The FOC

By
Manuel Alberto Ramy                                                         Read Spanish Version

The
23-story FOCSA building in the Vedado barrio is the tallest building
in Havana. In the 1950s, many people called it "the Coñó"
because of the exclamation ("Shoooot!") it prompted from
everyone who saw it for the first time. Some still call it that. I
have joined that group but for other reasons.

On
Saturday, I went to a Panamerican Shops hardware store on the ground
level of FOC…ÑÓ to buy a toilet bowl to replace the
antique I have in the second bathroom of my house. In a small sales
room, I found them in various brands, sizes, prices and colors. I saw
one I liked. The price tag said 118.95 convertible pesos (CUCs).
Trouble is, it lacked the combination seat-and-lid. I asked the
salesman, who told me "they came like that; without a seat,"
same as the washbasins, which "came without a pedestal."
Because of the missing part, the bowl cost a bit less than if it were
whole. With seat, lid and all, it should have cost just over 129
CUCs.

I
asked the salesman how it was possible to receive incomplete
merchandise. He grimaced and shrugged, in the manner that says "I
don’t know" or "I don’t care" or whatever. I didn’t
buy the bowl. I walked to another store on Infanta Street, corner of
Benjumeda. Surprise: it had the same brand and model, complete with
seat and lid.

I
went to the manager and asked him if it was possible for the stores
to receive and sell incomplete sets. "No, that’s not allowed,"
he answered, sharply. I bought the bowl.

Where
did the toilet seats and the washbasin pedestals go?

Now
let me tell you what happened to me as I left the FOC…ÑÓ.

"What
were you looking for?" asked a slim little man clad in brown
pants, brown checkerboard shirt and brown shoes. Before I could
answer, he said: "Maybe I have what you need." My
journalistic instinct kicked in and I answered: "A toilet bowl
like that one," pointing at it through the glass door.

"I
have it, and I can deliver it to your home with a whip [water intake
pipe] and all." 

"For
how much?" I asked.

"The
convenience (I marveled at his idiomatic precision) will cost you 119
CUCs (10 less than the official price, I figured) and the delivery
charge will depend on the distance."

How
about that. Cheaper, delivered to one’s home, plus an extra part —
the whip, which was gratis.

I
had run into an efficient vendor, part of the underground economy
that has been created from the "detours," "shortages,"
"miscalculations" and other terms invented by the
bureaucracy so as not to call the practice by its true name: theft.

A
lid here, a seat there, fixtures there, and presto, you have a
complete "convenience." And the vendor doesn’t have to
invest a single centavo.
The investment is made by the state, which also functions as the
involuntary bankroller of that underground economy. The profits must
be distributed, however. I don’t know the percentages, but I am sure
that part of the money goes to the vendor, another to the person who
removes the articles from the store, another to the store manager,
maybe a tip to a guard who’s distracted and looks away when the
article is filched, etc.

More
than a vendor, this man is a piece of the capitalist economy that has
spread like leeches attached to the belly of socialism. It is one of
the factors, though not the only one, by means of which — as Fidel
Castro said in his famous speech of November 2005 at the University
of Havana — only the revolutionaries can destroy the Revolution. The
same concern has been voiced by other leaders.

Is
there a relationship between the economy and moral values? Yes, but
the answer is incomplete. The economy, like the planets, pulls but
does not obligate. Examples there are aplenty.

Esperanza,
76, is like a member of my family. She was born in Cuba’s eastern
region, in Realengo 18, a place famous for the peasant revolt led by
Lino Álvarez in the 1930s. Under the slogan "Land or
Blood," that man and his followers claimed what belonged to them
by right: land, so they wouldn’t starve by the roadside.

"We
were hungry but we never stole anything," says Esperanza, who at
the age of 7 cut sugar cane, picked coffee beans "and ruined my
hands pulling yucca off the ground."

In
1959, she came to Havana, learned to read and write and — with her
own hands and her friends’ help — built a small house outside the
city. Her son is a licensed nurse.

"Life
isn’t easy and you have to work very hard to solve your problems,"
she says. "Sometimes, not even hard work is enough. But to
steal? Never."

The
economy does not obligate, true, but it does pull. And how. Because
of that pull, the loss of moral values is closely related to the
inability to satisfy people’s needs. That is why it is imperative to
unleash — under close control and as soon as possible — the
productive forces that exist in Cuban society, and also halt the
illegalities and corruption. Otherwise, we run the risk of someday
finding ourselves in a society with a proliferation of those vendors,
intermediaries, store managers and guards who make underground
commerce possible and whose banner is an amply used toilet bowl. Its
brand name? Neoliberalism.

Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.