PERSPECTIVE ON LATIN AMERICA : A Tale of Two Islands

As Cuba’s economy stabilizes and Fidel Castro’s regime survives what is arguably the most severe economic crisis any government in the hemisphere has faced in modern times, a lamentable process of “Latin Americanization” seems to be overtaking the island.

Whatever its shortcomings, the Cuban Revolution did, over the years, accomplish something major: It put a considerable dent in the repugnant inequality of class and wealth, privilege and opportunity, that has characterized Latin America since time immemorial. Now, as that success fades, a few reflections are in order on the Cuban experience and its relevance to other Latin societies.

Cuba’s “Latinization” consists above all in the brutal reappearance of inequality. Over the past few years and perhaps more acutely in recent months, the gaps have been widening between rich and poor, black and white, town and country, powerful and weak. New gaps are also surfacing: between Cubans with access of one sort or another to U.S. dollars and those without, between those who have relatives in Miami and those who don’t, between those with some talent, trade or charm to peddle and those lacking such assets.

The familiar characteristics of Latin American cities now can be seen in Havana: beggars and prostitutes on the streets, delinquents in the more affluent zones and officials or simple citizens shaking down tourists, businessmen and diplomats. Cuba once again looks like Mexico or the Dominican Republic; it never totally ceased to, and it still is not by any means a mirror image of them, but the trend is clear.

How did Cuba manage to escape Latinization in the first place? A simplified but succinct answer can be provided in three parts: First, the revolutionary government for many years was absolutely bent on reducing inequality at whatever cost, no matter how long it took. Second, the government was able to expropriate private wealth and/or eliminate the wealthy, not by killing or jailing them (as in the Soviet Union or China), but by sending them off to Miami. Finally, Cuba found a virtually inexhaustible--though not inexpensive--source of funding to support the first two efforts: the Soviet Union. In exchange for access to Cuba’s geopolitical location, for its ideological alignment and its emblematic alliance, Moscow footed the bill for sending everyone in Cuba to school, giving everyone adequate health care and guaranteeing all a living wage.

Thanks to all of this, the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro achieved something rare for this hemisphere: a significant improvement in the distribution of income, a leveling of opportunities and a reduction of the most odious inequalities. The cost was exorbitant and the trend was probably unsustainable, with or without the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the results were plain to see.

Only one other Latin American nation has built a new social structure upon a historically different base: Puerto Rico.

As a result of a huge transfer of resources from Washington, as well as mass emigration to the U.S. Northeast and the evolution of the rickety American welfare state, by the end of the 1960s, Puerto Rico had become a lower-middle-class society. Obviously, the degree to which this happened was nowhere near the equivalent of the norm in North America or Western Europe; the proportion of the population living in poverty remained high, but it was well below that of the rest of Latin America.

Thus the people of both Antillean isles reached middle-class status--more affluent in the case of Puerto Rico, where, for example, there is almost one car per capita. They enjoyed levels of literacy, secondary education, housing, social security and employment (the latter higher in Cuba) unknown elsewhere in the region.

According to recent calculations, in the best years of the Soviet-Cuban relationship, Moscow accounted for almost 20% of the island’s GDP. By some measures, Washington’s largess reached similar magnitude in Puerto Rico, if one counts everything from direct cash transfers such as food stamps (received by more than half of the population) and welfare to Pell grants and federal tax breaks (an arguable inclusion). In any case, the net inflow of dollars was a key instrument for reducing inequality in Puerto Rico.

Two additional factors counted. The first, of course, is the emigration of almost a quarter of Puerto Rico’s population to the mainland in the 1950s and ‘60s. Thanks to the otherwise ignoble Jones Act from the 1920s, which gave them a limited form of U.S. citizenship, Puerto Ricans were allowed to work legally in the States and to come and go freely--a luxury no other Latin American society has enjoyed. Then, to discourage more from leaving, a nearly full-fledged welfare state was set up in Puerto Rico, offering jobs, health care, education and housing. In tandem with this, lavish tax breaks and other enticements brought a rush of U.S. businesses to the island.

Both Cuba and Puerto Rico made real progress in the struggle against inequality, although at great expense and with ambivalent results on other fronts--for example, human rights in Cuba, the disintegration of a national identity in Puerto Rico.

When the socialist world collapsed and U.S. budgetary policy tightened, the situations on the two islands began to unravel. The Cuban debacle is undoubtedly more dramatic, and the telltale signs of ancestral Latin American inequality are far more unsettling there than in Puerto Rico, where the changes could be more lasting. The main point, however, may lie in what the Cuban and Puerto Rican experiences signify for the rest of the region: that without a huge transfer of resources from abroad, a large migratory outlet and a sustained redistribution of wealth, there is little hope for an enduring reversal of social inequality. Something to ponder in the age of free trade, immigration and drug trafficking.