Cuba: Going Back

by

Tony Mendoza

During 37 years of exile (and 37 years of American winters) I had increasingly remembered Cuba as paradise. What I remembered and what I missed was the weather, ocean, sky, breeze, vegetation, Havana, Varadero and the warmth and wit of the Cuban people. In August 1996 I flew to Havana, my first trip back, to confirm my memory and to satisfy my curiosity about life in socialist Cuba.

My family left Cuba during the first wave of immigration, in the summer of 1960, when Fidel Castro began the process of nationalizing all privately owned land, industries and businesses, thus making it clear that he intended to create a socialist state. As I recall, my family was only allowed to take 50 dollars cash, and the jewelry my mother wore, while everything left behind became the property of the state. Still, many other Cubans also left that summer and during the second half of 1960–around 60,000. Between 1960 and 1962, 200,000 Cubans decided socialism was not for them and left the island.

I turned 18 during the summer of 1960. I had just graduated from the Choate School, a private school in Connecticut, and from my somewhat warped adolescent perspective, leaving Cuba was an excellent move. American girls appealed to me immeasurably more than Cuban girls, who not only didn't drink or neck on dates, but also brought along a chaperone. I liked just about everything about American culture and I was lucky. I went directly from Cuba to a freshman year at Yale, and in 1964 I enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. By the time I finished with an architectural degree I was a different person, seduced by Cambridge and the exuberance and craziness of the times: the hippies, the anti-war movement, communal living, pot, acid, Rolfing, Primal Scream. I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but I still think of the Sixties and early Seventies as a truly wonderful period, another paradise. I expected an adventure every day.

In 1970 I joined a commune in Sommerville, a working class community next to Cambridge, with 12 men and women. Our minimal living expenses allowed many of us to drop regular jobs and pursue other interests, mostly in the arts, and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. The year we decided not to have our traditional New Year's bash, 75 people still showed up. I lived in the commune throughout the Seventies and along the way I quit architecture and became an artist/photographer. During all this time Cuba felt like a distant and not too relevant past.

That started to change when I moved to New York in 1980, hoping to give my art career a boost. The Eighties weren't as interesting as the Sixties and Seventies, so I had more time to think and reminisce. My romantic life also needed a boost. After many failed relationships with American women, I met a Cuban woman with a background very similar to my own–Carmen had studied art history in Boston and was also a veteran of the Sixties. It was the first time in exile when either of us had dated another Cuban and we were both surprised to feel so attracted, comfortable, and compatible. We moved in together. After speaking only English for twenty years, we rediscovered the pleasures of our native language. We purchased an alarming quantity of cassettes and CDs of old Cuban music, and danced in our living room to the rhythms of Cuban boleros and danzones. Black beans and fried plantains reappeared in our kitchen, and I started wearing guayaberas, the traditional Cuban shirt. After living in Brooklyn for a few years, we wondered what it would be like to live in a Cuban community, and in the tropics, so we moved to Miami and liked it, with reservations. We missed the cultural feast we had become accustomed to in Boston and New York. We also were not used to living in the same city with a very large group of relatives, many of whom would start conversations by asking: "So, when are you two going to get married?"

Still, we liked our relatives, we loved the climate, the ocean, the wild parrots in our garden, and our late afternoon cheese and wine picnics in Key Biscayne–where we eventually got married in a ceremony by the sea. We would have stayed in Miami had it not been very difficult for an artist to earn a living there, and more to the point, we needed health insurance; Carmen had a boy from her first marriage, and we both wanted another child. In 1987 I was offered a job teaching photography at the Ohio State University and our family moved to Columbus. To the tundra.

People born in islands shouldn't move to the Midwest. Every winter I had memories of Cuba that seemed to revolve around the climate. I remembered Varadero beach, where my entire family on my mother's side spent the three summer months at my grandfather's house. I especially remembered the porch overlooking the ocean. I ate breakfast there every morning, always on the lookout for the large fish–sharks, barracudas, tarpons–that glided close to the surf in the early morning to feed on sardines. After a morning of water-skiing and spear fishing I would return to the porch. There was a comfortable soft couch there, where I stretched out after lunch and napped. I can still feel the strong breeze from sea on my face, and hear the hypnotic sounds of the surf. I wanted to see that porch again, and go swimming in front of the house.

