In Cuba, racial inequality deepens with tourism boom

[El Presidente]

An interesting Article.

Racial inequality within cuba is well known to frequent visitors particularly if they travel to less touristy haunts.

I have always harboured the thought that unless prosperity can be managed (shared for all cubans) then even with the pipedream of liberal government / democracy....the country will revert back to socialism/communism within a decade.

Cuba isn't Havana Trinidad or Varadero. Approximately 8 Million people live outside of those areas and they do so mostly on $20 a month. That's close to 68% of the population.

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In Cuba, racial inequality deepens with tourism boom

By Chris ArsenaultFebruary 2, 2016 9:26 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-racial-inequality-deepens-tourism-boom-142651737--business.html

HAVANA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As warming relations with the United States bring new money and tourists to Havana, some black Cubans like Miguel Campuzano Perez say racial inequalities are widening and they are being left out of a potential capitalist boom.

Cuba's economy grew by 4 percent in 2015 and more than 3.5 million tourists visited the island in the year Washington and Havana restored diplomatic ties, ending more than five decades of Cold War animosity.

New hotels and restaurants are opening around the capital famous for its colonial architecture and 1950s American cars, and Cubans with money to invest in businesses have seen living standards improve.

But with no access to capital, and no family living abroad to send back money, 54-year-old Perez said he and other black Cubans are being excluded from the benefits of economic liberalization.

"The black people don't have powerful families, and that continues generation to generation," Perez, a musician and former soldier, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The people benefiting from remittances are white; the landlords are white."

As capitalism creeps into Cuba more than 60 years after a revolution that promised social equality, local residents and analysts are concerned about the gap between the haves and have nots and the ethnic undertones of growing inequality on the island.

'WHITE FLIGHT - TO MIAMI'

Just under 10 percent of Cubans identified themselves as black in the country's 2012 census. But statistics on Cuba's racial makeup are imprecise as more than a quarter of the population is a mix between various ethnic groups.

Following Cuba's 1959 revolution, the government of Fidel Castro, brother of current president Raul, introduced laws on racial inclusion, launched a literacy campaign, and universal public services in an attempt to tackle entrenched inequality.

African slaves, primarily from West Africa, were brought to Cuba by Spanish colonizers from the 1500s to work on the sugar plantations.

Slavery was formally abolished on the island in 1886 but blacks were still banned from some high-end establishments and excluded from well-paid, and most Afro-Cubans worked on plantations or as manual laborers.

Free education and healthcare programs from the communist government helped made it possible for previously disadvantaged groups to get jobs as teachers, doctors or government workers in the 1960s, residents said.

"Afro-Cubans have been the biggest reservoir of support for the revolution and are those most affected by worsening inequality," Paolo Spadoni, a political scientist at Augusta University in the United States told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Today, outright discrimination isn't the main cause of the growing wealth gap between blacks and whites, Havana residents said. Rather, migration networks, remittances and broader economic changes are the driving factors.

Much of the island's predominately white business elite left following the revolution with many settling in Miami, Florida, just 90 miles (150 km) from the Cuban coast.

"The vast majority who left to live abroad happened to be white Cubans," said Isaac Saney, a Canadian university professor who researchers ethnic issues in Cuba.

"They are sending remittances home and their relatives can invest in small businesses. This has led to an increase in racial inequality," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

TWO ECONOMIES

In 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba's main trading partner, ravaged the island's economy, making life particularly difficult for residents who didn't have family members abroad.

The average salary for a government worker, about $25 per month, has lost three quarters of its purchasing power since 1989, Spadoni said. While poorly paid, many state workers continue to receive other perks like subsidized food, and accommodation.

Cuba has two currencies - the Cuban peso which is paid to state employees and is worth about $0.04 and the Convertible Peso, which is worth one US dollar.

In the pursuit of foreign currency, professors left university jobs to work as hotel waiters and doctors took to driving taxis.

Some black Cubans say they have trouble getting comparatively lucrative jobs in hotels, because of discrimination.

"You need to be white to get good work," said Daniel Alberto Suarez, 42, an informal tour-guide, while drinking rum with two female European clients.

"Hotel and bar owners are making good money, but for regular people life is hard. I have no family abroad to send me money."

A raft of economic reforms beginning in 2008 made it easier for Cubans to open private businesses, intensifying the importance of remittances as start-up capital.

Miguel Hernandez, who has light skin, manages a restaurant popular with foreigners in old Havana earning $100 per day, a large salary by local standards.

"There is a lot of inequality between my friends who work for the state, and me who works in tourism," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "People will study to be a doctor, hang the title on the wall, then go work in a restaurant."

'PRESERVING THE REVOLUTION'

While many young people, black and white, said they're positive about Cuba's new direction, some older Cubans are concerned about what they could lose and what it could mean for the island's society.

