Tuesday, March 5, 2013

12/13: Alberto and Lucia

In our single night habitation out in the countryside, I awoke to roosters and people taking turns in the shower. I was thankful that our room had enough square feet to do some early morning stretching and lunges while my roommate Kera was in the shower because while it is truly amazing how many experts and community members we have the opportunity to meet with, much of our time is spent sitting in meetings or on the bus. At this point in my life, I am fortunate to say that is one of the hardest things about adjusting to traveling - finding time and space to try to stay in shape, especially when we are provided with an abundance of pineapple, papaya, eggs, and bread as we were this morning. I myself am not a coffee drinker, but following our late night conversations, a few of us needed a little extra boost to wake up this morning.

Stepping outside before breakfast, though, we discovered it had rained overnight, so the red earth was still moist and we made some impressions as a few of us ventured out to see a little more of the grounds where we were staying. Check out this classic car and the structures built to shelter the vehicles!

I was just in awe of how beautifully the light penetrated our condensed bus windows and crept over the pavilion.

Betsy, our interpreter, studying some vocabulary for the days ahead of us.

The backside of the sleeping quarters.

As we waited for our group to become a quorum, Diego went over to see the pigs on this tract getting their breakfast, and after their din subsided, we learned this is a fairly new sty. Farmers can enter into an agreement with the state to be provided with the pig, the feed, and other materials, and when it is time for slaughter, that is the state's responsibility, as is determining where the meat and other products should go. I am still unclear on details beyond that, but as far as I could determine, it seemed cows and pigs at least are entrusted to farmers but still owned by the state and part of the system to feed the people, and other farm animals such as chickens can be individual property to raise and slaughter as farmers wish.

We would see more of how Cubans live in this gloriously peaceful rural area as we traveled by foot to visit a tobacco farmer! It is amazing to see firsthand how Cubans have adapted to the lack of access to materials we may typically see on farms in the U.S. or believe to be necessary, but Cuba has come up with some serious innovations in terms of sustainability and productivity. We are seeing some of the results of years of struggle for Cuba to feed its people, as a country investing in its own food production system with few resources takes creativity and time.

For example, it takes time for cacti to grow, but when the particular breed below does, it can replace the need for barbed wire and function as a property fence to keep animals in. How amazing is that.

A neighbor's chickens and pig pecking, snuffling, and coexisting.

It's unfortunately a little hard to see, but the farmer had to duck to scoot under the tree branches from his perch on the logs. We also made way for these incredible beasts.

A bovine beauty modeling for me.

Gracefully draped in a cloud layer, a tobacco drying shed, much like the one we would tour later.

 I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to capture this picturesque pond in perfect stillness, inviting a lone white horse to quench its thirst.

Much of Cuba's agriculture has turned to more traditional methods, such as plowing with oxen (Photo credit to Bob).

After passing a house where one of the inhabitants was filling the silence with Afro-Cuban vocals, we came upon a younger farmer working on malanga close to our path. He took a break to ask, "¿De qué país son?" Where are you from? "Los estados unidos." The United States. "Pero son los buenos... La política es una cosa, pero el pueblo es otra." But you are good ones... Politics are one thing, and the people are another. Everywhere we turn, Cubans recognize we are in a political mess but do not judge us for that but acknowledge our humanity. Somos un solo pueblo, we are all one people.

We came upon our intended farm destination, and in between plots of tobacco (one below), we met one of the farmer's son and another worker who was really in touch with the earth - shoeless.

Alberto is the farmer who invited us into his home, a nice house for the Cuban countryside. Many of the houses built pre-Revolution perhaps need some renovations, but the original structures that date back to the earlier part of this century are evidence of the wealth of the old sugar elite. Some of Alberto's sheds and equipment are run down, but he is thankful to be a part of a cooperativo, a cooperative that has an agreement with the government to sell a production quota to the government in exchange for access to equipment and other production inputs. He is 70 years old but will not retire. This is his life, and he just lit up talking to us about it.  

