Cuba 1958 – Not as Underdeveloped as Alleged

Aug 26, 2011
Ivan Castro

Plaza de la Revolucion (former Civic Square) and Jose Marti Monument, finished in 1958 - Public Domain Michael Oswald

Before the triumph of the Fidel Castro Revolution in 1959, Cuba was far from the backward island that is depicted through government propaganda.

Was the island nation a perfect society then? No, by a long shot but figures from the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, archives of Cuban ministries and various other credible sources paint a different picture than the one put out from Havana for over half a century.

Education

Early in the revolutionary period, the government made a tremendous ruckus over a Literacy Campaign for the island. However, the 1957 United Nations Statistical Yearbook reveals that by 1953, 76 per cent of the Cuban population was literate. That meant that a bit over a million Cubans could not read or write, but only Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica had a higher rate of literacy.

In the mid 50s, education in the island had gotten a massive push thanks to the highest budget for education – 23 % of the total national funds – in Latin America and the opening of over 1,200 rural schools. By 1958, the literacy rate was 82 per cent.

Cuba also boasted six universities, three of them public and 114 technical and professional schools.

Standard of Living

Even though the agricultural worker made half ($3) of what the industrial worker earned ($6) for an eight hour day in 1958, no Latin American nation paid its workers any better. At the time, only six nations – Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, Sweden and Norway – remunerated their farmers better. The typical salary of the Cuban industrial worker was bested in only seven countries.

There was, conversely, a whole faction of workers who had only temporary work. During the 1950s projects for the diversification of the islands’ industry were under way and the economic situation of the underemployed and the unemployed was easing.

In terms of caloric consumption pre –Revolutionary Cuba ranked third in Latin America just behind Argentina and Chile. The average Cuban caloric ingestion had dropped by 11.5 % at the end of the 20th Century.

Furthermore, Cuba ranked in the top ten worldwide in terms of television and radios sets radio stations and news papers per capita, in most cases ahead of the majority of Western European nations. It was number one in Latin America in railroad lines kilometers. There was one automobile for every 40 inhabitants. Havana in 1959 had more movie houses and theaters than any other city in the world.

Public Health

By 1955, life expectancy in Cuba was 63 years while in the rest of Latin America it was 52, in Asia at the time it was 43 and in Africa, 37.

The island boasted 35,000 hospital beds, that is one bed for every 190 people, according to the World Health Organization. At the time, developed nations were shooting for 200 hospital beds per citizen.

The same organism attests that in 1957 Cuba was third in Latin America, behind Argentina and Uruguay, in doctors per inhabitant - one for every 980. There was one dentist per 3,000 people.

In 1957, Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America – 32 deaths per 1,000 live births. It was the 13th lowest in the world and ahead of France, Italy, Spain, Japan and other industrialized nations.

Culture

Most of the world known Cuban intellectuals, artists, writers and musicians were already established before the Revolution took power.

Writers José Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier ,Virgilio Piñera and poet Nicoolás Guillén; painters Wilfredo Lam, Amelia Pelaez and René Portocarrero; and ballerina Alicia Alonso were well respected and renown worldwide before 1959.

Composers, musicians and singers such as Ernesto Lecuona, Sindo Garay, Benny Moré, Celia Cruz, Trio Matamoros, Israel “Cachao” López and many others, including the lead singers of what would become the Buena Vista Social Club, were famous in the 1950s.

Government

Here was the problem. While the facts have been greatly exaggerated by the Castro Brother’s Regime, the Cuban government of the times, controlled by Fulgencio Batista since 1933, was corrupt.

Everything and anything could as was sold. Batista even made deals with known Mafia leaders for them to manage casinos in Cuba. Of course, the Cuban government didn’t get to tax the earnings of organized crime, but Batista and his cohorts got kickbacks.

The climate of corruption trickled down and policemen and minor government officials began to take bribes for their service. Anybody who opposed this unlawful way of doing business was harshly dealt with.

In all fairness, it should be pointed out that today’s regime is probably even more crooked. On their book, Corruption in Cuba, Jorge Pérez López and Sergio Díaz-Brisquet, state that the Castro brother’s policies of monopoly, cronyism and lack of accountability have actually institutionalized corruption at all levels of their regime.

Sources:

Adolfo Rivero Caro. Cuba: The Unnecessary Revolution
The Cuban Revolution
Pérez López, Jorge and Díaz-Brisquet. Sergio. Corruption in Cuba – Castro and Beyond. University of Texas Press, Austin, 2006.