When I turned 50 my Cuba nostalgia started to get out of hand. I wrote a series of coming of age stories about a 14-year-old boy called Tony, who lived in Havana in 1954. I would listen obsessively to CDs of Lucho Gatica and Rolando Laserie, the singers who were popular on the Cuban radio during the Fifties. Every time I saw pictures of Havana in photo books shot by European journalists, I would strain to see if I recognized the streets, the parks, the buildings in the background. I remembered Havana as an exceptionally beautiful city, but in those days I was unconcerned with beauty and I had no frame of reference. Now I know better, and I wanted to see Havana again. I especially wanted to see the house where I grew up and the huge mango trees in the garden, where I must have killed 1000 sparrows with my BB gun. (I regret it now!)

In 1996 I asked the university for a Sabbatical. I'm expected to do research and I proposed to go to Cuba, take pictures, and keep a diary. The U.S. allows Cuban exiles to return to visit relatives, for a maximum stay of 21 days. I found one distant relative still in Cuba, and proposed to visit her. The Cuban government is more than happy to grant visas to visiting exiles–Cuba needs their dollars. In late August I flew to Miami, then boarded the Peruvian charter that flew us to Nassau and from there to Havana.

The flight was scheduled to leave at nine, but they asked us to be in the airport at 5 am. I could see why. The plane was full, and every one, except me, was bringing four or five huge bundles of supplies for their relatives–food, medical supplies, clothes, shoes, toys. Cocoons, they called them, because a Nicaraguan with a portable machine, for three dollars a wrap, was kept busy wrapping many layers of cellophane around the suitcases and bundles. According to the veterans of this trip, the cocoons prevented the Cubans workers and officials at the Jose Marti airport from stealing everything.

On the plane, the passengers milled around in a festive mood, told jokes, and exchanged stories about the current situation in Cuba. A group in the back had gathered around a man with a guitar and sang old Cuban songs throughout the trip. The elderly woman who sat next to me told me she goes back every summer–American regulations allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives once a year. "I can't help it," she said. "I feel excited every time I go back. Havana brings back so many memories." She was going back to see her sisters. When I asked about her family in Cuba, she kept saying: "Me dan tanta pena, los pobrecitos." I feel so sorry for them, the poor dears. She was bringing five fifty-pound bundles full of supplies. She also said, fiercely: "If the Cuban custom officer says something to you about your documentation being incomplete, don't believe him and don't pay him a thing. Tell him you'll call his superior."

I had no trouble at the airport although the custom official pointed out that my passport, which I had renewed recently, wasn't signed. I quickly pulled out a pen and signed it. I might have detected a certain look of displeasure on the official's face, but he let me through. Other than that, I encountered the first example of the shortcomings of socialism. I went to the men's room. A socialist worker sat on a chair there and for one peso gave me two sheets of toilet paper, four inches by four inches.

"You must be kidding!" I said. Apparently, I had to pay more for more sheets.

Every public toilet, including the one at the best known hotel, the Havana Libre, has an employee dispensing toilet paper inside, either a tell-tale sign of socialist inefficiency, or more likely, an acknowledgment of the fact that if they put the toilet paper inside the toilet stall, it will be stolen.

A friend of my wife's family picked me up. I'll call him Mario. My wife was raised in La Esperanza, a small town in Las Villas province, now called Villa Clara. (The Revolution has changed everything, including the number and the names of the provinces. What used to be Oriente Province, is now divided into four new provinces, including Granma Province, named after Castro's boat.) Mario told me some wonderful stories about my wife's family during the old days, and had only horrible things to say about the current state of Cuban socialism, although, like most Cubans I met, he once supported the government and in the Seventies went abroad on internationalist missions. He lives well, not on his retirement income, but by renting two bedrooms in his three bedroom apartment to tourists. All his bedrooms were already rented to Italian tourists, but he had arranged for me to rent another place, a private apartment in El Vedado, for $25 a day. It had a small kitchen, air, and a black and white TV. Apartments like this can be found everywhere in Havana, where an income of $25 dollars a day amounts to a small fortune. Most families will very gladly rent you their apartment, move out, and stay with relatives.

