The Deterioration of Life in Cuba

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Tourists who vacation in Cuba rarely get a real glimpse of what daily life is like for the Cuban people. When I refer to "the Cuban people" I'm not talking about the locals they see in hotels, resorts, or restaurants. Those few live privileged lives compared to those who do not, or cannot, take part in Cuba's tourist industry.

When I refer to "the Cuban people" I mean the people who have no choice but to live in Cuba and scrape to make ends meet on the $20-per-month income distributed by the government. Those people are invisible to tourists and might as well be ghosts on an island that is as much a prison to them as any that incarcerates people.

Great effort is made by the Castro government to make the tourist portions of Havana photo-op worthy but that is not the real Havana nor the real Cuba. What tourists see is a manufactured movie set.

If you go behind the facade of those movie sets there are crumbling buildings due to decades of infrastructure neglect; and the infrastructure is not the only thing that is crumbling. The lives of the Cuban people are also crumbling. Most of them are forced to live in a squalor that is the direct result of a failed communist political system that reaps luxury for a few elite and abject poverty for the masses.


Cuba was once the pearl of the Caribbean. As with any country, there was some poverty but it was relatively modest. Cuba's middle class made up an overwhelming percentage of the population due to an economy that was robust. More importantly, the thriving middle class enjoyed something they no longer have - unparalleled upward social mobility.

In the 1950's, Cuba boasted a lower inflation rate than virtually every other country in the world.  Its currency was one of the few that was on par with the U.S. Dollar - one Cuban Peso equalled one American Dollar. Per capita income was greater than the per capita income in Austria or Japan and ranked 5th in the world. Wages were 8th highest in the world. The average daily wage for an agricultural worker exceeded that of workers in France, Belgium, Denmark, or West Germany.

Before Castro, Cuba ranked third in life expectancy; second in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones; first in the number of television sets per inhabitant; and eleventh in the world in the number of doctors per capita.

In 1953, there were more Cadillacs sold in Havana than in New York City.

Today?


Cubans earn a government imposed income of $20 per month regardless of occupation. Markets are empty. Food is rationed. Gasoline, furniture, appliances, and virtually anything that makes life easier is a luxury beyond the means of the people.

Communism has made most Cubans equal - equally impoverished. That is, except for the government elite and ranking members of the Communist Party. In a separate post, I'll delve into their lives as compared to what you're about to see.


This is what life is really like in Cuba post-Castro. And I'm just scratching the surface.

There's lots more to come in future posts.

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