Whether it was a good three hours or more than four hours –I can’t remember that exactly today, almost half a century later. However, the date does: it was January 1, 1978. I stood in a huge square in the center of Havana and heard the traditional New Year’s speech by the „Comandante en Jefe“, Fidel Castro Ruiz. The sun burned mercilessly from a bright blue sky. There was almost no shadow far and wide. My sunburn the next day was accordingly. Although the speech was transmitted by several loudspeakers spread across the square, it was still difficult to understand. But certain snippets of words were influenced by the constant repetitions, such as „el imperio yankee“, „la liberación de los pueblos“ or „la lucha anti-imperialista“.
My tour group, all of them young West Germans enthusiastic about communism, applauded frenetically, even though none of Spanish was powerful. For this they shouted „Venceremos“ again and again (we will win) all the more enthusiastically. I came across this group through a travel poster at the University of Cologne, which promised a two-week trip to Cuba for very little money. And so we flew – via East Berlin – to Havana, where we were welcomed on the plane by our Cuban travel guide. He spoke brilliant German. His wife came from East Germany and she was happy: Cuba was her socialist country of longing.
The group made it clear to our travel guide from the start why they came to Cuba: they wanted to experience as much of the achievements of real socialism as possible up close. I had just spent a few years in South America, in Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. I didn’t lack intuition.
We started with a visit to the sugar cane factory „La Australia“, then one of the largest in the country. Almost 20 years after the victory of the revolution and the nationalization of the entire production apparatus, the machines were badly run down. But my group was thrilled, after all, Cuba still produced a few million tons of cane sugar a year (nothing is produced today the former sugar island imports sugar). The statements by a Cuban engineer were interesting: For the Cubans, the GDR’s technical assistance in making the factory work was essential, only „los alemanes“ were able to get the old American production facilities with their many Russian spare parts back to work.
Back then, when you drove over land, you could see everywhere the evidence of state agricultural collective farms – no comparison to the well-functioning agriculture in Argentina that I had seen years before. Of course, my tour group, all of them city children, was thrilled. At that time, a not insignificant part of the collective farm’s harvest results went to those in the socialist economic bloc „Comecon“ united Eastern Bloc states. Since a trip to Prague, I knew how dissatisfied the Czechs were with the quality of Cuban tropical fruits, not to mention the lack of delivery reliability. Of course, this did not challenge my travel group, after all, compromises had to be made when building socialism, it was said optimistically.
Creeping decay
Even back then, a visit to a cigar factory was part of the obligatory program of a trip to Cuba. In a large hall, men and women sat at long tables and turned cigars made of leaves of different sizes and thicknesses, which lay on the tables in front of them in flat baskets. At the front sat a young man reading from a book. Was it Marx, was it Lenin? I don’t remember But I still remember that my group was almost ecstatic: production combined with indoctrination – for them an almost congenial combination.
And what did it look like in Havana back then, the city with the highest traffic volume in Latin America before the revolution in 1959, ahead of Caracas and Buenos Aires? We lived in an old hotel that had certainly once been elegant, everywhere you could see the beauty that once existed, although the creeping decline seemed unstoppable. Fortunately for the city, the regime had begun to discover tourism as a source of income. For example, work was underway to renovate the operetta theater near the Capitol. There I saw my first zarzuela: „María la O“, a work by the Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona.
A visit to the former „shopping palaces“ in the city center was informative. They often still had the expansive architecture of the pre-revolutionary years, but the offerings could not keep up with this decor. Most of the fabrics and all of the sewing accessories came from what was then Czechoslovakia. Every Cuban had a „tarjeta de racionamiento“ on which what he could buy was entered: women a dress, men a pair of trousers – per year, mind you.
Our return flight took place with an Ilyushin Aeroflot about Lisbon. Upon checking in, a stewardess noticed that I spoke Spanish well and she offered me a place at the front of first grade. Unlike the all-white Cuban officer corps there, the members of the simple troops in the „wooden class“ were blacks or mulattoes. They frankly said that they were on their way to Angola to do their military service there. I thought of a young Cuban woman who told me in Havana about her brother who died in Angola. The family had been given a coffin, but it couldn’t be opened. And so the family was left unsure whether there had really been „their“ dead person in it.
In later years I traveled to Cuba several times and met Fidel Castro at various conferences. But I never forgot the impressions of my first trip – the contradictions were too memorable.
What’s the status today for the 100th anniversary. Fidel Castro’s birthday around Cuba? More than three million Cubans have left the island – about a quarter of the population. His brother and successor Raúl has made the military the dominant power factor. Through the GAESA corporate conglomerate, the armed forces have long dominated all foreign exchange-producing sectors of the economy. GAESA’s foreign assets are estimated at well over 50 billion dollars. That would be enough money to feed the starving population and give them a reasonably decent standard of living.
With US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, son of Cuban exiles, Havana has a negotiating partner who knows the conditions on the island very well. This could become at least as important as President Donald Trump’s political noise. Either way: After almost 70 years of deprivation of freedom and economic decline, Cubans should finally be wished for a happier future.