Old & New 'half voyages' in Cuba.

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Like the car, it's outdated and broken.  Since the revolution in 1959 the country seems to have stood still. Whether it's living conditions, transport or food production.

Cuba is known for it's colourful American cars, but ask the local people what they want they will tell you they want the same things as everyone else.  They want new cars, somewhere nice to live, shops that stock things they want to buy rather than the grinding poverty of the last 57 years - not unreasonable, I think.  The local Cubans joke that Cuba gets it's name from cue - ba, meaning you have to cue for everything.

Something the new flood of American visitors to Cuba will find today is that all the tour buses are brand new Chinese  models.  But ask their drivers what they think of them and they will tell you they call them "half voyages" as they usually breakdown during a trip.

When we asked how the Cuban government could afford these shiny new vehicles we were told these were traded for Cuban doctors, rum and tobacco products.  We suspect the long term deal also includes the option for some Chinese production facilities (Cuba has cheap labour, low land prices and is very near to the US and European markets for Chinese goods).

These Chinese tour buses are said to be so unreliable that the Cuban government sell them off after just one season for the new owners to bear the cost of on-going repairs and any future problems.

As the average Cuban salary is only around $20 per month, that requires considerable creativity on their part.

The same business model applies to government owned taxis.  When they are completely worn out they are given to their drivers.

In 1959 when the original owners abandoned their homes, businesses and cars and fled the country due to the revolution, the local Cubans took over the cars as prized possessions, to be passed down from generation to generation. The only way they would ever be able to afford a car.  The only alternative lately was a succession of clapped out Moskvitch or Ladas.

Between them, this collection of automotive junk produce an unhealthy soup of pollution that claws at your throat.

Crime is low, but corruption is the norm, forced on the people by the system.  Apparently the customs is the cream, of government jobs, for obvious reasons.

There is the same feeling on the streets of Cuban as we experienced on a visit to China in 1988.  An extreme socialist/communist country on the surface but just below the surface it is a bubbling capitalist economy. The populace trying to scratch a living.

For a supposedly socialist country the economy in Cuba seems to be loaded against the common people who actually do the work.  A case in point.  The cigar workers produce around 100 handmade cigars a day.  For this they are paid their $20 per month.  They are allowed to keep 5 cigars a day each.  These they promptly sell on the black market to try and make their salary up to a living wage, and like most Cubans they have at least two jobs to survive.  These government owned cigar factories retail these hand made cigars at around $25 each.  So one assumes this monumental profit helps off-set the cost of the disposable tour buses.

On the subject of second jobs on the black, it is not unusual for doctors and other professionals to drive taxis to supplement their meagre salaries.  Talk to some of the taxi drivers and you quickly realise these are extremely well educated people.

This socialist utopia with it's loaded economy, government employee corruption and medieval farming practises is kept well hidden to all but a few.

Fidel Castro wrote a book titled "History will absolve me".  I wonder what he knew, that we don't.

Despite low income, poverty, poor infrastructure and lack of hope, the Cuban people are unerringly polite and friendly to foreigners, they seem to have a strange harmony in poverty.  But change is coming, the clock is ticking.......

ⓒ photos & text Tony Hillyard 2016

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