Clarifying Confusions # 1:   Confusing the Living Standards and Levels between Cuba and Haiti, and Cuba and China in the 1950s.

 

 

 

In the last 20 years of reestablishment of international tourism in Cuba, after a period of more than 30 years of political xenophobia between 1959 and 1990, except for few Soviet bloc advisers, rural and urban guerrillas fighters and dictators in training visitors, some western visitors have appreciated amazed Cuba’s situation with socialism, as better than in Haiti, but not so good than in China today.

 

These two big confusions about Cuba’s socioeconomic, political, cultural and living and health levels profile in the 1950s, comparing it with these very backward countries then, are product of an intentional concealment with loss and distortion of Cuba’s real historic memories and statistics after the socialist revolution, carried out by their leaders.

 

Cuba and Haiti:

 

Cuba and Haiti with similar history before 1492 were very different since 1804 and of course in the 1950s, when the socialist revolution triumphed. Haiti was in 1800 the most successful economy in the Caribbean, and was the first country at the south of the Rio Grande liberated from the second most powerful European metropolis: France, in 1804; while Cuba was less developed then, and the last liberated from the weakest European metropolis: Spain, in 1898. Haiti has maintained underground mainly African primitive institutions practically stationary for more than 200 years. In 1961-1972 and 1990-2010, Haiti has been moving progressively backwards with the smallest gross domestic product (GDP) per-head and living standards of Latin America and the Caribbean, down to its own figure in 1800 of $600 (by Maddison in 1990 International Geary-Khamis dollars). However, Cuba developing modern western institutions from the 1780s until 1957, thanks to the closeness to the US (which developed much more the powerful institutions inherited from Britain), which reached $2406, the 9th GDP per-head in Latin America and Caribbean, quadruplicating its 1800 GDP per-head and living standards, though in the next 34 years of revolution Cuba moved backwards twice in 1959-1974 and 1990-1999 in relation to its 1957 GDP per-head. From 1804 to 1958 waves of Haitians used to work in Cuban oriental provinces sugar cane plantation fields in the months of harvest annually, and even to emigrate in hundreds of thousands. At that period, Cuba was a nation of immigrants from South and Central Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and China, advancing in liberties, longevity, education, health, wealth and living standards, with exceptional emigration overseas and to the USA. Finally, Cuba showed in 1958 high conditions to become a 'Tiger' advancing nation as practically Trinidad & Tobago and Chile have become in the Caribbean and in Latin America.

 

Cuba and China:

 

Pre-Columbus prehistoric Cuban civilizations, and even the advanced Aztec and Incas civilizations in Mexico and Peru, were very primitive in relation to the advanced China from 6000 BC to 1492 AD, but Cuba and most countries of The Americas continued developing while China stagnated before since the 1700s and even after sovietization in 1949. China had in 1949 the world’s poorest GDP per-head $600 by Maddison, literacy, medicine, sanitation, famines, life expectancy at birth (LEB) (38), and highest infantile mortality rate (IMR) (200) by United Nations yearbooks. China secretly transferred its few top western factories to Russia, and could not advance with obsolete Soviet central planning, technology and medicine, and totalitarian socialism under the leadership of Mao Zedong --with the fascist style of Stalin. However, Cuba in 1958 had a 60-year top US style democratic-capitalism, with two 6-year periods of typical Latin American caudillism (warlordism) and corruption, but increasing a world medium-level GDP per-head $2406, equality, top nutrition, and top color-TV, pharmaceutical, building and light industries, tourism, education, sciences, arts, sports, medicine, dentistry, public health, LEB (65) and lowest IMR (32). In 1959, Cuba secretly transferred its top western civil tele-communication and industrial equipments with the ‘know-how’ to the paradoxically backward Russia, a country then with a GDP per-head ($3669), LEB (67) and IMR (57), though with atomic bombs, medium-range missiles, and a Sputnik satellite. Since 1978, China westernized with a totalitarian capitalism, under Den Xiaoping Leadership, with the old fascist style of Mussolini and Hitler, when Mao Zedong died in 1976), and improved its 2006 GDP per-head ($6048), nutrition, education, medicine, LEB (73), IMR (19), and living levels, excepting maintaining a disdain for recognition of overall individual rights and liberties, and their continued violation. Cuba’s intact Soviet totalitarian socialism under Fidel Castro leadership --with a mix of the fascist styles of Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il Sung--, has forced feudal equity progressively at the bottom as in 1750 again, but keeping some Cuba’s good education, medicine, pharmaceutics, health, LEB (78) and IMR (5) trends, at the not advisable highest cost of unrecognized and repressed rights and liberties in absolute captivity; depressed agriculture, industry, GDP per-head ($3214) --inflated with non World Bank methods, unaccepted by the UNDP in 2010 for the calculus of the Human Development Index--, nutrition, urban civilization, and overall living levels.

 

 

 

 

 

Rodolfo J. Stusser, MD.

 

Comment posted in Havana, January 23, 2010; updated in March 25, 2011.