Cuba: A long day's journey into the future

by Julia Lutsky

This article was reprinted from the June 22, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

HAVANA, Cuba - This is an old city, spread out over a wide area. Many of its buildings are old and decaying and none is as high as forty stories. Everywhere are indications of construction and repair. "We are blockaded," they seem to say but, as many signs around the city proclaim, "venceremos ("We will triumph)."

This writer spent a week in Havana as one of a group who traveled there on a fact-finding tour sponsored by the Center for Cuban Studies in New York and the Cuban Institute for Friendship with Peoples (ICAP) in Havana. The small hostel in which we stayed belonged to the Ministry of Education in the formerly exclusive, but now rather remote Miramar section of Havana.

Noel Borgues burst into the discussion without warning. It was our first full day in Cuba and we had barely arrived at the meeting place of the People's Council on the covered porch of a rundown office building in the Vedado section of Havana.

Borgues, a tall formidable looking man in his 50s and a delegate to the council, was in a hurry. He had come looking for the council president because a building had collapsed the previous evening. He needed to secure the services of a microbrigade to help in cleanup and restoration. Housing is the main problem facing this council's area - as it is in many parts of Havana.

Before the "special period" set in with the end of the Soviet Union in 1989 - and the tightening of the blockade shortly thereafter - they were constructing and repairing houses on a regular basis, as many as 20,000 of each annually, according to Borgues. Since that time they have not been able to do anything but basic repairs. They hope to construct and repair as many as 10,000 in the Havana area this year.

There are problems with nearly half a million homes in the province. Construction and repair is usually done by microbrigades whose members are often those who already do - or will soon - reside in the buildings themselves. The councils provide supplies and instructions and the people build their own and their neighbors' homes.

It is these supplies that have been so lacking. He said this was also true of medications which have been in short supply since the beginning of the special period. Solidarity donations have helped all during this period, both in housing and in the supply of medicines.

Government at the grassroots

In Cuba people and government communicate directly by means of these "people's councils." A council's area is composed of 10 or 11 contiguous neighborhoods, each of which elects a single delegate to the council. Elections are conducted entirely without campaigns; the people of a neighborhood meet and nominate two or more individuals from whom they elect a delegate.

The delegates then choose a president and two vice presidents from among their own number. These three are employed full time by the council but will be paid by the places where they had been working. When their two-year terms expire they will return to these jobs. The remaining delegates continue at their regular jobs while they represent the people of their districts.

It is the responsibility of council delegates to determine the problems and needs of the districts they serve and to take them to the appropriate government agencies for resolution. It is equally their responsibility to carry to the people directly those matters about which the government - national, provincial or local - wishes the people to consider and to make decisions. To this end delegates convene neighborhood meetings, usually every six months, where they give an accounting of the problems resolved and outstanding.

Conversely, they present the measures about which the provincial or national assemblies have requested ideas and opinions. They also help to "plan" problems such as when blackouts must be scheduled, as they must often be for lack of fuel. The delegate can determine directly from people when would be the least inconvenient times for the neighborhood. Delegates are also expected to hold open office at least weekly so that people who might not have been able to locate them during the workweek can see them for help.

Borgues did not find the council president there that morning but he was confident he would before the day was out. There is nothing in the whole council's area which is not the president's direct responsibility, Borgues said. Once elected, a president has practically no time, even for family life.

If the bakery in a given district runs out of flour, or its oven malfunctions, it is the president or a vice president who must get it fixed that day - or as soon as humanly possible. It is the president who must find the parts or the flour. The district depends on it.

Smaller problems can usually be handled by a district's delegate but when he or she is unable to resolve a matter it is the responsibility of the president or a vice president to follow up. "Smaller" problems might include all manner of broken or worn out domestic appliances from refrigerators and irons to fans and television sets.

The full council meets once a week on a regular basis, usually Saturdays or Sundays to accommodate work schedules. All the councils of a given municipality meet every six months.

Recently the municipal assembly to which the council we visited belonged began setting up commissions of paid professional experts. These commissions were new to Havana; they had previously been instituted in the rural people's councils and found to be useful.

A municipality's commissions generally meet every other month to discuss problems extending across councils. Since the main problem facing the council we visited was housing, two such paid professionals were present the day of our visit: an architect, Esperanza Castellano, and an engineer, Miguel Rodrmguez. These experts work full-time for the provincial or the national governments and go out on an as-needed basis.

Inefficiency or bureaucracy will sometimes keep matters from being resolved. A while back President Fidel Castro called together a meeting of local delegates to hear their problems in this respect. Together they instituted a procedure allowing anyone who had experienced such problems to write to his or her delegate requesting help "from higher up."

Castellano, a small stocky woman who smoked incessantly - as do many in Havana - recounted how she had written the delegate from her area on a matter which she did not spell out and requested help "from Fidel." Shortly thereafter she returned after work one evening to find Carlos Lage, vice president and secretary of the State Council, waiting for her on her steps. He had been waiting for her over an hour, she beamed as she recalled the incident. She went on to praise her delegate as someone she could count on to get things done.

The councils thus connect people and government: when, because of bureaucracy or for any other reason the interchange breaks down, this kind of direct path reestablishes it. Such occurrences strengthen the bond between people and government.

The closest we come in this country to such a direct tie to government is probably at the local meetings called by our Congressional representatives. These meetings, however, are generally timed to coincide with election campaigns. We can visit or write the offices of our representatives, but it has been my experience that unless this is done en masse and over a long period of time very little comes of it. In Cuba as everywhere else the ruling class governs in its own interest: what is different is that in Cuba ruling class and people are one and the same.

The area included in the council we visited contained five primary schools, three day care centers and one high school. Though there were no hospitals, there were two polyclinics and a dental clinic. The areas served by the schools and centers are defined within the area of the council. The clinics and council areas, on the other hand, do not coincide. In the Havana area each polyclinic now serves approximately 30,000 people. Borgues said they were currently working on coordinating the areas of clinics and councils.

People's councils serve as conduits for half of Cuba's two branched Social Security system. Social Security relates entirely to workers and their families and is handled by the workers at their job sites. Social Assistance relates to everything else and is channelled through the people's councils each of which has at least one Social Assistance representative assigned to it.

A lifetime of security

When a worker retires or becomes disabled that worker transfers his (or her) record from the Social Security sector to the Social Assistance sector. Retirement age for men is 60, and for women 55, except for cooperative farmers who retire at 65 and 60 respectively; both age and disability pensions are the province of the Social Assistance representative. So also are the senior citizen centers which provide meals - and such problematic aspects of community life as help and counseling for single mothers, cases of teenage pregnancy, and support for the wives and families of those in prison.

Social Assistance representatives also work to help youths who have dropped out of school to reintegrate into the school programs or into one or another of the vocational education programs. Education in Cuba at all levels is free and includes job placement at the end of the course of study.

The blockade is felt throughout the island. There is a lack of replacement parts for everything you can imagine, but people make do. Very old cars are everywhere in Havana. I rode in a 1930 Model A Ford. Bumpy and slow, but serviceable. The driver commented it had a very strong motor. He had taken it out of mothballs after 20 years when he found he could use it as a cab to serve the recent influx of foreign tourists. From the evident pride he took in it as well as the looks of it, he had done the work himself.

The medical system is short of everything from simple medications like aspirin to the most sophisticated devices such as pacemakers. Books and pencils are in short supply; schools, houses are run down. But not a clinic or hospital has closed, nor has any school or day care center. This is a country with one foot in the future and striding ahead.