Cuba economic reforms hurting the poor, experts warn

Cuba economic reforms hurting the poor, experts warn



HAVANA -- The much heralded opening of a still-limited private sector in

Cuba by President Raul Castro is being widely welcomed by Cubans who

expect the pragmatic "younger" brother of their long-time former leader

Fidel Castro to lead them out of an economic hole with its consumer

goods shortages, crumbling housing and salaries with near zero

purchasing power.



And U.S. visitors to Cuba are often astonished by what seems to be an

explosion of private enterprise and the emergence of not just a middle

class but an affluent people. However, not everyone in Cuban society is

benefiting equally as the government loosens controls.



Arturo Lopez-Levy, lecturer at the University of Denver and a Cuban

American, positively views the steps being taken.



"I would say that if there is a priority that Cuban policies and

politics should have it is economic development today, economic

development tomorrow, economic development the day after tomorrow," he

told CBS News during a recent visit to the island.



In the search for economic growth, President Raul Castro is budget

cutting, reducing the number of public employees, allowing enterprising

Cubans to become private entrepreneurs. Small mom and pop operations

have sprouted like mushrooms, adding a definite commercial feel to many

of the previously purely residential neighborhoods.

There is even a wholesale produce market operating on the outskirts of

Havana as a supplier to private restaurant owners and push cart vendors.

But there's a flip side to the opening that worries Lopez-Levy and other

observers.



"I'm very, very worried about one specific issue – the possibility that

class and race overlap in the context of a mixed economy because

whatever you might think about the previous system, it works a lot on

the basis of consensus and there was always a concern for those left

with the most difficult situation or the most disadvantages," he said.



In the old system, Lopez-Levy noted there was a safety net below which

no one fell. The safety net itself might have been lowered at certain

points such as during the economic crisis of the 1990s but it existed.

Now he sees investments are being concentrated in certain areas or

neighborhoods that traditionally have been middle or upper class and

predominantly white. These are neighborhoods where more wealth is

concentrated, where attractive homes inherited from pre-revolutionary

affluent families are easier to convert into bed & breakfasts or upscale

restaurants and where residents are more likely to receive help from

relatives with money living abroad since white exiles tend to be more

well-to-do than black ones. This, he said, resurrects pre-1959 class and

race inequalities.



Because there is a housing shortage in Cuba – 12 percent of the housing

in Havana has been officially declared structurally unsound – people

tend to live in the same place their parents and grandparents did before

them. Upward mobility in education and careers has almost never meant

that people were able to improve their living conditions.



"I have seen some neighborhoods where the, particularly rural and black

areas, where mainly black Cubans live and I think that it would be wise,

nationalistic, patriotic to think about the effect the reforms could

have on these people," he said, pointing out that these people have been

among the staunchest supporters of the revolution.



University of Havana Professor and historian Esteban Morales agrees and

he points out that "blacks came to Cuba as slaves while whites came as

colonizers" and that heritage has left a permanent mark on society

despite the revolutionary government's creation of free education and

health care for all along with other efforts to bring equality to

society. Now, the opening of the economy is not affecting all of Cuba's

11 million people equally, instead, he notes it is hitting "the poorest

sectors of the population."



In order to get the economy moving and raise productivity, the

government must take mercantile measures that are "difficult," Morales

said. Tourism and the creation of corporations have not benefited black

Cubans as much as whites, although statistics are hard to come by since

the census does not focus on race in its questionnaire.



Morales blames historic realities for this situation, noting that before

1959 "there was a very unequal system of wealth distribution." Ever

since Cuba was a colony, he notes, there also existed a "mass of poor

whites." However, Morales insists that "riches never belonged to the

black or mixed-race population." That means, he says, that "historically

there has been a poor sector of society and within that, blacks have

been the most disadvantaged."



So while he believes the current process of reforms is meant "to improve

life for everyone, to benefit all of Cuban society," it will take time

to bear fruit and in the interim will have a strongly negative impact on

those who have always faced the most difficulties to survive within

Cuban society.



There have to be efforts to get more non-white students and more males

into the university, Morales says, noting that with economic hard times,

blacks and males tend to drop out of school to get jobs. That is

something he saw happening at the end of the 1980s when the European

socialist camp collapsed and Cuba's economy went into a tail spin.



Something similar is happening now with public sector workers barely

getting by on their wages and the cost of living rising as government

subsidies for food and other basic products disappear as part of the

reforms to make the economy more efficient and to stop it from running

in the red. As a result the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots"

is growing wider and becoming more visible and it looks like things

could get worse before they get better.



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