Two perspectives from recent visitors to Cuba

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Cuba now maintains diplomatic and economic ties with 136 countries, including Canada, Japan, all NATO except the United States, and most of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is only the United States that maintains an economic blockade against Cuba, which has cost that country $15 billion so far, and costs U.S. businesses an estimated $750 million a year.

Cuba has also made great strides in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, which is all the more amazing when you realize that it is still a small, underdeveloped, Third World country. It is now exporting the world's first effective vaccine against the child-killer meningitis B, another vaccine against hepatitis B, an epidermal growth factor which speeds up the recovery of burn victims, and TPG, which significantly reduces cholesterol with no harmful side effects. Cuba invented and is also exporting Melagenin, a drug used to treat vitiligo, the progressive loss of skin pigmentation, from which 40 million people in the world suffer.

Dollars from tourism

The other field that Cuba is hoping to develop, in order to obtain dollars to buy things on the world market, is tourism. Last year 340,000 tourists from Canada, Europe, the Soviet Union, and Latin America, visited Cuba to take advantage of its sultry climate and relatively cheap prices compared to other countries in the Caribbean. The only tourists who can't go to Cuba are Americans, who would be violating the Trading With the Enemy Act if they spent any money there. (The only exceptions are journalists and professional researchers.)

Every dollar that Cuba takes in through tourism is earmarked for foreign exchange, and so a two-tiered economy is developing. ly, like second-class citizens in their own country.

A more farsighted, but less typical view was expressed by Juan Carlos, 25, in the Young Communist League: "The dollars we get from tourism are needed to raise the standard of living of everyone in the coun try," he said. True enough, but not necessarily self-evident to a layer of Cuba's youth.

One policy that Cuba has implemented, which is perhaps more controversial in the United States than in Cuba, is their strategy of sending everyone who is HIV positive for AIDS to a sanatorium. The Cubans are adamant: This policy, they say, is in no way designed to discriminate against homosexuals (only 37 percent of the people who are HIV positive in Cuba are gay), it is to break the chain of transmission and prevent an epidemic.

Cuba has so far administered 10 million AIDS tests out of a population of 10.7 million, and as of Oct. 16, there were 670 HIV positive, of which 54 people have died. (Compare this to the U.S. where two-thirds of everyone known to be HIV positive is already dead.)

I talked to four people, two of them doctors, who were HIV positive and lived in the sanatorium. I asked if they were unhappy having to be there.

All were indignant. They work the same jobs they had worked previously, make the same salary, and have 24-hour a day medical care.

«You ask if the revolution violates my rights by sending me to the sanitorium?," Chino demanded. "I'm alive because of the revolution!"

Cuba tests all pregnant women, everyone who has been out of the country (in the last few years Cuba has had 600,000 internationalists working abroad, including 300,000 in Africa), the sex partners of those who are HIV positive, and all those admitted to hospitals. It imports AZT and Interferon from France, and provides a (continued on page 12) The Soviet ships no longer steam into Havana Harbor laden with petroleum and food. The cops are legion. Armed with clubs and guns, they stand sullenly on street corners. The popular militias still muster, but no longer do they keep their arms.

A Malecón street dance is monitored strictly. Cops drag out many disorderly young men from the crowd and shove them into Ministry of Interior paddy wagons. A youth says something smart and within a second he's rubbing his jaw and the cop is holstering his club.

A Black youth sits next to me at a bus stop. He says, "I'm not afraid to talk to you. Many people are. They (plainclothes cops) watch our moves. We must be careful. It's bad here. I want to leave."

The youth and I stare at the overcrowded buses sputtering black clouds of smoke as they roar by. The Cubans call the buses "wahs-wahs" because they sound like crying babies. Many of the Cubans I saw in Havana never smiled; their faces were gaunt, as if they were enduring some kind of never-ending irritationlong lines and hunger.

The Cubans resent tourists eating their food and buying their commodities. Cuban homes are going to hell. The bureaucracy involved in obtaining even a nail is aggravating. Consequently, many Cubans are blaming both the blockade and Castro for their misery.

Can Cuba survive alone?

The Cuban Communist Party (CCP) theoreticians are trying to sell the line that the Cuban Revolution, in and of itself, can solve Cuba's problems. But cold reality is pushing a counter-line that says otherwise.

Let us examine the conditions that make Cuba so vulnerable to the U.S. blockade. First of all, Cuba lacks a domestic source of oil-this poses the greatest threat to Cuba's independence and its socialist revolution. Cuba is forced to barter on the world market for this essential commodity. The world's capitalists demand U.S. dollars for their oil.

And now, so does the Soviet Union.

The capitalist press leaves this important fact out of their articles condemning the Cuban revolution, just as they omit mentioning the 30-year U.S. economic embargo. The United States government is directly responsible for the shortages plaguing Cuba.

Most of the commodities produced by Cuban industry and agriculture are shipped abroad for U.S. dollars. Commodities not exported abroad are placed in tourist and technicians' stores. These stores accept only U.S. dollars.

Cuba needs oil. Without it, there would be no industrial civilization. Without fueled trucks, agricultural products would never reach the cities from the countryside. If there is hunger in Cuba today, then without oil, there would be starvation.

Communist Party Congress

The Cuban Communist Party held its 4th Congress in mid-October. The slogan and political line of the congress was: "Our most sacred duty is to save the country, the revolution, and socialism." The slogan and political line is anti-Stalinist and revolutionary. A Stalinist communist party, at this historical juncture, would place their industries and working class in the clutches of the New World Order. The Cuban CP wants to protect the gains of the revolution and safeguard Cuba's independence.

But there were some grim aspects to this congress, which took place while I was there. All journalists and foreign socialists were barred from attending. Reports coming out of the congress were censored. We couldn't discer whether or not there was a debate. Socialists the world over have speculated about the emergence of a Gorbachevite wing in the CCP. Whether or not this is so remains to be seen.

Castro's inability to identify positively with working class struggles in the degenerated workers' states was demonstrated again at the 4th Congress. Castro called the mass movement-like the one that successfully foiled the Soviet Communist Party's coup in August—an example of the said tha camp ha collaps congres:

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