More Than Fifty Years Later, Cubans Are Still Waiting For Liberation Whilst Useful Idiot Westerners Continue To Fall For Potemkin Villages

Cubans trying to defect to the US in a 1951 Chevy truck. Image: Gregory Ewald/ U.S. Coast Guard/ Getty Images

Jana Bakunina

To hear Jeremy Corbyn hail Fidel Castro as a great hero of social justice is to be reminded that those who toast communists are never those who have actually lived under communism. Corbyn has visited Cuba: He might have been taken on a day tour of Havana, where tourists are ushered to buy famous Cuban cigars, replicas of Che Guevara’s hat and postcards with historic revolutionary slogans such as ‘¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!’ On his bicycling tour Corbyn will have doubtless visited the charming colonial towns of Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos, perhaps swam in the Bay of Pigs or conducted a pilgrimage to Castro’s 1950s rebel headquarters in Comandancia de la Plata. It’s easy to be duped by the cheap mojitos, ubiquitous grilled lobster and spit-roasted pig, carefree dancing at casas de la musica and smiling people. After all, most fly to the Caribbean for a vacation, rather than snoop around empty state grocery stores and crumbling buildings. 

When I landed in Havana a few years back, the airline lost my luggage so I went out to a buy a toothbrush. As someone, who was born in the Soviet Union and lived through the empty shelves of Gorbachev’s perestroika, I should have not been surprised to see a large, almost entirely empty store with slabs of soap on the counter and not much else. There weren’t any toothbrushes, and a local guide called Pavel took me to the market where contraband toothbrushes were piled up next to home-grown tomatoes and chilies. As in any country with a command economy, the state shops of Cuba were empty, while the black markets thrived.

Like in any communist state the shops are empty – but the markets are thriving. Image: Jana Bakunina

Pavel, liked many Cubans, had a university degree; he quoted Tolstoy and recited some of Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin by heart. In a free country, such an intellect and education might have propelled him towards a high-flying career – but in Castro’s Cuba he worked as a local fixer for foreign tourist guides. His brother drove package holiday makers to their resorts. His parents, like virtually everyone else in towns on a sightseeing trail, cooked dinners for tourists. Officially, foreigners were supposed to dine in state canteens with unappetising, stale food. Unofficially, every posada was a restaurant where more intrepid travellers squeezed in around the family dining table and feasted on illegally caught lobster, king prawns and fish for $15-$20 a head. The table was always laden with salads made from vegetables grown in the back yard and a traditional dish of rice and beans called moros y cristianos. The Cubans got their rice from the state as part of the monthly ration. As a Russian, I felt very much at home.

Young people I met in Cuba were desperate to get out. In Santiago de Cuba, at the legendary Casa de la Musica, beautiful young men danced salsa with foreign women of all ages and sizes. Their hope was not just to score a drink or two, but ultimately for those women to fall for them, and help them leave Cuba. Young Cuban boys had become so adept in charming travellers, that one middle aged woman in our group decided to stay in Santiago de Cuba (causing much distress to the travel guide). 

Cubans I spoke to didn’t like to talk about politics or life after Castro. In a country with a tradition of arrests and repressions, censorship and isolation it was not surprising. People were proud of their education and healthcare – ‘the best one in South America’ – but the prevailing emotion was frustration. At the time, Castro’s government was midway through a crops-for-doctors barter, sending its troops on a rescue mission after an earthquake somewhere on the continent. There wasn’t much in this for the doctors. If we were to praise Cubans for anything, it would be for their entrepreneurial ingenuity, borne out of necessity.

‘With Cuba and with Fidel we are still fighting’. Image: Jana Bakunina

My memories of Cuba are full of revolutionary slogans, antique American cars (and an odd Lada), music and smiles. But we Russians know a Potemkin economy when we see one. I paid a dollar for every smile I snapped, I gave tips to musicians and ate only at private posadas stuffing myself with lobster to help families earn real money. I listened to romanticised stories of Che Guevara and drank neat rum to celebrate his glory, but when I saw state posters which read ‘Queremos que sean como el Che’ (‘We want to be like Che’), I wondered how many Cubans would have preferred quick death to life in Fidel’s prison. 

The question for people like Corbyn is simple: how closely do they want to look at Cuba? To judge Castro by his intentions, or the results? Cuba certainly is an example to the world: of what happens when you swap one dictatorship for another. Corbyn might ask himself: if it was such a success, why do tens of thousands risk death to migrate to Florida? More than half a century after its revolution, Cuba’s needlessly-impoverished people are still waiting for the liberation – and the liberties – that so many of us take for granted.