¨Freedom¨ and ¨Rights¨

I’m beginning to realize that every anecdote I put on this blog will be full of some deeper meaning about the ideological differences between this country and my own. But honestly, that’s the mindset that I go into my experiences with every day here. Whenever I see something new or different, my mind instantly transforms what could be a purely sensory experience into a comparison of Cuban and American values and ideals. Here are two examples from the past few days:

Thursday night a few of us decided to walk down to the Malecon, which is essentially a boardwalk at the northern border of Havana where the city meets the ocean. It’s not uncommon for people to go there with the alcohol of their choice, find a spot, and just sit there and converse with whomever they happen to meet in the course of the night. So a group of us grabbed a bottle of rum and walked the 7 blocks or so down to the Malecon. About 5 minutes after we found a good spot, a middle-aged man without a shirt on approached us with his fishing gear (including a large gutting knife). When he realized we were Americans, he immediately became fascinated by us and began speaking with us animatedly, and as if he had known us for years. He was obviously incredibly drunk, so understandably a few of the members of our group decided to go home when he began waving the knife around, unaware of the dangerous nature of his actions. After a friend of his got tired of waiting for him and came to get the knife, the rest of us eased up and began to talk freely with him.

Due to a combination of alcohol and the uniquely Cuban ability to speak intimately about sexual matters with whatever audience without considering it inappropriate, most of our conversation is not fit for print in this medium. However, parts of it were considerably more wholesome, ranging from love advice, to life lessons, to the vast differences between American and Cuban culture. At some point in the conversation he explained to us that he came to the Malecon to fish every night because if he didn’t, his family would starve (some rationing program, huh?). Following this, I asked him what he did for a living, assuming that he would tell me he’d fallen on hard times at some point during his life. His answer shocked me: he was an architect for the city. The reality of his situation really struck me as unlike any story I would hear in the States. The fact that an architect for a major city would be reduced to fishing in the ocean for subsistence really puts into context not only the unfairness, in a sense, of socialism (that someone with such an amazing skill is forbidden from being paid accordingly for his gift), but also the warped perception of “poverty” that we have in the United States.

I also thought it was interesting that a country with such economic and legal rigidity would be so lenient towards our activities on the Malecon (in the United States if hundreds of people gathered with alcoholic beverages for the mere purpose of socializing, it would be considered loitering; here it’s a typical Thursday night). Maybe one day there will be a government somewhere that doesn’t try to control the social, political, or economic aspects of its citizens’ lives.

The second experience occurred today during my Sociology of Work class. The professor was talking about the job market in Cuba, and he was discussing the components of supply and demand of labor. Surprised to see terms that are so strongly connotative of capitalism, I listened very intently to this part of the lesson. Imagine my shock and also intrigue when I realized that he referred to the terms in the exact opposite way we use them in economics courses in the United States. That is, he taught that the “suppliers” of labor are the employers who will provide jobs, and the “demanders” are the Cubans looking for work. I’ve always thought that the Classical view of these terms was the more logical interpretation (workers supply their labor to companies who demand it, since without the labor the goods of the company cannot be produced), so I struggled to understand the thinking behind defining them the other way around. And then it struck me that there was a fundamental Socialist assumption underlying this reversal of roles: The belief that a job is a right, not a privilege. Socialist governments believe that every citizen has a right to a job, regardless of their ability, and so they supply artificially created jobs with the express purpose of having them filled by citizens. The citizens, in turn, know that there are enough jobs out there for them to have one, and so they go looking for it and demand that they be given one. The mindset here (I can’t really speak for other Socialist countries) also seems to be that a job is something you get because it is understood by your society that everyone needs one, not because your labor will go towards the production of a beneficial good or service. But I think that’s perfectly understandable when there’s no sense of task identity (i.e. “I’m turning this cog so that we can make steel so that my fellow Cuban can build a bridge.). Since the government controls all factors of production, the train of thought is more like “I’m turning this cog so that we can make steel so that the government can take it and do… something.” Without that knowledge that your actions are going towards a goal that you approve of, there is no reason to seek relevance in your occupation; just do the work and take the money home to your family. No wonder Cubans are so content in their familial and social lives when there are such strong limits on any attempts to dream bigger…

I have classes!!!