Passengers on the flight had warned me that I was going to find a ruined Havana, but I was still surprised during the drive from the airport. Havana reminded me of the set for the movie Brazil; the same old factories that lined the airport road during the Fifties are still there, rusting away in the tropical sun, and still in use. People are on bicycles everywhere, like an old newsreel of an Asian country. We drive by 1950 model cars, 1940 model cars–we're on a time warp. Then we entered the residential area where I used to live, the Vedado, an affluent neighborhood in pre-Castro days. The wonderful gardens I remembered were now wildly overgrown or barren, and the buildings were even more depressing. Havana's architecture is pseudo Greek and Roman and after 37 years of socialism, the buildings appeared to be exact copies of the ruined monuments I saw in Greece and Rome. Instant antiquity! The damage seems more serious than the need for paint and new windows, which most buildings need. What holds the buildings up–the concrete, the structure–seems to be chipping away, as if a new breed of a concrete eating vermin is loose in Havana. In 1960 the Revolution came up with the Urban Reform Law, wherein the ownership of most houses and apartments was passed on to the dwellers, who paid for the units in low monthly installments. The new owners never suspected that they would never again have the funds, nor the materials, to maintain their homes.

The apartment Mario rented for me was half a block off G Street, also known in the old days as the Avenue of the Presidents. Coincidentally, Mario's apartment was on G Street, and my family's ex-house was also on this avenue. I asked Mario to drive by it–I just wanted to get out and take a quick look. I was shocked–the house was in perfect condition! It looked exactly like the house I left 36 years ago. Why? It's a government building. Not one doorknob was out of place. I just looked in from the iron gates and after 37 years everything about that house felt so surprisingly familiar. I could almost hear the voice of my grandfather joking and laughing while he played dominoes with his friends on the side porch.

The other five houses on our block hadn't fared as well. They seemed bombed. The building next to our house, a Jewish Synagogue in the Fifties, was in ruins. The house in the corner, where I played with a boy my age, was crumbling. The other three houses in the block were standing, but in veeery sad shape. I was to see this throughout Havana; most dwellings, where the Cuban people live, are dilapidated but suddenly you see a house in perfect condition. This invariably means that it's a government house–a party headquarters, a ministry, the headquarters of a mass organization. In certain neighborhoods, like the area that was known as the Country Club, on the western end of Havana, the old mansions are also in immaculate condition and tend to be embassies or the houses of high government officials. Fidel lives there in a huge compound in the area called El Laguito. My family's ex-house is now a government function house. All they do there is they give dinner parties.

A similar situation occurs with the cars one sees in Havana. Most cars owned by Cubans are in terrible shape, mostly 1950s American cars. You also see many Russian Ladas, dating from the Seventies and early Eighties, which were given as rewards to model workers or party militants. The Ladas apparently break down even more than the older American cars. Then one sees brand new Italian Fiats in perfect condition. Whenever you see a brand new Fiat, it belongs to a government agency or a government official. Socialist equality is at work in Cuba, but on two different levels.

After I dropped my bags, Mario invited me to his apartment for a drink. He lives on the eighth floor of a once elegant apartment building overlooking the ocean at the base of G Street. Going up on the elevator was my second experience of the shortcomings of daily life in Havana. The lights on the elevator were out. The door closed and we went up in total darkness. I was nervous going up on that pitch black, slow and incredibly creaky elevator–which obviously Otis Elevator hadn't serviced since 1960–and in a city with a reputation for sudden blackouts.

Over the drink, I asked Mario why they didn't fix the light.

"The manager of this building earns a miserable wage from the government. He won't fix anything unless we give him some money. Nobody minds the dark elevator that much, you get used to it, so no one is paying."

"What happens if you're in the elevator and there's a blackout."

"No problem. You can open the door by hand, and if you get caught between floors, you can go out through the roof."

That was reassuring.

Mario had three young Italian men staying in his apartment. They weren't in, but he said they were very polite fellows; they worked in the same office in Rome and had come to Cuba on a sex junket.

"Do they bring the jineteras to the apartment?" Jineteras is the new Cuban word for prostitutes.

"Of course. I don't interfere with the guests' private life. They come to Cuba to sleep with jineteras. I'm not a moralist. Besides, the girls they bring here are very polite. They're educated. They are not like the hookers you have in the U.S. The men who stay here are regulars. They come back every year. I'm booked solid every summer. I make them a good breakfast and my bedrooms have a great view of the ocean. We usually rent two bedrooms at 20 dollars a day per bedroom, but now we have all three rented. My wife moves out and stays with our daughter. I sleep on the porch. It's inconvenient, but here there is no tomorrow. If you can rent three today, you rent three today. Tomorrow the government will pass a law making this illegal." (Mario was right. In July, 1997, the government slapped restrictions and extremely stiff taxes on the practice of renting private rooms to foreign tourists.)

When I left, I told him I was terrified of his elevator and I was going to walk down.

"Nonsense," Mario said. "I'll go with you."

