Rotten Fruit

At a cooperative in eastern Cuba, the agricultural production of mangoes outpaced the capacity to package and to transport them, resulting in the rotting of the juicy fruit. So even when labor and technique reap abundance, the lack of containers and fuel hamper the ability to bring produce to market.

Remodeling Permits

Most people do not get the legal permmission to remodel or make additions to their homes, even though state licenses allow you access to subsidized materials. The more common illicit route is pursued with private under-the-table contracters and labor, and more costly stolen or mined materials from the black market.

This AP article does not explain why Cubans do not go the legal route. The assumption is that it takes too long and often results in rejected requests. Neither does the article mention why the state would be stingy on licenses when perpetually facing an extreme housing shortage.

We Work for you

TRABAJAMOS Para Usted

This image is different from the printed billboard produced by the Cuban Communist Party. It is a crudely painted mural at a state-run vendor. The painted wall pronounces that the service outlet “works for us”. This double entendre means that the firm serves us (its customers) and works for us (as owners of the state firm). In a country where employees often do not have much motivation to attend to clients, this message could be attempting to counterbalance popular sentiment about the low quality of the service industry. It may also be reminding people that they themselves as citizens are owners and beneficiaries of the means of production.

The unintended message that is revealed only in this particular photograph is an ironic statement on the social indiscipline of the workforce. In the middle of the day, a crew of idle men sit under the shade of a sign that proclaims “we work for you”. Clearly, state messages can change when perceived in the social context of the signs’ “natural” environment.

Retail Shake-Up

The end of the summer saw stores that deal in the more pricey convertible peso undergoing big changes. Many had been relieved of all their merchandise, as they were being put under new management. The miliary and some of its joint-stock subsidaries are taking over some chains that had been hemmoraging losses due to merchandise diverted into the black market (i.e. stolen goods).

This occured at the same time that the National Assembley passed legislation creating a high constitutional office of Comptroller that is supposed to perform widespread audits and combat corruption.

Coincidental with these changes came a modest reduction in price for some common items at the covertible peso outlets.

State Opens Website for House Trading

Cuba currently suffers a shortage of over a half million homes. Popular remedies include subdivisions like makeshift walls and artificial ceilings/floors to accomodate ensuing generations and newly integrated in-laws. Or, alternately, the architectural dividers serve as the physical representation of marital separation.

Selling houses is prohibited in Cuba, but the state allows people to swap houses. One could even trade one house for two apartments, for example. Houses in Havana typically fetch two houses in the less desirable provinces.

Previously, there were informal real estate agents that worked to connect two or more parties interested in moving. More recently internet bulletins have sprouted up that serve as marketplaces. State television even had begun sporadically announcing offers to "permutar" houses on the evening news.

Now the state has entered the game with an official website dedicated to house swapping.

To Cuba NM Guv shows luv

The governor of the North American state of New Mexico, William Richardson, has spent the last week in Havana, selling New Mexican agricultural produce and possibly doing advance work for a changeTM in US foreign policy toward Cuba.

Here Richardson awkwardly connects with the Official Historian of the City of La Habana, Eusebio Leal. The small crowd of hangers on stand approvingly.

Reflective Pay Demanded

Authorities have not yet restructured pay grades as promised in past years. Organized workers are complaining and proposing in the press.

Doggy Bag

If you request carry out of leftovers from a Cuban restuarant, the styrofoam Tetra Pak invariably appears on the bill as a $0.50 charge.

Superior Sundries

The state firm that supplies subsidized neighborhood outlets of food and limited household products has indicated that it has added fluoride to the toothpaste and made the soap more fragrant and colorful. The packaging of both have been remixed as well.

Oil or Food

Although Cuba has geologically projected offshore oil deposits, it is hesitant to use cash supplies to invest in exploration, when basic food and salary costs need paying now.

The US Blockade

Forty-seven years ago, President Kennedy initially erected the economic embargo that prevents commerce and travel to Cuba—and it has only stiffened with the ensuing US administrations. Depriving the island of its closest and most optimal trading partner has forced the Cuban government and its firms to incur the extra costs of buying and selling goods and services farther afield. Cuba can neither import needed medicine and scientific supplies, exploit the natural market for its tourism industry, nor often send its scientists, artists, and athletes to participate in events held in the US. In addition to the human suffering, the blockade has cost Cuba more than $86 billion over the course of its implementation.

Although limited agricultural cash sales to the island are now permissible, the US continues to lose out on over $3 billion per year due to the blockade. Its imposition divides families and impinges on US citizens’ constitutional freedoms to travel.

Social Indiscipline

Because the Cuban state heavily subsidizes the costs of basic foods, education, healthcare, transportation, and other facets of social life, regardless of whether one is incorporated into the workforce, not everyone is motivated to hold down formal employment. Especially for those in urban centers connected to the external economy, engaging in unsanctioned commerce or living off of remittances can prove more profitable than daily labor. The lack of material incentive has left thousands of unfilled vacancies in strategic sectors such as construction and agriculture. Havana has to import police, teachers and construction workers from the provinces because not enough capitalinos will take such occupations. Furthermore, the below replacement birthrates since the depression of the 1990s have not been able to restock the general labor force. The party and the state attempt to morally incentivize insertion into the workforce by portraying absentee laborers as parasites.

