¨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…