Cuba After Castro?

In front of the most popular ice cream shop in Havana there is an oft-photographed billboard -- a photo of Castro, looking old and grizzly but still fierce. He is caught mid-speech, mouth open and soft, finger raised in the air to illustrate his point. Below the photo, in big letters, are the words: Contra el Terrorismo y Contra la Guerra. Against Terrorism and Against War.

It sounds sane and rational. For those of us in the States who have had difficulty stating a similar position without being branded traitors or terrorist-sympathizers, it's inspiring to see the message displayed so openly. But while it continues to provide a measure of inspiration to the solidarity brigades that come from all over the world, increased tourism and continuing shortages and restrictions mean that Cuba is having a harder time inspiring hopefulness and energy in its own people.

One's impressions of Cuba depend a lot on one's expectations. Anyone visiting Cuba, and especially anyone who visited the Soviet Union when there was such a thing or traveled to China in the last 10 years, would probably be pleasantly surprised by the amount of unregulated joy found on almost any Cuban street. People burst into song, play guitar and woo each other by the ocean's edge, and dance so well their clothes seem to want to fly off their bodies.

Returning on a packed truck from a beach in Santiago, I found myself surrounded by dueling songs. A woman would start a song, all the other women would join in, and then the men would respond with a (usually more sexually explicit) song of their own. At a few points, the songs converged and then the whole truck, including the driver, would shout out the chorus (Bad! No! Good! Yes! -- this was the chorus I remember best). I tried in vain to picture my rush-hour subway car, similarly crowded, breaking out in unified song.

There is a physical beauty in Cuba too, that comes from the lack of new resources and the necessity of preservation. Cars from the 1950s are painted with whatever remnants of paint can be found, creating patchworks of green and blue that look like landscapes. Old bicycles become parts of merry-go-rounds. Then there is the surreal and lovely sensation of seeing beautiful old houses so well used. The marble columns of the 1920s are covered in vines, the 100-year-old wrought-iron gates make excellent clotheslines and the curved '50s balconies provide the perfect vantage point for wrinkled old men with their fat cigars to take in the street scenes below. Barefoot children play in old ballrooms long stripped of furniture and curtains. The palaces have truly been taken over by the peasants.

There is a tendency for Cubans to compare Cuba with the U.S. Because of the large influence of Cubans with relatives in the U.S., and the increasingly available access to television and U.S. movies. Cubans see new American cars and myriad computers and appliances, the endless varieties of clothing and the grocery stores and think: Yes, I'd like that. It makes more sense to compare Cuba to Haiti and Jamaica, its two other closest neighbors. Haiti and Jamaica are both capitalist countries whose governments are (now at least) perfectly acceptable to the U.S and they are in far worse shape than Cuba. Haiti is now the poorest country in the Caribbean. It has half Cuba's literacy rate and twice its rate of poverty and infant mortality. Jamaica is drowning in debt to the IMF and most of its people have been stuck in deep poverty for over 40 years.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and before it relaxed tourism restrictions and legalized "hard currency," Cuba was as close as it had ever been to starvation. But now Cuba -- compared not just to its immediate Caribbean neighbors but to much of Latin America -- looks good. There is no homelessness or landlessness or starvation and very little drug addiction. But Cuba today is a good example of what Che meant when he argued that a "revolution in one country" was only a temporary solution to inequalities.