You usually hear two very different stories about Cuba.
One is that a group of Communists, lead by Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raul, have turned a country that could have been (and once had been) a Caribbean paradise, into a Soviet style hellhole, where there is mass poverty, shortages and political repression. The people of Cuba are waiting to be liberated.
The other story is that Fidel Castro and his party turned what had been a very unequal country, full of racial and class segregation, corruption, gambling and narco, the casino of the US Americans, the sexual playground of the white man, into a country of equality, where the educational and healthcare systems are way above peer countries at similar levels of development. If there are shortages and difficulties, it is because of the US embargo.
Which one is true? The only way to find out is to see for yourself!
A country that defines simple judgment
The first and most important conclusion is that if you are opting for either of the simplistic readings, you have already lost touch with reality. The reality is that elements of both narratives are true, while both narratives also distort reality in certain ways. Cuba really teaches you the lesson that the world hardly ever is black or white.
The shortages
Yes, there are some shortages, but they are far from general. There is a marked lack of decent coffee on the island for instance. The only thing you find everywhere is terrible powder coffee. There is no milk. There are pastures in the hills, there are cows, yet there is no milk. What happens to the milk? Do they export it? One explanation you hear is that they do not have refrigerated vans to keep the milk safe at the tropical climate. When you hear this, you ask yourself: but can you not buy refrigerated vans from abroad? Surely there are plenty of countries that would be willing to sell you some.
The lack of coffee is a nuisance, but there are more serious issues. The dire shortage of vans, trucks and buses seem to be the biggest problem. There are no trains from one city to another, as we are used to in other countries, and there is also an astonishing lack of intercity buses. Makes you wonder: how do people get from one place to the next? Mostly, they do not. They stay put. If they need to, they’ll hitch a ride, or they will rent a taxi collectivo (a run down sixties US American car that fits 4-6 people, often complete strangers).
What other shortages are there? There is a shortage of petrol. Not an absence, but a shortage. There are power blackouts for a few hours every now and then, but at most times electricity is stable. Cubans have learned to live with this, although it is not easy when not only your lamps, but also your fridge and sometimes your water pump depends on the electric grid. But again, at most times electricity is ok.
The Cuban peso is collapsing. Even during your stay you might experience it losing its value significantly. You need to convert your dollars/euros, since credit cards are not readily accepted. But you do not want to exchange at an official bureau, because their rates are laughable. But then, where do you exchange? You do not want to exchange with any random person in the street, as they might run away with your cash. What is the solution? You might want to try restaurants, which double as unofficial exchange bureaus. In my case I ended up buying the daily peso revenues of a pizzeria after closing, every single night….
Cuba might have lots of doctors, and well trained doctors, but they have a shortage of medicine. People ask you for medicine in the street. Tourists leave pills behind before their flight out.
So yes, there are shortages. However, this does not mean that Cuba is a poor country. In general, life goes on pretty normally.
The lifestyle
Cuba is not a rich country, but it is not characterised by the kind of extreme poverty you see in much of the Third World. People get by. They have homes, they have food, they even enjoy life.
The popular media image of Cuba is true. People do drink a lot of rum and smoke a lot of cigars. Everywhere you find shops stocked to overfill with great rum. Everyone is trying to sell you cigars. People are smiling, ready to strike up a random conversation. They do smile a lot, they do listen to a lot of music, almost continuously, and even small kids have dance lessons in school. Not knowing how to dance is not an excuse in Cuba…
The famous Malecon in Havana is a huge disappointment. It is basically a reinforced concrete fence next to a broad nondescript embankment, which closes off some very poor barrios from access to the sea. These districts are run down and full of car exhausts and graffiti, and people who live there could find relief in the sea… if its wasn’t all concrete… The inner side of the road, which on old pictures you see was once a lively place full bars, has nothing to offer today. Those buildings have basically decayed to slums by now.
Good race relations
In no other country do you feel such a lack of racial tensions. You will see black and white people side by side in all occupations. You will often see mixed families. Actually, mixed families seem to be the norm. The consequence is that the entire distinction of black and white dissolves into different shades from the darkest African looking people to blue eyed Europeans. And they mix readily. Unlike in the USA, for instance, where racial differences are at the same time very strongly class relations as well, in Cuba this does not seem to be the case at all.
