Tremenda guayaba, fidel!

All evidence to the contrary, fidel castro will take to the airwaves once again this week to tell the Cuban people that everything is hunky-dory. There will be no more blackouts, the Cuban peso is being re-valued (again), rice cookers are on their way and official opinion polls show that out of 28,000 surveyed only 253 had anything bad to say about their maximo lider. Cubans will be glued to their sets this coming Thursday:

“It’s been a long time since we’ve heard any good news. Let’s just hope its all true,” said one Havana City postal worker as he hopped on the #190 bus heading home after making his rounds.

“Let’s just hope it’s all true.” Now, what are the chances of that? When was the last time fidel castro stated anything even resembling truth?

During last week’s speech, castro quoted opinions critical of his regime and then made fun of them like a stand up comedian. I think it was rather nice of the bearded one,considering. Cubans could really use a good laugh.

Other opinions read by the Comandante included: “Fidel is crazy if he thinks he will solve the housing problem”; “What Fidel says we’re going to get is fine but I’d prefer cooking oil and soap”, a reference to items that disappeared from the shelves in the early 1990s and which for years have only been available at special stores in U.S. dollars; and “He talks about chocolate when what we need is food”.

The reality is that fidel has no good news for his people.

Weighing in on the side of the critics is Cuban-American scholar Marifeli Perez Stable who has written extensively on the Revolution.

“None of the good news is coming from within the Cuban economy — no restructuring, a return to centralization, a peso revaluation that has nothing to do with reality – and, instead, is originating in Venezuela’s oil and supposedly splendid accords with China,” she says. “Sure, ECLA is projecting a 5 percent growth this year but that’s pretty meaningless if the bodegas [grocery stores] are still rationed and what average Cubans can buy with pesos is either scarce or overpriced. When Cuban women can get a week’s groceries and other necessities in peso stores without sweating it out, then five percent growth will be meaningful.”

So castro plays the rhetorical rope-a-dope:

In two moves by the Central Bank, and announced by Castro in his latest speeches, Cuba first upped by 7 percent the value of the original Cuban peso against the CUC and then raised the value of the CUC by 8 percent against the dollar effective April 9.

Castro pointed out the benefits of this by explaining how he’d just brought down the price of the new pressure cooker by 15 percent. His reasoning was as follows: the state picked up half the cost of the imported pots and converted the remaining 50 percent into its price in Cuban pesos.

By raising the value of the peso 15 percent, the state was also lowering the cost of the pot 15 percent so that instead of paying 150 pesos, consumers would only have to pay 122.50.

Now, I’m no economist, but this economic three card monty doesnt make a bit of sense to me. Truth of the matter is that Cuba’s economy is still in dire straights, despite chavez’s oil and whatever other trade agreements the regime has made recently. Things have to be paid for, you see, and fidel castro’s government just doesnt have the money.

In the chavez/Venezuelan oil trade, fidel has sent thousands of Cuban “doctors” and other personnel, along with state security agents and other “diplomats” in order to help chavez tighten his grip over the Venezuelan people. What is fidel going to do in the case of Japan when their bill collectors come knocking at the door? Who will he send then?

Seems to me that an economy that has to be drastically re-tooled like Cuba’s means that it’s desperately gasping for life.

The day after Castro spoke, Cuba’s Central Bank President Francisco Sober?n elaborated on the measures.

“The decision to reevaluate as of April 9, the rate of exchange between the Cuban Convertible Peso and foreign currencies, and to eliminate the parity between this national currency and the U.S. dollar is part of a coherent, gradual and prudent strategy that the country will continue for the benefit of the people,” he said.

Like Castro, Sober?n charged that the sustained depreciation in the value of the U.S. dollar plus the Bush administration’s increasing hostility toward the island has made it risky for Cuba to use the dollar as a means of payment or in its national reserve.

But the moves have unnerved many of the estimated 60 percent of the Cuban public with access to either U.S. dollars or other convertible currencies, such as the EURO, sent by relatives living outside the island or earned through their work. Estimates on just how much Cubans receive range widely from $400 million to over $1 billion.

“Fidel’s speech was great but he dropped a bomb at the end, the reduction of the chavito, people lost thousands of pesos,” went one opinion read by Castro on the 7 percent increase.

Previously people who bought Cuban pesos with CUCs received 26 for one, now they are only receiving 24. It doesn’t sound like much of a difference but if they changed 100 CUCs they got 200 pesos less under the new rate. And many people count on the dollars sent by their relatives to help them pay the often high prices at the farmers markets where private vendors sell everything from lettuce and tomatoes to pork in pesos.

Cubans depending on remittances to get them through the month already took a blow last November when a 10 percent commission was introduced on the U.S. dollar. Since then every CUC they buy costs them U.S. $1.10.

Cubans rushed to CADECA to exchange their dollars before the November deadline, changing an estimated $1.2 billion. But some Cubans wary of the chavitos and reluctant to put all their money in the bank have hung on to their U.S. dollars.

So fidel castro, while telling Cubans he will give them more, is, in actuality, taking more.

“We have nothing against citizens who have and receive dollars from abroad,” said Sober?n. “It’s legal and it’s normal that people living in other countries want to help their relatives in Cuba. But the possession of dollars,” he insisted, “puts Cubans and foreigners in positions of advantage and the Revolution has the moral obligation to seek improvements for all the people.”

Sober?n claimed that personal income in the United States has gone up 48 percent, so Cuban Americans are able to absorb the 18 percent difference. “If they want their families here to maintain the same standard they can send them more money,” he said as TV viewers listened astounded.

This is castro’s favotrite ploy when his economy is shot. Play to the Cuban family and get those Cubans living in exile to pay for his shortcomings and his failed revolution. Squeeze his people to the point where they are begging their family members living abroad to send dollars. Then, of course, the revolution, in all it’s hypocrisy, takes its cut.

Castro’s recent speeches make clear the direction in which he is taking the country. “I find myself increasingly attracted to the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Engel’s. Their time is not past,” he declared, going on to say he wanted Cubans to be in a position to enjoy a socialist society not measured by how many cars people have but by our potential.”

Ah, yes, there’s that “potential” comment again.

Let me explain it to you, fidelito, in plain Physics terms. There’s potential energy – the energy a body possesses because of its body or shape – and then there’s kinetic energy – he energy possessed by a body because of its motion. Potential energy will alway remain just that, potential, unless another body, through its own movement – ie: kinetic energy – engages it and thus transforms said potential energy into kinetic energy.

It’s all about progress, fidel. Forward movement.

Kinetic energy.

Hat tip to Jeff Quinton for the article link.