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World: CUBA: TEN YEARS OF CASTRO

6 minute read
TIME

We have now graduated from the primary school of the revolution. We are now entering junior high school.

THE words were those of Fidel Castro as he marked the 10th anniversary of his rule in Cuba last week. A decade has elapsed since the barbudos (bearded ones) strode down from the Sierra Maestra to crown their revolution and take over the Caribbean isle, and the years have taken their toll. Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara is dead, killed in Bolivia in an ill-fated subversion attempt. Camilo Cienfuegos, another of the early heroes, is also dead, killed in an air crash shortly after the takeover. Postersin Havana today poignantly proclaim: “We are doing well, Camilo.”

Only Castro endures, bearded as always, clad in his familiar green army fatigues, now 41. The years of experimentation and frustration seem to have mellowed him: he is a guerrilla agriculturist these days, seemingly more concerned with exporting sugar than revolutionary warfare. For last week’s celebration, there was no military parade, no troops and no tanks. “We do not want to waste a gallon of gas or lose a minute of work,” Fidel explained to a million cheering Habaneros in the Plaza de la Revolución.

Queueing for Everything. Ten years of Communism à la Castro havechanged Cuba dramatically. Castro calls them “the ten most difficult years.” He holds out the promise that Cuban sacrifices will soon be rewarded by a richly productive decade—but only after another “year of decisive effort, a year of 18 months,” in which Cubans may have to trade even their holidays for back-breaking work in the boondocks. After the initial, unsuccessful attempt at rapid industrialization, the emphasis has been on agriculture for the past few years. Outside San José, a town east of Havana, a huge billboard proclaims that “agriculture is to the revolution what the mountains are to guerrillas.” While there has been a serious effort at crop diversification, Cuba continues to stress the production of sugar, which constitutes 85% of its exports. Everywhere in the land, posters call for “los diez millones,” the 10 million tons of sugar that Castro wants by 1970, as opposed to a bare 5.2 million tons harvested last year and an alltime high of 7.22 million tons in 1960.

By comparison with the countryside, Havana, once the playground of the Caribbean, is clean, grey and drab. Its nightclubs are shuttered (except for the anniversary celebrations, when some opened and featured leather-skirted go-go girls), its streets are empty of cars and its remaining 55,000 private business establishments nationalized, including most of its once ubiquitous and distinctive coffee stands. Queueing for everything from an ice-cream cone or a cup of coffee to a wedding date and a reservation for the honeymoon hotel room (furnished by the government) has become an accepted part of Cuban life.

Food is rationed, and so is gasoline. For Christmas each Cuban child was allotted three toys. Despite cloth rationing, some Habaneras manage to look surprisingly chic, sewing their own miniskirts and making their own net stockings. Eating out is expensive and popular, and when a restaurant adds a new dish to the standard menu of fish and rice, the news spreads quickly. Cubans call Havana La Parásita, the parasite living off the land. Each year the city dies a little more but, for the regime, Havana is not where the fate of Communism on the island will be decided.

Green Belt. As Castro and his men envision it, Cuba’s future is in the countryside, in agriculture and in youth. Although Fidel recently complained that while other nations were sending men to the moon, he was having trouble sending people into the cane fields, almost everyone who can work does so. In the Cordón, a green belt around Havana where coffee and citrus trees have been planted, civil servants labor side by side with students, encouraged by the steady beat of the Brincos, the Latin Beatles, as it blasts from Radio Cordón. Habaneros repair to the Cordón for so-called “guerrilla weekends” of tackling weeds, in line with Fidel’s plea for communal work and “true, fraternal, humane Communism.” Dirty boots, rolled-up sleeves and talk of agriculture are marks of honor in today’s Cuba, even in the cities. Dairy farms equipped with modern machinery have sprung up—Havana province alone has 25 under construction—and highly scientific livestock breeding is encouraged. In the Cordón, new small towns are springing up. There are miles upon square miles of newly tilled soil and scores of “piccolinos,” tiny Italian-made Jeep-type tractors. Little shortage of equipment is evident; the U.S. blockade has hurt, but trade with Western nations continues, as illustrated by the presence of British-built buses, Italian motorcycles, and West German and Japanese fishing equipment.

Most important perhaps, the revolution has left its impact on Cuba’s youth. In his anniversary speech, Castro claimed that 300,000 youngsters now have government scholarships. Many of them would have had no such opportunity in the days of Dictator Fulgencio Batista. It is in education that Castro’s social transformation, based on his idealistic vision of a “New Cuban,” has been most profound. The government claims that illiteracy, 18% before the takeover, is now down to 3.2%, compared with 2.4% in the U.S. and 27% in Mexico. The figure may be exaggerated, but there can be little doubt that Castro’s literacy campaign has freed thousands of Cubans from the bondage of not being able to read and write.

Merit Alone. The price, of course, has been high. Since 1961, close to half a million Cubans have left their homeland, driven away by material deprivation, political indoctrination and limitations on personal freedom. More than 300,000 of them have come to the U.S., and fully loaded shuttle flights of gusanos (worms), Castro’s derisive description of the refugees, continue twice a day, five days a week.

Others remain behind on the island, trapped and grumbling, or hopeful that their children will benefit from the sacrifices their generation has made. One of those who has stayed behind is Gilberto Morejon, a Negro who works in the modern fishing port outside Havana. “Before,” he says, referring to the days of Batista, “people like me had no chance. We were discriminated against either because we were black or because we were poor. Now we are judged on merit alone.” Not enough Cubans share his enthusiasm, however, to usher in Castro’s Utopia any time soon. How else can a social order be explained in which fully 2,400,000 of Cuba’s 8,000,000 people belong to Comites para la defensa de la revolución, charged mainly with watching their neighbors?

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