POPULATION-CUBA: “The Last One Out Turns Off the Morro!”

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 22 2000 (IPS) - A popular joke has circulated in Cuba for the past decade: everyone has left the island, but before leaving, the last person out makes sure to turn off the beacon at the Castillo del Morro, at the entrance to the Havana bay.

The phrase “the last one out turns off the Morro!” resumes recent Cuban history and provides a good illustration of one of the escape valves – humour – used by Cubans to forget their troubles and woes during these times of continuing economic crisis.

“We are happy here”, the political slogan of the past decade, is quickly followed up by “just imagine over there!” – a reference to the United States.

A controversial and even dangerous decision for decades, emigration has since the early 1990s become just another survival strategy in the midst of the worst economic crisis experienced since the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution.

Thousands of people legally emigrate every year, while thousands of others decide to brave the dangerous 180-km sea passage to the US state of Florida on rafts, pay up to 8,000 dollars to be taken across by smugglers, or attempt to enter the United States from a third country.

The phenomenon has recently been highlighted by the case of Elián González, a six-year-old boy who watched his mother drown at sea when the smugglers’ boat in which they were travelling capsized, and who is now the high-profile object of a custody battle between his father in Cuba and relatives in the United States.

In the 1980s, one out of four Cubans attempting to make it across in rafts or other precarious watercraft died in the attempt.

In 1999 around 60 people died attempting to cross the Florida Straits. And according to US Coast Guard figures, 2,254 Cubans made it to US soil last year – and were thus automatically granted asylum, in accordance with US law.

Since 1995, Washington has issued around 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate. Nevertheless, the number of Cubans intercepted at sea in their attempt to reach the United States climbed from 626 in 1995 to 1,343 in 1999.

To many Cubans leaving, even without the possibility of return, seems as valid an option as renting out rooms to tourists without a license, setting up one’s own plumbing business without a permit, or selling products of questionable origin door to door.

From 1990 to 1993 this Caribbean island nation of more than 11 million saw its gross domestic product plunge after the disappearance of the east European socialist bloc.

Since then, the economy has rallied only slightly. The crisis continues to affect all spheres of life and, along with the economic reforms implemented since the mid-1990s, has radically changed the daily lives of Cubans.

A study by researchers Consuelo Martín and Guadalupe Pérez, published by the Political Publisher of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, found that “the gap between needs and satisfaction of needs triggers frustration and leads to a drop in the threshold of tolerance.

“Emigration as a solution to day-to-day problems has been one strategy to which people have resorted, with a drastic increase of the phenomenon – especially in its illegal form – in the 1990s,” said Martín and Pérez.

Survey respondents equated emigration with “contentment, happiness, luck and opportunity” and life in Cuba with “misfortune, anguish and torment.”

But many, despite their negative vision of life in Cuba, said they would not emigrate because they did not want to leave their homeland and family, they were too old, or they supported Castro.

The majority of those who said they would emigrate said their future here was “beclouded by uncertainties” and they wanted to put an end to their financial troubles. A small minority said they would like to find a political alternative because they were “against socialism.”

The emigré’s duty to help the family back in Cuba is seen as an indisputable duty.

“The important thing is to save the family, no matter how,” said a 49-year-old engineer, who while attempting to obtain a visa to move to the United States holds down a public job and fixes computers on his own time.

In 1993, his wife abandoned her professional career to take a job as a domestic worker, earning 60 dollars a month, while he made do with his salary of 400 pesos a month (on par with the dollar at the official rate and 21 to the dollar at government exchange bureaux.)

In Cuba, the average monthly salary is 220 pesos. While one dollar now fetches 21 pesos, in the early 1990s it sold for 140- 150 pesos.

“We are staking our bets on winning a legal visa, but if that doesn’t come through we’ll have to think of other solutions,” said the engineer, who asked not to be named.

The engineer and his wife, who have a 12-year-old daughter, have already tried just about everything. They even got divorced in order to marry foreigners in an attempt to leave Cuba, but things did not work out. They remarried to participate in the lottery for US visas, but their names have not been drawn.

According to US sources, 600,000 people ranging in age from 18 to 55 applied for the last lottery – or “bombo” as it is known locally – held in 1998 to issue 20,000 visas.

“If we’re not lucky, we’ll have to pay someone to take me out of the country, in whatever form,” said the engineer.

Once he makes it to the United States, he will help his family with cash remittances and care packages of clothing, medicine and food until able to bring his wife and daughter over with him.

From March to May 1993, an average of 500 packages a day were sent to Cuba from the United States, according to a study carried out by Consuelo Martín for the University of Havana’s Centre of Alternative Policy Studies.

After possession of dollars was legalised in Cuba in August 1993, money orders began to replace packages. Experts estimate that Cubans abroad send more than 800 million dollars a year to their families back home.