Hope for Cuba

[Bulldog]

National Post   Published: Saturday, March 15, 2008

There are signs that Cuba is beginning a curious modernization. On Thursday, Raul Castro, the new President and brother of retired dictator Fidel, announced that his countrymen would henceforth be permitted computers and DVD players. Next year, they will be allowed air conditioners -- if they can afford them -- and by 2010, who knows, perhaps even electric ovens and toasters.

No doubt, Cubans will be delighted to have access to the sort of kitchen appliances that our grandparents put on their wedding registries. But some may also suspect that they are being bribed: There's not enough food, comrades, and not much hope of more for the next couple of years. You won't be needing toasters and ovens for a while. So watch some old Stallone flicks and some Miami television, or surf the internet in the comfort of your air conditioned living rooms until the Council of State can figure out how to get broiler chickens off the endangered species list.

But whatever President Raul's motives, economic liberalization offers the best hope for a rescue of the Cuban people after half a century of grinding Communist oppression.

The government in Havana has long claimed that the outlawing of most appliances and consumer electronics in the 1990s was a decision forced on the regime by the collapse of the Soviet empire. Without cheap Soviet oil shipments, Cuban power plants could not generate electricity. To avoid widespread blackouts, Cuban households had to be stripped bare of even basic amenities. It was for the good of the Revolucion. (The fact that the Revolucion is now healthy enough to permit the use of mass-market appliances is likely owed to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has picked up where the U.S.S.R. left off as Cuba's oil sugar daddy.)

But there was another reason for Fidel's ban on electric goods. The early 1990s brought not only the demise of the Soviet Union, but also an explosion in satellite television and information technology. Uncontrolled information flow is always a threat to totalitarian regimes. The longer Fidel kept his electronics ban in place, the longer he could maintain his government's monopoly on news dissemination.

Now that the lid has officially been lifted on Cuba's computer ban, expect calls for reform to spread like wildfire across the Communist island. Recall that last month a pointed exchange between Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, and computing science students at a prestigious Havana university -- in which the students asked why the government was afraid to let them travel outside the country and use such web services as Google -- was rapidly disseminated around the country by students passing jump drives (also known as flash drives or memory sticks) from one to another and watching the video on public-access PCs. Such acts of "soft rebellion" can only become easier as more individuals have their own desktops and laptops.

Cuba still has a plethora of problems -- including tightly rationed foodstuffs -- nearly all of which are the result of failed central planning. But by permitting Cubans greater access to the outside world through television, movies and the internet, Raul Castro has inched his country closer to the day when the Communist Party can no longer delude the populace into blind devotion.

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=377566

I'm not crazy about the title but it is a sign of things to come 

[flopnfly]

I had no idea that they weren't allowed to have toasters

[Jammyisme]

   Such a sarcastic article. This what I heard this morning. So who wants to buy a farm?  *clap*Cuba lifts ban on farmers buying supplies
Mar 18, 2008 11:08 AM

Communist Cuba has lifted a ban on some farmers buying supplies in the latest sign that new President Raul Castro is looking to individual initiative to stimulate food production.

Agricultural sources told Reuters on Monday that Cuba will soon open stores for farmers to buy tools, herbicides, boots and other supplies for the first time since the state took over all the country's shops in the 1960s.

"It's like a birthday party around here. All the members of the cooperative are very happy," the wife of a dairy farmer said in a telephone interview.

Raul Castro has raised hopes for economic change since becoming Cuba's first new leader in nearly half a century when he took over as president from his sick brother, Fidel Castro, on February 24.

Few analysts expect a radical political departure from the one-party state but many predict he will pursue measures to make the creaking state-run economy more efficient.

Cuban farmers complain the cumbersome state-run system does not work, leaving crops to rot and farmers without timely supplies such as animal feed, resulting in poor land use.

Milk producers in state and private cooperatives, as well as private dairy farmers, will initially gain access to the stores. It was not clear whether nondairy farmers would be able to do so, but they believe so and were delighted.

"It has been hard to find supplies and for cattle you need wire and a machete. Now things are changing, and I see that as very good," said Carlos Manuel Fernandez, a 62-year-old farmer who raises cows on the Havana outskirts.

"You cannot sow fields without fences, so the new measures are a big improvement," he said.

A local agriculture expert said that allowing farmers to buy their supplies on their own was a major step forward.

"For the first time, all supplies are not being assigned by the central government. It's a market crack in the monopoly and centralization that it is sure to spread," the specialist said, asking not to be named.

Raul Castro, 76, has said he believes Cuba must produce more food and cut imports from the United States and other countries. He vowed to lift restrictions that hinder output.

"The country's priority will be to meet the basic needs of the population," he said on taking office.

With food imports rising to almost $2 billion in 2007 and Cubans complaining about soaring prices, the younger Castro has put agriculture at the top of his agenda.

Seed and Fertilizer

State-run companies recently sent buyers abroad to purchase tools, hand held machinery and supplies such as fencing, seed and fertilizer, presumably to sell in their outlets across the country, a local business source said.

The farmers will be able to buy supplies in Cuba's hard currency, the CUC or convertible peso, which is worth 24 times more than the Cuban pesos that state wages are paid in.

Cuba began crediting dairy farmers two US cents per liter (two pints) of milk earlier this year, which they can now use to purchase the supplies.

"They are readying a hard-currency store in the city which opens next month," said a dairy farmer by telephone from central Camaguey province.

"We'll be able to purchase hand-held tools, herbicides, boots, fencing and things like that," he said.

Cuba has around 250,000 family farms and 1,100 private cooperatives, which represent an island of individual ownership in an economy 90% controlled by the state.

But together they till less than one third of the land. In exchange for state-assigned supplies, they must grow certain crops or raise certain livestock to sell back to the government at fixed prices.

The remainder of the land is owned by the state, and half of that lies lies fallow.

Some Cuban economists say the state's monopoly over farm supplies and output holds back production because it does not reward better farmers and penalize unproductive ones, providing little incentive for development.

They have argued for more market mechanisms to provide farmers with timely supplies and to distribute their products.

The state has doubled or even tripled the price it pays in pesos for many farm products since Raul Castro began running Cuba on a provisional basis when his brother fell ill in 2006, in some cases adding a few cents in hard currency as a further incentive.

Individual farmers and cooperatives are also being offered more land and the government is considering opening up agriculture to foreign investment.