“What does it mean to be Cuban?” Arnaldo Pérez Castaño asks himself. “We are in a kind oftime bubble, where everything is kind of frozen, and life is very slow,” he says. “It can seem as though people don’t really care about anything, like they have no problems.”
Many people might agree with Pérez Castaño’s description of life in Cuba, but there is much more to this Caribbean country than that. Indeed, one of the things that stand out clearly is that the restrictions imposed by decades of communist rule and US sanctions have brought out some exceptional qualities in the Cuban people.
Arnaldo Pérez Castaño sees education as one way to improve the life of the average Cuban. After studying to become an accountant, he received a BA in computer science at the University of Havana. Inspired by his father, an electronic engineer who always had computers at home, he describes his love of technology and how he likes to “make things work correctly”.
A love of technology, however, is where life in Cuba starts to hit contradictions for someone like Pérez Castaño. Born in 1987, and now living in the capital, Havana, he got his first computer when he was in the eighth grade, a not-quite-modern Pentium II. Today, his Asus seems slightly primitive, as do his iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy J1 Ace.
Very few Cuban homes have broadband internet access and, until recently, there were few opportunities to connect to the internet elsewhere. This changed in 2015, when the government introduced Wi-Fi hotspots in public spaces. “Yes, we now have Wi-Fi access in parks,” explains Pérez Castaño, “though the conversation we’re having for this interview could not take place at 12 noon; it’s 6.30 a.m. here in Cuba now and it’s the best time to talk because there is enough bandwidth.”
Cuba does not yet have the 24/7 access that Europeans enjoy, but the price of internet access is coming down quickly. As well as the Wi-Fi hotspots, there is now at least the possibility of internet access at home — although it is still far too expensive for most Cubans. The state-monopoly telecom company promised it would roll out broadband in 2017, but this never happened.
Signs of change can also be seen, after years of negotiations, in the official permission given to open an office for the Delegation of German Industry & Chamber of Commerce in Cuba. Gunther Neubert has headed the office since September 2017. Neubert lives in Havana with his wife and two children, who attend an international school. Formerly in Ecuador and then Bosnia and Herzegovina, Neubert has the role of strengthening business relations between Germany and Cuba. His immediate aim, he says, is to examine what opportunities exist for German companies to invest in Cuba, and to see which products and services might interest German firms.
The elephant in the room
This is a breakthrough in itself, and Neubert says it was totally independent of the improved relations between the US and Cuba under President Barack Obama in 2014–15. The role of the US in recent Cuban history is the proverbial “elephant in the room”. After independence from Spain in 1898, Cuba became a US protectorate, with the US intervening in Cuban affairs when it saw fit. An already difficult relationship between the two countries worsened dramatically after the 1953–59 Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl and Che Guevara. In 1960, all US businesses in Cuba were nationalized, and a year later, the US ended diplomatic relations with Castro’s communist government. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, when the US assisted Cuban exiles in an attempted invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 were low points in the troubled Cuba–US relationship.
Human rights abuses by the Castro regime have also blighted Cuba. In 2017, a Human Rights Watch report stated: “The Cuban government continues to repress and punish dissent and public criticism. The number of short-term arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders, independent journalists and others was significantly less than in 2016, but still remained high, with more than 3,700 reports of arbitrary detentions between January and August 2017. The government continues to use other repressive tactics, including beatings, public shaming, travel restrictions and termination of employment.”
While much of the blame for Cuba’s lack of development in the past seven decades lies with the Castro regime, the US government’s embargo has had a major impact on the lives of ordinary Cubans. In 2017, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution “underlining the need to end the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba”. A total of 191 out of 193 UN member states voted in favour of the resolution, with just the US and Israel against it.
The US embargo on Cuba, which was relaxed under Obama, has been tightened again under the leadership of President Donald Trump. It currently prohibits travel to Cuba, with the exception of 12 categories, ranging from journalistic activity to athletic competitions. A November 2017 US Treasury Department paper answered a clear “no” to its own rhetorical question: “Is travel to Cuba for tourist activities permitted?”
Getting creative
With various banking and trade bans, in addition to the communist regime’s own ideologically driven restrictions and bureaucracy, earning a living in Cuba is far from easy. Pérez Castaño, however, typifies a determined, entrepreneurial spirit that contradicts the stereotypical image of life in Cuba. While not denying the many frustrations caused by inefficient central planning and the difficulties created by the US embargo, he has adapted to a wider world of technological change by — as he describes it — “getting creative”.
Pérez Castaño works for a state-run insurance firm, but to increase his income, he has written several books on technology. “Getting creative” also means taking advantage of the changes made in the country since 2008, when Raúl Castro took over the Cuban leadership from Fidel. At present, the Cuban government has a list of 201 legal occupations for small business entrepreneurs, although in mid-2017, the government declared that there would be no new licences in 12 of the occupations. Nevertheless, the limited opening up to more capitalism has had an effect, and The Economist estimates that there are at present “600,000 cuentapropistas (self-employed workers), including restaurateurs, hoteliers and so on”. Gunther Neubert explains that this means, for example, that people who officially work as taxi drivers might nowadays also own their own restaurant. And despite the government restrictions, Neubert is fairly certain that reforms to regulations for small- and medium-sized enterprises will arrive sooner rather than later. But the tightening of the US embargo is having an effect. Pérez Castaño believes that, rather than “hurting the Cuban government, it is hurting the Cuban people”. Pérez Castaño took advantage of the more open business environment pre-Trump to establish a tourism website with his partner, Junior Alfonso Paret. Cuba Mania Tour provides tours, dance lessons, classic car tours and various other activities for foreigners visiting the country. The website had been doing reasonably well, attracting around ten US bookings a month. But travel restrictions to Cuba have now resulted in a lack of bookings from the US.
It would be foolish to predict exactly what the immediate future holds for Cuba. Neither Neubert nor Pérez Castaño expect to see any radical changes made to the economic system in Cuba any time soon. And according to The Economist, the economy is in “terrible shape”. Subsidies in the form of oil from Venezuela are falling and trade between the two countries dropped from more than $8.5 billion in 2012 to $2.2 billion in 2016. Increases in agricultural prices, half-empty shops and a very small, weak private sector are all signs of a failing economy that cannot be offset by Cuba’s famously good medical system and other social achievements.
Despite the entrepreneurial efforts of Cubans such as Arnaldo Pérez Castaño, the “time bubble” that restricts Cuba is likely to continue. Life can be hard, he says, but to be Cuban, you need to fight and to be creative.
“That,” he says, “is Cuba.”