Computer-age comes to Cuba, but the real revolution is on the land
Rory Carroll in San Miguel del Padrón
The Observer,
Sunday May 4 2008
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday May 04 2008 on p33 of
the World news section. It was last updated at 00:03 on May 04 2008.
It has been a week of announcements for Cubans from their new president
Raúl Castro and on Friday shoppers gathered in Havana malls to gaze for
the first time at computers legally on sale. The computers cost almost
£400 and the average wage is under £10 a month, so most were just
looking.
But it is the other, less flashy reforms that may bring a more profound
impact - reforms intended to breathe life into Cuba's economy by giving
farmers incentives and freedoms. At May Day celebrations the government
announced it was ****fting control from the ossified agriculture ministry
to 169 local delegations. In a further assault on bureaucracy, it may
abolish 104 unnecessary departments.
The Communist party newspaper Granma said the move was needed to
'stimulate agricultural production, perfect its sale and increase the
availability of food and, in this way, substitute im****ts'. Salvador
Valdes Mesa, head of the Cuban Workers' Confederation, reinforced the
point. 'It is fundamental to concentrate efforts on increasing
production and productivity, above all of food,' he said.
The government has signalled a transfer of land to private farmers, who
are quietly recognised to be far more productive than state-owned
enterprises. The state, which controls 90 per cent of the economy, is to
further loosen its grip by allowing farmers to buy supplies directly. It
has also doubled and in some cases tripled the prices it pays for some
produce.
With Havana's hungry people packed on the plain below, 38-year-old Abel
was having a bad day. Two oxen were working a field of potatoes but a
rod on the plough kept snagging in the soil. Abel had no wrench or
hammer so he did what his Old Testament namesake might have done. He
picked up a rock and bashed the offending equipment. Cuban agriculture
is a disaster. Farms like this - a collective-run enterprise - lack not
only tractors but basic tools. This is a fertile Caribbean island
littered with dysfunctional farms which cannot feed the 11 million
population, let alone ex****t.
The three biggest successes of the communist revolution are health,
education and s****t, goes the old joke, and the three biggest failures
are breakfast, lunch and dinner. That could change. If Raúl Castro
succeeds in boosting agriculture he will bolster the post-Fidel
transition. Nobody starves but most Cubans struggle for decent
nutrition. Farmers are strangled by red tape requiring permission to buy
as much as a hoe. 'The handcuffs are being taken off, though there is
still a ball and chain around the ankles,' said one foreign expert in
the capital. Some 150,000 individual farms and co-operatives are
estimated to produce two-thirds of Cuba's food using just a third of the
workable land. Anaemic state farms occupy the rest.
The government has experimented with reforms before, notably after the
1991 collapse of its Soviet benefactor, only to row back to Fidel Castro
orthodoxy. Since stripping large landholdings in 1959, starting with his
father's estate, the maximum commandante was loath to relinquish state
control.
Now Fidel is 81, ailing and eclipsed by the more pragmatic Raúl, the
brother inaugurated as President last February. Raúl has studied China
and Vietnam, where the regimes have retained political control while
freeing the economy. He wants changes to boost output: 'The land is
there to be tilled ... We must offer producers adequate incentives.'
Cuba im****ts 80 per cent of its basic food with a third coming from the
United States, which exempts food from its economic embargo. The im****ts
cost £800m annually, a drain on state coffers set to worsen as global
prices rise.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba expert at Pittsburgh University, fears that
the reforms do not go far enough. 'Many Cuban economists believe that in
agriculture, only market mechanisms and foreign investment will prove
able to truly overcome stagnation,' he said. But the mood among farmers
was upbeat. 'We have been waiting for this for so long,' said Luis Pi,
head of a co-operative growing vegetables. 'We can do it if they let us.
Come back in a few months. You'll see.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/04/cuba
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