The Cubanologist’s View - 33 deg and 82% humidity; GMT-4

In 1991 I submitted my thesis on the Cuban trade economy at a time of tumultuous world events with the ending of the Cold War, which saw Cuba tailspin into recession as it lost its beneficial sugar-for-oil swap agreement with its former benefactor, the USSR. This was probably not the best year in which to make prognostications on the future direction the Cuban economy might take but that is the plight of the student with deadlines to meet.

19 years on and the same slogans - Long Live the Revolution and Socialism or Death - are still knocking around along with Fidel’s exhortations to be altruistic and think of the collective good above individual gratification. These are beginning to sound hollow in the dual economy created through Cuba’s pursuit of hard currency through tourism joint ventures.

In reality, the state economy is defunct and everyone tries to participate in the secondary economy to survive. There are even separate currencies to serve the national economy and the tourist economy; for those with convertible tourist pesos (CUCs) everything is available at a price. The state fails to provide adequate food and transportation, so access to the CUC as a form of payment is essential. This has created a parallel capitalist economy, or the opportunity to cheat and rip off at every turn. In practice, this means:

• The nationalised car rental company employees supply vehicles with 200 km less of fuel than a full tank but make renters pay the full tank and pocket the difference
• There are fees for every service like looking after luggage for 2 hours - cost 1 euro. Cuba is not looking such a bargain anymore
• The petrol pump attendant who assumes that if he fills the tank he will get the balance of any notes you hand over as a tip, even if this tip is close to 1 euro. And, of course, there is no service like in South Africa of washing the windows for that assumed tip. In fact, service remains largely an alien concept in this pseudo-system. Years of being brought up in surly socialist businesses and the Spanish heritage of grumpy non-service are hard to eradicate in this new parallel economy
• The menu that advertises soft drinks included and when the bill turns up there is a separate charge for drinks
• The bar we frequented for dinners in Havana that on our third visit decides to impose a random 20% service charge.

Then there is the poor service and the languorous laziness and slow pace:

• The maids who do not knock in the morning but simply burst in, assuming it must be time to clean the room
• The horrific road accident stats - while getting our undercarriage fixed (there is a government-owned repair shop in every settlement) I looked at the stats for the Trinidad area and only three coach drivers had been accident-free over five years.

Within minutes of the arrival, the car hire agent said to us that he hoped this is not our only trip to Cuba and that we would soon be returning. I thought this a strange comment at the time but as the days wore on I began to realise that there is a desperate need for return visitors to fill the ever expanding concrete blocks being knocked up along all of Cuba’s coastline and left in varying states of decay within months of completion. Don’t get me wrong - the sordid decay of La Habana Vieja, largely uncorrupted by modern influences, is very different to the average Caribbean capital with daily cruise ship arrivals and shops selling tat - and, despite the sewage on the streets, has a faded grandeur that is both photogenic and historic.

Over the last two decades much has been stagnant, but there has also been significant change - there is no way I would have predicted all those years ago that i) I would return or ii) there would be Coca-Cola available, or Nestle ice cream (made locally in another joint venture), or heavy traffic on the once-deserted streets, or luxury western cars, like Audi and Mercedes taxis. Also now absent are the fur-coated Russian technocrats and Havana has a much more cosmopolitan face, with an even an ambassadorial presence of the old enemy of South Africa (having been at war with the South Africans in Angola last time I was here) and many Chinese businessmen.

The revolution seems to have succeeded in creating the very system that it was intended to overthrow - capitalism with huge income disparities between those who can fleece tourists for the valued CUC and the destitute farmers without mechanisation - while maintaining an authoritarian bureaucracy that permits no dissent and a rigid, centrally planned, structurally inefficient command economy that fails to deliver.

After a week I struggle to see why anyone would chose a beach holiday here over Thailand or anywhere in Asia. This week has reinforced our decision not to spend much time in Latin America.