Cuba’s Economic Crisis Causes Cutbacks in Culture

Culture has long been a point of nationalist pride in this socialist state. Yet today, many artists are suffering as Cuba falters under the weight of its lasting economic crisis.

Painters are finding it tougher to locate art supplies. Writers bemoan the lack of paper and ink. Musicians lament the scarcity of replacement instruments, which can take months to obtain from the Ministry of Culture.

Dwindling cash reserves have forced the Cuban government to “sell” off some of the country’s best talent. Ballerinas, symphony musicians, jazz performers, athletes and others have been sent on world tours or loaned to overseas organizations for contract fees paid to the Cuban government.

The famed Tropicana extravaganza, for example, stages its nightly $55-a-head cabaret without its biggest stars and choreographer, who have been temporarily dispatched to work in other nations where they will be paid hard currency.

Some days, even the press is hushed. The Establishment newspaper Granma, the stalwart voice of the Communist Party, has had to reduce the number of times a week it publishes for lack of newsprint.

“There’s no paper anywhere on this island,” said Ellie Bernstein, a Soho artist who traveled to Cuba to lay the groundwork for an upcoming exhibit. Havana museum officials who were helpful in every other way, Bernstein said, asked her to print her own catalogue.

“Of course we are facing shortages in everything,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Ramon Sanchez Parodi, noting that Cuba is researching ways to use a fibrous substance in sugar cane for paper-making. “But we learned we were being wasteful in many areas and that we could make do with less.”

Amid the hardships, President Fidel Castro did spend an extraordinary $150 million in 1991 to stage a respectable version of the Pan American Games, impressing many foreigners who expected to see signs of the socialist dream in shambles.

“The government has done what I consider to be a commendable job of keeping cultural events going in the face of shortages,” said a U.S. diplomat living in Cuba who asked not to be named.

But, the diplomat added, “the real drawback in the cultural sphere has been a feeling of disillusionment among the people who are in the arts.”

On a coolly shaded veranda outside the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists in Havana, artists, musicians and writers gathered one humid afternoon to talk about their trades and sip cana santa , a dark sugar-water concoction served in the absence of Cuban rum.

Afro-Cuban jazz performer Bobby Carcasses, seated at a rusted wrought-iron table at the base of marble stairs leading to a mansion once owned by a wealthy family, took a moment to criticize accomplished trumpeter Arturo Sandoval for defecting from Cuba in 1990.

“He was my friend,” said Carcasses, 53. “But now he is not my friend. He is making a good life in a big house in Miami that cost of quarter of a million dollars. He drives a Lamborghini sports car. His wife opened a boutique. But it is bad that he lives outside of Cuba.”

Reached at his Florida home, Sandoval said it matters little to him what people in Cuba think of him now. “Now I know exactly what is freedom, what I was missing,” he said. “We are enjoying life for the first time. For this, I thank God every morning.”

Carcasses, who proudly recalls a 1958 appearance on “The Steve Allen Show” and who tours outside of the country, counts himself among the fortunate to have been able to trade in his worn fluegelhorn for a new one while traveling in Venezuela. “It’s not easy to get a good instrument here,” he said.

“The people here, they are not happy,” Carcasses reflected. “But for me, always, there is something that calls me back to Cuba. I’m not speaking about the revolution. I’m speaking about the ground, the earth.

“So I always prefer Cuba, my country, with all its problems. With all of its millions of problems.”