Modern Cuba has little to boast about save for its glorious past

Returning to Cuba for the first time in 30 years, I was shocked to see how little it has changed. The crumbling buildings, the shabby public places, the half-empty shop shelves ... they all remain the same — as does the love of rhumba, rum and laughter that so many Cubans share.
There is one key difference, however, between the Cuba of 1980 and the Cuba of 2010.

Then, working-class Havana residents were staging passionate and seemingly spontaneous demonstrations in support of the revolution and against the “gusanos” (worms) who were fleeing the island in a chaotic flotilla known as the Mariel Boatlift.

Angered and embarrassed that 10,000 Cubans had stormed the Peruvian embassy in a quest for sanctuary, Fidel Castro told opponents of his regime that they were all free to leave as long as they could arrange transport to Miami. And some 125,000 Cubans did set sail in 1980 from the port of Mariel in yachts and motor boats piloted by emigres living in Florida.

“Revolution is a voluntary act!” Castro declared that spring in a speech I covered for a New York newspaper. Crowds of Cubans trucked into the torrid Plaza de la Revolucion responded with whoops and pumped fists. “Fidel seguro, dale los yanquis duro!” they chanted — “Fidel, for sure, hit the Yankees hard!”

No one present in the Plaza that day could doubt that many poor Cubans felt great pride in a revolution that had, if nothing else, restored their self-respect. The Cuba of that era also remained a beacon of inspiration for millions of Africans, Asians and Latin Americans who shared the view that European colonialism and US imperialism had stolen their dignity as well as their resources.

Enthusiasm for the revolution — both inside and outside Cuba —has all but vanished in 2010.

Cuba does retain friendly ties with Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and almost every other black African country. Presidents Jakaya Kikwete and Yoweri Museveni both visited Cuba last month, while Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula held talks there a year ago. Each of the visitors thanked their hosts for having admitted hundreds of East Africans to Cuban universities and for having sent medical workers and teachers to East Africa.

Today, however, no African government is striving to emulate what many had once admired as “the Cuban model.”

Its exhaustion is as obvious now as was the revolutionary energy of 30 years ago.

Propaganda posters extolling socialism and denouncing the US trade embargo can still be seen on Havana’s streets and along rural roads all over the country. But hardly anyone with whom I spoke during a two-week visit seemed content with the present state of affairs or hopeful about the future. Hints are all that could be given in a society that punishes independent expression.

Apathy and cynicism were especially palpable on New Year’s Day, which in earlier times was an occasion for mass celebrations of the January 1, 1959, “Triumph of the Revolution.” On this 51st anniversary, only a couple of thousand Cubans gathered in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion — once the site of spirited speeches by Castro, who officially stepped down as president in 2006. Fidel’s successor and brother, 78-year-old Raul, gave no commemorative address at all on the first day of 2010.

In truth, Cuba today has little to boast about.

Officials continue to argue that the revolution makes health care and education much more widely available than in neighbouring non-socialist nations like Jamaica and Haiti. Claims of universal access to quality medical care cannot be adequately assessed in just two weeks, but more immediately visible services, such as maintenance of state-owned housing, appear to be non-existent.

What will happen to Cuba when the Castro brothers pass from the scene? No one knows. But it does seem unlikely that the Cuban people would ever compromise the national dignity that the revolution has instilled. It’s that sense of hard-won self-esteem that leads many Cubans to say they prefer to live under socialism “in spite of everything.”