ILLUMINATIONS: Cuba’s Fate and Ours
PART 1: From Survivor to Savior?
By Philip S. Wenz
July 1, 2003
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click image for a larger view
Havana's Malecon (seaside roadway) and hotel
district as seen from the old Spanish fort across the harbor.
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Two weeks after returning to Berkeley from Havana, I phoned one
of my closest friends in New Mexico. I had promised to call her
before I told too many people about my Cuban experience so she could
get the undistilled version. In truth I was, and still am, processing,
processing . . . what had I seen and what did it mean?
Since my return, I had already made the accidental acquaintance
of several people who overheard me describing Cuba to others. I
bumped into a friend while in line at my bank, for example, and
expressed my enthusiasm for Cuba, its people and its system. We
suddenly found ourselves in a three-way conversation with a stranger
behind us who said that her trip to the island had transformed her.
Cuba transformed others I met–a new face in my Yoga class;
the daughter of some friends who had just returned from a Harvard
University program there; others who went with their eyes open and
returned with their minds blown.
I explained to my friend in New Mexico that going to Cuba was not
like going to Italy, France or Brazil–anywhere else, really.
"It’s beautiful," I said, "with its own beauty
that rivals any other place I've been–Hawaii, the Grand Canyon,
Italy.
click image for a larger view
A "typical" country home in the Pinar
Del Rio district where the Global Exchange delegates walked.
Note the thatched roof of local grasses and the solar actuated
wet laundry processor in the front yard.
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"But that’s only part of it. What really impressed, and
somewhat surprised me was the people. They are happy and healthy
and balanced and strong. The condition of the people is my test
for how well the system works. I can definitely tell you that the
system works just fine, that the Revolution, as they call it, that
ongoing social and cultural process which is their total expression
as a people, is nurturing and strong and far from being on the verge
of collapse. All that doomsday stuff you hear outside of Cuba, especially
in the US media, is bunk.
"These are not people who hang their heads and drag themselves
under gray, Orwellian skies to some sterile office to do the bidding
of faceless bureaucrats whom the hate. The Cuban people have dignity
and a respect for others and their surroundings that goes hand in
hand with self-respect. Everybody, even those who in the US would
be considered the lowest of workers, has dignity, because they have
never learned that they are "inferior." The whole idea of class
is strange to them. The Cubans are functional, connected, social
and egalitarian in ways that we in the US can barely understand.
Most of them are enthusiastic participants in their collective,
life-long, generation-spanning experiment. All will be the first
to tell you that the Revolution is not perfect, but it is their
Revolution.
"But, you know," I said, the illumination I had been
struggling to express since my return finally dawning, "there
is something more, much more to my experience than just learning
about Cuba. It’s coming to grips with what that learning represents.
What’s true about Cuba is that it offers hope. Cuba is a successful
socialist experiment, not a dreary Soviet failure or a Chinese totalitarian
ant hill (if we can believe anything we’ve heard about China).
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There is a saying in Cuba
that tonight 20 million
children on this planet
will miss their dinner and
sleep in the streets–and
not one of them is Cuban.
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"The hope that Cuba holds for the world, and its "threat"
to the US, is that there can be–there is–a society that
takes care of its people. It doesn’t oppress them, it meets
their needs–and in a fairly non-intrusive way. Everyone is
fed, clothed, housed, given the best medical care in the world*–these
things are guaranteed to every man, woman and child and, two generations
after the "Triumph of the Revolution," are taken for granted
as a normal and natural part of life. There is a saying in Cuba
that tonight 20 million children on this planet will miss their
dinner and sleep in the streets–and not one of them is Cuban.
Despite a severe US trade embargo, Cuba is doing well."
Before I left for Cuba my hope for the world was . . . diminished.
The US is moving in the opposite direction from Cuba’s Revolution,
doing less and less for its people, concentrating more and more
of its wealth in the hands of the rich, rushing at breakneck speed
toward oligarchy. If we do not destroy the planet in an single nuclear
conflagration, will surely do so through environmental devastation,
and soon. We represent four percent of the world’s population
and consume thirty-five percent of its resources.
