Cuba

FIVE MONTHS IN CUBA

By Walter Lippmann

The world can change dramatically in five months. It did exactly that during the recent five months I spent on the island, from early October to early March.

During the five months there I continued to operate the CubaNews list, an Internet-based news service nearly five years old. The list has set as its goal to collect and send out information, first-hand report and commentaries from a wide-range of sources, and from many different perspectives, from, about and related to Cuba.

The fact that I operate the news service is important to protect my legal right to do the work and to travelto where I do the work.

I took another extended trip around the countryside, driving slowly for a week into Eastern Cuba where I stayed for a number of days visiting friends from previous trips, and then driving west taking a completely different route. Outside of Havana I never saw anyone asking for money, and even in the capital city, it's only rarely that you see anyone begging, as we see here in Los Angeles regularly. And I never saw anyone who looked homeless, as we also see here all the time.

My father and his parents lived in Cuba during World War II for three years. During the time when the Roosevelt administration was enforcing a strict quote on Jewish immigration to the US, my father and his parents, like thousands of other refugees from Nazi Germany, settled in Cuba where he learned the Spanish language and developed the profession of photography.

He'd been educated for the law, but Jews weren't permitted to practice. (He was always an argumentative sort anyway!) Though my father rarely spoke to me about his days in Cuba, he did take me to there in 1956, and my interest in the country developed in tandem with Cuba's revolution.

The biggest change was the decision the Cuban government made in October to remove the U.S. dollar from circulation in normal business activities on the island. Possession of the dollar remains legal, but there's simply no place to spend them, since no store, hotel or business will accept them for any purpose.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, possession of the U.S. dollar, which had previously been illegal, was legalized.While the USSR existed, Cuba had a certain economic stability which was ripped out from under it when the USSR collapsed. The island and its economy were thrown into a tizzy. The value of the Cuban peso collapsed. They had to legalize the US dollar. It later became the most popular currency.

The government set up a series of stores where those dollars could be spent. In order for the government to use those dollars in international trade, they later created a currency called the "convertible" peso which was set up as the equivalent to the US dollar. It could be spent the same as the dollar inside of Cuba and Cuba used the convertibles to collect dollars for foreign trade.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government opened the country up to joint-venture investments with private companies from abroad. Any company who wanted to go into business Cuba could apply to join with them. Networks of hotels were built with Cubans providing the labor and raw materials, and foreign companies providing the expertise, training and so on. Cuba also has one of the largest sources of industrial nickel in the world. They're mining that in a joint venture with the Canadian Sherritt corporation, who also manage lots of Cuban hotels.

Cuba received virtually all of its petroleum from the USSR, but with its collapse, that ended. Still, Cuban exploration continues and significant reserves have been found. With world oil prices shooting upwards, consumers in Los Angeles will be paying more at the pump, and international companies will find that the Cuban reserves, which have been hard to reach and difficult to process, will become more profitable. Spanish and Chinese and Canadian companies are involved in these industries now.

Cuba's government has said openly an often that they would welcome participation by US companies. The problem is that Washington does everything it can to block US businesses from further developing business ties. Those which exist for the moment are all one-way: Cuba buying agricultural commodities from the United States, and paying cash for their purchases. Cuba has bought a billion dollars worth from the US, including a good deal from California. Our state legislature has voted to end the US embargo of Cuba. (They don't use the more accurate word, "blockade".)

US movies are regularly played in Cuban theaters, in bootleg video versions, and Cuban television also plays US movies and TV series all the time, both commercial programs and things like History Channel, Discovery Channel. There are no commercials on Cuban television, though they have imaginative public service announcements which run the gamut from conserving electricity to supporting the work of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

If relations were normalized, they could sell more goods and services, from tourism to biotech and they'd undoubtedly buy even more since US products are extremely popular in Cuba, even 45 years after the Revolution. There'd even be a role for California's actor-governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governator's long been known as a fancier of for Cuba's Cohibas and Montecristos in the pages of CIGAR AFICIONADO magazine. He's also visited the island, at least once. He's also very popular among Cubans who love watching his movies.

Fidel Castro remarked, that Arnold actually had been in Cuba once, though "he has never been invited." Castro said, "Judging from the photos, he has a lot of muscles in his body, but they haven't done any X-rays of MRIs or studies to show what kind of muscle he has in his head. At least he's exercised a lot and may be a good athlete. Let's hope he has a mind as powerful as his arms." Time will tell if Arnold will find it somehow to his advantage to pick up Fidel's rather diplomatic opening.

Walter Lippmann, CubaNew

http://www.walterlippmann.com