For some of you, this maybe a boring post. For us – the whole relationship, history and economic situation here in Cuba is just fascinating. So, if you are looking for pictures and witty repartee, you might want to skip this post and go for the next one on the fabulous dinner we will have after the lecture!
There are no pictures, not much commentary, just lots of information that our extremely talented and knowledgeable lecturer, Prof. Sanchez, provides.
So – here we go! As I said, we just make it to our 5:30 appointed time – we meet everyone in the lobby – and lo and behold! One of the ladies on the tour with us (I think her name is Linda) has found my little composition book! Massive Relief! It must have been in my lap when we got up to get off the bus and fallen on the floor. She found it when she was getting off the bus and knew I would be a wreck without it!
So – note here – even though it is only day 2 – we still don’t really know everyone’s names – and quite frankly – we never do end up finding out some of them! We do have nicknames though which I’ll start to intersperse throughout the blog!
Across the street we go to the Parque Central hotel where we have a meeting room to conduct the lecture. Our lecturer is Professor Jorge Mari0 Sanchez, a Senior Researcher and Professor at Havana’s Centro de Estudios de la Economia Cubano (CEEC). He is a specialist on international trade and economic development and has had many visiting scholar associations with higher education Institutions such as Harvard, Columbia University, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and SciencesPo in Paris. An incredibly knowledgeable and informative lecturer, Professor Sanchez takes us through basic Cuban history, providing a quick overview of the economy from the early 1900’s through the Revolution and then the Soviet influence. He focuses though on more recent economic impacts – basically from the 1990’s onward.
Here is the long and the short of it – because I don’t want to bore you too much: Cuba of course was tied to the Soviet Union – and their economy was based nearly 100% on trade with the Eastern Bloc countries. In the 1990’s, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba was caught completely unaware. No one expected it – and suddenly they had no financial support or export/import availability at all. Export prices dropped almost in half and access to credit evaporated.
Cuba turned to Israel and France, but they were technologically incompatible in addition to a language barrier. Plus Cuba was a mono-economy – relying almost solely on the export of sugar and sugar cane. The first blow was the Eastern Bloc now not buying up the production, however the second blow came when the price of sugar dropped dramatically a few years later, leaving Cuba in even more dire straights. Fidel declared this trying time the “Special Period” and began austerity measures to try to mitigate some of the losses, but it has obviously been harsh over the years here in Cuba.
What to do? Well, first try to change the economic reliance on sugar. Over the years, sources of revenue have changed so that Doctors and health care products are the #1 revenue generator. Cuba has doctors all over the world and pharmaceutical companies that develop vaccines sold around the world. #2 is tourism, since the government has opened the door to more foreign investments. And #3 are remittances from relatives abroad, sending money back to Cuba. Approximately 5% of revenue comes from remittances.
And where to go from here? Obviously tourism could have a huge impact – but the issues are that there is no infrastructure to support it. Even in the beginning of the tourism boom, simple things like ice makers didn’t exist and had to be purchased, designed. There were no plastic bottles for purified water, so they were developed in Cuba specifically for the tourist market (which may explain why the darn things are so hard to open! Honestly – I already am getting a callous on the inside of my thumb from the darn screw tops!).
Plus, Cuba is decades late to the tourism business – which is good and bad. The good is they can look at other countries and use them as examples to follow or not (as the case is with Fonatur and Mexico – they don’t want Havana to be another Cancun). The bad is they are way behind and need to catch up in infrastructure and funding.
And moving on into the Economic cycle, will tourism sustain? Or will moving more into nickel production or drilling for oil offshore? Both of which they are trying to do now. It all remains to be seen how Cuba will pull itself out of this slump and improve their economy. And of course there is the whole US-Cuban relations issue that we aren’t even touching on here. The relaxing of the rules and regulations on Cubans returning here – and Americans visiting here – are encouraging, but where does the future lie?
And with that – our lecture (and yours!) is finished. Leaving more questions unanswered than answered, but providing a whole heck of a lot of intriguing possibilities! We all actually could have sat with Professor Sanchez for much longer than the one hour that we had!
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