Capitalism, God, and a Good Cigar

Cuba Enters the Twenty-first Century

Bibliographic Data

ID19914850
AuthorsAlicia Roca, Mimi Chakarova, Annelise Wunderlich, Julian Foley
EditorsLydia Chavez
Year2005
Pages264
Publication date2005-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueCapitalism, God, and a Good Cigar (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/9780822386483
WikidataQ57234466
OpenAlexW590608622
Open LibraryOL3299316M
ISBN9780822386483
LanguageEN
Citations received6

Is it possible that the secret of Fidel Castro's endurance comes down to standard-issue eyeglasses?Can such a fragile accessory sustain or threaten Latin American governments?I have been following Cuba for two decades.Twice I led a group of students from the University of California at Berkeley, teaching them how to report on foreign affairs.The first such trip, in 1992, produced a magazine, the Pacific.It captured the island's early struggle to survive the end of Soviet subsidies and trade.The second, in 2001, became the basis for this book, portraying Cuba's venture into a sort of never-never land between communism and capitalism.For more than a decade, from the time Castro legalized trading in U.S. dollars in 1993, the island has drifted between two opposing economic systems.Each chapter of this book offers a different glimpse of what it is like to live in a place caught between these two extremes.Even when Castro tried to get rid of the dollar at the end of 2004 and replace it with the convertible peso-known as the chavito, or toy money-it was the dollar that continued to reign.Chavitos could not be had without dollars, and no amount of economic hocus-pocus could undo that fact.My own interest in Cuba began in Central America in 1983 when, at the height of U.S. involvement there, I reported on El Salvador for the New York Times.No matter how savage the Salvadoran forces-the massacre of thousands of its own citizens, including an archbishop, priests, and labor leaders, or the murder of American nuns and aid workers-the Reagan administration supported the government.It was determined that El Salvador not become another Cuba, a situation that, in Washington's eyes, had already occurred in nearby Nicaragua under the Sandinistas.The American government spent more than a billion dollars to save El Salvador from this fate, and nearly as much to reverse the Sandinista revo-''In 1988, the USSR imported 63 percent of Cuba's sugar, 73 percent of its nickel, 95 percent of its citrus products and 100 percent of its electrical exports.At the same time, Moscow sold the island 98 percent of its fuel and 90 percent of its machinery and other equipment imports and the Comecon countries accounted overall for 87 percent of Cuba's foreign transactions.By 1992 Havana found these arrangements had gone.''So had everything else.Havana in 1992 existed in an odd, becalmed quiet: No gasoline meant no traffic.No trading partners meant no food.No movement or trade meant no trash; the city looked as if it had been picked clean.From the outside, stores appeared closed, but in fact, clerks stood in the dark behind nearly empty counters.Everywhere, Cubans waitedat bus stops, in front of bare government stalls, or in front of Coppelia, the downtown ice cream store that my father and I saw open only once during our week-long visit.Stories circulated about the ways in which Cubans subsisted.A Cuban steak?The fried skin of one of the grapefruits that used to be exported to the Soviet Bloc.Breakfast?A couple of tablespoons of sugar.Some mornings my father and I would leave our hotel to walk the city, returning at night to see the same people waiting in lines.Few begged in 1992, but it became clear in brief conversations with any Cuban that they could use a good meal.No matter the educational level-and most had studied or were studying for some degree-none were shy about asking for something to eat.The dynamic unsettled.Where had we ever been that well-spoken, literate locals asked for food?Meeting their requests

Capitalism · Communism · Economic history · Economics · Latin Americans · Liberian dollar · Political science · Politics · Reign · Cuban History and Society · Economic Theory and Policy · History · Law · 21st century · Anthropology · Caribbean & West Indies · Caribbean & West Indies - Cuba · Caribbean islands · Caribbean Studies · civilization · Cuba · Economic conditions · Ethnic Studies - Hispanic American Studies · History - General History · Interviews · Media & Communications · Pictorial works · Political Ideologies - Communism & Socialism · Social conditions · Travel

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