So I went down on the elevator from hell. There was a new twist. Just about everyone in Cuba smokes. Mario is a chain smoker and he smoked on the ride down. He didn't even ask for permission. I'm an ex-smoker and I'm horrified by smokers and cigarette smoke. Still, I was thankful for that little glow.

I moved into my apartment and went to work. I had 21 days to walk up and down every city street, revisit the places I remembered, take pictures, do video, and talk to people. In the 21 days I was in Cuba I shot 80 rolls of film and talked long enough to get to the topic of politics with over 200 persons. I kept a diary and wrote down every night what I had heard during the day. I taped as many conversations as I could, but many people seemed nervous when I pulled out my small tape recorder. They would stare at it and say: "If you want me to answer that question you have to turn off that tape recorder." I also found it difficult to use the video camera I brought, for the same reasons. Otherwise, people expressed their opinions freely, especially when it became clear that I was an exile and not a government undercover agent.

On the first day I was walking around and taking pictures in my old neighborhood in el Vedado. A man in his twenties crossed the street to talk to me.

"Amigo, where are you from?"

"I'm from here," I said.

"Naw. No way. You're not from here."

"Why not," I protested.

"Because Cubans don't look like you, don't dress like you, don't carry Nikons like you, and don't speak like you."

The last item in the list really bothered me. I always thought I spoke perfect Cuban Spanish. After all, I left when I was 18, but I soon realized that in the 36 years I've been away the language has changed. Cubans seem to speak faster now, and the intonation is different. Havana is now a predominantly black city, so slang and idioms from black culture dominate. The political situation has also created many new words, and everyone speaks eloquently, possibly the influence of Fidel, who seems to give a speech every day and is a genius with language.

Eventually I convinced this man I was an exile, back for a family visit. The reaction I got was not what I expected:

"You are lucky you got out. How could you be so smart to leave this place in 1960?"

I expected to find anti-American opinions in Havana, since Fidel has been attacking the U.S. in speeches for 37 years, but what I found was exactly the opposite. When I told Cubans that I was from the U.S. I always got warm and positive reactions. The most coveted tee shirts in Havana are Chicago Bulls or New York Yankees tee shirts–anything with an American institution printed on it. At the end of the first day I was photographing in Cayo Hueso, a rough neighborhood in the Old City, when two young black men spotted me and suddenly ran towards me. I had been warned to be careful in the Old City because tourists were being robbed, so I was a bit nervous. One of the men said:

"Hey! Are you an American?"

"Yes," I said, cautiously.

"Hey! Why doesn't the U.S. invade? This is shit. Why doesn't the U.S. invade?"

I realized early on that I needed to talk to other Cubans besides those I met on the street photographing during the day. I was concerned that the people who approached me would be those who wanted to meet tourists to get something from them, and more likely to express anti-government opinions, especially to a Cuban exile on a family visit. As it happened, I met a different group of Cubans in a wonderful place close to my apartment, a paladar, a family restaurant. The grandmother was the chief cook, her sons her assistants, and her grandchildren waited on the tables. Not only was the food excellent and affordable ($5 for a generous serving of roast pork, fried plantains, yuca, black beans and rice) but I realized it was a great place to talk to the other customers–a much more prosperous group of Cubans than the ones I met on the streets during the day. Most were professionals: architects, economists, artists, athletes, and of course, tourists and jineteras. I ate there every night. I'm an ex-architect; I ended up calling and meeting a group of architects whose phones were given to me by architects in Miami. To round out my research I tried to watch the news every night, to get a feeling for the information that a state controlled television imparts on the public. Finally, on my return, I found a web site with every speech ever made by Fidel Castro. I printed them out and read most of them.

Fidel Castro, February 2, 1965.

The train metaphor that Fidel used more than thirty years ago is still applicable. All along he has stressed that socialism is irreversible, and now that times are particularly difficult due to the loss of the Soviet subsidies, he stresses this fundamental position even more frequently. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Fidel has ended every speech with this disturbing mantra: Socialism or Death, we will win! From the early Sixties, the standard ending had been: Fatherland or Death, we will win! The message to the Cuban people is clear; saving socialism is the main concern of the Cuban government.

