[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 216]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            POVERTY IN CUBA

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                            HON. ALBIO SIRES

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, January 23, 2012

  Mr. SIRES. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following regarding the culture 
of poverty in Cuba under the Castro regime.

                [From the Jersey Journal, Dec. 31, 2011]

                   Cuba's Culture of Poverty Persists

                          (By Roland A. Alum)

       The Fidel-&-Raul Castro regime marks 53 years this Jan. 1. 
     The brothers unquestionably enjoyed extraordinary popularity 
     in 1959, but the enthusiasm soon vanished as they turned Cuba 
     into a financially and spiritually bankrupt Marxist anti-
     utopia.
       As a result, nearly two million Cubans of all social 
     backgrounds have fled, many of them settling in Hudson 
     County.
       By the 1950s, Cuba was a regional leader in numerous social 
     indicators, notwithstanding instability and corruption during 
     the republican era (1902-1958). But since 1959 the island-
     nation has become a backward, closed society beleaguered by 
     unproductivity and rationing.
       Sociologist Tomas Masaryk noted that ``dictators `look 
     good' until the last minutes''; in Cuba's case, it seems 
     particularly fine to certain U.S. intellectuals. Comfortably 
     from abroad, apologists contend that most of the 
     socioeconomic problems that traditionally afflicted the prior 
     five and a half decades were eliminated after 1959. Yet, 
     fact-finding by international social-scientists challenges 
     this fantasy.
       An early, little-known account uncovering some effects of 
     the Castros' regimentation came from research in Cuba in 
     1969-'70 by U.S. cultural-anthropologists Oscar Lewis and 
     Douglas Butterworth. They intended to test Lewis' theory that 
     a culture of poverty would not exist in a Marxist-oriented 
     society. They had naively presupposed that the socially 
     alienating conditions that engender such phenomena could 
     develop among the poor solely under capitalism.
       The Lewis-Butterworth early on-the-ground scrutiny 
     validates many accounts by respected experts and the much 
     vilified exiles. There exists a culture of poverty in Cuba, 
     although it is not necessarily a survivor of the old times, 
     but seemingly a by-product of the Castros' totalitarian 
     socialism. There were always poor Cubans, and some version of 
     the culture of poverty might have existed before; but in my 
     communications with Butterworth, he reconfirmed another 
     discovery. The researchers could not document a case for a 
     pervasive pre-1959 culture of poverty. The authorities must 
     have suspected the prospective conclusions because the 
     scholars were abruptly expelled and their Cuban statistician 
     imprisoned.
       Upon the 53rd anniversary, the old Lewis-Butterworth 
     analysis invites renewed reflection. Apologists customarily 
     replicate propagandistic cliches by blaming failures on 
     external factors, such as the ending, two decades ago, of the 
     multibillion-dollar subsidies from the defunct Soviet Bloc.
       The anthropologists' undertaking, however, revealed that 
     life for average Cubans in the Castros' first decade was 
     already beset with corruption and time-wasting food lines. 
     Likewise, Butterworth described how ordinary people were 
     engaging in what sociobehavioral scientists now call 
     ``everyday forms of resistance.'' Cubans were already 
     undermining the police-state through black-marketeering, 
     pilfering and vandalism, as we hear that they continue to do 
     decades later.
       After more than half a century of oppression and poor 
     quality of life, one hopes for a transition to an open 
     society with equal opportunities for every Cuban.

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