Category — Demographics

Via Financial Times:

Like the other residents of the José Martí housing estate in Santiago, Cuba’s second city, Rafael Gonzalez has grown used to the taps running dry.

“Sometimes water arrives only two or three times a month,” says the 46-year-old restaurant worker, who often has to rely on what he collects in the two rusting oil drums parked on the balcony of his second-floor flat.

Now, however, change is in the offing. Fixing Santiago’s defective pipelines and aqueduct is one of a number of projects being given priority as Cuba’s Communist government ploughs billions of dollars into roads, electricity and water infrastructure.

José Martí and other Santiago barrios should benefit, for example, from a multi-million dollar restoration plan and Mr Gonzalez and his neighbours are looking forward to the improvement. “They say next year we will have water,” says Rolando, a 52-year-old retired carpenter. “They are ‘revolutionis ing’ things.”

“Revolutionising”, however, turns out to be a slow process. Cuba’s Communists are anxious to avoid the tumultuous transition experienced by the Soviet Union and – like their Chinese allies – are determined to hold on to political power. Nor, with their traditions of austere egalitarianism, do they have much appetite for the kind of market-based liberalisation that has taken place in China and Vietnam.

Even so, President Raúl Castro, who last month completed his second year at the helm of Cuba’s economy, is determined to press on with changes designed to increase economic efficiency and improve living standards. [Read more →]

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Via Financial Times:

Cuba, one of the world’s last surviving Communist states, is looking at watering down the generous social welfare system that has been a cornerstone of its economy for nearly 50 years, according to a senior government official.

Alfredo Jam, head of macroeconomic analysis in the economy ministry, told the Financial Times that Cubans had been “over-protected” by a system that subsidised food costs and limited the amount people could earn, prompting labour shortages in important industries.

“We can’t give people so much security with their income that it affects their willingness to work,” Mr Jam said. “We can have equality in access to education and health but not in equality of income.” He said the emphasis on equality had helped maintain social cohesion during the 1990s when Cuba’s economy came close to collapse after the withdrawal of Soviet assistance, but “when the economy recovers you realise that there is [a level of] protection that has to change. We can’t have a situation where it is not work that gives access to goods,” he said.

Mr Jam’s remarks represent a rare and unusually frank insight into official thinking on Cuba’s future economic direction in the wake of the resignation of its long-time leader, Fidel Castro, in February.

Under Cuba’s new president, the former leader’s younger brother Raúl, the country has eased restrictions on bonuses that can be paid to workers and lifted bans on products such as mobile phones and DVD players.

Mr Castro also decentralised the country’s agricultural system and said idle land would be offered to co-operatives and private farmers to lower dependency on imported food.

However, the welfare system has remained almost intact. Under it, all Cubans are entitled to basic foods, including bread, eggs, rice, beans and milk, at much cheaper prices than those elsewhere in the world. Rents and utilities are extremely cheap and education and healthcare are free.

Any reform of these universal benefits would be controversial within the governing Communist party and unlikely to happen quickly.

But Mr Jam’s comments reflect growing frustration in official circles about poor performance in agriculture, construction and manufacturing. “There isn’t motivation to work in these sectors,” he said.

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According to Juventud Rebelde, Cuba continues to face a mass internal migration from the provinces to the capital of Havana.

City of Havana continues to be the primary point of attraction for a great majority of Cubans who decide to move.  And as so it happens in the rest of the world, the grand metropolis offers wonders — at times to great for popular thought — which seduces and traps people, even though they have to traverse multiple hardships.

The numbers of the last Population and Housing Census, which took place in 2002, demonstrates that the capital absorbed 40.8 % of the total immigrants from the rest of the country.

Historically, the population of the island has moved from the East towards the West.  The principal migratory waves that have established themselves are five and are from Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Villa Clara, Holguín y Pinar del Río, with its sole destination: City of Havana.

[...]

But the economic crisis detained development strategies that the country carried.  In the middle of those difficult circumstances, in the 90s, a great demographic explosion took place in the capital caused by a spontaneous and excessive exodus from other territories.

[Graphic: Juventud Rebelde]

[H/T: Penultimos Dias]

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