The Special Period

Cliver, Da’Vonn

History 250

11/1/14

        One of Cuba’s big economic markets is tourism. Tourism is what helped in saving Cuba during the Special Period. Cuba’s Special Period was the result of economic failure due to the collapse of the Soviet Union who funded Cuba. This paper will break into four parts: the first part will be about why the Special Period happened, the second part will be about the time before tourism came into Cuba, next part will be about tourism in Cuba and finally the last part will be how tourism has shaped Cuba for good and for bad. The purpose of this paper is to see if tourism was necessary to save Cuba and if so did it do more harm then good in Cuba.

        The Special Period in Cuba is one of the most important times in Cuba history. One of the main reasons it happened was because of the Cold War and more importantly you need to know about the USSR. The USSR started giving support to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 which was when Fidel Castro and his group went into Cuba and pushed out the corrupt ruler Fulgencio Batista and changed Cuba from a capitalist country to a socialist country and finally apart of the Communist Party. When that ended up happening Soviet Russia started funding and protecting Cuba since Cuba was a tiny island but as Castro said about Cuba, “Cuba is a third-world country with first-world indicators,”^[1]That is what made Cuba so special it wasn’t like any of the other small countries Cuba wanted to help the world and Soviet Union decided they would help Cuba out. In 1972 Cuba joined the COMECON. “Cuba supplied its COMECON partners with fruit, a vacation site, and sugar.”^[2] “Cuba receiving goods worth $5 billion per year more than the value of the good Cuba exported to the USSR. By 1970 more than 70 percent of Cuban trade was with the USSR, and another 15 percent was with its Eastern European allies.”^[3] “The Cuban government had rationed goods since 1962, when shortages first began. Government planners were unable to increase productivity to make goods more available. Shortages were also the result of a fundamental government policy that stressed the importance of producing sugar and developing export industries to bring foreign money into Cuba.”^[4] “Cuba’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell at least 35 percent between 1983 and 1993, with the steepest decline between 1990 and 1993. From 1989 to 1992, imports fell from $8 billion to $2.2 billion.”^[5] 

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union which led to the fall of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) which was a “trade and finical interaction that was conducted with the USSR and other nations.”^[6] “The CMEA made up 85 percent of Cuban trade and finical interaction.”^[7] About 40-45 percent of the island Gross National Product (GNP) had disappeared overnight. More to the point, all of the USSR’S previous economic assistance, oil for sugar barters deals came to a sudden screeching halt. Not only did oil shipments stop coming into Cuba, but it also was a big challenge to trade for oil. What made even harder was the fact that US embargo still effect so and with the fall of Soviet Union Cuba was in serious trouble when it came to trade and making money. In short everything was falling apart, activity plummeted, food imports dropped dramatically and the Cuban economy was teetering on the verge of a complete collapse.  Victor Ramirez a doctor in Cuba said, “It seemed like overnight things changed. What I noticed first was the power outages that happened constantly. It was a very hectic and scary time for us in Cuba when the Soviet Union fell.”^[8]

        The social impact or fallout from the demise of the USSR was intense. The average standard of living for every Cuban took a major hit and rationing quotas had to be introduced. At the worst points in the Cuban people would be given one or two weeks worth of rationing and they would have to make it lost a month or so. The people of Cuba were rationed on things like: vegetable oil, soap, detergent, eggs, monthly ration of beef which ended up becoming a mixture of ground beef and soy powder and finally milk which would get watered down. Also with the lack of petrol electrical blackouts became commonplace throughout Cuba. A lot of the house holds in Cuba cooked with gas and what ended happening is that random power outages would happen and people would have to wait until the power came back on to do anything. For the most part people who lived in Havana had a schedule of when the power would go out but for people who lived further out the power was very erratic and could come on and off at any time. The free basic meals that Castro had set up were still be served but most times it was just rice and beans. With random blackout happening schools and lunchrooms would close after the power would go out. Public transportation was pretty much nonexistent and you were considerate really fortunate if you had a working car still. The agricultural part of Cuba was also hit hard because with out oil and gasoline you can’t use tractor so the Cuban people had to revert back to livestock to do all their fieldwork. One semi good thing that came from all of this was that Cuba got some support from China who imported them hundreds of thousands of bikes that helped with transportation of Cuba. With the alarming drop in calorie intake about 50,000 Cubans had developed a temporary blindness many others had a significant drop in weight and the whole population experienced a serve drop in their overall personal health A typical ironic joke that people made was that, “The Revolution only has three problems breakfast, lunch and dinner.”^[9]