We have just heard that Fidel Castro, Cuba's courageous leader for 50 years, has stepped down due to age and ill health. He has been one the longest lasting political leaders in the world, despite several American attempts to have him killed. Few Indians know much about this island, tucked away in the Caribbean Sea, or have a chance to visit it. I had the rare chance to go there, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the withdrawal of all aid from Russia.
Cuba, a narrow 1000 km long island of 10 million people, a few hours south of Miami and just north of Jamaica, and between Mexico to the west and Haiti to the east, is beautifully green, with tall royal palms waving in the constant north-east winds. The beautiful scenery, the easy-paced life, the beautiful open colonial architecture of old Havana, reminded me of the India of my childhood. But many older Cubans remembered Havana as a sleazy fast-paced city of gamblers and prostitutes in the 1950s, with disease-ridden, poverty-stricken people oppressed by a military regime, the beautiful forests cut down by contractors, and the land despoiled by landlords. The Spaniards and later the Americans had made Cuba an island exporting sugar from foreign-owned sugarcane farms, and dependent on food imports to feed its people, 70% of whom lived in urban areas.
Socialism or Death said the stenciled slogans on the old walls of Havana. In the face of the economic American blockade, reinforced by an amendment in the US Congress, which threatened to punish Cuba's trading partners, Fidel Castro had said Cubans have no option 'but to struggle.' The port of Havana, which for five hundred years was the centre of trade in the Caribbean, was empty of ships, just as the shop shelves were bare of most goods. Cuba was critically short of oil, and long queues waited for strictly-rationed food - four eggs per person per week, two kilos of rice per person per month. Many had eaten no meat for more than a month. The American government of Bush senior was confident it would break Cuba in a very short time, and once again make it a playground for rich Americans.
These resilient people innovated quickly. A million cycles were bought from China and were sold cheaply at 120 pesos each. People made handcrafted shoes. Houses were built with sun-dried mud bricks. In Alamar township, on the outskirts of Havana, people were allotted apartments provided they engaged in construction work themselves. Many planted fruit trees, and this grew into a large environmental programme involving 300,000 teachers.
Cuba's ability to survive despite all odds is based not on any military strength but on three great social achievements engineered by Fidel Castro, which no other Third World country has accomplished, and few Western countries can match. He has created excellent educational and public health systems, and above all a sustainable agricultural economy.
In 1991, Castro was forced to declare an austerity programme, a "Special Period in Peacetime," because there was a 50% reduction in imports of oil, wheat and other foods, and even in fertilizers. People's daily caloric and protein intake dropped to 30 % of normal levels. Soon after victory of the Revolution in 1959, Castro had nationalized all the large farms, with the support of agricultural labour and small farmers, as no other communist country had been able to do. With the money earned through sugar export, Castro built the country's hospitals and schools making them freely accessible to all. But in 1993, in the face of the American economic blockade, Castro re-organized the state farms into local cooperatives, with incentives for increased production. Since chemicals could no longer be imported, Cuban agriculture turned to organic farming methods, employing cattle instead of tractors, and using green manuring, biopesticides, vermicomposting, and intercropping. Urban agriculture was started on all lands available, around government offices, schools, apartment buildings. The capital, Havana, was soon able to meet 90% of the vegetable and fruit needs of its huge population, and by 1997, Cuba had achieved food security, with highest production levels ever for 70% of major food items. Such resilient agricultural recovery may be termed one of Castro's greatest achievements.
His second noteworthy achievement was offering adequate comprehensive medical care to all Cubans, with 70,000 doctors, one per 159 persons, and a total of half a million health workers for ten million people - a record in itself, when we consider that half the country's 6000 doctors left for the United States after the 1959 revolution. Not content with this, Cuba today supplies highly skilled doctors to the rest of Latin America. Around 30,000 foreign medical students study for free in Cuba. Opening the Latin American Medical School, Castro vowed that it would train 100,000 doctors to serve poor communities everywhere. Cuban doctors have answered humanitarian calls by attending to disaster victims in several countries. They treated over 400,000 patients hit by Hurricane 'Stan' in Guatemala, and even saved several thousand Pakistanis after the recent earthquake there. Castro had over 1000 doctors on standby to attend to the hurricane victims in Louisiana, USA, in a no-strings attached kindly offer, but President Bush churlishly turned it down, leading to great suffering among unattended people. Cuban doctors have also performed over 600,000 eye operations among the poor in Panama.
Education for all has been Castro's third lasting achievement. The innovative Cuban literacy programme 'I Can Do It!' has so far enabled over two million people in Latin America and Africa to read and write.
No less an achievement has been the empowerment of Cuban women. They are all literate, with a life-expectancy of over 76. Maternal and infant mortality rates are among the lowest in the world. One in three 'decision-makers' is a woman, in most government departments, and most professions. 'The women thought of the revolution as their own,' I was once informed by Vilma Castro, president of the Federation of Cuban Women, and wife of Raul Castro, who has now taken over from his brother as President of the country.
Cuba has also turned to good account the American economic blockade by turning to renewable energy. Small rural villages are now being electrified by solar panels, micro-hydro schemes or wind energy. So, unlike what the American government expected, there is no sense of desperation to be seen in these proud people.
The key to Cuba's economic future, of course, lies in her ability to diversify away from sugar produced by over 150 factories. They have developed over 90 processes, for converting bagasse into newsprint, wrapping paper for hamburgers, sanitary towels, and even low-cost anti-diarrhea medicine and many other necessities. A process extracts from the effluent produced after refining 1000 tonnes of sugarcane around 1000 cubic meters of biogas, and 20 tonnes of fertilizer. Residual water is let out for irrigation.
The poverty of Cuba is not a poverty of spirit. There is dignity and self-respect, even with the poorest. There is no colour question in Cuba, with all the races of the world happily mixing into a culturally rich society. Cuba's galleries and concert halls are among the best in the world. This country is poor in terms of wealth, but not in terms of health, education, skill, self-confidence, culture, or all that is really valuable in life.
While there are no statues or portraits of Fidel Castro in public places, Hemingway seems to have left his traces everywhere, and his books are widely loved by cultured Cubans. A bronze bust of his, paid for by local fishermen, and made from the propeller of the boat he fished in, gazes over the waters from Cojimar village, where he wrote 'The Old Man and the Sea.' In the heart of Havana there is even an Abraham Lincoln School, and nearby, in front of the Museum of the Revolution, stands the Granma, the little boat in which Fidel Castro and 82 friends crossed over to Cuba in the mid-fifties to start the revolution. From the mountains of Sierra Madre in the east, they swept across Cuba, forcing General Batista, the last American puppet dictator, to flee the country on New Year's day, 1959. Near that boat I found a slogan Si Por Cuba? I asked what it meant. I was told, 'Say Yes for Cuba!'
