[Many Cuban entrepreneurs
and economists say the growth of the private sector has been excruciatingly
slow. There is still no wholesale market from which businesses can buy the
goods they need, and the government still limits the types of businesses open
to entrepreneurs to fewer than 200, a situation that some hope will improve
with the expansion of cooperatives.]
By Victoria Burnett
 |
Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate, via Associated Press
The May Day march on Wednesday in Havana. Joining the state workers this year were private-sector
entrepreneurs and employees.
|
HAVANA — In many ways, it was a
typical May Day: Hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers — doctors, sailors,
dancers, bank clerks — marched Wednesday toward this city’s vast Revolution
Plaza, waving flags, holding aloft banners that proclaimed fidelity to socialism
and tooting plastic horns.
But dotted among the
throngs of state employees bused in before dawn to observe International
Workers’ Day, there was a novel, and increasingly favored, breed: entrepreneurs
whose private businesses the government is counting on to absorb thousands of
the state workers it considers redundant and hopes to shed.
Their presence — albeit
limited — at one of the most important fixtures in the Castro-era calendar
reflects the shifting economic mix in a country where, for decades, private
enterprise was anathema and the state officially provided everything anyone
could need, from a job to the sugar people put in their coffee.
But the state’s ability
to do that has declined significantly over the years, with salaries and
subsidies like food rations unable to cover even basic needs.
“This is a way of
showing solidarity with the workers and of showing that we, too, are workers,”
said Orlando Alain Rodríguez, a former sommelier at a state-run hotel who
opened a restaurant on a busy intersection in downtown Havana nine months ago.
“I have 19 employees
with me, people who otherwise might not have jobs,” said Mr. Rodríguez, clad,
along with his staff, in a yellow T-shirt that bore the name of his restaurant,
Waoo Snack Bar.
The government seemed
keen to send that message, too. Carmen Rosa López, second secretary of the
Cuban Workers’ Union, expressed hope before the march that entrepreneurs would
come. “For us, they are all workers who contribute to the development of the
country,” she said, according to a state-run news agency.
That said, entrepreneurs
were a tiny minority in the river of public servants and employees of
state-owned companies that flowed, waving placards calling for “prosperous and
sustainable socialism” to the plaza, where President Raúl Castro stood beneath
a huge statue of José Martí, the revolutionary and poet.
A sea of red-clad
Venezuelans and Cubans held banners dedicated to Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan
leader and beneficent ally of Cuba who recently died, while a truck mounted
with television screens projected pictures of the smiling former leader to the
crowd.
Groups of actors and
artists lent the march a carnival atmosphere, and even at 7 a.m. instructions
blaring from loudspeakers were all but drowned out by drummers leading a crush
of workers raising their hands and swaying their hips to a conga. Students from
the National Schools of Art walked on stilts; one peeped out from a huge,
papier-mâché figure of an independence fighter. Farther back, a female sailor
in a crisp white uniform jiggled from one foot to another in a barely
suppressed salsa move.
Since late 2010 when the
government began issuing new licenses for Cubans to work for themselves and
employ one another, more than a quarter of a million entrepreneurs and their
employees have joined the private sector, taking the total to about 400,000.
Economy Minister Adel
Yzquierdo told the National Assembly in December that, including independent
farmers who lease land from the government, the number of nonstate workers was
1.1 million, double the figure in 2010. Mr. Yzquierdo said the government had,
over the past two years, cut more than 350,000 people from the bloated public
sector, which still employs well over four million Cubans out of a population
of about 11.2 million.
The government has also
turned over about 2,000 small state-owned businesses to their employees,
according to news reports, part of a much-anticipated but closely guarded plan
to create business cooperatives.
Many Cuban entrepreneurs
and economists say the growth of the private sector has been excruciatingly
slow. There is still no wholesale market from which businesses can buy the
goods they need, and the government still limits the types of businesses open
to entrepreneurs to fewer than 200, a situation that some hope will improve
with the expansion of cooperatives.
However small, though,
the private sector is changing the work culture on an island where state
employees earn meager salaries and are known for surly service, inefficiency,
absenteeism and pilfering.
Sergio Alba Marín, who
for years managed the restaurants of a state-owned hotel and now owns a popular
fast-food restaurant, said he was very strict with his employees and would not
employ workers trained by the state.
“They have too many
vices — stealing, for one,” said Mr. Alba, who was marching with his 25
employees and two large banners emblazoned with the name of his restaurant, La
Pachanga. “You can’t change that mentality.”
“Even if you could, I
don’t have time,” he added. “I have a business to run.”
Such dismissals aside,
the private and state sectors compete on some levels and cooperate on others.
The state, which once
had a tiny, $4 ceiling on any contract with a private-sector worker, now buys
products — from vegetables to billboards — from entrepreneurs. Margaly
Rodríguez, a caterer, said she had been hired several times by Palco, a state
holding company, to cook for events; she, in turn, rents glassware and crockery
from a state-owned restaurant.
It can be a curious
symbiosis: thousands of privately owned cafes, taxis, restaurants, photocopy
shops and stalls selling hardware, clothing, shoes and DVDs all compete with
state-owned enterprises. But many people work in both sectors, filching goods
from their state employer to supply their private business.
There are signs that
state-owned companies are responding to competition, adding modern touches at
dreary supermarkets (a neon sign, conveyor belts and shelves stocked with candy
at checkout) and redecorating restaurants.
“We’re in this very
interesting phase in which the public and private sector collaborate and
compete at the same time,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor at the
University of California, San Diego, who is doing a study of Cuba’s private
sector.
New economic freedoms
and the taxes paid by private-sector workers are also beginning to alter the
relationship between individuals and the state, analysts say.
“The willingness of
people to express an alternative point of view has definitely expanded,” Dr.
Feinberg said. “But it’ll take a while before they begin to develop a class
consciousness and a political articulation of their interests.”
The very fact that some
of Cuba’s new entrepreneurs chose to demonstrate their solidarity at
Wednesday’s highly orchestrated march is evidence that the state still has
enormous power.
And, of course, many
workers — both state and nonstate — stayed home. Several people who work in the
private sector said that, after years when they felt pressured by their state
employer to march, they would no longer go.
Others simply could not
leave their businesses. One woman, a 59-year-old former nurse who said her name
was Virgen and sold tiny cups of sweet coffee to people en route to the march,
said she had marched every year except this one.
“If I go to the parade,
who’s going to sell this?” she asked.