… I think. After running to the University in the heat of the afternoon many times, only to discover that the professor simply failed to show up, I think I’ve narrowed down my schedule for the semester, more or less:

‘Theory and History of Marxist/Leninist Philosophy’ – kind of a mouthful, I know, but the professor is amazing

‘Sociology of Work’ – basically the social aspects of work and the working class in Cuba

‘Contemporary Problems of the Caribbean’

And then I’m deciding between ‘Society and Religion’ and ‘Theory and Ideology of the Cuban Revolution’. The latter interests me for obvious reasons, and the religion class I find interesting because of Cuba’s sordid relationship with religion. On the one hand you have the Santeria religion, which arose because African slaves had to find Catholic saint equivalents for their own gods, and so the two faiths have been almost completely synthesized into something completely different. But on the other hand you have the fact that the Catholic Church was banned by the Cuban government following the revolution until very recently. So I think the love/hate relationship with religion and Cuban society would be fascinating to study. They’re offered at the same time, so hopefully I’ll be able to make up my mind by Tuesday, when we have to choose.

All of the teachers have been very sympathetic of foreigners (which is good for us because in addition to language difficulties, some of our classes are second and third year courses, and God knows I don’t have two years of philosophy under my belt). For the most part our finals will consist of papers written on a theme of our choice within the course material, and we don’t really have any homework, so… pretty easy semester. All the same, something tells me that in a way I’ll still be learning more here than I ever have in a semester at Penn (no offense to any of my former professors who may be reading this!).

No classes tomorrow, so that means another three day weekend is upon us. Hopefully this one will be like the last one: full of fun, sun, and 2 dollar bottles of rum. ¡Hasta luego!

Learning more everyday

So much to update from the past few days! None of it is really related, so I guess I’ll just go in chronological order:

On Thursday we did our best to go to classes. The way it works at the University of Havana is that the students have a set track for their major, and everyone takes the exact same classes depending on their track and year. So the administrative people often have a very hard time understanding that we’re used to being able to pick our classes ourselves. For example, we’ve been given 2 weeks to sort of shop around and see which topics/professors we like best, but when we go to the scheduling people with problems, the first thing they ask us is what classes we’re taking because they don’t understand that we’re not in a set track… so then we make up a random selection of 4 classes so that they stop pestering us, haha. The classes themselves (or those that have met, at least… sometimes professors just don’t show up, which is also something new) are really interesting. Some (like one on the Theory and History of Marxism/Leninism, which we’re all taking because honestly, how could you not when you’re in Cuba?) are quite obviously about Socialist principles, but even the classes that should have sort of a wider range of material to cover (e.g. History of Cuban Culture) all come back to those ideals of socialism. So it’s fascinating to see how Marxism really permeates every aspect of their education. Tomorrow we’re going to go check out a class called Tendencies of Contemporary Capitalism which I’m really excited for. Even if it’s not the actual sentiment of the average Cuban on the street towards capitalism or the United States, it will still be mindblowing to hear the University’s (and the government’s, since the University is state-owned) official stance on the subject.

Friday we had a free day (three day weekends for the whole semester, yay!), so a few of us went down the street to this famous ice cream shop called Coppelia. The place (like a lot of things that Havana and Cuba were known for in their heyday) is frozen in the 50’s, with a really crazy mod design (I describe it as what people in the 50’s thought the future would be like, so think of a white concrete building that looks like the Jetsons live there or something, haha). We saw lines way outside of the compound (it’s on a huge plot of land), but they weren’t leading up to the ice cream place, so we tried to walk in and see what the deal was. We were stopped by a man in sort of intimidating army looking garb (but I think he was a police officer or something) who asked us if we were paying in CUC (convertible pesos, which the tourists use more than anyone else) or national pesos (the local currency used by Cubans, it’s about 25:1, so 4 cents USD). We told him we were paying in pesos, and he told us to go back outside to the wait in the lines on the sidewalk. I get the feeling that if we had said we were paying in CUC we would have been able to go right in, which I thought was really interesting. So we waited in line with the other Cubans until our line got called to go further inside and stand in line inside the building until stools opened up (it’s kind of like a bar, but for ice cream). One of the bars was almost completely empty, but when we tried to walk over there, the women working behind us told us to go back in line. Later as we were leaving, we saw them sitting behind the empty bar having an ice cream break, while dozens of Cubans waited in line for an open seat.

