing assets in this resource-poor country. Most important, success goes to those who take risk and work harder.
Until 2011, running your own business as a taxi driver was illegal. Today, unlike almost all professions, you make money depending on how much you work and how nice your service. I met Jose (not his real name to avoid any risk to him), a military helicopter pilot until the Special Period who now drives a taxi full time on the street of Havana. I asked what he is doing for New Years to celebrate, he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “I’m working!” He may or may not have potatoes for a New Year Eve meal, but like millions of Cubans, he is more hopeful about 2015 as a year when the economy opens further both with the US and from within because he has the freedom to make more money if he works harder.
If the government opens the economy and we lift the embargo it could result in affordable potatoes, entrepreneurship, and billboards that don’t lie — a future worth hoping for.
