"Meanwhile, back in Havana"
washingtonpost.com
In Central Havana, Life by the Ration Book
Castro Showcases Nation's High Tech, but Many Struggle in Primitive Poverty
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 14, 2002; Page A14
HAVANA, May 13 -- When Jorge Socarras bathes, he stands in a bucket in the middle of his one-room apartment. He pours water over his head and scrubs with the one bar of soap the government rations him each month.
He has no running water: A couple of times a week, someone fills his big plastic water can with a hose. His toilet is a green pail that sits in the same room where he cooks and eats. He keeps it half-full of soapy water to keep the smell down, and empties it down an open six-inch waste pipe under the sink.
"All these years, it's just the same, the same, the same. We never go forward," said Socarras, 57, a city bus driver who lost his job when Cuba's economy crashed in the early 1990s. "The government says they are trying to improve the lives of Cubans, but it's a lie."
Former president Jimmy Carter, on a historic five-day tour of Cuba, today visited some places of which this island nation is proudest: modern biotechnology centers that develop vaccines and do genetic engineering, and one of Latin America's most respected medical schools.
But as Carter was looking at one Cuba, Socarras was living in another, one that is as much a part of Fidel Castro's revolution as the achievements in health and education. From the crumbling alleys of central Havana, where Socarras lives, to towns on either end of the island, vast numbers of the 11 million people here live in conditions that range from poor to primitive.
Castro's 43-year-old socialist revolution has given Cuba a low crime rate and levels of education, child vaccination and rural health service that surpass those of many wealthier countries in Latin America. But it has also left millions of Cubans, including doctors and teachers and others in the middle class, facing daily hardships that include tiny rations of food, scarce jobs and, in many cases, no running water and sporadic electricity. The Castro government blames its woes largely on the embargo imposed by the United States 40 years ago, though the embargo's actual effect is a matter of some debate.
"I'm glad Carter is here," Socarras said. "He's a man of peace, a religious man, and so am I. But he should know that not everyone is happy here."
To that end, Carter met today for more than an hour with Elizardo Sanchez and Oswaldo Paya, two of Cuba's leading dissidents, who are pressing an unprecedented effort to force Castro's government to guarantee free speech and assembly, free elections and more free enterprise.
Last week, Paya handed the National Assembly a petition signed by more than 11,000 Cubans demanding a national referendum on those reforms. Castro's government has barely acknowledged the effort, which is called the Varela Project after Felix Varela, a 19th-century Roman Catholic priest and independence activist.
Socarras said he had never heard of the project, although he recognized Varela's name because his apartment is on Father Varela Street. When the project was explained to him, Socarras said he was not surprised that the government had not mentioned it on the state-run radio station he listens to.
"I don't like the system, but I don't fight it either, because it's too hard," Socarras said. "It's done me a lot of damage. I worked for 32 years, but now I live almost like a street person. It's not right."
This morning, as Carter's motorcade of Mercedes sedans was cruising toward the biotech lab, Socarras was handing his tattered green ration book to a bread vendor in his neighborhood. The vendor handed him one small roll -- his daily allotment -- then recorded it in Socarras's book.
Everyone here gets a ration book. Some people, especially those who have U.S. dollars because they work in the tourist industry, can afford to supplement their rations by shopping in a few grocery stores. But prices there are much higher, and even many middle-class Cubans have to get by on rations.
After Socarras left the bread shop, he noticed some good news: Another vendor had received a load of picadillo, a pinkish mix of ground meat and soy meal. Socarras said it had been at least a month since picadillo had been available, so he was delighted. He handed over his ration card and got a half-pound, his monthly allotment.
Socarras's three-story apartment building is typical of central Havana, a sprawl of dilapidated buildings that is far larger than Old Havana, the neighborhood of cobblestones and colonial architecture that draws most tourists and where Carter took a walking tour on Sunday.
Socarras climbed the narrow, dark stairs to the second floor, passing a rat's nest of electrical wires twisting off in every direction to the building's 60-plus apartments. A forest of 4-by-4 wooden beams had been jury-rigged to keep the ceiling and balconies from collapsing.
In his hot apartment, where he has lived alone since his wife died of cancer four years ago, he dropped the meat on a small table next to a Soviet-built refrigerator from 1963. It hasn't worked in years, and he said he's been waiting more than two years for the government to send a repairman.
A new, South Korean-made refrigerator of the same size sells for $493.95 in La Elegante, a flashy store on central Havana's main street. But it would take Socarras years to earn that much, doing odd jobs and selling his monthly ration of cigarettes, which is how he has supported himself since he lost his bus-driving job nine years ago.
The average monthly wage here is about 200 pesos, a little less than $8; many professionals earn only slightly more. Socarras said his income varies: "I might make 100 pesos tomorrow, and then nothing for two weeks."
In the meantime, he uses the refrigerator as a cabinet to store detergent and some beans.
He has an ancient radio, no television set and a little two-burner stove. His bed is upstairs, in a makeshift loft, which has one barred window and a ceramic cat -- the only decoration in the place other than pictures of Jesus and of Socarras's three grown children.
"Most people in Cuba live this way; you get used to it," Socarras said, sitting beneath a ceiling covered with plastic sheeting to catch the dust caused by the termites eating away at his loft.
Socarras pulled out his ration card and ran through his monthly allotment: six pounds of rice, a half-pound of beans, three pounds of white sugar and two pounds of brown sugar, a bar of soap, two small packets of coffee, three packs of cigarettes, two boxes of matches, one tube of toothpaste, a pack of cookies, a pound of salt and some spaghetti.
He said he also gets eight eggs a month, but he's still waiting for this month's supply to arrive at the shop. He's supposed to get three pounds of potatoes a month, but he said most of the time they don't show up. He said there is occasionally chicken, pork, squid or shrimp, but it is available only sporadically.
"I don't rob, I don't steal, I just struggle," Socarras said. "They say things will get better, but I don't see it. I am worried about the future." |