Nevertheless, the overwhelmingly message I got from my conversations with Cuban citizens is that very few people seemed happy with socialism, with the Revolution, and with Fidel. Of the 200 people I spoke to with some depth, five wholeheartedly supported the Revolution, maybe five supported some of it but were very unhappy with the economic difficulties brought on by the fall of socialism, and the rest didn't seem to have one good thing to say about Fidel, socialism, and the current state of affairs. I found it interesting that among older people, almost everyone stated that at one time they supported the Revolution, but thirty seven years of hardships was enough. They wanted change, but they also seemed resigned. I heard this expression often: Esto esta de madre, pero no hay quien lo tumbe. This is terrible, but it can't be overthrown. The overwhelming feeling among Cubans, expressed by virtually everyone, is that as long as Fidel is around, nothing will change.

The main reason for the dissatisfaction I found is clear. While issues dealing with the absence of the most basic freedoms came up often in conversations, the problem that continually grates on people is more fundamental–it's not possible to eat two meals a day for one month with the monthly salary the state pays. There is food available, partly due to the Free Agricultural Markets, an economic reform grudgingly instituted in September 1994, but state employees, the overwhelming majority of Cuban workers, don't make enough money to buy there.

The average salary in Cuba is 160 pesos a month. The workers I met at the docks get paid the minimum monthly salary, which is 108 pesos, and highly accomplished professionals, such as brain surgeons, make the highest official salary, 400 pesos. This 4:1 salary ratio has been fairly constant through the history of Cuban socialism, fulfilling the goal of equality that has been one of the central tenets of the Revolution. The huge problem Cubans face is obvious when you translate these salaries to dollars. The black market rate of exchange, where one finds the best deal, was 20 pesos to a dollar when I was there, in September 1996. (That rate continues to hold as I complete this writing, in December 1997.) This means that the average salary in Cuba is 8 dollars a month. The translation of the pesos into dollars is crucial because after the legalization of the dollar in 1993, virtually any object or food item can be acquired with dollars in the thriving black market, in the official dollar stores, and at the paladares, while the shelves of the peso stores are woefully empty.

The peso stores is where Cubans get their monthly supplies of food using the notorious Libreta, the ration book. With rationing comes the unending annoyance of having to spend a large portion of every day waiting in the food line, as well as always being short of crucial items that never materialize, like cooking oil. Food has been rationed in Cuba since 1962. Even during the heyday of Russian subsidies, in the early Eighties, there was never enough food, making rationing necessary. The fall of the socialist block, the end of Soviet subsidies, the ensuing downward spiral of the Cuban economy, all have contributed to a critical shortfall of food. Most people told me that the monthly amount of rationed food lasted until the second or third week. I went in and took pictures inside many Libreta stores and all the pictures show barren shelves.

I looked at many ration books: Cubans were getting a monthly ration of five lbs. of rice, three lbs. of beans, five eggs, one chicken, half a pound of coffee, milk for children up to age seven, one bar of soap, two rolls of toilet paper, 3 packs of cigarettes. I saw no pork, which in my days was the traditional Cuban meat dish, nor fish, nor garlic, nor cooking oil, although if I flipped the book back three or four months a pound of fish and a bottle of cooking oil would make an occasional appearance. On the plus side, the price of the rationed items available is low, and has generally amounted to 40-50% of the average monthly salary of 160 pesos. With the remaining 80 pesos, a Cuban has to pay around 15 pesos for the electric bill, six pesos for cooking gas, five pesos for water and sewer, and maybe 15-20 pesos if he is still paying for his apartment, although most people have finished paying their installments and own their dwellings. With whatever money is left, Cubans have to supplement their diet by buying at the Farmers Market. In the large and busy Farmer's Market in 19th Street and B Street in the Vedado, every conceivable food item is available, but expensive. A pound of pork costs 30 pesos, a pound of rice costs eight pesos, and avocados are three pesos each. If we assume that the average Cuban worker has 40 pesos left after paying for his rationed food, rent and utilities, he or she will have enough to buy only one pound of pork, one pound of rice, and one avocado. And for the sake of simplicity, I haven't included purchases of clothing , shoes, toys, all of which have disappeared from the ration books in recent years. Not to mention any manufactured product, like a radio, or TV, or dare we even mention it, a car. At 8 dollars a month, a Cuban would have to save his entire salary for 100 years to buy a car.

