By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 1 2000 (IPS)

The crisis that has devastated the economy of Cuba over the past 10 years has radically changed the lives of its citizens, and especially the lives of those over 60, the most vulnerable, fastest-growing sector of the population.

Although old age has brought unexpected success to a handful of veteran musicians who recently recorded the Buena Vista Social Club album, the so-called “golden years” are not so kind to most of Cuba’s senior citizens.

Ibrahim Ferrer, one of those involved in the project, who had abandoned music to work as a shoe-shiner, says the newfound success brought back his pleasure in life: “Before, I didn’t care if I died; now I don’t want to die.”

Ferrer, 73, won a Latin Grammy last month. And another of the Buena Vista Social Club musicians, Francisco Repilado (Compay Segundo), visited the Vatican to sing to Pope John Paul II.

The experience, the driving force behind which was U.S. recording artist Ry Cooder, was carried to the big screen by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose documentary will be shown at the 10th Annual Celebration of the International Day of Older Persons on Oct 5 at United Nations headquarters in New York.

But the success that has transformed the lives of the musicians who are now known as the “superabuelos” or “super- grandfathers” is seen here as an isolated phenomenon.

“Incredible ‘chiripazo’ (luck),” says Alba Aguirre, a 72-year- old retiree who scrapes by on a pension of 100 pesos a month. “Life is something else, and getting old is the last card in the deck for anyone.”

In Cuba, the dollar sells for 21 pesos at government exchange bureaux. In the past 10 years, the state has channeled 16.2 billion pesos towards social security and social assistance, benefits received by 1.5 million people — 261,000 more than 10 years ago.

People over 60, who currently comprise 13.9 percent of Cuba’s 11.1 million inhabitants, will total two million by 2011, or 16.5 percent of the total population, according to National Statistics Office projections.

Juan Carlos Alfonso, director of that office’s Centre of Studies on Population and Development, says the tendency will “intensify, and by 2025 a projected one of every four Cubans will be over 60.”

If birth and death rates remain low and life expectancy high, Cuba will have an ageing — and shrinking — population in 25 years, with a mean age of 42.4 years, says Alfonso.

The National Institute of Workers Health, meanwhile, warns that spending on social security will rise at an alarming rate, when those born during the population boom that followed the 1959 triumph of the Cuban revolution reach retirement age.

Although the government of Fidel Castro guarantees staple foods at subsidised prices, and utility rates are low, the average monthly pension of 100 pesos falls short for those who have no other source of income.

Aguirre never had children, and family members who emigrated send her just a few dollars once or twice a year. “I clean or wash clothes for neighbours…and receive medicines from the Catholic Church,” she says.

“In the 1980s, my 100 pesos went far. I was anything but rich, but I lived with dignity. Now I can’t afford anything,” says Aguirre, who complains that money — or lack of it — is her biggest problem.

“The doctor is free, the neighbours help out when they know I have nothing to eat, but it is not easy to feel that you can’t support yourself, especially when you still feel useful,” she adds.

Aguirre obtains some food items, like eggs, sugar, rice and grains, at extremely low prices. But she has to buy others, such as cooking oil and milk, at the government network of stores that sell only in dollars.

Vegetables and meat are only available in the free farmers’ markets, where prices are high, even for those who earn salaries of 400 pesos a month or more.

Nevertheless, Aguirre, who lives in Old Havana, says she does not even want “to hear about” the small government-supported family-run restaurants or soup kitchens opened in 1997 to provide daily meals to low-income residents.

For Aguirre, turning to the soup kitchens would be “like losing my dignity.”

The more than 1,500 family restaurants are part of a government policy based on the idea that “no one will be simply left to their own devices,” as Beatriz Cortijo, director of Gastronomy at the Ministry of Interior Commerce, told IPS.

In 1999, the ministry earmarked two million dollars to purchases of ingredients for the soup kitchens, whose clients include elderly persons with small pensions and no family support, the disabled, pregnant women, and low-income single mothers.

“The truth is that the ‘Special Period’ (the official name for the crisis) saved me. Before that, the only thing I was good for was to take my grandchildren to school. Now I went back into plumbing, and I earn my few cents,” says José Sánchez, 74.

Sánchez is one of many senior citizens who decided that they could still help support their families, after the government expanded, in 1993, the number of trades in which self-employment is allowed.

Figures from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security indicate that of the 408,881 people with licenses to work on their own, 28,169 were retirees who had turned to self-employment to boost their incomes.

Cuba’s formal support networks for the elderly include free medical services, social security, and social assistance in the form of economic aid and home helpers, soup kitchens, housing repairs, and retirement homes.

But a study by the Centre of Psychological and Sociological Research (CIPS) of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, based partly on interviews with 60 elderly Havana residents, indicated that the network of services was falling short.

Geriatric services are still limited, with one geriatrician for every 9,600 elderly citizens. And while 27.8 percent of those receiving social assistance in 1995 were elderly, only 2.2 percent of people over 60 received such aid.

According to the data compiled by the CIPS, nine percent of the adult population in Cuba lives alone. But that year, only 117 of every 1,000 senior citizens living on their own had access to soup kitchens, 31 of every 1,000 to laundry services, and nine of every 1,000 to home repairs.

For most of those interviewed, “the aid provided by society goes unnoticed, and even though such assistance is essential, it is poor, and it is not focused on socialisation of the older person,” said psychologist Alberta Durán in a summary of the study published in March last year.

Raúl Hernández, an expert at the University of Havana’s Centre for Demographic Studies, says Cuba is experiencing “an ageing boom,” which, he cautions, will bring about significant changes in social and economic policy over the next few decades.

Excerpt: