Island that Dared (55 page)

To avoid the Soviet Union’s unhealthy symbiosis, the Party is legally prohibited from intervening in municipal elections where delegate
nomination
is genuinely free. At the National Assembly level, the Party does control the membership in a roundabout but effective way. Only fifteen
per cent of adults belong to the Party yet seventy per cent of National Assembly delegates are members. The other thirty per cent includes representatives of religious faiths and of the arts and sports world.  

The keystone of Cuba’s participatory democracy is the nomination of municipal candidates by a show of hands at small public meetings. Tens of thousands of these local gatherings take place, on average lasting no more than thirty minutes. Participation is not compulsory but about seventy per cent normally attend; on polling day the turn-out everywhere is in the late 90s. The procedure is, Alejandro assured me, a Cuban invention,
uninfluenced
by any foreign systems. It is extremely ingenious, and hermetically sealed against corruption/vote-rigging, but much too intricate to be presented in a résumé. Those deeply interested in psephology may find the details in Arnold August’s
Democracy in Cuba
and Peter Roman’s
People’s Power.
 

The Council of State, controlled by the Communist Party, takes all major decisions with island-wide implications. These are ratified by the National Assembly which meets only twice a year but staffs numerous specialist commissions to do a lot of necessary boring work. Occasionally, at Party level, democracy raises its pretty head and popular views, wishes and judgements are taken into account. In preparation for the 1992 Constitutional amendments small groups met and debated various issues in eighty-nine thousand workplaces, schools, universities and community halls. A distillation of their comments eventually reached the legislators and was respected. In 1993–94 a similar number of ‘workers’ parliaments’ debated the major economic reforms then being proposed. The opinions voiced were synthesised and considered and those held by a majority caused legislative changes – notably of taxation.  

To us this form of participatory democracy is a novel notion. Imagine a proportionate number of ‘people’s parliaments’ gathering in Britain, by request of the government, to discuss, for instance, the Poll Tax, or closing mines or post offices, or the introduction of university fees, or an airport extension or new Tridents. Then try to imagine Britain’s democratically elected government giving consideration to voters’ views … But would we Minority Worlders appreciate this sort of collective involvement in running our countries? It requires a certain expenditure of mental energy – and time. Moreover, despite having regular access to ‘free and fair elections’, and complaining so often about governmental decisions, we seem to feel terminally disempowered in relation to decision-making. But enough of fantasy-land – let’s return to Manzanillo.

Most Cuban cities share the background motifs of smugglers, sugar, slaves. Long before Manzanillo’s founding in 1784 its natural harbour was a smuggler’s favourite. During the nineteenth century it prospered as quite an important port and its wealthier citizens built mansions displaying a taste for whimsical Moorish flourishes. At sea-level one is scarcely aware of the Caribbean’s nearness: just occasionally a patch of blue sparkles at the end of a street. But then, from the steep, densely populated hills that
semi-encircle
the colonial centre, one is overlooking the Gulf of Guacanayabo’s dazzling expanse. Nowadays Manzanillo is chiefly renowned for its Rebel Army associations. Here Celia Sanchez, Fidel’s right-hand woman,
clandestinely
set up the supply base without which the Rebels could not have survived.

The
colectivo
put me down at 3.15 when sun-scourged Manzanillo was not lively. In a shadeless open-air cafeteria, facing Parque Cespedes, the bar was closed – no one in sight. Eduardo in Mayari had recommended a
casa particular
and provided a street sketch. I sat on an iron chair to consult this – then leaped up with a burnt bottom. Clutching that scrap of paper I crossed the park diagonally, pausing to admire the sphinx statues in each corner, the fake nineteenth-century lamps and the enchanting Glorieta Morisca, designed by a Granada architect, where the municipal band plays regularly and bridal couples pose for photographs. Most such Cuban agoras are in all-day use but here not even one bench was occupied. Although my
casa particular
was quite close, I felt slightly dizzy on arrival.

An open street door led directly into the living-room and I gatecrashed a celebration; relatives and friends had gathered to drink the health of a new-born baby. I was enthusiastically received as another friend rather than the new p.g. Liqueur glasses of some powerful homemade alcohol, dark brown and syrupy, were being rapidly downed and refilled. The infant’s plastic crib (made in China, very fancy with a nylon mosquito net) stood on high legs in the centre of the room. A three-year-old first born was having displacement problems and querulously demanding everyone’s attention. On a low altar beside my bedroom door a black Virgen de Regla/Yemaya, clad in flowing blue and white robes, had to be included in the party; at intervals people offered her a sprinkle of that strange herb-flavoured potion, or a few peanuts, or a scrap of coloured thread or ribbon.

Later I got the family sorted out. Juana, the
abuela
, suffered from obesity and her daughter-in-law, Rita, was going in the same direction. Manuel, her English-speaking son, worked at the local ship repair yard and had a not unusual grievance. In 1994 his father and an uncle took off
for Miami accompanied by Manuel’s two sisters, then in their late teens. Father had promised to ‘claim’ his wife and thirteen-year-old son once he had ‘settled’; instead, he was lost to view. In due course Juana presented Manuel with a step-father, Viktor, a wispy little man who seemed in danger of being suffocated in the marital bed should his wife roll over in her sleep. Viktor operated a horse-bus and his eighteen-year-old daughter, Margarita, a student nurse, was the fifth member of the household. The jolly scene I had witnessed on arrival was misleading. Placid Juana, who apparently loved everybody, was at the still centre of a maelstrom of animosities. Margarita criticised Rita for continuing to work part time as a free-market vegetable seller though she had a year’s maternity leave on full pay. Rita insisted that the three-week-old baby was perfectly happy on his
abuela
’s lap sucking expressed mother’s milk from a bottle. Viktor sided with his daughter which provoked Manuel to condemn him for overworking his horse. Rita objected to Manuel’s gambling on cockfights which made it necessary for her to sell vegetables. Carlos, the first-born, reacted predictably to all these simmering (and often loudly overboiling) dissensions. He was the only unhappy child I met in Cuba.

Next morning I observed that in Manzanillo dawn comes twenty minutes earlier than in Havana. At 6.35 the first pale orange tint appeared above the horizon as I strolled through a run-down district of small, variously designed dwellings, many with dormer windows, lining laneways shaded by misshapen trees. Already polling stations were being unlocked and when I peered into one I was invited to come back later. In contrast to the exclusion of unlabelled solo travellers from public institutions, foreigners are positively encouraged to take a close look at Cuba’s election processes – for obvious reasons.

In Havana I had first seen the only harbingers of this Election Day – A4 pages displayed in office and shop windows showing passport-type photographs of the candidates and listing their academic and/or practical achievements and the mass organisations to which they belong. These are drab little notices, impersonal, nobody claiming that they will do this or that if elected; nor are there any canvassing visits, posters, leaflets,
loud-hailers
, rallies, telephone calls or TV appearances. At no stage is money involved; the state provides the A4 notices. Winning or losing does not evoke the same emotions as in our world. Losing may be a personal disappointment – but no cash has been wasted. Winning is taken calmly, and not as Step One to prosperity; Cuba has no greasy pole on the political field. (I wouldn’t know about the joint-venture field.) Those elected (who
may be anything from lawyers and street-sweepers to factory hands and professors) continue in their jobs while working as unpaid public
representatives
. In local government only the president, vice-president and secretary of each municipal assembly – officials elected by the delegates – receive salaries. Twice a year, at accountability sessions, delegates must listen to
planteamientos
(suggestions and complaints of local importance) and representatives found unsatisfactory by their constituents may be ‘recalled’ (sacked) and replaced in what we would call a by-election. Municipal delegates are responsible for the day-to-day running of their neighbourhoods. They organise mini-brigades to build houses for the community, maintain
organoponicos
to feed the community, oversee local schools, polyclinics and factories – and participate, if trade unionists, in the planning and management of their enterprises. They are on duty twenty-four hours a day seven days a week and may be approached at any time by any constituent with any sort of problem from a family row to a burst water main.

At 7.00 a.m. precisely, all over Manzanillo (and all over Cuba) the national anthem, being quietly relayed by Radio Rebelde, signalled the opening of the polling stations, each catering for the residents of its immediate neighbourhood. A forty-minute walk took me past nine stations. This means an absence of queues or crowds; a tourist could have spent 21 October drifting around any Cuban city or town without realising it was Election Day. On arrival voters exchange their registration cards for ballot papers, then enter a tent-like enclosure set up in a corner where they are invisible while making their marks. Thus citizens may anonymously express disapproval of or hatred for the government by spoiling their paper. A few steps take the voter from tent to ballot box, guarded by two uniformed junior schoolchildren. I watched one opening ritual. Out on the pavement, an elderly CDR member held high an empty cardboard carton while inviting any passer-by to enter the station to witness its being sealed with glue and placed on a little table between its juvenile guardians.

After breakfast I met Alejandro who suggested our touring the hilltops ‘before it gets too hot’. (In my estimation it was already very much too hot.) On steep slopes, Manzanillo’s streets of stuccoed houses (1920s) become grass-verged tracks with open drains running down the centre. Narrow green valleys separate the hills and Alejandro pointed to once-fine villas set amidst still handsome trees. Other
barrios
have a quasi-rural character with livestock wandering around charmless utilitarian cottages (1960s) and closely fenced
organoponico
beds.

We were invited into polling stations improvised in a kindergarten, a
tienda
, a polyclinic, a cultural centre, two offices. The children’s role fascinated me. As the folded ballot papers were pushed through the slits these Pioneers saluted smartly and together chanted – ‘Voto!’ It was important, said Alejandro, to educate young citizens about how
Cuban-style
democracy really works, to make them feel responsible for the boxes’ integrity and proud of contributing to the election of the best
representatives
to run
their
community. To prove that this involvement was genuine, not any sort of stunt or cosmetic gesture, Alejandro led me at 7.00 p.m. from a polling station to the nineteenth-century Asamblea Municipal del Poder Popular. As the polling station’s box was being transported, opened and emptied on to a counters’ table, two pairs of sharp little eyes watched every movement. According to Alejandro, this ‘catch ’em young’ policy explains why even today’s teenagers vote eagerly in municipal elections. At which point I recalled Professor Raby’s assessment:

When Alejandro asked how Western democracies select candidates I explained the Irish system, then told him of the unease often voiced by Tony Benn (among many others) about decisions once made by
governments
having been transferred to the EU, NATO, the unholy Trinity and the multinational corporations ‘
whom we do not elect and cannot remove
’. I added, borrowing a metaphor from the liberation theologian Franz
Hinkelammert
, that Western parties now treat voters as consumers whose political choices can be swayed by market techniques. And Socialism, as one choice, is now excluded. According to my guide, ‘All delegates must live in their own constituencies. If they don’t help enough with local problems they won’t get selected next time.’

I wondered why anybody should want to be re-selected for such a demanding unpaid job, then realised that this remark exposed my
imperfect
understanding of Revolutionary thinking (and feeling). As David Beetham has put it:

By this stage we had retreated with a few Buccaneros to the shady Andalusian courtyard of the Colonia Española club where wall tiles show Columbus landing in Cuba and pensioners play dominoes all day and a three-man band was rehearsing on a balcony. ‘They play for their own joy,’ commented Alejandro. ‘I like best this way of music.’