Cuba

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by zzsstt, May 8, 2009.

  1. zzsstt

    zzsstt Junior Member

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    There have been various mentions on this forum of Cuba as being an example of working permaculture, and how terrible it would be if the US were to cause capitalism to become established there. I have not been to Cuba, but I read an article today in the "Guardian Weekly" (a weekly digest of the Guardian Newspaper from the UK), and I would like to share some segments:

    "Cubans long for an apertura, an opening (zzsstt: an opening to trade with the world, notably the US). Spend a day with a typical family in Vedado, a district in Havana, and you understand why. You wake up in a crumbling overcrowded house. The humidity is stiffling but the fan is broken. You want a shower but there is little soap an no shampoo. You go easy on the toilet paper - it's the last roll. Breakfast is bread, butter and tea. You wait an hour for a packed bus to take you to work."

    "Your salary is 80c a day, enough to buy some tomatoes and onions on the way home."

    "No-one starves in Cuba, but for most Cubans ife is a daily grind. Absurdly low monthly wages of $22 have spawned a nation of hustlers and micro-capitalists. Many have a sideline, a scam, to make ends meet. This thin strip of the Caribbean is not quite the "museum of socialism" that some depict."

    "The Havana beloved by European and Canadian tourists is a time-warp stereotype: colonial-era architecture, 1950's Chevys and Buicks cruising the streets, not a Starbucks in sight, and a population ready to fiesta at the mention of rum. Crime is near non-existent, the health service and education systems are fantastic, and salsa rules the night. Much of that image is romanticised. Up close, the handsome buildings stink from bad plumbing. Chinese buses and Skodas are replacing the tail-fins. A diet of starch and grease has widened waistlines and roughened skin. Pregnant women and infants receive stellar medical care, but many hospitals are foul, the victim of degradation since the economic crisis of the 90s."

    "top of the wishlist: vegetables, fruit, meat, soap, shampoo, toilet paper, shoes, clothes."

    "Botched central planning and the embargo have gutted industry and agriculture, condeming millions to hidden unemployment and underemployment. "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work", goes the joke."


    So, whilst no journalist is to be fully trusted, perhaps Cuba is not the permaculture heaven that we'd like to believe?
     
  2. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    G'day zzsstt :)

    Could you please cite the article that you make reference to?

    Thanks, Mark.
     
  3. zzsstt

    zzsstt Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    The article was in "The Guardian Weekly" (https://www.guardian-weekly.com), I believe it was the 1-5-09 edition. The paper has gone on to it's next reader, but I'll try to get it back and find the authors name.
     
  4. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    G'day zzsstt :)

    The original article appeared thus:

    Open for business

    For the last 50 years, Cuba has struggled under a crippling US trade embargo. But this week President Obama eased sanctions on the island. Rory Carroll reports from Havana on what this will mean for ordinary Cubans

    Rory Carroll, The Guardian, Wednesday 15 April 2009:


    https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ap ... ions-obama

    Concerning Rory Carroll's journalistic integrity:

    Reputedly, he has confessed to "not being impartial", and to writing from an "observational" perspective:

    https://www.borev.net/2008/04/british_me ... y_car.html

    Concerning Cuba's permaculture record:

    Based on my studies to date (of which a (part) reference list is provided below; reposted in case you should care to study from it yourself), I believe the Cuban people are world leaders in the cause:

    Alteri, M., et al. ‘The greening of the "Barios": Urban Agriculture for Food Security in Cuba’, Agriculture and Human Values, vol. 16, (1999), pp. 131-140.

    BBC, Timeline: Cuba, (2008), retrieved March 3 2009, from BBC News: https://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pageto ... 203355.stm

    Benjamin, M. & Rosset, P., The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's Experiment with Organic Agriculture, Melbourne, Ocean Press, 1994.

    Bray, D. & Bray, M., ‘The Cuban Revolution and World Change’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 3, (2002), pp.3-17.

    Burchardt, H-J., ‘Contours of the Future: The New Social Dynamics in Cuba’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 3, (2002), pp. 57-74.

    Deere, C., ‘Reforming Cuban Agriculture’, Development and Change, vol. 28, (1997), pp. 649-69.

    Dilla, H. & Oxhorn, P., ‘The Virtues and Misfortunes of Civil Society in Cuba’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 4, (2002), pp. 11-30.

    Gott, R., Cuba: A New History, New Haven, Yale Nota Bene, 2005.

    Hamilton, D., ‘Whither Cuban Socialism? The Changing Political Economy of the Cuban Revolution’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 3, (2002), pp. 18-39.

    Killoran-McKibbin, S., ‘Cuba's Urban Agriculture: Food Security and Urban Sustainability’, Women and Environments International Magazine, (Spring, 2006), pp. 70-71.

    Koont, S., ‘A Cuban Success Story: Urban Agriculture’, Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 40, no. 3, (2008), pp. 285-91.

    Monreal, P., ‘Development as an Unfinished Affair: Cuba after the "Great Adjustment" of the 1990s’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 3, (2002), pp. 75-90.

    Oxfam, Cuba: Going Against the Grain, (2001), retrieved March 3 2009, from Oxfam America: https://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpubl ... t1164.html

    Staten, C., The History of Cuba, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.

    Valdes, J. & Stoller, R., ‘Culture and Development: Some Considerations for Debate’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 4, (2002), pp. 31-46.


    Cheerio, Mark.

    PS: Anyone from Australia thinking about visiting Cuba some time in the future? If so, I would love to hear from you.

    I'm considering the Cuba Brigade option:

    https://www.cubabrigade.org.au/

    Peace and love, M.
     
  5. zzsstt

    zzsstt Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    Like I said, no journalist is to be trusted!

