Cuba: You Can’t Eat Doctrine

Jose Alberto Potuombo is sitting in La Atarraya, the cafe he manages across the street from the great bay, attempting to hear Fidel Castro on his Korean- made boom box. But there are distractions. A crowd is forming on the seawall across the way. “Ven aqui! Ven, mira!” yell the little children, and people are indeed coming and looking. Now there is a crowd of 70, staring down into the water. They laugh, they cheer. Some drivers stop, others honk and yell, “Balseros! Balseros! A Miami! A Miami!” (Rafters! To Miami!) Potuombo scans the scene sourly. “Let the bastards go,” he growls. On the radio, Fidel drones on.

It is Wednesday on the Malecon, where Havana meets the swelling breast of its bay. The Malecon is Cuba’s promenade, its boardwalk, its Champs Elysees. Across the Straits of Florida in Miami, kingdom of dollars, citadel of wealth unimaginable, the exiles have a favorite T shirt: it portrays the Malecon after Castro’s fall as an endless vista of shiny, neon-lighted fast-food joints. The crumbling, once graceful seafront is still a long way from that plastic vision. Potuombo gestures at the crowd in his cafe, who are placidly consuming not Whoppers or Big Macs but the tepid brown soda that is the sole item on his depleted menu. “These are the real Cubans,” he proclaims. “These are the people who will defend the revolution despite the limitations of the moment.”

People stay because many Cubans are still loyal to the revolution — if not the man — that they believe gave them 30 good years. According to people on the street and in their homes in Havana and its environs, it is mainly the economic deprivations of the past four that have shaken their faith and their pride. Every Cuban must work out his own calculation for the moment when devotion turns to desperation, when the hardships become too much to bear, when the natural desire to stay is overpowered by the need to go. This summer that moment came for thousands — especially the young — not so much because the hardships have grown worse but because they seem to have no end. People go when they have no future and no hope.

This week the Malecon belongs to the balseros. But the weather is not on their side. Juan, 20, stands knee-deep in the swelling surf. Despite cheers from the crowd above, he is finding it impossible to lash his inner tubes to the plywood he hopes will bear him away. The waves are too high; lightning flashes and a pelting rain begins. Does it matter whether he ends up in Miami or only Guantanamo? “Who cares?” he asks. “So long as it’s out of here.” He has no job, no money, no prospects, he says; he must escape. But not today. He hauls his gear back over the seawall to his building across the street. His aunt, who has been watching the Castro speech, shoots him an inquiring look. “Tomorrow,” he mumbles, brushing past her into their tiny apartment.

Farther down the avenue, Baldomero Alvarez Rios, 70, shakes his head. “The problem with young people in Cuba today,” he says, “is that they have no idea what it was like before the revolution.” His wife Maria Luisa Vina Alonso, 67, nods solemnly. Before 1959 they were members of what Maria calls the petite bourgeoisie, but then Baldomero’s revolutionary fervor turned him into a party-line journalist. They worked all over the country and even abroad, spreading Castro’s word in receptive capitals like Santiago and Mexico City.

While they now live modestly on Baldomero’s 300-peso-a-month pension (just over $3), Maria claims they long ago “learned to scale back for the benefit of the country.” Her husband expounds on a widespread theory: young Cubans who never experienced American capitalism are far more eager to put to sea in its pursuit than their parents, who knew capitalism’s dark side firsthand. “They see pictures of their relatives in Miami with late-model cars and Seiko watches and Levi’s,” he says, “and they are tricked into thinking Cuba’s problems are internal and salvation lies elsewhere.” The revolution brought fair distribution of the country’s wealth, he says, and improvements in health and education. Even if it had not brought those things, he went on, it is justified on patriotic grounds alone: it made Cuba free and independent. Would the youngsters prefer the Cuba of 1958 — that pitiful, oppressed colony of the United States? They will learn, he says. So will all the exiles. “They will realize what they had here and praise Fidel and the revolution,” he says. His aging companera nods fiercely.

