The week kicked off in Viñales—an outing organized for my eleven graduate students from Pennsylvania. Viñales is one of several points of eco-tourism being developed to draw tourism (and its revenue potential) from Havana to outlying regions. A very smart move, indeed, as the revenue potential of a World Heritage Site designation is too good to resist, and there is a strong correlation between site designation and tourism center.
Beyond the beauty of the Viñales Valley and the hospitality of its people, our students were able to learn about and experience a number of things. First, infrastructure can make a difference; the road to Viñales suggests an application of planning that is as uneven as the road itself. Second, tourism in Cuba is about managing flows of people—foreigners—to direct and concentrate their visit within designated spaces. This is not a criticism so much as an observation of choices. In a state that remains wary of foreigners, especially those who visit from states that have until recently been viewed as adversaries, it may well make sense to figure out ways to both invite tourism, but also to manage its insertion into the island. The creation of tourist “safe spaces”—where interactions are anticipated and take place within rural areas and outside the Havana metropolis—is one strategy.
Just a few hours from Viñales, Havana afforded our group the experience of a tourist sector built around a set of constructed experiences. Like a historically connected Disneyland, Havana’s tourist attractions offer the visitor everything from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” (at the Morro) to “The Godfather Part II” (La Tropicana) and its 1950s Cuban social culture, along with the experiences of the post-Revolutionary state.
At the center of these experiential adventures sits Havana harbor, which is the basis of the organizing geography of this living theme park. Standing at the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Moro and the lighthouse at the mouth of Havana Harbor, one can see the ways Cuba organizes its tourist sector on the ground; that is, the way that the Cuban state manages the flows of people and their experiences to extract maximum benefit with a minimum of disruption to the island’s socialist state, while providing the right mix of fantasy that caters to the tourist-market expectations of foreigners.
Havana harbor no longer serves well its intended original purpose as a major working port and center of international commerce in Cuba. It makes sense to abandon it as a principal working port for the nation; Mariel, along with Cienfuegos and Santiago, may serve the state better (and more profitably) to that end. What is left for Habana harbor but to profit from its own history in a world whose tourists increasingly understand pleasure as global living museums? Its history and beauty suggest an equally appealing use, one consonant with market demand—as a travel destination.
The Port is ideally suited to this purpose, providing a ready-made system for the easy containment and direction of tourists for short-burst visits. What could be better for a state that perhaps ought to be suspicious of tourists roaming around than a system in which tourists can be injected directly into tourist sectors and then bused to other tourist sectors using the state’s own transport systems? Tourists are indulged, the state makes money, and it is easy to monitor and adjust the entire process. Again, this is not a criticism, but rather a recognition that the trends inherent in market-based Western tourism may find a most efficient expression in Cuba.
Hybridized tourist sector experiences were nicely illustrated by our visit to the Organopónico de Alamar. One of Havana’s largest and most successful urban gardens, the Organopónico offered an opportunity to consider urban gardening and the way it is embedded in the social programs of economic development under conditions of Cuban Marxism. In fact, it appears to be a very popular site for tourists.
On its grounds, visitors are able to experience sustainable organic urban farming on the island, a movement that has had some success in feeding local communities. Urban gardens such as the Organopónico nourish the tourist sector in two ways. Firstly, they increasingly supply tourist-sector hotels with excess production through state intermediaries who will take a cut of the profit. Secondly, they serve as sites of tourism in their own right. Drawing in tourists eager to learn about organic farming and the history of Cuban urban agriculture serves two useful objectives: it provides tourists with a diversion, and it provides cooperative gardens with income. A fair exchange, I suspect; but one can wonder about the extent to which this sort of tourism is healthy for agricultural co-ops.
To some extent, such visits—when lucrative, in particular—can also serve as a trap. One can image urban gardens becoming hostages to the expectations of tourists, even when those expectations become a burden to the co-ops and make it harder for them to meet their objectives to the people they serve. Tourists expect a “show” that lives up to their need for consuming “experience.” In the worst case, co-ops can become specimens—circus acts in the global circus that is international experience tourism. The co-ops die as vibrant social institutions and re-emerge as sideshows to a weeklong vacation for the consumption of tourists.
Finally, we found ourselves on the beaches in Varadero, the jewel of Cuba’s dreams for a vibrant and profitable tourist sector. As a peninsula, Varadero is easily groomed and protected from substantial integration with the rest of the area. It also provides a physical manifestation of the way in which tourism is viewed as both central to the economy and marginal to the society that surrounds it.
What makes Varadero even more interesting is the way in which the Cuban authorities have taken models at the heart of capitalist markets-based tourism—with their inherent notions of containment, management and controlled experiences generating maximum revenue and minimum risk (think all inclusive resorts in the Bahamas and historically the Club Med model)—and put them to the service of the social and political aims and requirements of a European-style, Marxist-Leninist state with respect to its program of class struggle and resource mobilization in the service of the state. And, of course, with that comes irony.
The Cuban authorities tend to criticize Chinese Marxist-Leninist projects for borrowing the mechanics of the markets, yet here the Cuban authorities have also borrowed heavily from the mechanics of the West. In this case, the Cubans engage in market behavior; they are competing for beach-based tourist dollars in a market that no amount of central planning can avoid. Moreover, they have also embraced the core business practices of Western capitalist enterprises. Joint ventures extend the life cycle of moneymaking for the Cuban state.
The state makes money in the planning and construction of these joint ventures. It directs and approves operating plans, and to some extent, their pricing. The state takes a cut of the profits and provides services, like food, entertainment, maintenance, etc. The state-owned tour companies and the state-owned buses that ferry travelers to and from the resorts bring in revenues as well. And of course, the tour operations that take people from the tourist zones for day trips to other points of interest on the island also provide multiple points for value-added state revenues, for the employment of labor, and for the managed planning of the development of tourist-related resources throughout the island.
Having segmented the operations of these compounds, the Cuban state has been able to take a cut of value added everywhere. Bravo. As the sole capitalist on the island and the owner of all of the means of production, it makes sense—and is certainly deeply embedded within Leninist notions of Marxism—that the state exploits its capital. Of course, that exploitation is meant to serve the social projects at the heart of Cuban socialism. In the absence of transparency, it is not easy to see where or how these profits are used. And this produces the greatest irony—as the sole owner of productive capital in Cuba, it may be hard for the Cuban state to avoid the habits of the capitalist in world markets.