I left for Cuba just when it was becoming clear, as I had predicted
in an earlier article
in ECOTECTURE, that the US would become bogged down for years in
Iraq, killing people, being killed; when Pacific island nations
were making contingency evacuation plans against rising sea levels
caused by global warming; and when there was a bumper crop of SUVs
sold at home. The best I could hope for was forestalling the current
US administration’s disastrous policies and that the good people
of America would someday wake up. A reversal of current trends in
the direction of sustainable development seemed as distant a dream
as Thomas Moore’s Utopia. (Or Earnest Callenbach’s
Ecotopia, a novel that takes place in the independent country
of NORTHERN CALIFORNIA after it secedes from the US).
By the time the special
period was over in the
late 1990s, Cuba was
feeding herself –
organically, sustainably,
without pesticides or
much mechanization.
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If, before I went to Cuba, someone had asked me what I expected
to find there, the last thing I would have said was "hope."
I wanted to go, initially, because several years ago a student in
my Principles of Ecological Design course at the San
Francisco Institute of Architecture brought in a movie
about Cuba’s organic agricultural revolution. When the Soviet
Union collapsed in 1989, and Cuba was suddenly left without the
support of its "parent" communist country, it was predicted
by the world community that the island’s populace would starve.
Instead, under the steadfast leadership of Fidel Castro who told
the Cubans that a "strong and brave" people would never
return to "slavery," the Cubans tightened their belts,
literally, and entered the "special period," a euphemism
for what amounted to an economic depression. By the time the special
period was over in the late 1990s, Cuba was feeding herself–organically,
sustainably, without pesticides or much mechanization. I was fascinated,
and vowed to someday visit the island and see this "green revolution"
for myself.
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A delegate at the Fourth International Conference
on Ecology and Sustainable Development. (Actually, a medical
student performing a dance from Peru, his native country,
at the Conference's closing ceremony. Cuba trains several
hundred foreign medical students from foreign countries for
free each year. The only requirement is that, after graduating
and becoming doctors, the students return to their native
lands and villages and work among the poor for six years.)
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That opportunity came this year when the San Francisco based NGO
Global
Exchange organized an educational trip to Cuba which
included attendance at the Fourth International Conference on Ecology
and Sustainable Development, hosted by the Cuban government, and
related field trips to various sustainable development sites. I
went to investigate Cuba’s sustainable development programs,
and this series of articles are a chronicle of that trip.
But to my surprise, I saw much more than solar panels and urban
organic gardens. I saw the system that made these things possible
and made them available to the people, indeed made them a project
of, for and by the people. Cuba’s green revolution is an extension
of its socialist revolution. One could not exist without the other.
Both were born of necessity, arising in separate crucial periods
of that former Spanish, American and, economically, Russian colony’s
quest for its own, self-sufficient identity.
The tenacity of Cuba’s social revolution, just now coming
to fruition after two generations, has illuminated a path toward
independence, socialism and, yes, democracy**
for all Latin America. Castro himself has said that violent revolution
is a thing of the past. But democratic social change pressed, pressed
by the great mass of people will slowly blossom throughout Latin
America, in no small measure inspired by Cuba. Whether this change
is violent or peaceful will depend more on the United States and
its acceptance of the natural course of history than on the Latin
people themselves. Obviously they will prefer that their homelands
not be ravaged by war, but if they must defend themselves they will.
If there is sufficient disclosure to the US public about the nature
of their development–rather than a hyped-up media campaign
about terrorism and drugs–the Latin nations will be able to
build without first destroying.
The short version of what
followed is that Cuba opted
for sustainable development
as the way out of its crisis
and into a promising future.
It was that decision that
positioned Cuba to be the
light not just of the
developing world, but,
potentially, of all the world.
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What will they build? Born of Cuba’s socialist Revolution
was its green revolution. In 1987, the World Commission on Environment
and Development (also known as the Brundtland Commission after its
Norwegian chairman) formalized and promoted the idea of "sustainable
development," which term had been bandied about for the previous
decade or so, in its famous report "Our Common Future."
In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba was at a crossroads.
The short version of what followed is that Cuba opted for sustainable
development as the way out of its crisis and into a promising future.
It was that decision that positioned Cuba to be the light not just
of the developing world***, but, potentially,
of all the world.
Why such a bold claim? One of the many problems facing ecological
designers or promoters of sustainable development is that of non-integrated,
piecemeal implementation of solutions–here a solar house, there
a campus with a bioremediation pond. But, with the exception of
a few private homes and farms belonging to dedicated practitioners,
where can we find integrated systems with completed loops wherein
the waste product of one process becomes the energizer of the next–systems
that mimic natural ecosystems?
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Instead of just writing and
thinking about a sustainable
world, we could build one.
