Changes in Cuba?

‘Nevertheless, it moves’

By Elsa Claro

Even if something extraordinary does not happen in Cuba very soon, other developments will occur to refresh the existing economic model.

Almost all the world’s press is writing about the gerontocratic stagnation in which the threatened island finds itself, but they don’t recognize the few and well-spaced transformations that have occurred and would have been publicized if they had happened elsewhere.

It is true that the openings involving the issues of property and size of land holdings could be improved, but it wouldn’t be impossible for that improvement to accelerate from the pace of a danzón up to a conga.

The experiments made in barbershops and beauty salons (turning them over to the workers in usufruct) have become extensive and now include almost all the shops in the country. The same is happening with the taxis, which until now were operated by the state but have become like any small or medium-size enterprise, with individual expenditures and earnings.

Something similar will occur with other segments of the service sector, from restaurants to the sale of automobile parts, for example, or repair shops for household appliances and such. The variety of permits for self-employment has quietly expanded as a likely way to absorb the million people who today work in jobs that have no real content.

That extreme measure is most important, because it will leave no one unemployed. The people laid off will have options; if some are not attractive to them, they can take a chance in their own enterprises or in cooperative jobs.

None of these eventualities requires special approval from either the Parliament or the Communist Party Congress, because they’re based on existing laws that apply to each choice. In any case, they will need regulations, organization and, very important, a tax system (which exists but is rarely and poorly applied.) Perhaps the laws will need some new clauses but the laws themselves are well grounded.

While these and other variables are brewed – and logic and common sense tell us will be implemented in the next several months – the nation experiments in what might be called the partial dismantling of a system that’s excessive for a small country that is not among the rich.

Eight months ago, the lunch rooms in four ministries were discontinued in a multiple experiment. The purpose was to reduce that burden and find rational formulas to end the pilfering of products that are often purchased in hard currency.

About 2,814,000 workers were affected by the changeover. Each received 15 pesos, over and above their salaries, to compensate for the inexpensive meal.

As a result, almost 3 million pesos were saved in the purchase of food alone (the figure does not include the cost of transportation, wages and supplies related to lunch-room operations). Discontinuing lunch rooms in other companies and institutions, a process already in motion, should save the state 3 million convertible pesos (CUCs).

The other side of the moon

“Changes are taking place and they don’t necessarily occur at the speed or pace we’d like,” said Rafael Hernández, editor of the magazine Temas.

His statement, made during the Catholic Church’s Tenth Social Week, could apply both to the slowness of the changes made since Army Gen. Raúl Castro assumed the leadership of Cuba in 2007 and to political practice at the very top, because Hernández also referred to the dialogue between civilian and ecclesiastical authorities, a remarkable development considering its mostly internal nature.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega himself repeated it on various occasions, alluding to the “dialogue among Cubans,” perhaps to stress where and how it happens, in comparison with the processes promoted from elsewhere by actors who don’t know the needs of Cubans and Cuba’s official leaders.

Harking back to the Social Week, we can cite the opinion of Carmelo Mesa-Lago, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, who considers the economic reforms instituted by Castro to be positive. They must be deepened and speeded up, he told reporters in Havana, repeating something that is heard at any street corner.

It is interesting that Mesa-Lago admitted that the world crisis does not make the situation in Cuba any easier and that he admits to agreeing, to a great degree, with economists on the island, many of whom are young and participate in the intense internal debate, making some nationwide proposals. These young economists are expected to become the national leadership’s next generation, a turnover that even Castro admits will occur soon.

To allow Americans to travel to Cuba would soon disarm several of the measures that “put the brakes on the normal development of an economy” because it would lift the financial limitations imposed by the United States, said Omar Everleny Pérez, one of the experts at the Center for Cuban Economics, discussing a topic that was agreed upon by experts from both sides of the Straits.

Outside the academic or pastoral world, and knowing that it is not simple to replace a loose scheme with another that provides decentralization but demands individual exigencies, it is necessary that anything managed by the State have better administrative controls and trustworthy accounting.

That is happening, so far. The rest – with a pasodoble or conga beat – will also come.

Elsa Claro, a Cuban journalist, contributes to Progreso Semanal/Weekly.