Everyone is equal, some are more equal than others / Untangling Cuba

Every day here is like working at a knotted ball of string and trying to straighten out
more and more of it. Any time I think that I have finally untangled all the knots, I find
that there are more gnarls that I didn’t notice or that the previously unravelled parts have
become snarled once again.

Through my own cultural filter, I find this system completely incompatible with any
improvement of human welfare and inherently at odds with human equality.

This week has been another fascinating experience in working with clashing ideological
systems. Monday morning we met with V, our local jefe and we were told that the
Partido was showing up the next day to visit the farms. This is a big deal. The Partido
taking an interest in a small project like this could be very helpful in gaining access to
more resources for the farmers. We planned to go to the farms in the morning to meet
the delegation and spend the day visiting the farms with them, asking questions and
answering questions about Canada’s involvement in the project. We waited all day for
them to arrive and they never did. It was still a fascinating day.

As planned, we showed up to the head farmer’s farm at 8:30 and ended up arriving at the
same time as two extension workers from Baracoa.

*Background info: the project is run by the forestry institute and it has offices in Havana
and Baracoa. There are a handful of people from the institute involved in the project
who are supposed to take turns to come to the project site, so that there is someone from
that part of the team here every week. Since we’ve been here, no one has come since the
CEO of FBC was here. The reason that they can’t always come is that they don’t have the
budget to come stay for a week at a time. To solve this problem, the CEO had budgeted
a monthly stipend of 20 CUCs, payable to the team member upon the submission of a
report on their visit. As far as we have understood, this money has yet to get to any of the
Baracoa team members from the Havana team members who were given control of the
stipend.

We ended up talking with the team members for twenty minutes and trying to understand
the reasons that they had not come sooner. Still foggy on the details, but basically there
has been no budget for them until this week.

After somewhat clearing up this issue, we followed them as they did a recorrido (a
check up of the farms). They have several things to note down for the final report of the
project, including which farms have micro-viveros (nurseries), autoconsumos (kitchen
gardens), how many species they have in their one hectare analog forestry plots, how
many seedlings have been planted, how many have survived and more… During this
recorrido we realized a lot of things about this project that we hadn’t necessarily thought
about. Some of which I’m still processing. I’ll try to put it into words, because even now,
two days later, my feelings and thoughts are still as mixed up as the clothes in my laundry
bag.

This project is supposed to be based on analog forestry. Analog forestry (AF) is a
methodology that has the objective of recuperating degraded areas, while attempting to
recreate a climax vegetation, similar to what existed before the deforestation process.
The idea is to find ways to maximize benefits for rural communities, in terms of social,
environmental and economic forestry services. In theory, this is an incredible idea.

The farmers are workers who don’t own their farm and are contracted to plant trees by
the Empresa Forestal, whose primary objective and reason for being is to simply cover
soil. The AF methodology is proposed/imposed by the project to hopefully improve
their wellbeing in the long term. The problem is that these farmers don’t have a sense of
belonging to the farms and so don’t necessarily think past their next paycheck enough to
see the benefits of using this imposed methodology. They don’t own their land and there
is a huge amount of turnover. The turnover occurs mainly because of the poor conditions
that they live with; namely poorly constructed houses with leaky roofs, no water access
and no electricity. Some farmers don’t even live on their farms and commute every day
from Guantanamo, Cecilia, Paraguay or La Sombrilla.

The way the farmers are paid is by work accomplished. There is a head farmer of the
14 farms and he is in charge of going around at the end of every month and ensuring
that the tasks from their monthly workplans have been accomplished. Basically, at the
beginning of every year, the Empresa tells the farmers what needs to be done for the year
and divides it by month. Every month, the farmers hand in a detailed workplan of what
they plan on doing and they are paid for the different tasks that they accomplish. This can
include anything from planting a certain number of trees, planting seeds, transplanting
seedlings, maintaining a fire trench to prevent forest fires… you get the idea.

The AF methodology fits in to this by giving the farmers an opportunity to still perform
their required tasks, but with the option of planning ahead and eventually making extra
profit by, for example, selling fruit from a papaya tree that they planted instead of a
eucalyptus tree. Some of the farmers have really taken advantage of the possibility and
are working hard in their spare time to plant economically valuable species. In the end,
the methodology is just a way to help them. At this point in the project, the farmers are
supposed to be paid for analog forestry tasks, in the same way that they are paid for
general forestry tasks.

