Why does one travel to Cuba? Perhaps the answer is in the trees, for the first thing any traveler notices from the airplane window is how green the island is. The contrast with the arid desert surrounding Madrid’s Adolfo Suárez airport could not be greater. A paradise untouched by the pollution, industry and exploitation that accompanies modern life, to the uninitiated. In reality, Cuba used to be the world’s largest sugar producer, before the Castro regime severed Cuba’s ties, first with the free world, then with the world proper. Like many other places in America and Europe, Cuba has been de-industrialized, sadly no service industry sprang up to replace it.
After disembarking the plane, it soon becomes clear that you are far from home. The heat and intensity of the sun is nothing like Europe. The island provides an unobstructed view, this means that you see a lot of lightning while feeling only a little rain. The main eye catchers of Havana are the luxury hotels being built everywhere in joint ventures with European companies. Drivers proudly explain that rooms go for 2.000 or even 10.000 euros per night. The great hope for the socialist country is to make money from people at the top of capitalism: ironic, and seemingly unfeasible. First of all, with economic uncertainty all over the world, the group of individuals willing to shell out these amounts is going to become smaller. Moreover, why would one spend their 2.000 euros in Havana instead of the far more comfortable Santo Domingo, Nassau or San Juan?
The food is definitely not a reason to come. Because importing is hard, the food is based on what is available locally. This in itself is not a bad thing at all, on the contrary. Many Europeans would prefer to eat more locally sourced food instead of what is available at the carnival of globalization in our supermarkets. In Cuba you can expect to eat a lot of watermelon, mango, guava and avocado. Sadly, dinner almost exclusively consists of rice and black beans, complemented by varying vegetables, mostly tomato or green beans. Protein is provided through beef, pork, chicken or seafood. Sadly, all of these are cooked too long until they do not resemble anything. Your writer watched in dismay as a cook lathered a white fish in butter, cooked it to perfection and then kept it going for another 5 minutes… The lack of supplies is no explanation, many of the finest recipes in the world have been created to deal with hardship. Could it be that the Cubans never found a way to deal with their isolated status? At any rate, socialism is not conducive to quality and customer service.
The way of life of the Cuban worker was explained to me by my guide in riveting detail. Because socialism emphasizes the worth of work, jobs are easy to come by. In fact, it is amazing how five people are often employed to do the work that one person could do. Education, from primary school to university is completely free and of high quality. However, the main problem – I was explained – are the salaries. A doctor, professor or bus driver will not make more than 100 euros per month. The richest people are waiters and such who can make a brain surgeon’s monthly wage in two days of tips.
And this is the context of the quote ‘socialism does not work’ although it does seem to work in the sphere of education and health care. Cuba boasts a life expectancy of 79 years, similar to Europe. There are even clinics catering specifically to tourists who can help you quickly and at incredibly low cost. In the field of clothing, food et cetera, Cuba is not cheap. Your 100 euros max will not go far enough in putting food on the table, therefore the government provides its citizens with food, as well as cigarettes. Yes, Cuba is poor, but it is incomparable to anything I have seen before. I have traveled extensively through Africa, where poverty is a huge problem. In that area of the world poverty can be defined by a lack of money. For if you do have money, everything is for sale. There are supermarkets selling Dutch cheese and British cucumbers, luxury apartments with air-conditioning and 24-hour security and luxury all-terrain vehicles. In Cuba there is simply nothing for sale, even if you do have money. There were some shops for tourists where you could buy souvenirs and cigars, but no sunscreen. The global inflation has not passed Cuba by, and with a devalued peso, imports are even harder to come by than before.
Moreover, many of these imports are state monopolies. Traveling to Cuba is traveling 70 years in the past. The famous 1950s cars line the streets while in the more rural areas people still ride around on horseback. Due to the aforementioned monopoly the import of newer cars is prohibitively expensive, making a car more costly than a house. It should not surprise the astute reader that Cubans drive very carefully. I drove around in a car of the make ‘Patriot’, making me think of cowboys, apple pie and hamburgers. In fact, this vehicle was built in Ulyanovsk, the city on the Volga where Vladimir Lenin was born. Other vehicles were scarce and drove well, the main danger instead was the road itself. Avoiding potholes became the main focus rather than anticipating the movement of other drivers, a philosophical opposite of the perfect roads congested by throngs of maniacs in my home country.
Traveling in this country is a great way to improve your resiliency. A brilliant example are the toilets that challenge one’s expectation of what a toilet entails. Were previously I was annoyed if a toilet had no soap, toilet paper or lock, Cuba quickly dashed these expectations. Fixtures such as a way to flush, toilet seat or a door became luxuries. Of more vital importance is the fact that drinking water is not universally available. The first hotel informed me they only served ‘rum and coffee’. When I told this story to a friend, IT specialist by trade, he immediately asked how they made the coffee then. I am a bit vexed I did not think to ask this question, on the other hand it may be for the best I never heard the answer.
Other than water, rum is available everywhere. The main drinks are Cuba Libre and mojito, wine and beer are exotic luxuries. The aforementioned cocktails are made in the opposite way vis-à-vis what I am used to. One starts with a very large amount of rum to which a little bit of cola or juice is added. When going out the focus is not on drinking but on dancing. Cubans are either dancing the salsa or a more up-tempo style, either way they turn it into a great performance. The parties mostly end when there is an electricity blackout, which happens very frequently.
One way in which Cuba outperforms most of the world is the fact that there is no racism. Even though Cuba has a long history of slavery and in the 1950s there was a segregation with separate clubs for black and white, nothing seems to be left of this. It is a common sight to see mixed groups of friends, something that is sadly all too rare in the multicultural cities of western Europe. Could it be that if everyone is in the same (atrocious, but still) economic situation other divisions fade away? As there is no racism, there is also no political correctness. Souvenir shops are full of caricatures of black people that would make any westerner cringe. Luxury resorts are decorated with images and statues of the native Cuban population frolicking in the nude through their pre-Columbian paradise. In fact, the natives became extinct in the 16th century, due to a combination of European diseases and the hard labor forced upon them by the colonizers.
The only books for sale were the collected works of Ché Guevara and the Castro brothers. For sale, but rarely bought, as the copies I bought had been languishing near the resort lobby for over ten years. Ché’s account of the Cuban revolution is interesting for anyone who wants to understand how such a small band managed to oust the previous government. The epilogue is of heartbreaking optimism as Ché expects the US and other foes not to be able to ignore the Cuban dominance in sugar production. To the foreign observer it seems unlikely that a regime that is so proud of its own ideology, yet so dependent on the outside world, can long endure. However, one should keep in mind that Cuba has been going on in this fashion for many decades. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba lost 85% of its foreign trade overnight. The years after were hard, with the food situation far worse than now. In 1994 the government made some liberalizing reforms in the economy and embraced tourism as a new source of foreign reserves. Cubans have not rebelled since then, but they have left, with the Island losing 100.000 people a year to emigration.
I may very well return to this beautiful region, when time and money allow and the cold bites at my bones. But it will be to a destination far more comfortable. Yet I do not at all regret my voyage. One travels to Cuba to experience in its full absurdity the unique tropical socialism. It is a cliché among tourists that they want to visit Cuba soon before it changes into a ‘normal’ part of the world. But I doubt this change will come soon, Cubans have been living like this, and worse, for more than 30 years. The last night in Cuba, when I was sipping a very stiff Cuba Libre, it finally dawned on me: the rum must be cheaper than the coke.