Another voice
Toy socialist in dreamland
Auberon Waugh
Havana, Cuba When I left England at the beginning of last week, it seemed reasonable to suppose that President Reagan was about to launch another Bay of Pigs, or at least blockade Nicaragua to prevent Russian arms from Cuba reaching Guatemala and El Salvador. Before 1 left, there was a slightly ludicrous CIA press conference on British television: an aerial photograph of a barracks somewhere in Nicaragua had sinister labels attached, saying 'Soviet-style physical recreation area' and 'Soviet-style laundry facility'. I could think of no possi- ble explanation for this unless Americans were preparing us for some heroic intitiative or other.
Although I had never felt the slightest urge to visit Cuba before, Havana suddenly seemed the 'in' place to be. So here I am, thanks to the admirable magazine Business Traveller. For a week, the only newspaper available had been Granma, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba whimsically call- ed after the boat which brought Castro back to Cuba for his second and ultimately successful bid for leadership in 1956. In- cidentally, I learn that Mr Edward Heath has recently been here for a long private talk with President Castro. But there has been no mention of any American invasion in Granma. Of course there would not necessarily have been, since it is totally con- trolled by the Central Committee. On the other hand, it reports a call by Colonel Gaddafi for 'collective international effort' to prevent imminent attacks on Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Cuba, Angola, Nicaragua and El Salvador by American forces 'in cooperation with reaction and Zionism'. From the fact that this report was relegated to page 7 I deduce that the crisis is sub- siding. In Cuba, there is a state of interna- tional crisis if Granma says there is. Other- wise there isn't. It is the perfect newspaper, really, for politicians. Perhaps The Times will yet be reborn as Morning Cloud III. I see this Granma as a raddled old Shirley Williams figure, sitting alone in an upstairs office of the huge Communist Party head- quarters in Revolution Square and deciding for herself — possibly on the strength of the traffic flow beneath her — whether it would be good for the Cuban people to believe there was an international crisis. A few weeks ago she was going great guns and declared general mobilisation. All the but- chers and bakers and candlestick-makers suddenly disappeared, but they seem to be coming back. On a 400-mile tour of the island I saw no great evidence of war- preparedness.
It would be easy to take a grown-up view of America's rather feverish attitude to its communist neighbour and say that since the socialist regime, in all its oppressiveness, in- competence and occasional cruelty, is large- ly sustained by the siege mentality, then it is foolish and irresponsible and counter- productive to rattle sabres at it. Certainly the trade embargo is counter-productive in this respect, giving the regime an excuse for sudden shortages and the more or less per- manent unavailability of basic requirements like toothpaste, typewriters and spare parts for Russian-made cars. But this analysis ig- nores the central phenomenon of a controll- ed press which is not so much the ignorance of the public as its indifference.
Obviously no Cuban is going to talk frankly to a press man from England. What 1 find more striking is that nobody is in- terested in politics. Nobody questions the regime because there is no conceivable alternative. In Manila, people spend a large amount of their time gossiping about the sex lives of President Marcos and his vivacious wife. Here nobody knows and nobody asks about Castro's private life since he divorced his wife. Nobody even knows where he lives. He is said to move between various homes, never spending two nights at one. He turns up at diplomatic receptions unexpectedly, with a fleet of Alfa Romeos full of bodyguards, having closed all streets leading to the party an hour earlier. But his is the only evidence of persecution psychosis in Cuba, and I suspect that what really gives him uneasy nights is the knowledge of the thousands of Cubans he has murdered or dispossessed or imprisoned, including many of his own ear- ly supporters, as much as a genuine fear of American invasion.
In any case, the whole economy of Cuba is now so thoroughly socialised that it is hard to see how it can ever be unscrambled without a long period of national bunkrupt- cy. Castro has maintained the siege mentali- ty for 23 years; a whole indoctrinated generation has been born and grown up knowing no alternative truths. As Cubans are constantly reminded, they have the only free education system in Latin America, the best health service (only out-patient medication must be paid for), rents are tied to one tenth of salary (although even the newest worker housing would be unaccep- table to any British 'worker'), and there is virtually no unemployment, even if there is obvious under-employment. It is by no means unusual to find small, fully automatic hotel lifts manned by two grotes- quely fat black women who leave very little room for anyone else as they sit scowling at each other travelling up and down together all day.
Wages are low — the minimum and most usual wage is 92 pesos (about £138) a month while the head of a fairly important govern- ment department like the main tourist authority gets 380 pesos (say £570), little more than one of our 'workers' in the steel industry. But there is very little for anyone to spend money on. Food is cheap, clothing is subsidised, though rationed, and although few Cubans have cars, petrol is cheap at 60 centavos (say 90p) a gallon, but again rationed.
Now Castro is inviting 49 per cent Western participation in certain manufac- turing enterprises, offering new plant and 3 docile, low-wage labour force in exchange for Western technological and management experience. One might also point out that whatever the official Marxist analysis of our current crisis in the West, Castro is in- vesting huge sums of money in tourist enterprises to attract Western currencies. It may seem that he has completed the socialist revolution and is now about to lead his people to prosperity. How, one might ask, has he achieved it?
The answer to the apparent paradox of a socialist system which works lies in the enormous Soviet subsidy of £41/4 million a day — by cheap sales of oil and expensive purchases of sugar — which keeps it going. A daily subsidy of £41/4 million to a popula- tion of 9.2 million explains everything. The Cubans are only toy socialists, just as employees of British Steel are only toy steelworkers. There are two reasons wily Cuba remains socialist, and the Soviet sub- sidy must logically be more cogent than the mysterious preferences of its current die" tator, whose revolution was generally welcomed without any realisation that it was communist. Before leaving this Footisb dreamland, 1 should also point out that it can scarcely be so idyllic as British tourists may imagine. Of its seven million in- habitants at the time of the Revolution, 11/4 million have left. In addition, perhaps some five or six thousand reactionary elements were executed. So far so good. You can't make a cake without breaking eggs. But when Castro and poor misguided President Carter opened the floodgates in April 1980 — 21 years after the Revolution — 145,000 people promptly bolted, and by no means all of these were convicted homosexual murderers, as the Left would have 115 believe.
Imagine the scream that would go LIP from Mersey, Wear, Tyne, Clyde, Humber and every other `-side' if British 'workers' saw their richly deserved mobilitY allowances and special unemployability supplements being poured out to a Carib- bean sugar-cane republic. Soviet workers may be in no position to complain, but ob- viously Russia hopes for commensurate ad- vantages in Latin America from this enor- mous investment. Next week, unless something else crops up, I shall discuss the battle for the hearts and minds of Latin Americans with particular reference to the attitudes and activities of the Catholic Church in the region.
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