Alberto started off by explaining how he and his two sons work their 50 caballerías, and first we had to figure out, through interpretation by Betsy, how this local measurement converted to how we would normally size out farms. We learned there are roughly 13 hectares per caballería and 2.5 acres per hectare, so if we did all the conversions and interpretations correctly, his family works about 1600 acres.

They primarily produce tabaco (tobacco), but they also have land that they can use for corn, beans, rice, fruits, and sugarcane, as well as food for the animals. Unlike food production, tobacco has great value, and all tobacco production belongs to the state, so Alberto's family can sell all the tobacco they produce, even beyond the desired quota, to the state for the same price. In the case of this crop, price depends on quality of the product, so there is no set fixed price, but there are guaranteed maximum and minimum prices tobacco farmers could receive for their product. Therefore, these tobacco farmers are also able to earn more by producing more and producing better products.

Some farmers in their cooperative also have agreements with the state to produce beans, and going over the quota means being able to sell the extra at a farmer's market. In the case of rice, that crop here is primarily grown for family consumption and any extra can be sold at the market. At least in this area, there seems to be enough to go around, and there are plenty of resources and space to cultivate fruit trees for the family and community.

We had endless questions for Alberto, one being the incentive for entering into a cooperative. Today's Cuba is quite different than a system of communal production we may picture for a communist or socialist system, as farmers here work individually but receive significant support from the state. Every co-op receives a technician to help with production and techniques, the state takes care of the agreement with the bank for credit so the farmers just have to focus on growing, and the state also provides all resources for production - oil, equipment, necessary chemicals (tobacco is basically the only thing grown in Cuba that still requires chemicals), etc. Sounds like a pretty good deal! 

Given his age, Alberto has the wisdom of living through capitalism and the transition to socialism, so he was able to give us his candid, comparative perspective. His father was a gran productor de tabaco, a great producer of tobacco, and Alberto was the only one out of 12 kids who wanted to stay and work the land because he liked it. Before the Agrarian Reform in the 1960's, the intended equitable redistribution of land that is one of the fundamental goals of socialism and often extraordinarily difficult to pull off, farmers had to rent the land from larger landowners, but now Alberto owns his land and property and will be able to transition them to his sons if they want to keep working the land. Especially as the government is trying to encourage more of its people to head to the countryside to work in food production, other families were given a portion of land by the state.

Alberto told us he would like for his children to have the best of the future, and if they are interested and want to work the land, they can survive and live well like this. He added that he was already a grownup at the time of the Revolution, and knew life under the capitalist system when things were very hard. In those days, there was in fact a limit on what his dad could produce. There was not an association that bought the tobacco, and if you produced extra tobacco, you cannot eat it, so what would you do with the extra? Tobacco farmers who had more tobacco to sell were taken advantage of and given hardly anything for their efforts.

Further expanding on economic justice, he added, "In many capitalist places, the lowest taxes are for those who have the most... Here there are more taxes for those who have more." Alberto has seen not only Cuba's transition from capitalism to socialism, but also he knows about our system because Cubans, rural farmers included, are in general educated and aware of what is going on in the world, especially in their giant neighbor to the north. "Socialism is not the same as it was in the '60s," he said, and the system has evolved a lot since then, but he has faith that the main interest of socialismo is the bienestar del pueblo, the wellbeing of the people.

Another example he gave about the state caring for its people was when hurricanes struck this region five years ago. Two, the first being Hurricane Gustav, hit eleven days apart. "The second one didn't have anything to do because the first one did everything already!" A lot of houses and trees were destroyed, and he felt blessed that this house only lost part of the roof while there were many other lost roofs in the area... "Gracias a Dios," "Thanks to God," everyone had shelter so they did not lose anyone like they did due to Hurricane Sandy. The state tried to advise people to take precautions and evacuate, but many were stubborn and did not move. Everybody in Pinar del Rio were able to recover thanks to the government, and while they were fortunate that most of the year's production had already been sold, if a disaster does kill crops, farmers are still assured of their minimum salaries for the year.

