A Curious Style of Socialism

The well-publicized three-day visit to Cuba by Senators Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island and Jacob Javits of New York was not only a diplomatic icebreaker; it had at least one notable side effect as well. The Senators were accompanied by 29 U.S. newsmen, who were allowed a rare firsthand look at life under Cuban socialism. Among them was TIME'S diplomatic editor, Jerrold L. Schecter, who toured the island on his own after the Senators flew home and last week filed this report from Havana:

After 15 years of revolution, Fidel Castro's Cuba has developed self-confidence and independence despite its heavy debt (at least $4 billion) to the Soviet Union. Living conditions are difficult but improving. In Havana today there is more talk of exporting sugar, lobster tails and shrimp to Europe than about exporting revolution.

Fidel, as Cubans call him, still sets the standards. He holds tightly to the reins of power, although he relies heavily on Deputy Premier Carlos Rafael Rodriguez for advice on economics and foreign policy. His personal popularity remains high because he mixes easily with his people and moves about the countryside to supervise new projects under development. Castro now seems confident enough to experiment with local elections--Matanzas Province chose a new people's assembly last June--and he has promised that the first Cuban Communist Party Congress will be held next year.

Blood Donations. There is less romanticism now and more realism. The guerrilla mentality is passing; at a recent mass rally, Castro was the only Cuban leader who wore a uniform; the others were dressed in business suits and ties. The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, whose original function was to control the population through vigilante and community spying activities, has broadened its work. Inoculations for children, blood donations, used-bottle collections and clean streets are now the primary tasks of C.D.R. block committees.

Cuban socialism is a curious mixture of voluntarism and paternalism. Farmers are asked to give up their land for fully furnished apartments with TV sets and refrigerators, the most highly prized consumer goods in Cuba. "Historic wages," meaning old salaries of up to 600 pesos a month ($720), are still paid to certain professionals, although the majority of the people earn between 127 and 300 pesos a month.

Since 1970's economic near-disaster, when Castro exhorted Cubans to produce 10 million tons of sugar and failed, agriculture has been diversified. New roads course through the green country as rice fields, fruit groves and cattle farms are developed. This year the soaring price of sugar will give Cuba an estimated $2 billion bonus--if the crop is as large as last year's 6 million tons.

Ambitious Projects. The biggest gains noticeable in Cuba are in the countryside, where new four-story concrete housing blocks are replacing traditional palm-thatched hovels called bohios. One of the most ambitious housing projects is in Alamar, ten minutes by bus from Havana along the coast. Since 1971 apartments for 15,000 workers and their families have been built at Alamar along with schools, workshops, day nurseries, clinics and supermarkets. By 1982, more than 150,000 people will live hi the two-and three-bedroom apartments. Construction is done by "microbrigades," a Cuban innovation in which workers leave their regular jobs for a year or more to work on housing construction into which they can then move.

Typical of the workers living at Alamar is Israel Castro, 42 (no relation to Fidel), a shoe-factory worker. He pays 6% of his $154.20 monthly wages for a three-bedroom apartment for himself, his wife and two children. Before the revolution, the Castros lived in one room in a Havana slum. Their present apartment, he says, is "a palace compared to that." At the Alamar supermarket last week, Mrs. Castro and other women lined up to buy loaves of unrationed bread at 170 per lb., as well as rationed eggs (15 per person per month), rice (6 Ibs. monthly), salt, lard, beans, oil and tomato sauce. Children receive a free meal at school, as do workers at their factories.

Change is less dramatic in Havana. Paint peels from old Spanish architecture and water shortages are chronic. Cuban socialism is still based on the equality of scarcity. Stores display only bare essentials in clothing and household goods. The clothing ration allows two dress shirts a year to each man. A 23-inch black-and-white Russian TV costs $750 to $900, a refrigerator $720. Workers' committees decide who can buy TVs and refrigerators.

Prostitution has been virtually eliminated, along with gambling, drugs, the lottery and the unemployment that once affected 33% of the labor force. But sex still flourishes under socialism. There are long lines of young couples waiting impatiently to rent rooms ($2.88 for three hours) in inns, or posadas. Havana's restaurants are a pale shadow of the city's profligate past. The once elegant Paris Restaurant on Cathedral Square, now called El Patio, has waiters in formal dress; but the filet, at $7.20, arrives as hamburger. One of Ernest Hemingway's old hangouts, La Bodeguita del Medio, still has his comment scribbled on the wall: "Mi mojito en La Bodeguita, mi daiquiri en La Floridita" (roughly, "I like the Bodeguita's mojitos" and the daiquiris at the Floridita," referring to another of his favorite bars in Havana). Alongside is a message, now poignant, scrawled there by another patron who later became Chile's ill-fated Socialist President: "Long live free Cuba! Chile is waiting! Dr. S. Allende, June 28,1961."

Lifting the Embargo. Castro, during the visit by the two American Senators, vigorously flayed President Ford's "deplorable imperialistic policies" in an hour-long speech devoted mainly to anti-Americanism. But in conversation, Cubans are careful to distinguish between U.S. policy and "the American people." They seem friendly toward the people, but former President Nixon's name is routinely printed in Cuba's newspapers with a swastika replacing the x.

The economic embargo of Cuba imposed by President Kennedy in 1962 and adopted two years later by most members of the Organization of American States has apparently slowed but not crippled Cuban development. Castro promises that "the isolation of the Cuban people is slowly withering away and the economic blockade of our country cannot last much longer." He hopes to buy oil from Venezuela; that would make Cuba less dependent on the Soviet Union and its aid, which comes in at the rate of $1.5 million a day (including 95% of Cuba's petroleum). Castro has also eased up on his old demand that the U.S. surrender its naval base at Guantanamo. The emphasis now is on formally lifting the hemisphere embargo, an event Cubans look forward to when the OAS meets next month in Quito.

The question of reparations for nationalized American property (estimated to have been worth $2 billion) must still be broached with the U.S. There is also the matter of repatriating American inmates of Cuban jails--nine political prisoners and 40 skyjackers or drug smugglers. The Cubans hope to deal with such problems step by step. Despite socialist slogans, they retain a sense of closeness to the U.S. But 15 years of isolation has firmed up their ideology and deepened belief in their abilities.

Now when Fidel tells them that "Cuba is an irreversible reality on this continent," his listeners are confident that he is correct.

* Recipe for a Bodeguita mojito: one spoonful of sugar, half an ounce of lemon juice, jigger of white rum, mint leaves, soda and ice.

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