Cuba’s doing it, little Cuba
with hardly any money,
just grit, intelligence and
the will to survive through
right livelihood.
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The entire nation of Cuba is moving, albeit slowly, but at lightening
speed compared to most of the rest of the world, toward an integrated,
managed sustainable ECO ...logy ...nomy ...culture. It helps that
Cuba is an island. It can to some extent be isolated from the problems
of other, badly developed or developing countries. (Not, unfortunately,
from the effects of global warming, or from all the crap the US
is spewing out of the mouth of the Mississippi River into the Caribbean.)
It also helps that Cuba has a centralized, socialist government
so that integrated planning is possible. By contrast, think of the
underlying contradiction of the objectives of the US Department
of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation and
the Environmental Protection Agency.
Because she sees sustainable development as the key to her future,
Cuba has made impressive efforts to educate her people about the
interconnections between the ecosystem which supports them and their
own welfare and well being. The country has also taken tremendous
strides toward building a sustainable system, starting, of course,
with the basics–feeding itself with organically grown, pesticide
free natural products; reducing its dependency on the monoculture
of sugar; developing alternative energy production capacity; eliminating
energy waste both through conservation measures and by producing
electricity where it is needed, locally and by diverse means, and
eliminating line voltage drop and grid disturbances; seriously reforesting–Cuba
has doubled its forested area from 14 to 28 percent of its land
area in two decades; conserving wetlands and other wildlife reserves;
and promoting sustainable and bioregional architecture.
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click image for a larger view
The entrance sign at a hatchery for an endangered
species of crocodiles near the Zapata wetlands reserve (proximate
to the Bay of Pigs) declares that the restoration effort is
an "Idea of the Revolution."
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But beyond all that, and the reason I think that Cuba has a real
shot at "getting it together" in a way that could serve
as a model for the entire planet, is the potential for developing
a nation-wide, integrated system wherein, for example, the waste
from the harvest is used to make biofuel (already underway) which
in turn is used to drive hammers for rammed earth construction (not
yet underway that I saw). The possibility is mind boggling. Instead
of just writing and thinking about a sustainable world, we could
build one. Cuba’s doing it, little Cuba with hardly any money,
just grit, intelligence and the will to survive through right livelihood.
Cuba Series
In the upcoming articles in this series I will describe what I
saw in Cuba–mostly in the way of sustainable development programs
and installations but also, to a lesser extent, the people and their
culture–their Revolution–because the two cannot be separated.
Our group of 60 or so Global Exchange "delegates" spent
several days touring sustainable installations in Havana and, of
course, attending the Conference there.
After that, many of us stayed on to join a remarkable individual
named John Francis as he walked across part of the island on a mission
to promote international peace and understanding (Planetwalk).
We walked until our feet hurt, but we also stopped at biosphere
nature reserves, solar powered rural schools and medical clinics,
a crocodile hatchery, a tiny nature museum and charming rivers and
farms. ECOTECTURE invites those of you who could not join our Cuban
adventure to join us virtually.
Footnotes
*Cuba’s medical system is on a par
with those of the US and Europe, technically, but far more advanced
in its preventative medicine, the use of natural medications and,
of course, universal health care. Cuba has twice as many doctors
(not nurse-practitioners, doctors) per capita as does the US. To
my knowledge, none of them drive fancy cars or live in big houses
or rely on status symbols to convince themselves or others of their
relative worth. Like everyone else in Cuba, they make a living–by
taking care of people, as it happens. God, the place is refreshing.
RETURN to * in article
**The recent international flap over Cuba’s arrest of "dissidents,"
execution of hijackers, etc., has helped create the image of a paranoid
dictatorship with no freedom of the press or individual rights.
While this picture is far from true, ECOTECTURE is not the appropriate
venue for an in-depth discussion of Cuba’s complex political
situation. I have written an article on the dissidents and have
references to many other resources on Cuba’s internal politics
and international relations. I will gladly make this information
available to anyone who sends me an email. RETURN
to ** in article
***In its recently adopted constitution, ratified by almost 90%
of the voters (the populace, that is, not "representatives"),
Venezuela included as a fundamental right that of living in a clean
environment. It also made sustainable development a national goal.
The extent to which these measures were influenced by Cuba’s
green revolution is unknown to me at this time, but it seems likely
that there is a connection. Further research into Venezuela’s
sustainable development laws and programs will be undertaken by
ECOTECTURE. RETURN to ***
in article
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