    Sadly I have little faith these days in anything I have not seen myself. It is rare to find a published article in the press, concerning a subject about which I have any knowledge, that cannot instantly be dissected and shown to be false, misleading or simply inaccurate. This is, I suspect, largely because stories that sell papers are far more valuable than stories that are truthful. Worse still is that this situation now exists in "research" papers, where commercial or political pressures have resulted in authors bending the truth, or at least stressing certain portions of it and ignoring those inconvenient realities that do not fit their views! The internet serves to propagate these inaccuracies, as "everyone is an expert".

    In the case of Cuba, I would imagine the truth to be somewhere in the middle, as is often the case. It is also true that opinion on any given subject is always subjective - what some view as "being in touch with nature" others would view as "living in squalor". This no doubt also applies in this example! The author is concerned that the family in question have no toilet paper and their fan is broken - fans are a relatively new invention, and torn up newspaper serves as toilet paper without a problem, but to the author this is proof of their impoverished existence.

    We must also remember that other newspaper articles recently have stated that the biggest problem with African villages is their lack of internet access, and that subsidence farmers in (I can't actually remember which "3rd world" country was under discussion) should band together in to bigger farms so they can afford to buy modern machinery and fertilisers. All of these views are simply a reflection on what the author sees as "normality", together with the first worlds stupid belief that what works, alledgedly, for "us" will be best for "them".

    However I have no doubt the same rules apply equally to the "pro" Cuban permaculture brigade. It is unlikely that the authors in your list are "anti" permaculture, and far more likely that they are largely pro-socialism. This is not to say that they have motives other than a genuine belief, nor that what they are saying is untrue, but it does mean that they are no less biased than anyone else. For example, I picked at random the third item on your list. Rosset P., has written a large number of articles or books, all on related subjects, all from a similar viewpoint, including "Why we must get the WTO out of Agriculture", various anti-Biotechnology articles, and why the Gates Foundation is misguided. Now in fact I tend to agree with many of those sentiments, but because I agree with them does not make them (or me!) right!

    A friend of mine went to Cuba some time ago. It occured to me to ask him what he thought. Unfortunately he went there simply to look at old American cars, and his entire journey was planned around getting flights on some of the very old aeroplanes that are only flying commercially in those area. He has no recollections of anything else!
     
  6. Flying Binghi

    Flying Binghi Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    "...his entire journey was planned around getting flights on some of the very old aeroplanes that are only flying commercially in those area. He has no recollections of anything else!..."

    Whats wrong with that ? ... grab a sixpack and watch the TV program "Around the World in 80 Gardens" and ya get all the info needed on Cuba's green "experiment" .. :wink:
     
  7. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    G'day zzsstt :)

    True. There are so very few original thoughts, much less original comment, coming out of the mainstream media today - too many agendas, too many vested interests, I believe. So how do we make sense of it all? One response is to read vast amounts of literature and then travel, and in doing so spend time listening to the people whose land we have visited upon, and somewhere down the path we can then, perhaps, draw our own conclusions.

    Concerning big 'D' development, and that of Cuba's in particular:

    I am not so naive as to blindly follow the mantra of socialism (Cuban-esque, or otherwise). As I have stated numerous times before, and through much previous discourse recorded via this forum, I am nothing if not a neo-eco-anarchist. Socialism, communism, neo-liberal lazaire faire capitalism - they all stink of human corruption, exploitation and ecological degradation, in my humble opinion.

    Such is my intended journey to Cuba. It is there where I plan to spend as much time as possible furthering my study of the nexus that exists between permaculture and the post-1990 Cuban agricultural model. Of course I may then further add to my own partly drawn conclusion, but I doubt whether it will waver far from my current belief, that is that the post-1990 Cuban agricultural model is much better than what we (Euro-centric, 'Westerners') contend with, and subject the land to.

    On big 'D' development in general:

    Critical development theorist, Vincent Tucker, dismisses it as a 'myth'. He asserts that it falsely claims the status of 'natural law, objective reality and evolutionary necessity', and that should anyone dare hold an opposing view (such as the good people of Cuba, and dare I say, myself) to this ('Western') belief, then she/he should consider her/himself as 'primitive, backward, irrational or naive'.

    He goes on to fire this critique:

    Development is the process whereby other peoples are dominated and their destinies are shaped according to an essentially Western way of conceiving and perceiving the world. The development discourse is part of an imperial process whereby other peoples are appropriated and turned into objects. It is an essential part of the process whereby the 'developed' countries manage, control and even create the Third World economically, politically, socially and culturally. It is a process whereby the lives of some peoples, their plans, their hopes, their imaginations, are shaped by others who frequently share neither their lifestyles, nor their hopes nor their values. The real nature of this process is disguised by discourse that portrays development as a necessary and desirable process, as human destiny itself. The economic, social and political transformations of the Third World are inseparable from the production and reproduction of meanings, symbols and knowledge, that is, cultural reproduction.

    Source: Tucker, V. (1999) 'The Myth of Development', Chapter 1 in Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm, eds. R. Munck & D. O'Hearn. London: Zed Books, pp. 1-2.

    So, with the above words of the esteemed scholar, Mr Tucker (for I could never hope to write so eloquently), I will leave you to ponder this:

    Is this what the USA wishes for Cuba? To 'develop' it? To wave their magic wand of 'development' over it?

    I fear this is so.

    G'day Flying Binghi :)

    Yes, I have been directed to that particular progam. For those who may have not seen it, most of it appears on Youtube here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRz34Dee7XY

    Cheerio, peace and good fortune to you both, Mark.
     
  8. Flying Binghi

    Flying Binghi Junior Member

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    Re: Cuba

    ...Human proof walls and fences, a "nexus" to "what we (Euro-centric, 'Westerners') contend with"... or not.. :shock:
     

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