Since it's obvious that nobody in Cuba can make it on their official salary (and I didn't see any obvious signs of malnutrition among Cuban citizens,) how do people survive? It's simple. Everyone has to resolver. To solve. It's one of the most commonly heard words in Havana. How are you? Aqui, resolviendo. La busqueda is another word one hears. The search. Another phrase; Hay que inventarsela.. One has to invent it. All these terms refer to the many creative and mostly illegal ways to make ends meet, and so common that they are a part of the system. Most Cubans do a lot of resolviendo at the place of work. If a Cuban is offered a job in a ministry, he needs to know the potential for la busqueda at that job. Hopefully, the job has a product that gets distributed, and some of that product can get diverted, and distributed among the workers and managers. After all, the government never tires of reminding everyone that in Cuba everything belongs to the people.

Construction outfits solve many problems for the workers. Lumber, concrete blocks and steel re-bars can be sold easily in the black market. Food distribution outfits are even better. The family diet will improve spectacularly if you are employed in a food warehouse. In a gas station, gasoline can easily get siphoned from the tanks, without going through the meter, and sold privately. When I rented a private taxi to take me around the countryside in Granma Province, the driver never bought gasoline at the gas station. In every town he knew someone who brought out the gas in a metal canister from the back of his house. Everybody is so busy doing biznes that Cuba is probably the most capitalistic and entrepreneurial country in the world. A crude word for all this illicit economic activity is stealing, but Cubans don't use that word. There is a joke that socialism has only two fundamental problems: lunch and dinner. The official salaries don't solve those two problems. Hay que resolver.

I got a good feel for the amount of products being diverted from state enterprises by living in a large apartment building. When I was home at night, the door bell rang often. I would answer. Would you like to buy some toilet paper, some avocados, lobsters, rum, cigars, cooking oil? All of it stolen.

How is the Cuban government reacting to all this illicit activity? By passing stiffer and stiffer sentences for economic crimes. In July, 1997 a new round of stiffer penalties were passed including jail terms of up to 20 years for pilfering and waste of state property.

The moment I understood the dismal financial situation Cubans face, and what they have to do to solve their problems, I started asking everyone I met why the government didn't pay more. Was the government simply being malevolent, paying a slave wage to the entire nation, while at the same time endlessly professing the official philosophy, which I saw enlarged on walls and billboards everywhere: Everything we do is for the benefit of the Fatherland, everything we do is for the benefit of the people. Obviously, I thought, the government must have an income, from the sale of sugar, cigars, nickel, and there had to be a significant income from the tourists that one sees everywhere in Havana. I brought $2000 to Cuba, and spent it all. Surely, the government has an income and they didn't seem to have expenses, at least labor expenses, which in most countries is the brunt of the expenses of any enterprise. The Revolution can be seen as a giant corporation and it has a highly educated labor force–an entire island–working for eight dollars a month. Government enterprises must be making a huge profit unless they're being run by unbelievably incompetent managers or blatant crooks. So where is the money going?

I first asked Mario, the retired doctor.

"There is no money! There is no production!" he exclaimed, shocked by my ignorance. "The inefficiency of this system is monumental! Tony, you have to understand, first of all, that tourism doesn't produce! A fortune has been spent on tourism but the tourism that comes to Cuba is package tourism, the cheapest tourism. The hotels that have been built are luxury hotels, they have cost a fortune and mostly they are empty. Many tourists stay in apartments. Nothing is being produced here. Sugar is not producing any money because no one wants to cut cane. It's a horrible job and it doesn't pay. Who is going to work like an animal for ten dollars a month? The volunteers that we used to have, brigades from the cities that went to the country to cut cane for free, we don't have those anymore. Why? Because the revolutionary spirit that was alive here at one time is now dead. Because the government doesn't have the Ladas and the refrigerators that they used to get from Russia to give to the militants and the model workers. Nothing gets produced because nobody works. It's very simple. Besides, the government pays in pesos and pesos are useless. You can't buy anything with pesos. Go to a peso store and you will see empty shelves. The huge problem we have in Cuba is that food is not being produced and we don't have the money to import it."

"But," I observed, "when I go to the dollar stores I see plenty of food, even though it's expensive."

"Yes, you can find anything in the dollar stores, but the prices are so high that only a very small minority of Cubans can shop there. A normal meal, bought in the dollar stores, will cost a monthly salary."

"Still," I said, "there are other industries. Fishing, nickel. Look, the government has to have an income because I see the soldiers from the Interior Ministry riding in late model trucks, and I see many new tourist hotels in Havana. There has to be money because money is being spent."

