CUBA SAYS GOODBYE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

By Leonardo Padura and - - Reprint | | Print |

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HAVANA, Apr 3 2008 (IPS) - Recent confirmation that Cuban citizens living in Cuba can finally have their own cell phones and buy computers, microwave ovens, and DVD players with the local currency in local stores has provoked amazement among the less informed and an ironic chuckle among those familiar with the complex multiple realities of this Caribbean island, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that the possibility that the inhabitants of this magical, mythic, and always surprising island will now be allowed access to these goods leads automatically, however, to a formidable obstacle : all of these devices must be paid for in \’\’hard currency\’\’. A one or two-minute cell phone call would cost an entire day\’s wages for a person who works for the all-controlling state, which pays an average daily salary of 400 pesos, or 16 convertible pesos, equivalent to 16 dollars. But the people say that doesn\’t matter: in the end they will have cell phones. The fact that for the first time inhabitants of the island can legally have a telephone that was not \’\’assigned\’\’ them by the state, watch on their DVD player something not broadcast by the government, or use a computer to produce or gather information beyond the reach of the state, is far more than a jump forward in time. It is a enormous and important increase in scope of free will in a country suffocated by systems of prohibitions and control.

The fact that Cubans are the last people on the planet to have free access to cell phones, which revolutionised communications at the end of the last century, and that the new government has given tacit permission to buy DVD players and computers (although there was no announcement made in any official publication, to my knowledge) is a reality that openly clashes with the traditional view that we Cuban’s have of our country as at the cutting edge.

Cuba was the first country in Latin America to have railways (as early as the dawn of the 19th century, even before Spain, the then colonial power). It was the location of the first ever telephonic transmission (the inventor was the Italian Meucci and not Alexander Graham Bell). And it was the second country in the western hemisphere to transmit and receive television signals, well ahead of almost all European countries. It was also the first in Latin America to eradicate illiteracy with a massive campaign that lasted until 1961, and the only one to send a man into space. Moreover, as the official slogans put it, Cuba is the ”most educated country in the world”, and the most fervent practitioner of international solidarity.

But none of these remarkable achievements was enough to lead Cuba out of the twentieth century at the same time as the rest of the world.

The possibility that the inhabitants of this magical, mythic, and always surprising island will now be allowed access to these goods leads automatically, however, to an economic problem that presents a formidable obstacle: all of these devices must be paid for in ”hard currency”: either convertible Cuban pesos, or a far higher numbers of ”national” pesos. Because of this, a simple one or two-minute cell phone call would cost an entire day’s wages for a person who works for the all-controlling state, which pays an average daily salary of 400 pesos, or 16 convertible pesos, equivalent to 16 dollars.

But the people say that doesn’t matter: in the end they will have cell phones. Although this isn’t certain either. A sizable percentage of those Cubans who could afford the luxury of these newly-legal devices already had them well before it was allowed by the new government of Raul Castro, who has finally unveiled the first changes that he has planned – changes made official simply by signing a decree that had already been written by the pressures of reality and life.

For a number of years -for my entire life- I have heard it said that Cubans are ostentatious exhibitionists who would rather dress well than eat – among their other qualities. My experience has shown that this is usually true and in recent years I have seen the flourishing of what we call here ”speculation”, or the art of showing off that you have, and enjoy, something that others cannot. Only the possession of an automobile -the sale of which was strictly regulated for 50 years- exercised a more powerful form of ”speculation” than wielding a cell phone. Until now, only foreigners and employees of companies with ties to foreign capital could have them, but ”speculators” did everything possible to induce one of these fortunate individuals to hand over, or even sell them, a contract for the device. The cell phone is an accessory that radiates economic and social success, though a large number of those who carry them use them only to check who is calling and speak on them only for the first five seconds (which are free) to say, ”I’m going to call you now” and then find a public phone that takes Cuban pesos. What was important was not using the cell phone but simply having it, or, more important, showing it off.

Perhaps for readers who thought they were reading an old paper, these typically Cuban news stories are merely Caribbean folklore. However, the fact that for the first time inhabitants of the island can legally have a telephone that was not ”assigned” them by the state, watch on their DVD player something not broadcast by the government, or use a computer to produce or gather information beyond the reach of the state, is far more than a jump forward in time. It is a enormous and important increase in scope of free will in a country suffocated by systems of prohibitions and control. Therefore, a warm welcome to the cell phone and all that it may bring. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)