FALL 2004 ISSUE

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Originally published in the Fall 2004 Virginia Tech Research Magazine.

Material appearing in the Virginia Tech Research Magazine may be reprinted provided the endorsement of a commercial product is not stated or implied. Please credit the researchers involved and Virginia Tech.

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Cuba inside out:

Once the Caribbean jewel with its uniquely built heritage; now a downtrodden country

By Lynn Davis

Virginia Tech geography professor Joseph L. Scarpaci in the College of Natural Resources has made 43 study visits to Cuba in the past 14 years, often taking student and adult study groups with him. Scarpaci and his students explore Cuba’s unique urban, historical, architectural, and cultural landscapes.

In the process of penetrating the heart of the country and the hearts of its proud people, he has brought some balance to how the world can rightly understand the Cuban citizen, out from under the dark shadow of Fidel Castro. The resilient spirit of the Cuban people might be almost matchless. Despite their enormous economic struggle and instability since the 1950s, they survive with an incredible inner strength and grace.

"This is a good time in history to visit Cuba," Scarpaci explained to me and the rest of his last adult study group in 2003. "The country is at an interesting crossroads politically and economically."

In the spring of 2003, 70 dissidents were arrested and incarcerated. Rebelling students would have been unheard of in earlier years. The students met with the U.S. Interests Section, a U.S. agency that provides consular and diplomatic services, but also promotes democracy in Cuba. The dissidents were given harsh sentences, resulting in an international outcry. But Cubans are courageous survivors, and the ones we met were friendly and hospitable. We thought of them in these terms as we listened to Scarpaci, and again, months later, when politics and the ever-present tensions shut the door on U.S.-Cuba travel even for scholars.

While tourist travel to Cuba has been off-limits for Americans since Castro’s takeover in 1959, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issues some licenses to educators to take study groups to the country. Scarpaci has been one such licensee, which is how our group was able to travel to Cuba.

In his academic research and preservation pursuits of Cuba’s built environment and the urban studies programs he has conducted with Cuban architects, Scarpaci has gotten to know Cuba from the inside out. By studying Habana Vieja (Old Havana) with Cuban colleagues, Scarpaci has learned more about Cuba than just its glorious past. Taking adult and college students to Cuba, where they are immersed in the Afro-Cuban culture, the communist revolution museums, Old Havana, and such points of interest as the trail of Ernest Hemingway, Scapaci has built up many personal contacts.

As one student said, "I can read a book, do research, or write a paper about some aspect of Cuba, but I can’t really understand it until I come and experience it." Essentially, such experiences form the foundation for Scarpaci’s Cuban studies.

During his many visits to Cuba, Scarpaci studied Old Havana, perhaps one of the New World’s most interesting cities and truly one of the great cities of the entire world, and in the process built up a rapport with Roberto Segre and Mario Coyula, architects at the José Antonio Echeverrá Polytechnic University in Havana. Together the three wrote the book Havana, Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis, one of the few books written in English about the city in recent times.

The international trio assessed nearly 500 years of development in the Cuban capital and brings to modern light its architectural beauty. As Havana has embarked on a project to restore some of Habana Vieja, the three scholars updated their sold-out 1997 book.

Havana

Havana truly is the city of architecture. “Of all the capital cities in the Caribbean, Havana, once the most splendid, remains the finest example of a Spanish colonial city in the Americas,” declares Scarpaci, who has had some influence in the restoration of the historic center. An architect in the City Historian’s Office, Orestes del Castillo, gave us the walking tour.

A major focus of Scarpaci’s research trips is to study how a small staff of architects, planners, and curators go about restoring Cuba’s Old Havana. In 1982, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the historic district of Havana a “World Heritage UNESCO site” because of the unique architecture of the area — its narrow streets with modest colonial houses and eclectic buildings adorned by the tranquil atmosphere of the plazas. Urban development proposals and neglect threatened the area.

Scarpaci’s research looks not just at the architecture, but also the country’s social and economic fabric, diverse population, and contemporary challenges of international development.

Neither tourism nor historic preservation was a priority in socialist Cuba in the 1980s. With its economy in shambles, the cash-strapped country now heavily promotes both, and both are top governmental priorities even though their specific goals sometimes conflict.

The group learned from Scarpaci’s lectures and study materials that change ushered in new players, such as foreign investors in tourism, a limited real estate market, and public utilities. Spain, Israel, France, the Netherlands, and Mexico are currently doing business with the Cuban government. The Israelis are developing office complexes and orange juice packaging plants, as well as helping Cuba improve its infrastructure and find better agricultural opportunities.

Cuba once raised most of the world’s sugar cane but its out-of-date processing plants can no longer compete globally. The proud country that once raised enough sugar for most of the world has closed half of its 150 sugar mills and can hardly raise enough food for its own people.

