Internal migrations; how about the fields?
From
Havana
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
Forty-six
illegal settlements, some with 2,000 inhabitants, such as the Las
Piedras settlement in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del
Padrón, defy Decree No. 217, enacted in 1997 to slow down the
flow of Cubans from the interior of the country to the capital.
The
migrations have been the topic of an investigative project done by
the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (JR), which has published it in
several installments, the second on Sunday, Aug. 3.
The
data it contributes are significant. Of the 2,201,610 inhabitants of
Havana City, who represent 19.6 percent of the Cuban population, 31.8
percent (that is, 700,242 residents) are not natives of the city.
From
Havana Read Spanish Version
Internal
migrations; how about the fields?
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
Forty-six
illegal settlements, some with 2,000 inhabitants, such as the Las
Piedras settlement in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del
Padrón, defy Decree No. 217, enacted in 1997 to slow down the
flow of Cubans from the interior of the country to the capital.
The
migrations have been the topic of an investigative project done by
the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (JR), which has published it in
several installments, the second on Sunday, Aug. 3.
The
data it contributes are significant. Of the 2,201,610 inhabitants of
Havana City, who represent 19.6 percent of the Cuban population, 31.8
percent (that is, 700,242 residents) are not natives of the city.
Luis
Carlos Góngora, vice president of the Provincial Assembly of
the People’s Power of the City of Havana, told JR that "so far
this year, 2,397 people who were illegally in the city have been sent
back to their provinces of origin." The newspaper adds that,
since 2006, "more than 20,000 people" have been returned to
their places of origin and points out that the number of illegals who
live in the capital is hard to pin down.
The
migrants’ motivations show no singularity whatever.
La
Mora came from Guantánamo, in the country’s far-eastern
region, where "for painting fingernails, you earn three pesos.
Here, five pesos and up." Her mother, who migrated in the 1980s
said: "Over in Guantánamo, I worked in a cooperative,
planting beans. There’s a surplus of that type of work."
That’s
not all these illegal migrants say. They move in a curious
clandestinity because, despite the fact that they lack current
documentation, their children go to school and receive medical care.
But in essence the motivations are the same since human groups began
to spread: the search for better living conditions.
Of
all the motivations, I am struck by the one described by La Mora’s
mother, a farm worker "in a cooperative, planting beans. There’s
a surplus of that type of work." True, hands are needed in the
countryside. Only 16 percent of the active labor force works in
agriculture. In our country, half the land is idle and/or
under-exploited. Now, we have been asked to squeeze the most out of
it because it is impossible to continue importing 75-80 percent of
the food that the state supplies at subsidized prices.
An
old friend commented, while speaking about agriculture and food, that
"it doesn’t make sense that a country as eminently agricultural
as ours experiences the shortages of other countries that do not
share our characteristics." And he added: "Havana people
don’t want to be construction workers" — a comment made by
President Raúl Castro on July 26 — "and the peasants
leave the farms."
Decree
No. 259, which allows for the lease of land in usufruct to people who
are willing to till it, was conceived to stimulate not only
production but also the permanence in their hometowns of people who
otherwise might become internal migrants.
No
doubt, this is an important, very positive move, but it has several
meanings, depending on how you read it. One viewpoint is the
producers’, who beginning in 1993 were given land in usufruct for an
unlimited period of time. Some took that to be a lifelong lease;
others became insecure. And let me clarify that in both cases we’re
talking about the use of the property, not the property itself.
Property, private or in usufruct, is worth the decisions that may be
made about it.
Now,
Decree No. 259 states that private individuals must renew their
land’s usufruct every 10 years; state organizations must do so every
25 years. Extending the time tends to grant security, but is it
sufficiently motivating to attract new producers? Will it encourage
people like La Mora’s mother to return with renewed enthusiasm and
hope to till the land they are given?
The
renewals of usufruct rights are clearly linked to the farmer’s
output, which is logical, and the evaluation of this indicator will
be the responsibility of a higher authority. Who is that authority
and at what level is it located? That was more or less the question I
heard from several farmers who are very happy by the fact that their
sector is regaining the important role it deserves (particularly
"with the better prices we’re now getting") but concerned
that "those inspections" designed to renew usufruct rights
will bring back "the old mechanisms, the old hurdles."
This
apprehension is not surprising, because bureaucracy’s tricks are
infinite and what is decentralized with one decree can be centralized
with another.
"If
I produce, and the records show it — what more do you need? And I
have to demonstrate that, year after year," one farmer told me,
suggesting that production records are the best parameters of
efficiency.
In
the case of the new applications for land, the most frequent
questions I’ve heard include:
• whether
10 years are enough to clean idle land and make it produce
efficiently;
• whether
the lessees will have the resources and materials they need and on
time (the crops don’t wait); and,
• what
the conditions of usufruct contracts will be, in terms of the duties
and responsibilities of both parties, information that is not
explicitly given in the decree. The need to have the necessary basic
elements (machinery, equipment, irrigation systems, transportation,
etc.) to successfully carry out the productive cycle is another of
the concerns expressed by the experienced producers.
The
answers to these questions will depend on the regulations attached to
Decree No. 259.
The
task of affixing workers to their land demands a bold and flexible
vision. Practice shows that, aside from leasing of land to private
farmers (a very positive measure, I repeat), the success of the
agricultural and alimentary sector lies in the cooperative movement
without bureaucratic red tape, with operational autonomy and rational
and seductive commitments for the delivery of goods to the state. At
present the levels of contracts and delivery to the state made by the
Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs) and the Agricultural
Production Units (CPAs) are up to 70 percent of the production, which
does not encourage the producers, who are limited in their
participation of the free-market prices.
Another
fact of life is that the Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCSs)
and the private dairymen produce 60 percent of the milk.
Socialization
can begin in the countryside and has a name — cooperatives.
Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.
