CUBA-ECONOMY: After Five Years, it’s Carnival Time!

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 18 1996 (IPS) - The rhumba beat is resounding on the streets of Havana again this month as Cubans celebrate their first official carnival in five years of economic depression.

The 1996 festivities, however, have failed to rekindle the glory days when carnivals were one big party.

“They aren’t a shadow of what they were,” groused one resident, still the carnival has provided a long-missed recreation activity.

Like many other Cubans who have had nothing to do on a Saturday night except watch television, Daniel Osorio paid 30 pesos for a box to watch the carnival festivities with his family. he was only one of more than 7,000 people buying tickets every night to watch the traditional parades from grandstands and boxes together with large groups of tourists who forked over dollars for the privilege.

Demonstrating the dual monetary policy that has characterized the Caribbean country since 1993, food and drinks are on sale for dollars or pesos at different stands and at different prices.

While the dollar and the peso are officially set at parity, exchange bureaus buy dollars for 23 pesos and sell them for 28.

“I bought my seat in a box for three dollars and have enough money to eat and drink,” said Osorio, declaring that he would “never go partying” if he had to rely only on his salary of 340 pesos.

The government decision to celebrate carnival this year was made in December as a sign of official optimism at the gradual recovery of the Cuban economy.

After a free fall that reduced gross domestic product by 34.3 per cent between 1989 and 1993, the 2.5 per cent growth rate registered last year appeared to confirm the efficacy of the government’s economy reform package.

Authorities and financial observers, while agreeing this was a hopeful sign, cautioned that growth was still inadequate because it was calculated from a very low base.

Even so, the municipal government decided to organize a modest carnival in just two months compared to the six months it took in the past to prepare floats and parade costumes.

Havana’s traditional carnival is a medley of old African festivals stemming from middle of the 16th century, and the masked balls popular in the 19th century.

With the declared intention of reviving carnival traditions the authorities advanced the date from July to February and moved the parades from the Malecon, the broad Havana avenue that runs next to the sea, to the Prado Boulevard where it was held from the beginning of the century until the 1970’s.

Located within Old Havana, which the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) has declared a world heritage site, the Prado is frequented by tourists, which helps the authorities’ fundraising goals.

Indeed, some local observers believe that the real purpose of shifting the carnival to February is to make it a tourist attraction during the island’s “high” season.

Ministry of Tourism sources say that the number of tourists visiting Havana has risen 55 per cent this year compared to the same period in 1995, yielding a daily average of 6,300 people.

Carnival time has allowed the government to try to soak up the excess money in circulation that threatens the island’s financial equilibrium. Official sources say that liquidity was reduced from 11.8 billion pesos to nine billion between May 1994 and the end of 1995 as a result of a package of measures intended to strengthen public finances.

This year brought Cubans new taxes on foreign currency receipts and boats and higher taxes for self-employed workers.

Carnival festivities have been “merry, peaceful and orderly,” said the latest issue of Juventud Rebelde, the organ of the Union of Communist Youth, which based its report on information supplied by the National Revolutionary Police.

Havana residents said they enjoyed the spectacle but missed the the big floats that appeared in former years and the parades were really only visible to those who bought viewing places, like Osorio.

But most spectators said they understood that staging a “full blown” carnival with floats filled with rhumba dancers would be prohibitively expensive this year.