In the warrens of Old Havana, farther along the bay, Ana, 25, has another generation in mind: that of her three-year-old son. He has been waiting for a hernia operation for two years. At his day-care center, which lacks books and toys, there is no Mercurochrome for skinned knees. “All the children have colds,” Ana explains. Flushed with anger, she beckons a visitor to accompany her to the nearest pharmacy. “Is there aspirin?” she demands of the clerk. “Is there flu medicine for my baby?” The answer, as always, is no. “You see!” she says. “They take all the medicine to the tourist stores, where you must have dollars.”

Nearby, Jesus, a 31-year-old bank teller, shelters himself from the storm beneath the facade of Old Havana’s Almacenes Lux department store. The Lux is filled with busy people buying soap from Mexico, soda from Venezuela, baby strollers from Europe, and shoes, clothes and neon-color backpacks, some made in the U.S. The buyers are Cubans with dollars, but Jesus has none. He lacks relatives in America and does not work in a dollar-paying job. Is he bothered by his deprivation? He shrugs. “It’s in the nature of the poor to covet what the rich have,” he says. “All I can do is wait for a little bit of luck to fall from the sky.” The rich? The poor? But what happened to the revolution? “What revolution?” Jesus snaps. “The revolution ended a long time ago. What we have now is a system that has stalled.” He pauses. “Well, at least it’s stalled for me.”

To the west, in the Nuevo Vedado district, Eugenio, a sports trainer, produces his ration book. For July he was allotted 6 lbs. of rice, 10 oz. of beans, 1/2 lb. of oil, 3 lbs. of sugar, 1 oz. of coffee, one bar of bath soap, three packs of cigarettes. No meat. In May it was rice, beans, sugar and coffee; no oil; no soap; no cigarettes; two cans of beer. No meat. Yet Eugenio will not be rafting. He is a master of resolviendo — the Cuban art of barter, the cut corner, the gray market. His wife works in a cigarette factory and brings home unofficial samples. With the purloined packs, Eugenio heads for the local government bodega to find the old man who sits on the sidewalk outside to trade illegally in yuca. He sells his yuca for 10 pesos per lb., but tobacco is always an acceptable substitute. Thanks to such enterprise, Eugenio eats well enough. “We survive because we’re strong,” he says.

Southward lies the dilapidated neighborhood known as La Vibora. There, a gaggle of elderly women cluster in a disintegrating foyer. Pointing to one in the group, they say, Talk to her. She is the anti-revolutionary. Asking to be called Luisa, the 66-year-old mother of an exile is glad President Bill Clinton cut off remittances, even if it means no more money from her son in California. “He pockets the money anyway,” she says. Who? “Fidel. Who else?” Alarmed, her companions shush her, and she lowers her voice. “I’d rather suffer a little more than see this damn government prosper anymore,” she whispers. “They have everything — generators, cars, gas, the food they want — and we have nothing. They talk about Fatherland or Death, Socialism or Death. Bullshit. I’m not going to die while they fatten themselves.”

Have you noticed, she asks, that there is nothing on the walls around here? Her voice drops lower still. That is because at night, people who are very angry and a little drunk tear down the revolutionary posters. “No one is scared anymore,” she asserts. “We have suffered too much.”

For three days the weather achieved what Clinton could not, stemming the tide of rafters. On the beach at Guanabo, east of Havana, Saturday night’s forecast is for 15-ft. waves and more rain. The balseros along the shore use their time to work on their rafts, dream, complain. Jorge Luis, 36, introduces his raft’s crew. “Just because we’re discontented, we’re considered antisocial,” he says. “But in fact we’re all professionals. Cuba is like a prison these days. You work one month to eat one day. You . . . ” And then he pauses and smiles, surveying one raft after another beached on the white sands. Someone has passed the word. The forecast for Monday is clear.