Cuba: Cold War pawn and sanctions target still fascinates: fifty years later, people are taller, they live longer, but country still seeking stability - World

National Catholic Reporter, March 8, 2002 by Gary MacEoin

Cuba fascinates me. I first came here in 1945. Its news value then was close to nil. It showed up once a year in the business section when we learned how many millions of tons of sugar the harvest promised us. In the following years it figured more prominently in scandal sheets as Las Vegas gangsters built luxury hotels and casinos.

By my fifth visit in June 1958 it was firmly established as a hedonist's paradise, a haven for the playboy rich, a byword for corruption, decadence and inequality.

Herbert Matthews of The New York Times reported that Havana had 50,000 prostitutes and 270 brothels. When I got into a taxi in the late 1940s, the driver had enough broken English to offer me, with ample gestures, his sister, 13 years old.

By that time, also, thanks to Matthews and a few other enterprising journalists, many had heard about 32-year-old Fidel Castro who, with the 12 survivors of a small invasion force, was waging a guerrilla war since 1956 in the Sierra Maestra. On New Year's Day 1959, abandoned by the United States, Dictator Fulgencio Batista fled. We welcomed Castro, now a folk hero, to the Overseas Press Club of New York, where we endured what soon became his trademark, a three-hour impromptu speech.

Back in Cuba in June 1959 and again a year later, I watched the different reactions of the wealthy and the impoverished as farms over 1,000 acres and foreign enterprises were nationalized, rents drastically cut, and racial apartheid abolished. Those who, reading the signs, had salted away their wealth in Florida, started what was soon a mass exodus to Miami. The United States, at first benignly indifferent to what it assumed would simply be a brief cleansing followed by a new round of corruption, bristled at the threat to its $2 billion investment. As a few years earlier in Guatemala, it rejected the proffered long-term bonds as inadequate, severed diplomatic relations, imposed an embargo, and recruited, trained and equipped the army that ended up ignominiously at the Bay of Pigs.

To survive, Castro turned to the Soviet Union. It responded generously, buying the sugar and providing industrial equipment, technical aid and liberal credit. Cuba now became a pawn in the Cold War, leading to the threat of a nuclear holocaust in the 1962 Missile Crisis. After that was resolved by Soviet withdrawal and a U.S. commitment not to invade Cuba, we committed ourselves to a hysterical policy in which we persist to this day: Use whatever means are necessary to force Cuba to recognize our suzerainty. The CIA, as we all know, is creative. Exploding cigars, a poisoned wet suit, a poisoned pen are a few of its more than a score of assassination attempts identified by a congressional inquiry. The effort continues, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Radio and TV Marti. Saboteurs. Funds for subversive groups.

What sense does it make? A small island with 11 million people. It would fit six times into Texas with room to spare. No navy. A tiny army and air force without offensive capacity. Is this a greater threat to our survival than a communist tyranny like China with which we maintain diplomatic relations and to which we award favored nation status?

Just as the United States is fascinated, so am I. That is why in January 2002, I am back for the 12th or 13th time. A decade after the collapse of the Soviets, how high is the morale? Do people here still support the regime, or are they ready to cry uncle?

Some things are better

Some things are definitely better than half a century ago. People are taller. They have better teeth. They live longer. Both children and adults are in better physical shape. Obesity is rare. The typical Latin American division between a few ultra wealthy and many in abject poverty has disappeared. Income disparity is about one to three, a radical contrast to the United States where it is one to 100, or more.

Some things have worsened. Apart from a few major streets, the roads are potholed. Vintage automobiles, although meticulously polished and carefully maintained, need shocks. Stores and homes cry out for a coat of paint. Clothes are of inferior quality. Clothing, transport and medicines are in short supply, as are such basic food items as meat, milk, eggs and butter.

Some things are unchanged. Fresh breezes off the ocean provide a pleasant alternative to the smog that substitutes for air in most cities today. You hear a chorus of Mira ("look"), Oye ("listen"), Psst, as people greet acquaintances on crowded streets. They shout to each other. I think they must all be deaf from day-and-night-long immersion in a cacophony of competing loudspeakers spewing salsa music and vapid oratory at full blast. For once I am grateful that I can remove my hearing aids.

There are reasons for the changes. People are taller and have better teeth because of the universal availability of free medical and dental services combined with training at school in good dietary practices. These advances explain why Cubans live as long as people in the United States (79 years for women, 74 for men), and why the median age is 35 years, compared with 20 in El Salvador and other neighboring countries. An additional reason is that Cubans, unlike other Third World peoples, do not need children in order to have a caregiver in old age. Everyone has a guaranteed pension. So with access to effective reproductive services, they limit family size.