“Having achieved quantity, you are investing in quality.”
“The revolution has created the material base. Some sectors still have deficiencies and require large investments; this is the case of housing, though we are making progress. More than 70,000 housing units are being built each year.”
“What about transportation?”
“During the first 10 years of the revolution, we didn’t import any cars. Both the economic and trade blockade to which we were subjected and our own priorities channeled resources to other sectors, such as health and education. Whatever automobiles we import mustn’t adversely affect social needs. About 10,000 are coming in every year now, and specialists, technicians, and outstanding workers have priority.”
“What about public transportation?”
“We import the motors and some other parts and build the rest of the buses here. Now, we’re working on the production of motors. Two out of every three automobiles that are imported are assigned to workers directly linked to production and services; they are sold almost at cost, to be paid for in installments over periods of up to seven years, at minimal interest. The workers’ assembly in each work center decides who deserves them. Some of the imported cars are, of course, used for car rental services and for state administration.”
“Does private property still exist in the rural areas?”
“Yes. We still have nearly 100,000 independent farmers. They plant coffee, potatoes, tobacco, vegetables, a little sugarcane, and some other products. So far, more than half of the independent farmers — there used to be 200,000 of them — have joined production cooperatives and have been very successful. Their incomes are high. Joining a cooperative is entirely voluntary. This movement is progressing on very solid foundations. It frees the state from mobilizing manpower to help them with the harvest, as used to be the case. Moreover, cooperatives bring improvements to the farmers’ lives. It makes it easier to provide them with schools, new housing, safe drinking water, electricity, etc. More than 85 percent of the homes in Cuba are supplied with electricity. Credits and prices are fixed by the government at levels that encourage production. Production surpluses bring even higher prices and are sent to the parallel market. The farmers don’t pay taxes, and like all other Cubans, their families are entitled to free health care and education. Members of cooperatives have annual incomes that range from $3,000 to $6,000 — more than those of individual farmers, whose production costs on their isolated plots are higher and whose work is more difficult to mechanize. Ever since the beginning of the revolution, we’ve been creating credit and service cooperatives. The services cover everything in the field of work implements, such as tractors, silos, trucks, and cane harvesters. Now the production cooperatives own that equipment.”
“May farmers contract labor?”
“Yes, in accord with the laws of the land that protect the workers. Nowadays, thanks to progressive mechanization, it takes only 70,000 cane cutters to bring in a harvest of more than 70 million tons of sugarcane. Fifteen years ago, 350,000 were needed. Most of this manpower is supplied by the agricultural workers themselves. For many years now, we’ve had to mobilize very few volunteers, and we haven’t had to mobilize any soldiers or high school students for these tasks. Unemployment isn’t a problem in Cuba; to the contrary, most of our provinces have a labor shortage.”
“Don’t students participate in productive activities any more?” I asked.
“In the schools in the countryside they do. We have about 600 schools of that type and about 300,000 students in them. They’ve been a tremendous success. In the cities, the junior and senior high school students may go voluntarily to the countryside for 30 days each year. More than 95 percent of them do. They help to harvest vegetables, pick citrus fruit, and bring in the tobacco and other crops. If a society universalizes the right to study, it should also universalize the right to work. Otherwise you might create a nation of intellectuals who are divorced from physical work and material production. The schools on the Isle of Youth are one example of that work-study combination. Much of what has been done there was based on my own experience. I spent 12 years in boarding schools. I could go home only once every three months. We weren’t allowed out of the school, even on Sundays. There was no coeducation. Now we have boys and girls in the same schools on the Isle of Youth. They are out in the open with no walls around them; they can leave the school every day for their productive, sports, or cultural activities. They don’t just study, as we did in my time; that was tedious — sometimes unbearable — and produced much lower academic results. In any case, the main purpose of having the students work is pedagogical, not productive. We now have a million junior and senior high school students. Ninety-two percent of all the young people between the ages of six and 16 attend school. Enrollment at the middle level is already equal to that at the elementary level where practically all of the children between six and 12 are enrolled.”
I made a brief comment: “By eradicating economic antagonisms, socialism does away with the social classes. This is an objective phenomenon, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce social differences from the subjective angle. Those who do nothing but intellectual work may feel superior to those who do direct work.”
Fidel said, “Yes, that’s why it’s important for everyone to do manual labor. In addition to thinking, people also have to know how to do things. ‘Doing is the best way of saying,’ Martí said. That’s why the students from the cities go to the countryside for 30 days. They used to go for 42 days, but now there are too many students and not enough places to send them. The ones who go do so voluntarily. But, as I said, 95 percent of them go. More than 600,000 workers are employed in education and health — in a country with a population of 10 million. It’s as if eight million people were employed in those activities in Brazil. Most of them are women. That is, six out of every hundred citizens are employed in health or education.”
“Is there an oversupply of doctors in Cuba or a shortage of patients?” Joelmir Beting asked.
“Before answering, I’d like to add that we have a total of three million workers. There’s a teacher for every 12 students, more or less. There are 30,000 students in the schools that specialize in training elementary schoolteachers. Fifteen years ago, 70 percent of our elementary schoolteachers had no degrees; now, they are all graduates. We have created a reserve of elementary schoolteachers. Ten thousand of them aren’t teaching; they are being paid their salaries while receiving further training at the university. A Cuban elementary schoolteacher has studied for nine years at the elementary level and four at the secondary level and now has the opportunity to study for six years at the university level when he begins to work. He does this through independent study courses for part of the time and full-time study with pay for two years, winding up with a B.A. in elementary education. Our plan is to have all the elementary schoolteachers get university degrees.
“We already have 20,500 doctors and will graduate 50,000 more in the next 15 years. We already know where each of them is going to work. We also plan to introduce a sabbatical year for doctors: one year of full-time study for every seven years of work. There will never be too many doctors if there is an ambitious health program and adequate planning of services and training of technicians.”
“Is bureaucracy a congenital disease of socialism?” the Brazilian journalist asked a little ironically.
“Bureaucracy is an evil of both socialism and capitalism. Since we can use our human resources better, I think we’re going to win this battle. As I see it, the most irrational feature of capitalism is the existence of unemployment. Capitalism develops technology and underutilizes its human resources. It may be that socialism doesn’t yet make the best possible use of human resources, but it doesn’t subject human beings to the humiliation of unemployment, and we