By David Usborne in Havana
Saturday, 5 March 2011
The party begins to pop at about midnight when the half-naked male
models point the last stragglers to the open roof top.
On a second level above us under the stars the DJ turns it down briefly
to allow a solo trumpeter to play a sensuous salsa serenade while behind
the bar – as long as a swimming pool and sagging with mojito cocktails –
lesbian porn from the nineteen thirties is projected on an bare wall.
The guests, in from Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Paris and Madrid, take it in
their sophisticated stride, navigating past mattresses for the boozed up
and the louche and feigning insouciance as Oscar-winning actor Benicio
Del Toro brushes past. There had been a clue in the invitation about
what was to come. Dress code: "tropical glam".
Yet there is wonder if not actual shock in their smiles even as they
dance their last dance and surrender to the approaching Caribbean dawn.
We are not in Miami, Palm Beach or even Los Angeles. This is Havana,
home to one of the last Soviet-style regimes in the world. Now in the
lift going back down an impossible rumour goes around. Two of Raul
Castro's sons attended the party. You never saw them?
Cuba is changing. The roof-garden fete, with its decadent pulse, was not
something you see in Havana on your average Saturday night. Some may
have thought of it as an aberrant flashback to the pre-revolution days
when frolicsome behaviour was the norm. But to others it seemed like a
back-to-the-future experience. Was this a glimpse of this grand but
crumbling city 10 or 20 years from now, raring once again for fun? A
reporter meanwhile tries to straighten out those Castro sightings. The
surprise: no sons but two grand-daughters had indeed shown up.
Grandfather Raul, who turns 80 this year four years after taking over as
President from his ailing brother and founder of the revolution, Fidel,
will not have given the party a second's thought. That Cuba is tiptoeing
back into the sunlight is of his own personal doing, after all. It was
last September that a stunned nation as told that the centrally planned
economy was dying and needed radical surgery. By the end of this April,
the government decreed, 500,000 Cubans would have been fired from state
jobs. In the longer term, the Raul-sanctioned plan would eliminate about
1 million jobs, or roughly 20 per cent of the workforce.
It is an audacious blueprint that will kill the socialist model erected
by Fidel and his co-revolutionary Che Guevara 53 years ago or save it
from collapse. Its success or failure will depend largely on whether
Cuba, with its epic inefficiencies and laid-back rhythms, can rediscover
long-suppressed capitalist instincts. Today, the state employs almost 90
per cent of all workers. As many of those are now laid off they will be
encouraged to apply for licenses to try their hand at private
enterprise. Fidel did something similar 15 years ago, but on a far
tinier scale – Havana saw the opening of a handful of family-run
restaurants and hostelries for tourists – and he later backed away. This
promises to be much bigger.
What it means is that Cuba is in a state of high agitation. Interviews
over several days with Cubans of all backgrounds suggested a people
uncertain whether to be deeply afraid of what is coming or grateful that
after decades of stagnation, their leaders finally are ready for reform.
And there have been other signs of movement from the top. In February,
the regime with little fanfare lifted the internet firewall that for
years had blocked much of what Cubans could see on the web (though only
a fraction of the population has access to it). And the months since
last July have seen 60 political prisoners released, all originally
rounded up in the so-called 'Black Spring' of 2003. Only seven of those
arrested in that crackdown now remain behind bars.
Miguel Barnet, the President of the Writers' and Artist's Union, an
amiable man about Havana who has a direct line of communication with the
Castros (and is therefore not free to speak entirely candidly), accepted
that Cuba is in a tricky place but was certain that Raul knows what he's
doing. "I am very optimistic for Cuba," he tells me. "What would be
tricky is if there was no transition going on. We need to do this."
Raul has support from other members of the top communist leadership.
Next month, a Communist Party Congress will be convened, something not
seen in a decade and a half. It will approve the full Raul reforms that
not only will significantly broaden the areas in which free enterprise
will be tolerated and even encouraged but – perhaps most surprising and
risky – will simultaneously introduce a system of income tax.
We also know, however, that resistance has been powerful at the next
level of communist leaders – the ones who have to choose who is to lose
their jobs and then tell them. Sources spoke of uproar one recent night
at the luxury, state-operated Melia Cobiba Hotel when top socialist
officials gathered the staff of 580 people and told them only 480 would
be returning the following day.
In an attempt at consultation and fairness, committees were established
to discuss how the lay-offs might work. Their work was concluded last
weekend and on Monday Raul acknowledged that progress on sacking the
first 500,000 workers had been slow. The end-April deadline, he said,
would therefore be extended. He gave no new clear schedule for reaching
his final goals.