Our group also asked him if over the years he has noticed cambios del clima, changes in climate, and therefore had to change cultivation methods accordingly. Alberto affirmed that in Cuba you can see it. It used to be completely dry in November before the rainy season, but now the rains do not come until mid-December and Cuba is in drought-status. At this point, as we were in Cuba in mid-December, they should have already had a lot of rain. The rains are hitting Florida, but not Cuba. Cubans can fortunately keep the same planting schedule because they can depend on irrigation to compensate. Drinking water here comes from un poso terrano, an underground well, dug by the state with the necessary machinery, and irrigation comes from lagos artificiales, artificial lakes (aka reservoirs) that the state made to get water to each necessary location. Some areas can irrigate with gravity, but most of Alberto's land is higher so an electric engine is required, but the state takes care of that.

The most noticeable effect of climate change that farmers are concerned about is the rise of global temperatures. Here in Pinar del Rio, temperatures (forgive me for using Celsius because that is how Alberto explained) used to not get hotter than 20C in the summer and now the highs surpass 30 in the winter. This of course affects certain kinds of crops, namely beans. If the temperature goes above 26, beans do not flower, which is a problem now because even in the winter there are sustained temperatures over 26. It helps that Pinar del Rio will still cool to 20 overnight, but if temperatures continue to rise, this region will no longer be able to produce this staple crop. This man has lived climate change. His life is living proof of the climate changes already happening and direction our world is headed.

This is just a wonderful photo of our new friend. (Photo credit to Bob). While his grandson had been running in and out of the house and playing outside for most of our time, in the middle of the talk, he took Alberto's cap and ran off to the next room with it. We assumed he did not want his grandpa wearing a hat, but he came back with a newer one that says CUBA on the front to replace the tattered green hat he ran off with. He just dolled up his grandpa for us. Elise also asked him if he wanted to be a farmer like his dad and grandpa, and he said "Yes, but I need to study first." This kid has his priorities!


For more on the actual topic of tobacco, while we pointed out in our country tobacco demand has decreased because of the associated health risks and public awareness, here in Cuba Alberto says there is still plenty of demand. There are health warnings here too, but the key is the tobacco is also good quality. It is your decision if you want to smoke, he added. He himself used to smoke but he quit "a while ago..." which turned out to be 30 years!

His tobacco is for both cigars and cigarettes because he plants different kinds of leaves. They use both organic and chemical fertilizers, and as I have previously mentioned, tobacco is really the only agricultural product in Cuba that still requires some chemicals. Alberto says his farm does not rest the field but they do crop rotation from tobacco to corn, which takes up the rest of the leftover fertilizer and cleans the soil, resulting in basically a fresh field for the next tobacco crop. It is a pretty finicky plant, so he spent a great deal of time talking us through the steps from seedling to finished product.

Seedlings are first grown in the greenhouse and then in the drying shed to be sheltered from sun, wind, and rain and to grow strong. Then when they are ready, they are to be transplanted in the field. Following harvest, the sun can burn the leaves, and the night humidity can harm quality, so they dry leaves on poles inside the drying workshop, where we went inside (see photos below). At the height of the harvest, the leaves cover the poles going all the way up to the ceiling and sometimes even fill the walkway that goes through the shed! 

Here Alberto shows us how he starts climbing all the way up the rungs to hang the poles of drying tobacco leaves.

As Alberto explains here, tobacco production here is also a community effort: as only one of his sons likes to do tobacco, at harvest time three to four people from the neighborhood come and cut the leaves by hand. The surrounding farms also produce tobacco in addition to other fruits and vegetables, so they help each other out with labor and giving away extra bounty. They were so generous to give us all starfruits to taste and munch on inside the drying shed too (here Betsy is holding one).

As we said our heartfelt thanks and headed on our way, Alberto's son who was not the fan of tobacco production also walked with us, explaining that he has emphysema so the chemicals and tobacco air are bad for him. He still wants to farm because he "loves natural things," and emphasized we need to take care of our world. He asked us if we like mangoes, and though we had to head back for lunch, we got detoured for even more wonderful generosity. We were invited into his home to try mango pulp - no water, just pure, concentrated mango. I for one love mango flavored anything, and it was amazing to taste how this pulp was so unbelievably rich and thick.