"What you have to understand, Tony, is that this is a very repressive system! You are going to see it. There are 75,000 plainclothes spies in streets, and we have the largest army in Latin America. To maintain a repressive system like this one costs money. That is the main priority. Whatever is left is going to built the new hotels, which will continue to be mostly empty. Why would a western family want to bring their kids to a Stalinist state? You have to understand this about Cuba. Before tourism, money was spent in sugar. Billions of dollars in Soviet aid. And the sugar industry is in shambles. And before that millions was spent in cattle, and the cattle industry is in shambles. Before that money was spent in coffee, and nothing has worked. We now produce less sugar, a lot less, than what was produced before the revolution. We have less cattle than we had in the Fifties, and now we have twice the population. When you go to the countryside, you will see hundreds of secondary schools that have been built there, and they are empty. This government's incompetence is beyond belief."

I wasn't completely satisfied by Mario's answer. I asked everyone I met where they thought the money was going. One man said, laughing: "I don't know where the money is going, except that it isn't going into my pockets!" Many blame the low salaries on the fall of the socialist block, and they don't see how anything is going to improve, since the socialist block is not coming back. One young woman was convinced it's part of the plan; by keeping everyone poor no one has time to organize to topple the system–they have to devote all their time and energy to the pursuit of the next meal. An independent taxi driver told me, conspiratorially, that it was a well know fact that Fidel was putting all the money in his account in Switzerland.

The five supporters of the regime I spoke to accepted that salaries are low and money is scarce, but they blamed this situation on the U.S. and the embargo. Fidel, in his speeches, spreads the blame when it comes to the shortcomings of the Cuban economy. Everyone and everything are at fault, except, curiously, his leadership and his decisions. He primarily blames the embargo and the fall of socialism on the current crisis, which he has officially named the Special Period in Times of Peace, but in recent years he has also blamed incompetent managers, who routinely get sacked, corruption, absenteeism, inefficiency, capitalistic experiments, and even Soviet largesse, described in this December 25, 1993 speech:

However, the most thorough and convincing explanation of why the economy is in shambles and why there is no money to pay the workers I owe to a mid-level government economist whom I saw often. I met him while we were both waiting for a table at the paladar. We sat together and after dinner he invited me to his apartment for coffee. He wanted me to see it because the apartment was for rent, just in case I wanted to move from my current apartment. The apartment had almost no furniture and there were stacks of books piled on the floor. He had just gotten divorced, and things were not much better at work. He's a reformer and he made it clear that he is not being listened to. Reformers all want the same things: more market mechanisms, more capitalism, but Fidel has always resisted market structures. The economist collaborated what Mario said.

"There is no money. 70% of all government enterprises operate at a loss. In a nutshell: The Soviet subsidy to Cuba during the 80's averaged around 4.5 billion dollars a year. They paid us higher prices than world prices for Cuban sugar and sold oil to Cuba at lower prices than world prices. The trade deficit between Cuba and the Soviets got as high as 2 billion in the eighties, and that shortfall was also subsidized by Soviet credits. How are we going to replace the Soviet subsidy? We aren't going to do it. It's not possible."

"Tourism seems to be growing fast in Cuba," I said. "Could that make up for some of the subsidy shortfall? I've also heard that biotechnology is doing well."

"Tourism is growing, but this year it will bring only 400 or 500 million dollars net. A lot of the money being made in tourism is being made by the foreign partners who invested in the hotels. Biotechnology is making less than the tourist industry, maybe 200 million. The rest of the economy is a mess. Sugar is in a downwards spiral. We clear 300-400 million from sugar, certainly less than tourism–the first time this has happened in Cuban history. Ironically, the most profitable business Cuba has right now is the dollars coming from the enemy, the Miami Cubans. Since possession of dollars was legalized in 1993, remittances from Miami are bringing in 500 or 600 million a year. If you add all these, you get around 1.6 billion, so you can see we will never make up the 4 billion plus we were getting for free each year from the Soviets. We simply don't have enough money to import oil and food. The Revolution has always imported about 30% of our food needs."

"So what is the solution?" I asked.

"The only possibility is for us to produce more by allowing a free market of goods and services to function. Our problem is simple. We are not producing food because there are no incentives to produce. Everyone gets paid the same inadequate wage. And Fidel won't allow a real free market. Historically, whenever farmers in Cuba have been allowed to sell their own produce, they've produced plenty of food. But you can count on Fidel to resist any attempts to free the markets. Castro has always exhibited an irrational hatred towards market mechanisms, entrepreneurs, capitalism, small private business, you name it. There are some free markets now, but they are overloaded with restrictions to prevent them from thriving."