In this context, it is possible for a farmer to make more than the average monthly salary.
However, issues arise when the farmers have no tools to do this work. Anytime they
need anything, they must first ask the head farmer, who must bike to town to ask V, the
head of the Unidad Silvicola (that we are working with directly), who must try to get in
touch with the head of the Empresa Forestal (that controls access to materials, tools and
that is the official forestry entity) who then makes the final decision about the request.
At each one of these steps, only one person is in charge of transmitting information and
things get bottlenecked. Not to mention the problems with salaries and actually getting
paid in the first place. And the lack of water. Apparently plants need water to grow…?
Whodathunkit?

It is a very top down approach and a conversation with V, our jefe, this morning made me
realize this even more. I got in trouble for giving the farmers some sense of power. Oops.
J

The last time that I met with the Comite de Agua, we planned on pushing for the work
to be finished. I told the farmers that I would push as much as I could from my end and
involve the Canadian FBC powers that be, but that some push had to come from their
end as well. The idea behind the comity is to involve the farmers in the running of their
community and for them to gain some decision making power over their lives. Which
they have started to do, much to the chagrin of V.

During the recorrido with the Baracoa team members, I took advantage of the
opportunity to continue collecting info for my baseline assessment of the water situation
on the farms. The man from finca 4, E, who is part of the water comity told me that he
spoke with V and had made three suggestions to speed up the painfully slow process.
1. To have all the materials for construction of the elevated concrete plinths on the
farms so that when the builders arrive, everything they need is there. *The way
things are now, the material arrives at different times and the builders can’t do
anything when they bother to show up to work.*
2. Get the man who is supposed to dig the trenches for the pipes to the farms so that
he can see that the ground is dry enough to start.
3. To tell the farmers where the pipes will go so that they can start making a path for
the machines and be able to use the trees that will be bulldozed and wasted.

The simple fact of one of the farmers making suggestions to someone from higher up
is a major step forward. I told the finquero (farmer) that this was wonderful and that he
should put these suggestions down in writing, formally and make notes of what he wrote
in his Comite de Agua notebook.

That brings us to this morning. V lectured me about how the farmers don’t have the
same amount of power that we as interns have and that he as head of the Unidad has.
He still calls us his “children” to enforce the hierarchical difference between us. He said
that decisions and suggestions couldn’t come from those who are lower down because
Cuba doesn’t work that way and we needed to understand that. He said that he was in his
position because he is intelligent and has a specific strategy of how this process will work
and that the farmers have no business interfering with this. He said that he was under the
impression that the water comity would focus on water quality and water use, not bother
themselves with questions about material and construction. He said that in the Cuban
system, power belongs to those who are in higher positions. He said that the farmers had
no business knowing what was happening with materials. He said a lot of things.

I had been awake for approximately 7 minutes so all of my retorts came out sounding
like garbled incoherent nonsense. One thing I did manage to say was that, coming from
Canada, I’m used to everyone being equal, so it is very strange for to work in this system.
I was hoping to bait him on this point so that HE would respond something about the

communist system, where all men are brothers and THEN I could jump onto this point
and BAM, knock him down with words. Unfortunately, he didn’t take the bait, but I’m
still happy I took that jab. I played dumb and asked him why he was bringing this up,
because he made it seem as though this conversation was coming out of nowhere. He
mentioned that E, the farmer from #4 had made requests and at that point, I was able to
bring the conversation around to backing up E and pushing for these suggestions from my
end.

V also mentioned that because there have been ministers in town from the Partido,
security has been increased and we are being watched more closely. We basically have to
be careful what kind of questions we ask the farmers in case this information gets back to
the spies and we come under more scrutiny for not sticking exactly to our work plan.

Meanwhile, the few elevados (raised concrete pillars) that have been built need to be
redone because they are already falling apart and need to be able to support over two
tonnes. The concrete still hasn’t been delivered to the farms, but this might happen this
week… Hopefully. The man who will be digging the trenches will be checking out the
farms today or tomorrow and supposedly starting on Monday.

I am meeting with my water comity today to discuss advances and plan a workshop for
next Saturday. Next week I will be receiving documents about the river’s water quality
and I’ll plan a workshop around demystifying the different water treatment techniques. I
plan on involving the members of the water comity in putting together the workshop so
that they get used to doing this.