Energy Revolution

As an economically embargoed nation with few proven natural energy resources and historically dependent on foreign oil subsidized by geopolitical allies, Cuba has recognized the need to consume energy efficiently. It is also very attuned to the threats of climate change particular to its geography—soil desiccation and receding coastlines. The ensuing "Energy Revolution" has involved replacing all the light bulbs on the island with compact fluorescents, developing and distributing efficient kitchen appliances and televisions, and swapping out old wasteful American refrigerators and Soviet air conditioners for new efficient Chinese models. The replacement campaigns operate at the neighborhood level in the door-to-door manner of the census; and families pay for their new appliances on installment plans. The state has also purchased fleets of Chinese buses and made upgrades to power plants and the electric grid. There are no longer systematic blackouts—yet unintended blackouts still occur sporadically. Cuba is near to rendering itself efficient enough to be an energy exporter, if the seabed tracts currently being explored yield the levels of petroleum estimated.

Buff Dude + State Loans + Abandoned Land --> Feed Capitol's Development

"Estoy pegado a la tierra desde niño y aquí seguiré, con mi modesto aporte, para que La Habana pueda responder a los programas de desarrollo que tiene en marcha".

To experienced and capable farmers, the Cuban state is providing the use of forsaken land as well as credits for tools, fertilizer, and seed. The goal is to make efficient use of those willing and talented enough to raise a multitude of crops; to attain economies of scale instead of limiting productive agriculturalists to their original small plot, Soviet tractors, and grunting oxen.

The epigraphic farmer's quote reveals that the rural folks shall grow the crops that feed Havana, as it develops its industrial, medical, scientific, and human capital.

The metropolitan dwellers will have an outstanding debt to their rural compatriots for the foreseeable future.

Land Reform Redux

The hurricanes have delayed but not terminated the redistribution of idle or inefficiently used state lands to small farmers and private cooperatives that will have usufruct rights to cultivate for decade-long stints.

Eighty thousand applicants have requested land thus far in a program that could be the largest redistribution of land since the 1960s.

Prior to this reform Cuba had a quarter million family farms and over a thousand private cooperatives.

Sectoral Hypoglycemia

The island formerly ruled by sugar barons continues to diverge from its roots as an azucracia. Much land controlled by the Ministry of Sugar is being transferred to the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture. At the risk of sacrificing a source of foreign currency, this move likely intends to bolster Cuba's drive toward food security.

Grassroots call for single currency

An apolitical criollo group has gone to the trouble of collecting and presenting 20,000 signatures to the National Assembley in favor of adopting one unified currency--something everybody & their mothers & all the most elite communist officials had already said would be a nice occurrence.

Trouble is its not that easy.

The peso is worth little and not traded outside the island. It is the backbone of the socialist aspects of the Cuban economy. The convertible is backed by foreign currency reserves and worth 24 times more than the peso. It is the money of the tourism, remittance, and certain industrial sectors.

The dual currency system was established during the special period to both partially engage with the global market and to retain the socialist morals and incentives achieved up to that point. It has always been known to be irritating--but deemed the least worse option available.

This interview in English with a Spanish economist explains very well the current duality, how it came to be, and the prospects of going to a single currency.

Here are simple critiques of the wild calls for economic reform that do not take basic economic consequences into account.

From the Department of Scorpion Farming

Down on the scorpion farm, Cubans are boosting the yield of the blue variety that fights cancer.

Somehow that is a true statement.

Deflated Exultation

Were it not for the flurry of forceful hurricanes that wiped out $10 billion (around a quarter of GDP) in housing, infrastructure, agriculture and other economic activity, Cuba might have been sitting rather pretty (at no less than 6% growth in GDP) during this moment in world history that sees capitalism catch a critical case of cyclical comeuppance.

Alas--due to natural forces wholly unrelated to socialist political economy--Cuba is not in a position to feel schadenfreude; it cannot freely shout that it told you so, let alone offer up its model as an alternative to the creatively destructive capitalists.

So the Cuban political leadership wryly watches the market states run around with their heads cut off (capital punishment?)--yet cannot speak, on the world stage, from a position of objective solvency.

Undaunted defenders of capitalism should be thankful that violent weather muted what otherwise might have stood as a formidable alternative for a world searching for a path forward.

Socialized Rewards

The mode of incentives in revolutionary Cuba has tended to center around benefiting groups rather than individuals; from rewarding productive workplaces with communal bonuses (shop-wide vacation and recreation subsidies) to rewarding entire provinces that perform well (medically or economically speaking) with special events (such as the 26th of July festivities).

In keeping with this socialist tradition, Cuban airport authorities celebrated the arrival of the year's two millionth tourist--not by singling out one lucky winner--but by flagging the entire plane and letting all passengers partake in the prizes.

The revolutionary ethic has been extended to the visiting capitalists.