Before I left, the economist told me a joke. Cuban jokes, he said, tell you all you need to know about Cuba:

"Fidel goes to a hog farm and tells the manager: I want you to try this new diet on this pregnant sow. I've devised it myself and I think we could double the production of piglets. Some months later the sow has the average number of piglets, 5 piglets. The farm manager is a little nervous, but tells the district manager that Fidel's sow produced 6 piglets. The district manager calls the provincial managers and is happy to announce that the sow had 7 piglets. This man is very excited and calls the national manager to announce the birth of 8 piglets. The national manager calls the minister of agriculture, and can't contain his happiness when he announces that Fidel's sow produced 9 piglets. The Minister is ecstatic. He calls Fidel and triumphantly announces that his diet has produced 10 piglets. Fidel says: "Just what I thought would happen. This is what we'll do: we'll export five piglets, and the five that remain will be allocated for national consumption."

A few days later I was photographing the monumental staircase leading up to the university of Havana, where rebellious students, including Fidel Castro, once massed to protest the many corrupt politicians in Cuba's history. Now, ominously, two government policemen were posted at the top and at the bottom of the staircase. A man sitting on a third floor balcony nearby waved at me and invited me up. We sat on the balcony and talked. He was around seventy and he let me know quickly that he was not too pleased with the current state of affairs. I wanted to know what were his impressions of Cuba before the Revolution. He confirmed what I remembered;

"Politicians were all crooks," he said, "but the economy was so vibrant that there was enough money left over to spread among the population. The salaries were more or less the same as now, except that dollars and pesos then were interchangeable, they had a one to one value, not the twenty-to-one exchange value they have now. In effect, the standard of living had gone down by a factor of 20. In those days not one person in this city was hungry. In any cafe in Havana you could eat a meal with pork and rice and beans for 25 cents. Now you can't find pork, and if you find it, you can't afford it!"

"In your opinion," I asked him, "why is the Cuban economy in such terrible shape."

"Fidel ruined everything in 1968, when he nationalized all the small businesses. Up to then, only the land, and the big enterprises, like the sugar mills, had been nationalized. But the bars, restaurants, stores, repair shops, small businesses, all those were individually owned. You could find anything, not as before, but you could find any kind of food, and have anything repaired. But Fidel has a problem. He wants to control everything. So he nationalized all the small businesses, even the vendor who sold food on the side of the road. When he did that, he ruined Cuba. This place has been a mess ever since."

I was curious to see how Fidel rationalized the government takeover of the 58,000 small mom-and-pop shops he nationalized in 1968, turning Cuba into the most socialized country in the planet. What the economist said about Fidel's semi-irrational hatred of the small entrepreneurs seemed accurate. Here is an instructive excerpt from a speech Fidel gave in March 1968:

And just in case people didn't get it, Fidel continued his lesson in socialist economics:

In that same speech he explained that the only small private business he was not going to nationalize were the taxi drivers because that was an activity "which is due for disappearance because the cars get old and disappear. The number of cars do not increase." Little did he know that thirty years later those same old taxis would be merrily rolling along on the streets of Havana.

I couldn't resist hiring one of those scheduled-to-disappear private taxis, a 1958 black Cadillac, to take me on my mission to see the house where I used to live. The house is hard to miss. It sits on top of a hill, at the high point of G street, designed by an eccentric Russian architect my grandfather met on a trip to Europe. I was thrilled to have found that particular model taxi because at the time I left Cuba in 1960, my grandfather had a chauffeur driven 1958 black Cadillac. Now I sat again in the back seat as the driver drove up the long driveway, as I had done countless times when I lived there. The current Cadillac, though, was held together with duct tape and made many strange noises.

I got off the taxi and asked to see the director of the house. When she appeared, I explained to her, smiling, that I was not interested in the least in reclaiming the house, but I had grown up in this building, and for sentimental reasons, it would mean a lot to me if I could see the house again. At first she was uncertain. Then she said she was sorry. I would have to go through official channels and mentioned the office I would have to approach.

"No, no, please," I pleaded. "I'm here purely on a personal mission. I just want to see my old bedroom, the ground floor and I want to take a look at the garden, and the mango trees, where I used to play." When I mentioned the mango trees, she figured I was harmless, and consented. Eventually she gave me a complete tour. After a 37-year absence, I was amazed how familiar every room felt. I must have filed away visual memories in my brain and those files were re-opened the moment I stepped through the front door. Everything was familiar except for the furniture, which was new. The only furniture I recognized was a heavy marble table by the foyer, presumably too heavy to move.