When Scarpaci and his “official” Cuban tour guides ran us through the “must-see” showplaces of palaces, fortresses, and other historic buildings, now mostly museums, we were stunned by the decrepit appearance of much of the built environment. Time and climate coupled with the scant Cuban budget have taken a serious toll on the many magnificent buildings. Essentially, time has stopped in Cuba — you get the feeling that you are living in the 1950s and 1960s, especially when you look at the streets and see the vintage cars, which few citizens own.

Restoration of Havana’s historic center is one of the government’s priorities, so we saw buildings in various stages of repair. Crumbling colonial buildings with sweeping arches are being restored for boutiques, museums, and housing. The 529-acre historic quarter is a massive undertaking funded by joint ventures with foreign companies and by a decree that allows tourist dollars made in Old Havana to be plowed back into its restoration and social programs.

It is a unique arrangement in this country of centralized state control. The island’s economic crises, as well as the acute need to rescue the old city’s architectural treasures, have forced the change. After Cuba’s 1959 revolution, grand homes and hotels were divided and parceled out to families because the country needed housing, not tourists. A downside to the restoration efforts has been the relocation of some residents, who are sometimes put into housing distant from where they work, resulting in long commutes on packed buses.

Few Cubans have cars. Most walk, ride bikes or motorcycles, or cram into the public buses. Those who do have cars drive old American models from the 1950s. The few new cars we saw, including some Mercedes Benzes, were driven by government officials.

We saw the rented hotel quarters where novelist Ernest Hemingway lived in Old Havana when he wrote some of his books, and then the suburban estate home he bought that is now preserved intact with all his furnishings.

The most lasting impressions, however, were visits to the homes of ordinary people. While 80 percent of Cubans own homes, housing is a major problem in Havana.

We visited Celia, who lived in a small apartment in an abandoned 1920s building in Havana. While most Havana homes have electricity and running water, she had electricity but no indoor plumbing and had to carry water to her second-floor home.

No buildings, except for the tourist hotels, had good lighting, which gave you a sense of the early 1900s in America, when there were only 40-watt bulbs. Cubans are accustomed to blackouts.

From the rooftop lounge of the nice 1990s Dutch-owned Parque Central Hotel where we stayed, you could look out over a sea of dilapidated buildings, such as the one in which Celia eked out an existence. On some of the tiny balconies you could see chickens that were being raised for eggs and meat to supplement the rationed food supply. We saw few overweight Cubans.

While we ate well in the state-owned restaurant and a few private ones, most Cubans subsist on meager diets with little variety. There are ongoing shortages and state rationing has been in effect since 1961. Cubans must pick up rations from the bodegas, or corner grocery stores, on the first day of each month because little is left later. Tourist eating places and the hotels import their food.

The countryside

The other home we visited was several hours south of Havana. While most farms are state owned, this remote farmstead was one of the 10 percent of farms in Cuba that remain privately owned. We traveled by bus within a mile of the 50-acre farm and then walked the deeply rutted dirt road the rest of the way. The farmer dispatched his horse-drawn cart to carry those who could not walk the distance.

Farming has ceased to be productive for most of the country because of lack of money for fertilizer, seed, and modern equipment. Farmers of state-owned land must get permission for everything they want to grow or raise. Farm owner Rene Barrios told us, “Farmers who work for the state are lazy.”

We enjoyed a wonderful pig roast with some fruit and vegetables and the rum drinks for which Cuba is famous. A banana grove bordered one side of the tiny, two-room farmhouse, which had a concrete floor, thatched roof, and no indoor plumbing. Most of the living was done outdoors. The aging farmer, who barely makes a living, had given up raising sugar cane and now concentrates on hogs and chickens.

One day our tour bus took us to a lovely countryside called Pinar de Río, a province west of Havana. There you got a sense of how nice things could be if Cuba were thriving. The resort-like setting in the mountains sparkled. The December weather was fairly pleasant despite some rain and cloudy days. We never saw boats around the coastline; the government would consider boats a dangerous temptation for Cubans who want to escape to Key West, a mere 90 miles from Havana.

Music groups played in the squares and sold their CDs almost everywhere we ate. Beggars approached us every time we came out of the hotel or a restaurant or went for a walk in a square. One common ploy from the women was “milk for my baby.”

Economics and politics

About 4.5 million of the 11.3 million Cubans are employed. Limited self-employment (hairdressers, operators of home restaurants, auto mechanics, bicycle repairmen, taxi drivers, artisans) has been allowed since 1993. In recent years, many doctors, lawyers, and other professionals in Cuba abandoned their careers to make more money by being tour guides and taxi cab drivers because tips from tourists and American study groups were better than their wages. No matter what kind of work a Cuban does, the average monthly salary ranges from $8 to $15. Tour guides and taxi cab drivers can make that income in a day.