Little things like that have already become an integral part of our experience in Cuba; they really don’t strive for things like efficiency here. Actually, in our Leninist/Marxist class on Thursday our professor began to lay the groundwork for the bourgeoisie mindset by saying that they prided themselves on the rationality of efficiency, and since the proletariat is eventually going to conquer the bourgeoisie in our class, I’m assuming that the mentality of prizing efficiency was also deliberately overridden. But yeah little things like trying to push tables together for big groups, or not letting us pay in the cheaper national currency in some cases because our information hasn’t been processed yet (even though we’re obviously students here and have identification proving so)… you can’t help but feel the bureaucracy hiding under it all. We were warned in our first days here that it would be necessary to be flexible, but it’s hard to keep a cool head when you see the (often rather simple) solution to a problem that, frankly, nobody feels like fixing since they have no incentive to do so.

On a lighter note, yesterday we went to the beach! It was about a 2 hour car ride to Varadero, this gorgeous beach that, like a lot of things, was quite a hotspot back in the 50’s and 60’s. The hotels, like Coppelia, are stuck in time. They say it used to be one of Fidel’s favorite places to go, and I can definitely see why: The sand was amazing, the water was really warm… just a great beach. But sadly it was over too soon, and now we’re back to classes tomorrow. Hopefully enough of them will meet this week that I can pick my schedule by Friday!

Llegamos a Habana!

We made it! After a series of travel misadventures (by the way, for those of you I bothered with my luggage weight worries, the employees at the Nassau airport used their cutoff of 70 pounds, so my total weight of 66.5 was no problem!), we finally arrived in Cuba. Even in our 20 minute drive to the residencia, I could tell that the vibe in Cuba was very different from anything I’d ever seen in the United States. So many people outside on their porches, on the plazas and sidewalks, just sitting and conversing with each other. People here really take the time to foster personal relationships, which I guess is both a cause (in that some aspects of capitalism detract from that sort of personal relationship) and a byproduct (in that they only have so much free time to spend with each other because they’re unemployed) of their political beliefs. I think our whole group is really excited for the semester to come, and I don’t think we could have picked a better study abroad site; nothing could have possibly been more different and eye-opening than this.

Our residencia is fantastic: air conditioning, TV in English and Spanish (Entourage in español, anyone?), two meals a day… the list goes on. It’s still modest, but definitely enough of a haven to relish coming home after classes each day. Speaking of classes, they began the day before we got here (thanks, Ike!), so we’ve been thrown into everything full force… which luckily isn’t much here in Havana. We were told to just take our time deciding what to take, and that professors are extremely accommodating of foreign students (especially the Americans who understand maybe every third word of what they’re saying). So we’ll see how that goes. Most of us are interested in the same types of classes (i.e. anything having to do with Marxist thought), since there is no better place to learn such philosophies. So hopefully our foray goes well tomorrow, and we add an academic aspect to the learning process that we began the second we stepped off the plane.

Finally!

Phew! So after being delayed a week because of Hurricane Ike, I'm finally on my way to Cuba! I'll be landing in Nassau around noon, so we should be in Havana by 4 or so. Hopefully everything will go smoothly despite all of the luggage craziness (we deserve a little bit of accommodation after the anxiety of this past week, haha). I just want to say thank you all for making my summer so great, it really was a great 4 months and part of me is sad to see it go. As for those of you I didn't see this summer, most of you are off having your own abroad adventures, so keep having fun! I promise to take lots of pictures, update as often as I can, and do my best to bring lots of goodies back. See you in December!