(Emerson Lynn, jr., associate editor of the Register was one of a small group of newspaper editors who spent the week of Jan. 16-23 in Cuba as members of a study mission arranged by the Inland Press Association. This is the second of a series of articles reporting on the trip.)
The average Cuban earns a salary of $20 U.S. a month. How on earth can you live on that, we asked our guide. “By magic,” she replied. The real answer is less romantic. Economists there estimate it takes $80 a month to keep body and soul together. Cubans scrape together the $60 difference by selling things they steal from their workplace, working two jobs, getting employment in a business that caters to tourists where they can earn tips and finding any other way they can to game the system.
Cuba has two currencies — regular pesos and convertible pesos. The regular pesos are the currency in which the government and any other employers pay wages. They are worth about 24 to the dollar. Convertible pesos are worth about $1.
When Americans exchange dollars for pesos, however, the government takes a hefty 20 percent slice, exchanging 80 CUCs for $100 U.S. It is, they explain without apology, a way to gather some much-needed hard currency. Neither Cuban currency has value outside Cuba.
Cubans manage to survive because the government subsidizes them heavily. Every Cuban gets a monthly allotment of basic foods that covers perhaps a third of their needs. They must buy those allotments at special coupon stores, but they cost mere pennies. Rents and utilities are in line with the official salaries. All Cubans, in other words, have a home. None need go hungry. But the home is minimal. The diet heavy on beans and rice.
That said, the subterranean economy is massive. Doctors who earn $20 a month in salary, bring in much more making “house calls” on the side. Our guide earned $385 in tips for a week’s work — and makes much more when lucky enough to get a larger group. The driver of the China-made bus we traveled in all week was also tipped $154, the equivalent of about eight months of his government salary. Because world food prices are high and Cuba imports about 80 percent of its food, government employees get an additional food allowance which in some cases is as much as their regular salary.
Farmers sell their vegetables and fruit to friends and neighbors or trade the produce for other goods. There are, in other words, two economies operating parallel in Cuba.
The government is fully aware of this and has recognized the need to expand the individual enterprise economy and shrink the government sector. President Raul Castro announced late last year that 500,000 government employees would be fired and sent out to earn their livings as farmers, shoe repairmen, painters, carpenters, etc. The process has begun. We were not given any report on its progress. It will be months before it will be evaluated publically.
We did see evidence, however, that the revitalization of Cuban agriculture is under way. Fields which had not been cultivated for years and and been taken over by brush were being cleared. The brush was being dug out by the roots which heavy machinery. Piles of roots and branches several feet high stood in rows on the land, ready to be burned or carted away. In a season or two, those acres will be put to use by one or more of the former government workers who will be allowed to lease the land from the government on favorable terms.
Agriculture seems to offer the best alternative employment for Cubans now working for the government for starvation wages. Cuba has thousands of acres of fertile land which was abandoned after the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped buying Cuban sugar at above-market prices. It also grows citrus fruit, papaya, pineapples and other tropical fruits which it exports to Canada, western Europe, China and elsewhere. Increased farm production will reduce the need to import, increase exports and provide meaningful employement.
Progress will be slow because the capital modern farming requires is not available. The tractors we saw were Russian models from the 1950s with steel wheels and little power. The government encourages farmers to use oxen which means a farm family will be severely limited to the amount of land it can cultivate.
The United States could help by lifting the embargo on sales of Cuban farm products to the U.S. At present, Cuba buys substantial amounts of wheat, soybeans, chickens and other foodstuffs from us, but is not allowed to sell its products here. It would benefit the U.S. and Cuba if two-way trade were permitted.
Tomorrow: Our unembassy.
Cubans subsist ‘by magic’
