Tourism corrodes soul of Cuban revolution

Nothing kills the spirit of a revolution better than being treated like a second-class citizen in your own country, as Cubans are currently learning.

In Havana's ornate old Gran Teatro, fans of Spanish ballet pack out the back rows of the auditorium, behind rows of empty seats reserved for dollar-paying tourists. Musicians employed at the country's glistening holiday resorts beg tourists to order beers for them at bars reserved for non-Cubans. Locals pass the weekend at beaches with the crowds and the seaweed, while nearby strands stand swept and empty for arriving foreigners.

"Tourism apartheid" is winning Cuba much-needed foreign currency, but it's also corroding the soul of a revolution that has defied the odds to survive into its fifth decade.

A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the communists are still firmly in control of this cigar-shaped Caribbean island. In eastern Europe state socialism is now just a fading memory, but for Cubans, wearied by years of centralised planning and rationing, it's an everyday reality.

The guerrilla war started by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and a few dozen comrades in the late 1950s is one of the most romantic revolutions the world has known. The regime's success in mythologising this struggle - most notably in endless images of Che, with and without cigar - has given it the strength to repulse all challenges from outside. Armed landings, assassination plots, propaganda radio, sabotage, bombings - Cuba has withstood everything the US and anti-Castro activists within the US have thrown at it.

When the Russians pulled the plug on its aid to the country in the early 1990s, the country tottered. Thousands left for nearby Florida in a flotilla of small boats and rafts. Castro turned the situation to his advantage by emptying the prisons in the same direction. The US promptly stopped being so welcoming. The crisis passed.

But now, like the imported beetle that becomes a pest, the all-powerful dollar is eating away at the self-belief of Cubans. The manna from tourists has become the staple of daily exchange. The local currency, the peso, is virtually worthless and there's little to buy with it anyway. Dollars are needed to buy all of the luxuries and many of the necessities of life.

Cuba isn't the first developing country to experience "dollar rape". Why be a doctor when there's more money in driving a taxi? Why work as a physiotherapist when it profits more to massage the ample stomachs of foreign tourists? Why go with a local boy when "escorting" visitors is so much more rewarding.

In Havana, we stayed in a room rented out by a young couple, both lawyers. She earns $12 a month, and he earned $16 until he realised it made more sense to stay at home and make the bed that earns this family $25 a night. The state's take in this form of basic capitalism is a $100 a month tax.

A country that pays lawyers the same amount as streetsweepers might be some people's idea of paradise, but Cuba cannot sustain this form of economic distortion for much longer. It seems that everyone these days has a plan to ease dollars out of the pockets of tourists.

At the same time, Cuba's impressive infrastructure is crumbling. Where else in the developing world can you find near-total literacy - even if there's nothing to read - clean drinking water and excellent health services? Yet how long can this continue, given the flight of skilled personnel and economic hardship resulting from the continuing US economic embargo?

The government has only itself to blame. It is pushing forward with the expansion of tourism, and with a series of joint ventures with western firms which suggest Cuba might be going the way of Vietnam or China. Supporters of the regime are always first in the queue for jobs in these lucrative projects.

Today, Cuba resembles nothing so much as a theme park. Like Dublin's Georgian heritage at the turn of the last century, Havana's colonial mansions have been preserved as tenements. American-made Chryslers, Oldsmobiles and Cadillacs from the 1950s still cruise the country's deserted highways. The shops have dusty, elegant fronts and empty shelves.

It feels like the land that time forgot. Yet less than 100 miles away from Havana, in downtown Miami, Castro's enemies are plotting. The burger joints, the evangelical churches, the multinationals, even the Mafia - all those who ride the wave of American domination are ready to return. The rest of us can only wonder if there is no alternative to the opposing poles of freebooting US capitalism and state communism.

The received wisdom is communism will survive in Cuba until Castro bows out. But even at 72, the Cuban leader looks as vital as ever and shows no sign of leaving the stage. Arguably his greatest achievement now would be to find a "third way" between capitalism and communism, the route that eluded Mikhail Gorbachev when the Soviet Union broke up.