Speculation abounds that he may also be slowing the pace because of
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other countries in the Middle East where
citizens have risen up against authoritarian regimes. However, Cuba is
different. It does not have a youth-heavy population, access to sites
like Twitter and Facebook is extremely limited and there is no issue of
corruption or great displays of wealth among the ruling elite. "We write
to our capitals every day and say it is not going to happen in Cuba,"
says one junior diplomat at the Canadian embassy here. "Change is going
to come not at once, but bit by bit."
Then there is this: while the prisoner release programme has cheered
human rights groups and even some dissident leaders in the country, no
one supposes that old habits of repression have died. Thus two weeks
ago, on the first anniversary of the death from hunger strike while
behind bars of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the regime moved
temporarily to round up 45 dissidents and confine 60 more in their homes
to diminish the chances of street protests. All were released when the
anniversary was over.
"Some positive steps have been taken," a diplomatic source in Havana
said, noting the release of the 60 political prisoners. "But we remain
extremely worried about the human rights situation." He described a
security apparatus that remained alert and ubiquitous. Any kinds of
street gatherings are instantly quashed, in part by thugs hired by the
state. The front page of the Communist Party paper, Granma, last week
reported that the spokesperson for the Ladies in White, a protest group
of wives and relatives of those first incarcerated in 2003, had been
unveiled as a government informer. What motivated the paper to run this
is unclear.
The United States, which maintains its 49-year-old economic embargo
although restrictions on sending money and travelling to Cuba have been
eased by President Barack Obama, has its own human rights crisis with
Cuba, involving US citizen Alan Gross, 61, who was to go on trial in
Havana yesterday. Caught distributing satellite reception equipment to
Jewish groups in Cuba to improve their access to the internet, he was
arrested on charges of espionage and could face 20 years in jail if
convicted. The US has protested and demanded his release.
The embargo is a big part of what ails Cuba, which was kept afloat for
years by Moscow until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. The other
problem is the lack of liquidity in Cuba, where no system of credit
exists. Meet Jose, for example, who for years worked as a carpenter
before – in the Cuban equivalent of winning the lottery – landed a job
last year driving a tourist horse-drawn buggy in Old Havana on a monthly
salary of $11 that is multiplied many times over by tips. With two of
his four sons along with him, he acknowledges that he risks being fired
under Raul's reforms. "We will deal with that if it comes," he says,
before revealing an ambition to open a paladar – the name of the private
restaurants permitted to serve tourists: "I will be the waiter and my
wife will cook." But he echoes the worries many others have.
"The pillars of our country are all gone – coffee, sugar, rum – they
aren't good any more," laments Fran, 66, once a farm labourer who now
earns $4 a month as cabaret singer for the state aviation institute. He
too is lucky as the holder of one of Fidel's original licenses to
entertain tourist groups. He sings old Beatles' numbers at a creaking
paladar on a river outside Havana. Fran tells me something that would be
hard to credit were we not in Cuba where nothing seems too bizarre. He
claims his son Ojani was married in the early 1990s to Jennifer Lopez.
"I told him not to worry about the money and just leave," he says with a
smile of obvious chagrin. He is pessimistic about the Raul reforms. "So,
the people will be allowed to work for themselves and have their own
business. Yes, fine. But how do you that without any money? We have no
savings."
"It will all come from Miami," says a US businessman who has permitted
business dealings in Cuba. In spite of the embargo, the US is Cuba's
fifth trading partner. This is why the relaxation of the rules on money
remittances to Cuba by Obama are seen by some as crucial, because those
dollars may fuel the nascent free enterprise sector.
Few in Cuba, however, expect the embargo to end soon and most react
sceptically to the idea that when Fidel dies, Uncle Sam will come with
dollars and cruise ships and take the island for itself. "I don't think
that the Americans want another mortgage," says Mr Barnet, the union
leader. "We have to do this for ourselves."
More important now, with the Communist Congress around the corner, is if
ordinary Cubans think it can be done. That they want to have faith is
clear and they don't need rooftop parties to feel the breeze of possible
change. But the gap between Raul's promises and free enterprise taking
root is wide and fear still reigns over hope. "This," says a diplomat
"is their last chance, because the country is in dire shape."
Five Revolutionary Decades
2002: The US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the island takes on new
prominence as a prison for detainees in the wars in Afghanistan and
against terror.
1962: Cuban missile crisis. The USSR and USA come to the brink after
Moscow deploys nuclear missiles on Cuba at Castro's request. Kruschev
later agrees to remove them.
1961: The US-supported Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles fails.
Castro declares Cuba a communist country and allies it with Moscow. The
US breaks off all relations.
1959: President Fulgencio Batista is driven from Cuba and Fidel Castro,
leader of the revolution, becomes the President. Raul, his brother, is
deputy and the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara is named third in
command.
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