Alberto's son and his wife tried to feed us more, but we really had to be going. There seems to be just a spirit of generosity as the norm here. Alberto had even sent Betsy with an entire bag of starfruits because she had never had them before! I have been fortunate in my own life to see this kind of generosity from my wonderful rural Iowan family as people who produce food want to share it so that all produce may be consumed and all may be fed.

 Speaking of feeding the people, after our own lunch of beans and rice, tuna, salad, yucca, and more mango for dessert, we shipped out and quickly learned our bus had picked up a couple more passengers: Ariel and Chino had each purchased a pig to take back to Havana for their families' roast for the new year!

During lunch my table also got into some pretty deep topics, such as our own religious upbringings contextualized in all the exposure and cultural understanding we are gaining in Cuba. Diego who was raised Catholic noted the comfort in being able to attend a Catholic service anywhere in the world and resting in a sense of familiarity, but Cuba is like nowhere else he has ever been because santería has such a foothold in society. Talking about Catholicism in reference to the Revolution, many churchgoing folks got involved one way or the other, but after the Triumph of the Revolution and the transition to atheist communism, Catholics, other religious practitioners, homosexuals, etc. were either put to work or left the county. The papacy was much more conservative in those days as well, so it, along with our CIA, spread propaganda that the communists were going to take people's children and send them to the USSR to work. This of course sent especially Catholic Cuban families from uncertainty to greater fear, so many sent their children out of the country expecting to be reunited with them later. 14,000 Cuban children ended up in Miami through the CIA's Operation Peter Pan and to be placed with families around the country, and most were never reunited with their families, which caused some pretty awful heartache on the island. This program is just another part of the US' legacy with Cuba.

One measure on Cuba's side that is working to make progress on our countries' relationship which we also discussed is the travel ban on their end. The Cuban government did used to restrict its citizens from leaving the country, but at this point what is needed is a population mind shift. The government is not preventing them from traveling, but money might. There are two "new" laws starting in January (I use quotation marks because they are merely codifying current practices): the first, Cuban citizens just need money to pay their government for permission to travel (which basically everyone should be able to get) and then have to see if they get visa permission from another country to enter, and the second, Cuban citizens will be allowed to stay abroad for up to two years (it used to be that if a Cuban citizen stayed outside the country for over 11 months they would be considered an immigrant upon return, which made it tricky if they got a year-long job abroad...).

So as Cuba was taking steps to make it easier for its people to explore more of the world, our group from the U.S. reveled in our unique adventure in the only country to which travel is limited by our government. We bounced around on the bus, taking in solar rays, pastels of towns we passed, and varied greenery of the surrounding forests. In the middle of our return voyage to Havana, we took a bathroom break at a tourist stop decked out with fresh flowers inside the stalls and on the sinks. Some of our crew partook in fresh juice sold at the bar, and others of us went inside the little store for some snacks. If we were in Cuba a little longer I could have justified purchasing a tub of guava paste, but I would not be able to finish it before leaving the country. The cheese puffs Diego bought unwittingly turned into the bus ride amusement upon boarding (I do not want to potentially embarrass them if they would be embarrassed...) as somebody pointed out the connection between their phallic shape and the name on the package: "Gallitos de queso," "Cheese roosters." I'll leave the rest of the joke deciphering to you, my dear readers.

Anyways... entering the Ciudad de la Habana from the outskirts, we saw new apartment buildings under construction with workers crawling all over them. Apparently "work brigades" build new housing, which function as state-salaried jobs for these workers, and once the building is completed, the workers decide who of them can move in. This could create some serious uncertainty for families affected by Havana's housing crunch, but the general understanding is the new housing is distributed based on need and seniority in the brigades. There is a lot more to learn about the Cuban housing subject, but that was where our discussion ended for the time being. We were also enjoying a rare rain as we made our way back to the MLKC.