"We need keep the ideas of the revolution: free education, healthcare, taking care of the elderly and racial equality," Maria Luz Fernandez, 52, a primary school administrator, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Earning $40 per month, Fernandez, who is of mixed race ancestry, is well aware she earns less than young waiters from her neighborhood who walk by the school wearing flashy cloths and knock-off designer watches.

Young people want big houses and cars, but "the revolution can't afford to provide that for everyone," she said, her long, gold fingernail extensions tapping the table.

With more foreign money coming into the economy, she hopes the benefits will trickle down, and teachers and other state employees will eventually see higher salaries.

"When the Americans come, (there will be less) equality," she said, as children wearing school uniforms and carrying pink Barbie backpacks wait for their parents.

"The government needs to share the new wealth with the people."

(Reporting By Chris Arsenault; Editing by Ros Russell please add:; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)

[shlomo]

Black people and teachers not being paid fairly. Is this Cuba.........or anywhere else in the entire world???

[Ryan]

Somebody asked me some time ago if there was racism in Cuba, my reply was "Of course there is. If there wasn't, they'd all be the same colour by now."

Unlike many other countries, Cuba hasn't had a wave of immigration to bring a new skin tone in at least 5 or 6 generations.

The vast majority of Cubans I know get along just fine, skin colour doesn't matter. There are some though who will openly air their dislike of other Cubans based on skin colour. It's like anywhere.

The article hit on a specifically Cuban issue that didn't help the situation at all. The vast majority of Cubans who got out after the revolution, and thus sent back remittances, were white. Another specifically Cuban issue is the lack of black army generals, in a country where the army has so much influence. There have been a few but they are vastly under-represented.

Lots of black cops though and all the ones I've dealt with have been terribly nice.

[Orion21]

Rob,

What this article highlights for me is how forced "equality" programs don't work. They don't work in the US, Cuba or anywhere else around the world. There is one simple reason - those who are disadvantaged will be disadvantaged no matter what because they will never "have" what the "whites" have if they depend on the government or programs to give it to them. The restaurant owner making $100 a day is not making that money because he has lighter skin. If his food was bad people would not eat there. He has grown a successful business and he just happens to have lighter skin. He took a risk to start his business and he could have just as easily have failed and lost everything.

Call it what you will but throughout the whole history of humankind there have been have's and have-not's. No political system has ever been invented that makes everyone equal because there is always a power structure. The people in power will reward those who support them and down the line the money and power will flow. The only way these people will be able to achieve what they want is if they take the risk to build something on their own. Government programs can help get people on their feet, provide education and train - but at some point the individual needs to take the initiative to try and build the life they want.

[Ryan]

To use your restaurant owner example and to keep the conversation about Cuba, the vast majority of restaurant owners in Cuba are white or very light skinned.

To set up a business anywhere takes capital, in Cuba it also, until very recently, included also already owning the property.

White people in Cuba own restaurants because their fathers or grandfathers owned property in areas where tourists go (Vedado, Miramar and the nicer parts of Habana Vieja). Also their white families sent money from Miami, Spain or Canada. It was mostly whites who got out after the revolution because they had the means to, and then sent and continue to send money back. Having said that I don't deny for a second their hard work and risk taking.

Bank or government loans to set up private businesses didn't exist until literally a few months ago.

Walk the streets of Havana now and see who the entrepreneurs are, the guys fixing furniture, refilling disposable lighters, sharpening knives with a contraption fixed onto their bicycle. That is, the guys starting businesses, small businesses, that don't require property or too much seed capital. They're black guys, most of them.

[Fugu]

Rob,

What this article highlights for me is how forced "equality" programs don't work. They don't work in the US, Cuba or anywhere else around the world. There is one simple reason - those who are disadvantaged will be disadvantaged no matter what because they will never "have" what the "whites" have if they depend on the government or programs to give it to them. The restaurant owner making $100 a day is not making that money because he has lighter skin. If his food was bad people would not eat there. He has grown a successful business and he just happens to have lighter skin. He took a risk to start his business and he could have just as easily have failed and lost everything.

Call it what you will but throughout the whole history of humankind there have been have's and have-not's. No political system has ever been invented that makes everyone equal because there is always a power structure. The people in power will reward those who support them and down the line the money and power will flow. The only way these people will be able to achieve what they want is if they take the risk to build something on their own. Government programs can help get people on their feet, provide education and train - but at some point the individual needs to take the initiative to try and build the life they want.

This statement appears a quite radical standpoint if voiced with such a strong generalization. The principle you are claiming, and I tend to generally agree with that – individual initiative and responsibility – might well hold for ‘free’ societies, but will not be valid anymore once it comes to oppression.