Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door MSNBC
Cuban leader defiant as ever
HAVANA, July 25 — Cuba’s revolution turns 50 Saturday with a leader just as defiant today as when he started half a century ago. Fidel Castro will lead the celebration by returning to the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba where he launched his armed struggle in 1953. In fact he will be speaking not far from the courtroom where he went on trial for his life after being captured during his first armed attack against the Batista dictatorship.
FOR FIVE DECADES Castro has used the anniversary to laud the benefits of an egalitarian socialist system, emphasizing his programs that benefit the forgotten members of society, while skirting criticisms of his abuse of basic individual rights. This year Cubans expect more of the same from a president who often quotes national hero José Mart�*: “To be educated is to be liberated.”
Castro began his revolution with a literacy campaign that sent 200,000 young people into the countryside to teach farm families to read and write. Although Cuba’s adult literacy stands at 96 percent and its primary schools rate the highest marks when compared to the rest of Latin America, education today is fighting to stay top of the class. Cuba’s biggest problem? No one wants to teach. With Cuba’s economic meltdown over a decade ago, teachers left the profession in droves to seek more lucrative salaries.
Disgruntled professionals, in fact, make up a bulk of the Cuban workforce whose salaries increasingly fall short of meeting Cuba’s high cost of living. Raquel Hernandez quit the army for a job with the tourism company Gran Caribe. Part of Cuba’s privileged class, she earns a portion of her salary in US dollars. “School and health care are free but I still have to buy shoes and food for my daughter.” Even with her hefty salary of 400 pesos and 20 dollars a month, the single mother finds “everything so expensive. My salary just doesn’t stretch far enough.”
TOUGH ECONOMY
Despite a slight bounce in tourist earnings, Cuba’s economy continued to sag this year. For the third year running, economic growth — expected at a modest 1.5 percent before the year’s end — has dropped below government expectations.
Cuban watchers don’t expect Castro to address those concerns at Saturday’s rally before 10,000 ardent supporters but to look instead at the global political picture. They expect harsh words for his traditional enemy, the United States, but are not looking for any action that could change the status quo. Much like what people heard on May 20 from President George W. Bush who criticized Castro for a crackdown on the dissident movement but stopped short of penalizing the island by either suspending the direct flights between both countries or canceling the 1994 migratory agreements.
The opposite, in fact, is the case. While European tourism generally remains in its post Sept. 11 slump, terminal two at Havana’s main airport is the busiest its been all year with as many as ten flights a day arriving from Miami and carrying Cuban Americans home to visit family.
GDP
Cuba acknowledges that the loss of Soviet aid and trade caused its GDP to drop by 35 percent between 1989 and 1993. The CIA estimates the drop was more like 50 percent. But after five years of a sinking GDP, the economic decline came to a halt in 1994. Since then, according to Cuba,
here's how GDP has fared:
1994 +0.7
1995 +2.5
1996 +7.8
1997 +2.5
1998 +1.2
1999 +2.5
2000 + 5.6%
Trade balance
In 1999, Cuba said trade with other countries was worth $5.1 billion. Export earnings declined 22% in 1998, to $1.4 billion, the result of lower sugar export volume and lower world prices for nickel and sugar. Import expenditures also fell 15% to $3.0 billion, in part due to lower world oil prices. Export concentration on sugar was as much as 51.4 percent of total export value between 1993-96 which explains the trade deficits.
1994 -0.8
1995 -1.3
1996 -1.6
1997 -2.4
1998 -2.5
1999 -3.0
Trade relations
Before 1989, 85 percent of its trade was with the socialist bloc. Since then, Cuba has had to establish new trading partners. As a result of decline in sugar output, Cuban exports to almost all of its key trading partners have fallen since 1996. Exports to Russia and Canada fell by 13 percent. Exports to China by 27 percent and trade with Cuba's biggest trading partner, the European Union, fell by 3 percent.
Sugar
The 2000-2001 crop was a paltry 3.5 million tons while the government is predicting a rise to 4.0 million this year, despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Michelle. The 1998 sugar harvest was the lowest under the Revolution and in the last 55 years. Output in 1993-97 averaged one-half of the 1982-89 average. Cuba's inability to export sugar was its biggest problem, with an 18 per cent drop off in 1997. In 1997, Cuba exported 3,552 thousand tons of sugar and (at a price of 11.16 U.S. cents/pound) earned US$ 853 million and in 1998 it earned US $620 million.
1994 4,000
1995 3,300
1996 4,450
1997 4,252
1998 3,200
1999 4,000
2000 3,500
Physical output (thousand metric tons)
Oil and natural gas
Cuba's oil output has increased more than 400 percent over the last decade, to over 60,000 barrels per day, a third of the cash-strapped Caribbean island's minimum oil consumption. Oil firms from Canada, Britain, France and Sweden have been helping Cuba develop its existing wells and search for new reserves. In 2000, Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez negotiated a deal to provide Cuba with monthly supplies of oil.
Foreign Investment
Foreign direct investment is trickling in. In 1996, there were 240 joint ventures in Cuba, involving firms from 57 countries and valued at $5 billion. In 1998 foreign investment still hovered around $5 billion. U.S. businesses, although limited by the embargo against the island, remain eager to tap the Cuban market, Rice producers in six states -- Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas, hope to capitalize on the Cuban rice market estimated at 350,000 to 400,000 tons annually. Cuba now purchases rice from Thailand and Vietnam.
Tourism
Tourism is Cuba's largest source of hard currency, earning $1.9 billion in gross revenues in 2000. As a result, the government is worried about the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the economy this year. There has been a steady increase in tourist traffic since the early 1990's. In 1994 Cuba had 617,000 tourists, putting it on a par with Aruba and the U.S. Virgin Islands and by 2000, the number had jumped to more than 1.6 million. Canadians and Europeans are Cuba's main visitors. The U.S. embargo prevents Americans from visiting unless they receive special permission from the State Department.
Castro has also signaled Washington that he won’t permit a wave of illegal migration to muddy the waters of the Florida Straits this summer. Some observers expected Cuba’s worsening economic picture to spark a repeat of the 1994 immigration crisis that brought 38,000 rafters to U.S. shores. Instead of opening the floodgates, Castro moved quickly and severely against all illegal attempts to flee his island when he upheld a court decision to execute three men found guilty of terrorism for hijacking a commuter ferry with 30 passengers aboard. And Washington, enmeshed in its own battle against terrorism, recently took two steps to support Castro’s efforts when a Florida court handed down a stiff sentence to a plane hijacker and the U.S. Coast guard returned hijackers and a state-owned vessel to Cuba after it reached Bahaman waters.
Advertisement
You can also expect Castro to defend his April law and order campaign that sentenced 75 independent journalists and human rights activists to prison terms that range from six to 28 years. Castro will most likely repeat his claim that the dissidents are mercenaries in cahoots with the U.S. government to undermine his regime - charges both the activists and the State Department have denied. Government moles that infiltrated the dissident movement here will be prominently seated when Castro delivers what could be his major foreign and domestic policy address this year.
Just by walking up to the podium on Saturday, the firebrand communist, who will turn 77 next month, will dispel this summer’s storm of rumors that he might be either gravely ill or dead. Like past rumors, these began when Castro was absent from public view for a few weeks and ended when he handed out diplomas at a graduation ceremony earlier this week. And, as in the past, government officials here blamed Castro’s enemies in South Florida’s exile community for starting and spreading the scuttlebutt.
|
