The Cuban people have a word, complicao, which is an intentional mispronunciation of complicado, complicated. They use it a lot—to describe all kinds of situations, relationships, and above all, problems. And Cuba has lots of problems, all of them complicated. There are no simple solutions for Cuba and the Cuban people.
Cuba is almost 800 miles long and averages about 55 miles wide. It has few natural resources, so virtually everything has to be imported. Lumber and steel for construction, for example, are scarce and expensive—concrete is one of the few building materials that can be manufactured locally. It’s not easy, or in some case even possible, to improve the infrastructure because of the shortage of building materials, skilled labor, and above all else, capital. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling. The shortages and expense, coupled with a cash economy, make simple tasks (such as home improvements) complicao.
So Havana has become a decrepit beauty, with hundreds—even thousands—of colonial-era buildings slowly turning into ruins, even while occupied by dozens of families. The shortage and expense of building materials combined with a lack of foreign investment are hindering the development of tourism. Tourism is great—it brings in hard currency—but at the same time it’s a plague in cities like Trinidad, where the water and sewer systems are already over-taxed.
Trinidad is an astoundingly beautiful 16th-century colonial city, popular with tourists because many of the 400-year-old buildings in the center of the city are well preserved. The city encourages tourism and foreign investment in development. But it’s complicated (there’s the word again) by the fact that much of the central city is paved with river rocks that were laid down in the 18th and 19th centuries. You don’t just drag in a trencher and dig for a new sewer line through 200-year-old river rock cobbles. They have to be dug out individually. After removal, the question of how to repave the street arises. Pouring concrete or laying tarmac is a simple solution, but doing so would destroy part of the charm and authenticity of the city.
Maybe it’s not actually a problem. Without capital, it is impossible to do the work anyway. Because the Cuban economy is based on cash, there are few banks. Those banks don’t have depositor’s money to loan out for improvement projects. And the building materials aren’t available, even if the capital were available. Complicao.
The Cuban government has offices devoted to the preservation, conservation, and restoration of its crumbling history. Havana has an office with eight architects and associated staff assigned to conserving thousands of building. Because of the volume of buildings requiring attention, they are forced to use a “triage” method to prioritize the projects so that the worst or most important buildings get help first… and the government has a strong influence in deciding such priorities. So El Capitolio (the National Capitol Building, built in 1926-1929 as the seat of the National Assembly and abandoned when that body was disbanded with the “triumph of the revolution” in 1959) is getting a multi-million-dollar restoration and modernization. Not receiving any restoration or modernization? Crumbling apartment buildings from before the Spanish-American War. Dwellings full of families. Complicao.
Complicao is used to describe much of the “under the table” black market/barter/bribery situations that occur daily in Cuba. For example, Cuba has automobile exhaust emissions regulations. It also has thousands of elderly American automobiles that don’t stand a chance of passing their bi-annual inspections. Many of these cars are vital to the economy, being used daily as tourist taxis and touring cars, so they can’t be red-flagged off the roads. The situation is easily remedied with a small bribe to the inspector. Complicao.
Similarly, most of Cuba’s electrical power plants run on coal. The one in central Havana has a tall smokestack that emits a cloud of black smoke day and night. When I inquired, “how is such a thing permitted?” the answer was complicao—they can’t live without electricity, and they don’t have the capital to install new equipment—or smokestack scrubbers or to convert to cleaner-burning liquefied natural gas (LNG). Importing LNG from their long-time trading partner Venezuela would require building ports and pipelines—and this would require more capital. Yet again, complicao.
Complicao can also be used as a “cop out.” When Cubans are confronted by something they really don’t want to do, they can always say, “Es complicao,”—it’s complicated—as a way to avoid having to do or confront the issue. I can’t say that I encountered this personally but was told it’s an easy out for someone too lazy or weak to put forward the effort to solve the problem.
We Americans are accustomed to knowing almost nothing about this island of 11 million people only 90 miles from our shore. What little we do know is reduced to hashtags (#RaulCastro, #FidelCastro, #ElianGonzales), because we have been prohibited from visiting—and much of what we do know was propagated by anti-Fidel immigrants who came here in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. They were upset about the loss of their homeland to a bunch of bearded communists who took their property, nationalized their industries and investments, and were happy to see them go. But that generation has largely passed on, and the bitter rhetoric has subsided. Many Cuban-Americans would welcome a lifting of the embargo and a loosening of travel restrictions to make it easier to visit those still on the island, and for those on the island to obtain western consumer goods.
Lifting the embargo would also remove a political smokescreen that might cause the government to actually have to face their failure to “control” the economy into prosperity. I’m not an economist, but it seems apparent to me that Cuba must move away from the cash economy, create some system of income tax so that the tourist boom benefits more people, abandon its ownership of cattle so the farmers can bring cattle to an open market with price competition, and raise the pay of the professionals, such as doctors, dentists, and teachers. As government employees, these educated people are paid wages that can barely support them and their families, while private entrepreneurs with access to convertible currency thrive, regardless of their education.
There are no simple solutions to the problems faced by this beautiful country, ruled for almost 60 years by a pair of brothers who led a popular revolution.