MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. On this day, 50 years ago, Fidel Castro and his guerillas marched into Havana. That day marked the end of U.S. domination over Cuba and the beginning of Castro's reign. These days, many Cubans struggle just to put food on their tables. Government officials say 2009 could be even worse. NPR's Jason Beaubien recently visited Cuba and found some people frustrated by the communist system and others who still feel a sense of pride and loyalty to the revolution.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Parts of Havana look post-apocalyptic. Ornate art nouveau buildings crumble in on themselves. Sixty-year-old cars, overloaded with passengers and belching smoke, lumber through the streets. The grass in public parks is overgrown. At times, bright red, white and blue Cuban flags fluttering from balconies are the only sparks of color in this drab landscape.
(Soundbite of music)
BEAUBIEN: Yet, music thumps out of apartment buildings. Kids play stickball and soccer in the streets. Young couples kiss on the ocean boardwalk that looks north towards Florida. Julio Casanova, sitting in a rather barren park in central Havana, says Cuba faces many problems.
Mr. JULIO CASANOVA: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: But you live, he says. You live. You live. You live. You live. You live.
Casanova is 60 years old. When Fidel Castro toppled the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Casanova was shining shoes on the streets of Havana. Under Fidel, he was able to go back to school and eventually became an officer in the army. Under the communist system, he, and everyone else, gets health care, shelter and basic food.
Mr. JULIO CASANOVA: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: It's different than in the United States, he says. In the United States, if you don't work, you don't eat. Here, everyone eats.
As a country, however, Cuba has struggled recently to meet everyone's basic needs. Government bodegas that sell heavily subsidized food rations regularly run out of meat, eggs, and cooking oil. In a market on the west side of Havana, crowds push in to buy tomatoes, limes, papayas. There is fresh produce here, but the overall agriculture system on the island has declined so dramatically that Cuba now imports roughly 60 percent of its food - much of it from the United States.
A soaring trade deficit and three hurricanes in 2008 have pushed the communist nation into its toughest financial crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union. An ailing Fidel handed power to his younger brother, Raul, in 2006 after running the country for 48 years. And as president, Raul Castro has made only minor changes to the Marxist-Leninist system.
(Soundbite of Cuba's President Raul Castro's speech)
BEAUBIEN: At a ceremony, last week, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Fidel coming to power, Raul Castro said the Cuban Revolution is stronger now than ever. But dissidents say the revolution has evolved into a dictatorial system that traps Cubans in a bizarre form of poverty. For instance, Cubans are paid in national pesos, but many necessities are only sold in convertible pesos, CUC, the currency available to tourists.
Ms. BELINDA SALAS (Director, Latin American Foundation of Rural Women): (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: How am I going to buy in CUC when I don't get paid in CUC, asked Belinda Salas?
Salas runs an organization advocating for the rights of rural women, and she says the Cuban economy needs a radical overhaul. She says U.S. policy towards the island hasn't helped. Food in the markets now comes, often times, from the U.S., but she says the government still gets to blame all its problems on the embargo.
Ms. SALAS: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: If there's no plaster, it's because of the embargo, she says. If the lights go out, it's because of the embargo. If there's no rice, it's because of the embargo. And the embargo has become a justification for them to stay in power for 50 years.
Salas also accuses the government of crushing dissent. Human Rights Watch says more than 200 people remain imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons. In many parts of Cuba, there is frustration. People still flee the island in boats. The majority now try to get to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as the U.S. Coast Guard has made reaching Florida more difficult.
But as the country commemorates the 50th anniversary of Fidel coming to power, many others say the revolution has accomplished a lot. In the south of Havana, in an area called San Miguel, dirt footpaths wind through a maze of cobbled-together fences and wooden shacks.
Mr. JASMAN RODRIGUEZ ESTABLE: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Jasman Rodriguez Estable is 29 years old. He lives in a rustic house in which cloth curtains serve as doors to the bedrooms. He says before the triumph of the revolution, poor people like him couldn't go to school. Now, even though Cuba is a developing country, he says it has high-tech hospitals. It sends doctors and teachers throughout Latin America. In the 1980s, it had one of the most powerful armies in the world. Rodriguez attributes all of this to the 82-year-old Fidel.
Mr. ESTABLE: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Fidel is young, he says. And he will remain young forever. Fidel will remain young because he has strength, ideas and confidence in his people. Rodriguez acknowledges that the monthly salaries in Cuba aren't enough to live on, but he says life is hard in many parts of the world. He's proud that Cuba, for all these years, has stood up against its rich, superpower neighbor, that it still opposes capitalism. Despite the mounting hardships and calls by dissidents for radical change on the island, Rodriguez thinks Fidel's communist system is in Cuba to stay. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.