After some time to freshen up, I enjoyed learning a little more about our wonderful Cuban facilitator, Ariel, at dinner. Outside of his work at the MLKC, his main identity is actually a private carpenter. This profession was granted state approval in 1994 as the government enacted limited economic liberalization measures to bring in some more revenue during the rough years of the 90's, including allowing some private businesses and professions. Ariel got his license to fix people's woodwork in 2000 at a time when not many licenses were granted because the government did not want many people of the same profession in the same area competing. The people who can afford to commission Ariel are typically those with access to CUC, including many foreign clients. His clients are his prime breadwinner, and he actually loses money working at the King Center, but he loves it so he continues to do it - and are we thankful he does!

While we did not have many scheduled delegation events at night, tonight was one exception: we were to see a movie in the comforts of our King Center classroom with a few special guests. The film was Lucia, which once it started, I realized I had seen in my Cuban Politics seminar! No harm in seeing it again, but we were pretty punchy from an already long day and bus ride, and while powerful, Lucia is a pretty strange (and in some parts disturbing) film. I will tell you to see it yourself and not give too much away, but it has three sections focused on a different woman named Lucia. The first is set in the days of Cuba's war for independence against Spain, the second in the 1930's, and the third in the early 1960's. It dramatizes the role of women through love, objectification, and their place in society, and we were especially looking at the strides socialist Cuba has made in terms of gender equality, specifically through access to education as a vehicle for empowerment.

We certainly got to hear from some empowered women when in Cuba, and tonight's special guests were a group of female popular educators. Two of them went from Havana into the countryside on literacy campaigns in the first couple of years of the Revolution. For quick background about the literacy campaigns, students in the cities were sent out to the countryside to not only teach reading and writing, but in the popular education model, they learned as well. By day they learned how to work the farm and do chores, and they would teach the farm family they stayed with reading and writing. The Revolution specifically targeted rural illiteracy and lack of access to schools, and their efforts definitely paid off because in the first three years of the Revolution, the functional literacy rate jumped from about 60 percent to 96 percent. This format was such a success that it has been exported principally to other Latin American nations but also to other developing countries for sweeping literacy campaigns to democratize education access.

One woman had studied here in the capitol and had already graduated as a teacher but did not yet have work, so when she got the call (at age 18, mind you, but the literacy brigades included students as young as 12!), off she went. She recounted the challenges of seeing couples affected by chauvinism where the women were not allowed to learn and just did chores because they wanted to avoid problems with their husbands. Many fathers of teenage girls did not want young men in their homes. And though the government sent personnel to the villages to check on teachers and try to ensure respect from the farmers for the teachers, there were some scary incidents such as sexual violence within the homes, which may have been kept very hush-hush. It is still one thing to change the law and push initiatives such as these campaigns, and it is another thing to change society.

And many people simply did not understand the purpose of the campaign beyond literacy. The phases of the program were first teach people to read and write in people's homes in rural areas without access to schools, second to try to ensure everyone had finished schooling through sixth grade, and then to make brick-and-mortar schools available for all. The purpose of these literacy brigades was to educate all, and the government approached this goal in waves. If a rural family was composed of two parents and children, for example, the teacher staying in their home would teach the entire family until a school was built. Once the public school had been established in the area, the children would then in turn go to class during the day and continue teaching their parents at night.

Beyond the functional applicability of literacy and empowerment through that skill, these women talked about how the literacy campaign connected the whole country - especially at a time when mainly wealthier Cubans were leaving the country, Cuba had to be united as one people. Some even stayed and continued teaching work in the zone they had been sent to, such as one of our guests who stayed, got married, lived there for fifteen years, and had children there before going back to the city when her children were adolescents. Another woman represented the majority of teachers who were very young at the outset of the program, so when they returned in vast numbers at the end of their service, the state organized vehicles and Fidel received them at the Revolution Square.

Beyond this 1968 film and the incredible stories from the work of these women in the early 1960's, the Cuban government has recognized there is a need to address gender stereotypes that still exist in society. After the mid-70's, Fidel and his cohort realized Cuba had a deficit of secondary school, so they started another campaign, this time including material on machismo and other gender stereotypes. I have already touched on the successes of these literacy campaigns evidenced in statistics and gender equality initiatives on paper, but of course individuals can only speak to their life experiences and how law and government campaigns play out in practice.

To cap off a great night, we took a group photo!

Until next time, ¡hasta la próxima entrada!