guantanamera.docx

8/14/2019 guantanamera.docx

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Adam Jacobs

Cuba in Socialism and in Diaspora, Prof. Joo Felipe Gonalves

Film report #1:

Guantanamera, Toms Gutirrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabo, 1996

El perodo especial

Revolutionary Cuba had been, since the early years, heavily dependent on

preferential treatment and assistance from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. In the

late 1980s, the Soviet Union, alone, accounted for 70 percent of Cubas imports and

purchased nearly that portion of [its] exports. Most importantly, it was providing

generous financing, purchasing Cuban sugar for well above world-market prices, and

subsidizing oil imports to the islanda portion of these oil imports were systematically

being re-exported for hard currency. Similarly, through COMECON, 15 percent of

Cubas trade was tied to the Eastern Bloc. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the decline

and eventual collapse of these partners severely impacted the Cuban economy, causing it

to contract by more than 30%. Trade with these countries did continue, but with the

dissolution of previous solidarity; to be sure, there was a reneging of previous trade deals,

an insistence on hard currency as the medium of exchange and a dramatic scaling back of

favorable financing, trade terms and trade subsidies. (Eckstein, Ch. 4).

Guantanamera takes place during the ensuingspecial period, an economic crisis

in Cuba largely defined by a decrease in import capacity and, in turn, austerity and

reform. The film begins with a group of undertakers, each in charge of a different

geographic region, apparently seeking to reform the islands system of transporting the


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deceased. Adolfo suggests an even distribution of responsibility, noting that such would

preclude each undertaker from exceeding his/her petrol allowance. This discourse

seems to reflect the cutback in oil imports, broadly representing not only Russias and

Eastern Europes downgrading of their relationship with Cuba, but also Cubas shortage

of hard currency and its failing economy. In any case, the islands general inability to

import many goods led to much adjustment and reform; at one point in their journey from

Guantanamo to Havana, when their hearse breaks down it is replaced with a horse-drawn

one.

Central to the special period was a shortage in food. In the film, at the start of the

their trip, they drive by an outdoor caf and ask the attendant if she has any; almost

confused, the woman looks at them and says that she only has cigarettes and tobacco.

Naturally, this shortage in, and therefore a difficulty in procuring, essential goods led to a

general decline in morality; in the film we observe one scene at a mourners-only

cafeteria where a man is heard saying the following: My uncle died last week but

nobody gave me a free snack. Though not as telling as Prof. Gonalvess numerous

anecdotes, this loss in morality is even more explicitly demonstrated by those in the

cafeteria pretending to be bereaved.

This infeasibility of importing many goods led to the governments promotion of

self-sufficiency. Insofar as food was concerned, the islands Food Program emphasized

agricultural diversification away from sugarcane (Eckstein, 96). The increase in demand

for agricultural labor led the government to employ several collective and voluntary

work strategies (Eckstein, 101). The film touches on these reforms when a radio-

bureaucrat tells the following: The 1,650 hectares of beans planted in the state co-


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operative and rural sectors represents a new record figure. Though, aside from what was

government-sanctioned, Cubans, themselves, took initiative to ameliorate these shortages.

It is important to remember, however, when explaining these shortages in the

context of the fall of the Soviet Union, the continuing role played by the state socialist

Cuban economy. Put simply, as Verdery explains, shortages are endemic to such

economies, mainly resulting from the inefficiencies of central-planning and the

implications of soft-budget constraints. These shortages, in turn, inevitably lead to what

become very essential, and profitable, black markets; essential because they work to

provide what is necessary but absent, and profitable because they exploit such need. To

some extent, the great disparity between supply and demand during the special period

was mediated through state rationing, but this was ultimately insufficient and led to a

surge in black market activityfrom $2 billion in 1989 to $14.5 billion in mid -1993

(Eckstein, 124). In the film, Adolfos driver, while he is supposed to be focusing on

getting to Havana as quickly as possible, is, in fact, more interested in picking up goods

to sell once there; first he takes the time to buy garlic, and then he outwits Gina and

Candido when he convinces them to agree to have lunch at his friendspaladarso that he

can pick up, among much else, bananas and a live turkey; about the garlic he says the

following: Theyll cry out for this in Havana. Whats more is that these transactions

were conducted in U.S. dollars.

An informal dollarization of the Cuban economy took place during the special

period. Much like elsewhere in the world, in Cuba U.S. dollars had been used as a means

to achieve some sort of economic stability, though now they reached heightened

importance. High demand and low supply resulted in many non-rationed essential goods


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becoming practically only affordable in dollars. Cubans went about procuring dollars not

only through tourism and informal activity, but also through remittances. As a way to

capture some of these dollars, the Cuban government legalized dollar possession and

implemented several strategies; for example, Cubans were now allowed to shop at dollar

stores and profitable remittance fees were put into place. Needless to say, this provided

the Cuban state with much needed hard currency.

More generally, it seems to me that Guantanamera touches on two very telling

aspects of revolutionary Cuba: its bureaucracy and its peoples resilience. In terms of the

former, it seems that Adolfos plan was foiled in a web of bureaucracy that, regardless of

whatever alternative could have been proposed, would have, in any case, inevitably won.

Secondly, the Cuban peoples resilience to adapt to their situation, especially during the

special period, seems to rival that of the state.

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guantanamera.docx