Cuba 'apartheid' as Castro pulls in the tourists
By David Rennie in Havana
Last Updated: 7:36pm BST 07/06/2002
It takes a short stroll round Havana to realise that Fidel Castro has
pulled off an extraordinary ideological feat. In less than a decade he
has created one of the world's great playgrounds for the rich while
standing by his Socialist principles.
Backed by a wave of European and Canadian cash, Mr Castro has turned
Havana's historic heart from a cheerless Communist slum into a
district of exquisite hotels, restaurants and shops.
You can sip a drink in an 18th century palace courtyard, dine to the
sound of a strolling salsa band or puff a Cohiba cigar at a bar once
propped up by Hemingway.
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You could be in Spain. Yet Old Havana is 100 per cent state owned,
give or take a few joint ventures. Only one detail mars this triumph
over capitalism - to achieve it Mr Castro has had to introduce a form
of apartheid.
Not only can most ordinary Cubans, who earn an average of =A38 a month,
not afford to enter Havana's new five-star hotels. Even if they have
dollars - either from working with tourists or from remittances sent
by relatives overseas - they are barred from tourist hotels or
resorts.
There are no signs on hotel doors, but the ban is very real - thanks
to a catch-all law against "harassment of tourists". Cubans call it
"tourism apartheid". Mr Castro would doubtless say that he is merely
protecting guests from annoyance, not that many Cubans believe him.
Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes, one of the dissident leaders who met Jimmy
Carter in Cuba last month, said: "The government permits tourism up to
a certain point to earn money.
"But they don't want the Cuban population to be contaminated by
tourists."
But contamination has started and has proved a multiple shock. First,
Cubans working with foreigners have become the new rich. A hotel
****ter makes more from a day's tips than a doctor earns in a month.
Second, Cubans saw foreigners enjoying impossible luxury. Eat a half-
pound of beef and you have eaten a Cuban's official ration for six
months. A three-egg omelette consumes a week's ration for a Havana
citizen.
Finally, and perhaps most damagingly, Cubans have worked out that many
visitors are just ordinary people back home.
Mr Valdes said: "Cubans thought all tourists were millionaires
enjoying things that they could never have.
"But then they saw they weren't on private yachts, they were walking
round the streets. That bothered them because they used to believe
that ordinary people in the West were exploited."
Even in the rest of Havana, much of which looks more like Africa than
Spain, capitalist dollars are saving Mr Castro's Revolution.
Eight years ago, at the height of Cuba's post-Soviet crisis, it was
hard to find food in Havana, even for a foreigner with dollars. Now,
Cubans with a few dollars can eat well, at the family-run home
restaurants, or paladares which have opened across the city.
The government is doing its best to damp down these first sparks of
free enterprise. "The great dilemma for a totalitarian regime is
giving economic rights to the people," said Mr Valdes.
"The government fears the emergence of independent businessmen, who do
not need their rations, or certificates of political rectitude to get
a good job.
"The government will have to change," he added. "Capitalism is
inevitable."
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