Cuba Building Socialism -- One More Time Reforms?

Even as many other Communist countries are experimenting with economic reforms of one kind or another, Cuba has chosen to move in precisely the opposite direction. Within the past year Fidel Castro has pulled the plug on the country's once-thriving system of free-market farmers' stands and a program that allowed Cubans to build, buy and sell private homes on the open market, two of the touches of capitalism that he has permitted to take root in 28 years of rule. TIME Correspondent Laura Lopez visited Cuba with an American delegation from Indianapolis, host city for this year's Pan American Games, in which Cuban athletes will compete. Her report:

It was barely 8 on a Saturday morning, one of the two weekend days each month that Cubans are required to show up for work. The downtown Havana bus stop was already crowded. A foreign visitor buying a newspaper at a nearby stand offered a dollar bill to the vendor, a wizened and near blind old man. He eagerly accepted it and carefully counted the change in Cuban centavos. Moments later, a policeman, obviously summoned by the crowd, was glaring sternly at the vendor. Dollar transactions are not allowed in Cuba, an onlooker explained. The old man ruefully handed the greenback to the visitor.

As recently as a year ago that bit of finagling might have gone unnoticed. For a time, beginning in the late '70s, the Havana government tolerated financial freewheeling on a modest scale, and Cubans grew accustomed to it. Moonlighting for extra income became commonplace among Cubans with skills in plumbing, shoe cobbling, auto repair and other personal services given short shrift by the centralized economy. Homebuilding turned into a lively cottage industry that helped ease the island nation's chronic housing shortage and rewarded the handy. Faring best of all were the country's farmers, who were allowed to sell items produced in excess of government quotas on the open market. "Some farmers became millionaires," says TV Commentator Roberto Agudo. "They began to think of nothing but acquiring things."

That was clearly not Castro's intention. Complaining that too many Cubans were committing the sin of "trying to get rich individually," he launched a crackdown. He ordered the farmers' stands replaced by state-run enterprises that sometimes charge lower prices but, consumers now complain, offer much less variety. The new rules for dwellings did not preclude Cubans who want to profit from buying and selling their own homes. But in an effort to end the speculation that had begun creeping into the market, homeowners are now allowed to sell only to the government -- at its price. "The glories of the revolution are not based on money," Castro told the Third Party Congress in February 1986. Cuba's new slogan, Castro said, would be "Now we are going to build socialism."

Cynics were quick to ask what the country has been doing since he first made that vow at the outset of the Cuban revolution. Indeed, many of the problems facing Cuba have a distinctly familiar ring. World prices are sorely depressed for its two leading hard-currency earners, oil from the Soviet Union, which it exports on the spot market, and sugar. Moreover, bad weather has damaged the sugar crop; in recent years Cuba has been forced to buy shipments from other countries to meet its sugar-export quotas to the Soviet bloc. The resultant drop in foreign earnings is in part responsible for the anticapitalism moves. Cuba simply cannot afford to spend much on imported goods for consumers with expendable income.

The local press carries little news of the Soviet Union's experimentation with freer markets and economic incentives. Members of Cuba's elite who are aware of the Soviet reforms nonetheless defend Castro's path. The farmers' markets, insists Enrique Capetillo Llana, an editor of the popular magazine Bohemia, "were too capitalistic." Ordinary Cubans have reacted to the new austerity with the indifference born of previous zigzags by Castro -- and with occasional spurts of defiance. Demand for underground home videocassette recorders, for example, has remained so strong that the government has tried to offset it by opening a series of VCR salons for public use.

Castro's second build-up campaign is aimed at the Cuban physique. At 60, the Cuban leader is on a health jag, exhorting his people to exercise regularly, participate in sports and shed unnecessary weight. Two years ago, to establish his credibility in an antismoking campaign, Castro gave up his trademark cigars. But the results of the health campaign have been mixed. Officials claim that tobacco consumption dropped 23% in the campaign's first year, but not all Cubans have become converts to clean living. On the compulsory Saturday workday, a foursome of male goldbrickers sharing a bottle of bootleg rum on a Havana side street snorted at the thought of regular workouts. Referring to a well-publicized campaign aimed at older men, one scoffed, "Exercise is for grandfathers."

Castro put in one appearance during the visit of the Indianapolis delegation. Asked whether he planned to go to the games himself, the Cuban leader made light of the commotion his attendance would cause. Glancing at Indianapolis Police Chief Paul A. Annee, Castro deadpanned, "I think it would multiply his work."

In fact, Castro is well aware that relations between Cuba and the U.S. | remain far too icy for him to expect an invitation. Washington has not even decided whether Cuba's athletes will be allowed to travel to Indianapolis on a Cuban airliner, which would technically violate a 27-year-old U.S. boycott on commerce with Havana. However, Castro knows that, as host of the games in 1991, Cuba will be in a position to handle any protocol complaints with a certain reciprocity.