However, since Cuba is the place that defies simple readings, there are two caveats. One is that Cuba used to be a place where white by and large did mean upper class and black had almost been equal to lower class. However, a huge number of white people left after the rise of Castro. Not for racial reasons, but because they were the educated, property owning upper and middle classes, and they had the most to lose under Communism. As a consequence of them leaving, Cuba today is much more a black and much less a white country than it previously had been.
The second caveat is that although race relations seem to be excellent in general, this does not seem to characterise the top echelons of the Party. Non of the heroes of the Cuban Revolution were black. Both Christ (Fidel Castro) and his most celebrated Apostles (Raul Castro, Che Guevara, Cienfuegos) were all white Europeans. All three leaders of the state (Fidel, Raul and today’s Díaz-Canel) have all been white.
Political repression
There is surely political repression, but it is not the obtrusive, visible kind. There is certainly no armed police or militia in the streets, in fact you hardly see anyone in uniform. Contrary to expectations, there are no huge signs and billboards heralding the message of the party or declaring the glory of communism. In the entirety of Havana, you will come across one or two at most. They were most likely there before, but it seems like the Party grew tired of propaganda and removed them. There are visibly more political signs and posters in the countryside, but these are age old signs that had been put there decades ago and are now decaying.
Almost everyone has a phone, and many people have smartphones. There is no mobile internet, you cannot just get SIM card based mobile internet for your phone. However, there is wifi here and there, as you will see on your phone. Almost every café and restaurant has internet. However, here is the twist again: when you ask them, they almost universally deny that they have a wifi, even when you see them surfing it. Why? It is either illegal, or they don’t want to take the risk of you surfing somewhere illegal on the net. Who knows?
Most of the time you have to get by without internet during your travels. This means no Google Maps, no looking up things you see in the streets, no online banking, no Shazaming great Cuban music you hear. When you do find a stable wifi (mostly in your hotel, rationed per hour once you have checked in, but renewed readily), nothing seems to be blocked. This is not China, with its Great Chinese Firewall, here you do have access to your Facebook, Google etc. However, the speed is too slow for streaming or downloading, so Cubans will ask you if you can bring them a film on a USB stick next time you visit.
The weirdest thing is that there are no newspapers. Not even the Granma, the official party newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, named after Castro’s famous landing yacht. Newsstands are permanently closed, small stores do not carry newspapers. Cubans just laugh when you ask them about this. Have you ever been to a country where there are no newspapers at all? How can you do political repression, if you don’t print the ideology? Is there a scarcity of paper? You get the feeling that the Party has simply given up trying to indoctrinate.
Are Cubans waiting to be liberated?
No. You don’t have that impression.
Most people avoid politics, but when they do not, they will ask you very directly about capitalism. They do not seem to be as naive about it as Eastern Europeans had been in 1989. They are aware of the drawbacks as well as the advantages.
Do Cubans support the government? It does not seem so for the most part. They complain a lot.
Does this mean that they are ready for a political transformation, and they want to get “liberated”? Most likely not. And there is an obvious reason for this if you think about it. Let’s suppose you live in a confiscated villa in Havana that had been inhabited by middle or upper class owners prior to the Revolution, who are now living in the USA. An enormous number of families live in such buildings. A next political transition would mean that the previous owners would suddenly show up and claim back their property. We know this because there are firms in Miami that offer previous owners the service of taking regular spy photos of the state their claimed properties is currently in. If you are the family living in the building that would surely be reclaimed, would you support democratisation at the cost of losing your villa or house? Not likely. Catch 22.
If you are the manager of a Cuban firm, cooperative or trading agency, “liberation”, “democratisation” or “capitalism” would mean that the next day you are taken over either by an American multinational, or more likely, by the filthy rich Cuban business class residing in Miami. Would you like to be replaced? Not likely.
If you are black, and working as gardener, cook, hotel staff, etc. would you once again like to work for foreign white people? Not necessarily. You can almost be certain that this would be the outcome within a few short years.
Thus, the calculation is not easy. Would your standard of living increase? Almost certainly. Would you lose a lot of your dignity? Almost certainly.