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MARIO J. TORRES
The truth about Cuba
CUBA NOW
After the fall of Berlin Wall, the collapse of the USSR, and the total destruction of the Communist countries, Castro had a natural death that he did not want to accept. His economy was in the air. He had no more support from his friends and old partners who were all gone, but he did not want to change or open up to the rest of the world, or even hold elections because he knew that would mean losing full power.
So, instead, he closed himself inside the country and intended to survive by going back to the times of the Indians. He called this process The Special Period.
He reduced to a minimum all first-need articles of every kind, and those had already been scarce for more than thirty years. He created new laws of repression and he started charging high taxes on everything. Besides, he increased the price of all articles, he reduced salaries, he forbade every attempt to survive by a private small business or transaction, he prepared failed fishing plans, he attempted to have every house in Cuba cultivate, grow, and consume their own food from the garden at their houses. He also created insufficient agricultural markets and did crazy things in agriculture; he stimulated foreign tourism in Cuba by legalizing the so-called "currency of the enemy": the dollar.
He used the dollar to start selling first need- products in a country where workers do not get paid in dollars. The initial exchange rate was around one hundred and thirty Cuban pesos for one dollar. This meant massive murder because the average monthly salary of a Cuban worker is around two hundred pesos. That is ten dollars for the whole month if we take the current twenty/thirty-pesos-equal-one-dollar rate. There couldn't be anybody who might definitely afford the excessively high prices of the underground market and the dollar exchange rate. No one would be able to afford food to support his family, not to mention clothes, shoes, housewares, and other secondary needs.
These types of brutal misery, despair, worry, need, and strong repression are the main features of Cuba nowadays.
In the previous thirty years, food ration distribution had been controlled by a special coupon notebook. After 1989 this situation became more serious and in big crisis.
Before 1990, Cubans were entitled to four ounces of meat per week, a loaf of bread daily, and some items like fish, eggs, and butter more easily obtainable. In the 90's meat became an exclusive product for tourism and was not distributed to the population any more. And, most of the items that could be obtained with rations but were usually available practically disappeared.
The current food ration distribution is as follows:
(1) Four ounces of ground soybean resembling meat bi-weekly.
(2) Some kind of awful, stinking and bad tasting ham-like stuff in ounces twice a month.
(3) Five eggs once a month.
(4) One fish once a month.
(5) A quarter of a loaf of bread daily.
(6) One liter of milk every other day for kids
up to six years of age.
(7) One liter of soybean yogurt every four days
for kids between seven and fourteen years old.
(8) Five bottles of kitchen alcohol twice a month(9) Fuel for cookers twice a month.
(10) Rice, beans, sugar, salt, matches, and
cigarettes in small rations the first day of each month.
(11) Coffee powder , four ounces once a week.
(12) Soap and toothpaste, every three months.
(13) Vegetables and produce must be bought
where people can get them.
(14) Cakes are only sold for one-year birthday party kids.
Rum is a mixture of kitchen alcohol, kerosene, and other unknown substances which makes it undrinkable. Beer is low quality, and when sold brings about long queues and quarrels among men. Shoes and clothes are never sold except for dollars. Other products like butter, cheese, milk yogurt, cokes, malta, ice cream, cookies, crackers, oil, beef, pork, chicken, good fish, ham, lard, etc., practically do not exist in Cuba as supplied by the state, since it had always been the only provider. Some of those can be found in the dollar shops or in the clandestine or black market.
This type of ration is practically a survival food that never makes ends meet, so usually everybody runs out of everything pretty fast. In these cases Cubans have to turn to the clandestine market or to the dollar shops, but first they have to make marvels to get the money to be able to afford it.
The dictator then created many shops in the country that sold (and still do) first need products in dollars even though the population is paid in pesos and the dollar=peso rate is between 25 and 30 pesos for 1 dollar. Castro has always wanted to prove that life before 1959 was like hell in the island and that life standard improvement started when he took the power, trying to confuse the people with the idea that progress is not brought by modern times but by his revolution. If the system that prevailed up to 1959 had continued, many more goals in technical and economical progress and advance in all fields of life would have been achieved than the ones Castro claims to have obtained also at the high price of his dictatorship, so here the evil leader wisely takes advantage of a principle that many Cuban have not realized and it is that the passing of time is proportionally direct with mankind progress.
The following data proves that the reasons for Castro's revolution and its acceptance by the people were, by no means by economical reasons, but were simply due to the propitious historical stage of the nation at that moment in which Fulgencio Batista wanted to impose his government to the people, in a second term, with antecedents of a coup d'etat and violence for mere political motives.
CUBA BEFORE
This is the real Cuba: In 1958, Cuba was a prosperous country with a solid economy. It was the third country in gold reserve in Latin America and the value of its currency equaled the American dollar at a 1 to 1 ratio. Its inflation rate was the lowest in Latin America with 1.4%. The island was fourth in the world in greater employees' and workers' salary payment. The Caribbean country with 0.86 cattle heads per inhabitant, ranked 8th in Latin America and was 3rd in meat production in the same area. As to mineral production, Cuba was the first in the world in cobalt production, second in nickel, eighth in manganese and eleventh in copper production. Regarding consumption of calories, Cuba was 3rd in Latin America and first in fresh fish consumption.
In that very year, Cuba was 3rd in Latin America with 28 inhabitants per telephone and 27.3 inhabitants per automobile. The island was also second in inhabitant per radio set ratio with 5.0 and first in inhabitant per TV set ratio with 1 TV set for 18 inhabitants.
Cuba was the third country with the largest number of radio stations (160) and television transmission stations with 23 in Latin America. In relation to its population, Cuba was second with 60016 movie-theaters and also second in newspaper distribution with 588.0 inhabitants per newspaper. In 1958, there were 97 hospitals and 21,141 beds at the service of the people and 6,4231 doctors and the inhabitant=doctor ratio was 980 inhabitants per doctor where Cuba ranked second in Latin America whereas in inhabitant per dentist ratio Cuba ranked third with 2,978 inhabitants per dentist. Besides, children mortality rate in the island was the lowest in Latin America at that time with a 37.6 % deaths per thousand children born alive and the general mortality rate was 5.8 % per thousand; being first in America and third in the world.
The country had 13 universities at that time apart from institutes, Schools of Commerce. Technical and Pedagogical Schools. Illiteracy rate was 25 % and the island was fourth in illiterate per inhabitant in Latin America and it was the country that devoted more budget expenses to Public Education with a 23% Out of 273 inhabitants, one was a college student and 45% were female.
In Cuba, there was 1 km of railway line every 8.08 km.
Also, daily average salary for agricultural workers in 1958 was $3.00 (7th in the world) and $6.00 for industrial workers where the island ranked 8th worldwide. Cuban workers had a daily 8 hour shift system and worked 44 hours a week. They were paid 48 hours a week and were entitled to a one-month paid vacation yearly and in summer months many shops and stores were closed at 1PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that workers could enjoy the hot and beautiful Cuban beaches, which at that time were open for everyone and not for tourists or for the new ruling class as they are now.
This may measure how much the Cuban people lost with Castro 's revolution and how unnecessary it really was. Castro now purposely adjudicates to his system his contradictory "achievements" (if there was really any) which are anyhow the result of the progress that the passing of time brings about in countries, societies and civilizations but in the island's case, progress was definitely stopped when he took the power and what is more, if Castro had not existed, Cuba would now be a paradise on Earth.
MAKE YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS!
MARIO J TORRES
JANUARY 2004