After the 1959 Cuban revolution, the arts and sports were elevated by the government, so today artists, musicians, and athletes have some of the highest incomes, which basically makes for a dual economy in the otherwise poor county. They are able to travel out of the country, while few other Cubans are permitted international opportunities. “Foreigners have more rights that we Cubans,” lamented one Cuban professional. “Many people are frustrated and want to leave but cannot. FC’s policies have hurt us.”

Osvaldo, our Cuban guide, had been a government economist but after the fall of Russia left Cuba without its sugar daddy, Osvaldo found a much better-paying job in the coveted tourism sector. However, his nice income of American dollar tips dried up in early 2004 when the U.S. government began putting more restrictions on study travel to Cuba. In June 2004, half of his fellow tour guides were laid off because of the drop in the U.S. travel to the island.

In the months before the U.S. presidential election, President George Bush — critics say to court the south Florida Cuban-American vote — turned up the heat on Castro by pulling down the broad umbrella of study and family-visit travel to Cuba. By putting increased restrictions on academic travel, the administration sought to cut off an important lifeline to the Caribbean island, which was getting 200,000 U.S. travelers. Scarpaci points out that recent polls show that many Cuban Americans oppose the restrictions on their travel to visit relatives on the island, which changed from once a year to once every three years.

The U.S. Treasury Department claimed that the study tours were disguised tourism. Before the current crackdown on travel, Americans ranked fifth among nationalities that visit Cuba annually. The resulting financial pressures have hit all Cubans hard. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba identified a thriving tourist industry as vital for bringing in hard currencies. The country has even mellowed in allowing some private enterprise — private booksellers and bed-and-breakfast-type businesses have been legal since 1993.

In the summer of 2004, Castro responded to America’s tighter travel restrictions with talk that the United States planned military strikes against Cuba and warned America, “You will not find a divided people.” This was typical Castro. As one Cuban shared openly with us, Castro would bring out his nationalist speeches when a situation warrants stirring people up.

Castro also abruptly froze most American dollar sales across the island. The stores that sold items for American dollars are controlled by the government and offer many essentials that are not available in stores that only take pesos. Cuba’s two currencies only complicate its economic woes.

Many Cubans who survived the drastic economic collapse of the early 1990s, when Russia withdrew its support of nearly $5 million daily, feel trapped in the long-standing U.S.-Cuba feud. “If the U.S. ever were to lift sanctions against the island all at once, there could be mass pandemonium and perhaps massive exodus to other countries, so most Cubanologists agree that if sanctions are ever lifted it should be in degrees,” says Scarpaci. “The country’s greatest need is capitalization, which is why joint ventures have become so important to Cuba.”

Cuba’s advantage, compared to other developing nations, is its highly skilled labor force. Education is compulsory to the ninth grade and literacy is 97 percent. But while Castro touts his free education system, Cubans face a bleak job market and rock-bottom wages. The health care system, in some ways, is possibly Castro’s crowning achievement. However, linen and food are often lacking and must be provided by patients’ families.

Despite the poverty of the country, Castro himself resides in numerous homes throughout the island and rotates constantly among them for security. Although 77 years old, the feisty Castro has held Cuba hostage to his dictatorial policies and socialist philosophy since his 1959 revolutionary takeover. Incredibly, he has held power longer than any other political leader alive in the world today. Following his takeover, Castro confiscated U.S. properties in Cuba. Relations with America deteriorated further in 1961 with the Bay of Pigs invasion and President Kennedy’s subsequent embargo on Cuba.

Imposed in phases, America’s embargo was designed to isolate the Cuban government economically, restrict most travel, and deprive the country of much-needed U.S. dollars. The posturing culminated with the October 1962 missile crisis. Tension and confrontations have marked the two governments’ relationship for the past 45 years.

A long-time Cuban icon of left-wing revolutionaries is Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. The Argentine-born rebel and guerilla leader was Castro’s right-hand man during Cuba’s 1959 revolution but was executed by the Bolivian Rangers in 1967 at age 39. Today his image appears on all sorts of fashions and paraphernalia. Fascination with him reigns in films, books, and other multimedia. The handsome, middle-class med student had movie-star quality and is the subject of Steven Soderbergh’s movie “The Motorcycle Diaries,” a hit at Sundance in early 2004.

So while young people around the world learn from popular culture and sport T-shirts with Alberto Korda’s famous 1960 photo of Ché, those of us who had the opportunity to visit Cuba have a first-hand and heartfelt appreciation for what fellow human beings have had to endure for nearly half a century.

We returned to the United States vowing never to complain again about our circumstances. You are never the same after you have visited this struggling country. You are transformed by the Cuba experience.

Lynn Davis of the College of Natural Resources was on Scarpaci's adult study tour in December 2003, before the United States suspended short-term study travel.