The Hierarchy of Freedoms: Reflections from Cuba
“If you could choose to live here in Cuba or to live anywhere in the world, what would you pick?” asked Diego.
While Yasmany thought about his response, I watched sunburned blonde tourists struggle to negotiate their way into one of the “Gran Car, Rentar Una Fantasia” vintage taxis lined up behind us, rims gleaming.
“Well, let’s see,” responded Yasmany. “I could pick a first world country like the States or Germany. I’d have a car day one; I could just get a loan and get a car.” We nod; car ownership is a universal goal, and with only 60,000 cars on an island of 11 million people—many of them old-fashioned 1950s showboats that drive tourists along the Malecón for $35 an hour, or three-quarters of what the average Cuban makes in a month—and huge hurdles in importing new ones, an especially hard-to-achieve one in Cuba.
Then Yasmany continued.
“But what if I got cancer? What if I lost everything, including the car? Here, I’d be taken care of. It’s hard to choose.” He went on to tell us the story of a friend from the UK—a country whose healthcare system is many times better than mine—who had told Yasmany that when she was pregnant, she had to wait three months for her first wellness check, which shocked him; in Cuba, she would’ve been seen immediately by her primary care physician, then referred immediately to a hospital specializing in obstetrics and gynecology.
In the end, Yasmany chose Cuba. He told us he’d stay where he was because his body and mind were guaranteed to be cared for there.
He and his family receive free healthcare and can go to school for free, including higher education, and be guaranteed a job afterwards.
After the Revolution, every Cuban remaining in the country was given a home—sometimes they were mansions appropriated from the fleeing elite—and nowadays, no Cuban has to pay rent; they either own homes or live in government-sponsored housing.
None of those freedoms are perfect, owing in small part to the complication of providing them in a poor country and in large part to the fact that Cuba is a socialist state ruled by the Communist Party of Cuba and has a planned economy, in which the state owns the large majority of resources and is responsible for 78% of employment (and previously was responsible for 91.8%; things have loosed up under Raúl).
Diversity of choice doesn’t exist in Cuba.
Healthcare is free, but facilities are basic. (The doctors are highly trained, though; in fact, thousands of Cuban medical professionals go on medical missions to other countries to help fill doctor shortages. We met a doctor who’d spent three years working in Venezuela.) Cubans can go to school for free, but not necessarily for what they want; Yasmany wanted to study tourism, but he was ranked number seven among his classmates interested in that course of study, and only the top five could go. He studied economics instead and became a professor at the University of Havana, with a salary of about $45/month, and now gives walking tours focused on Cuba’s economy for extra cash. Because even with free rent, reduced-rate food provided by monthly ration cards, free healthcare, and free education, he needs money to buy things he wants: extra clothes, imported tech, and red meat, none of which the ration cards provide.
It’s easy for me, as an American, to look at Yasmany’s life and see all the freedoms that are lacking. He couldn’t study what he wanted—I could. He couldn’t speak out against the government without facing the possibility of intimidation, arrest, or abuse, per the Human Rights Watch—I could. He can’t buy whatever he wants because it’s either not available or he can’t afford it—I can, generally, having access to both superstores and a credit card. I have access to different perspectives all the time, through whatever media I choose—he only can watch TV, 100% of which is state-owned, and only access a censored internet (and that’s if he can afford the cost, which 75% of Cubans can’t).
But how much of what I see present in my own life and missing in Yasmany’s is real freedom?
I could study whatever I wanted, but my education came with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. And I was one of the lucky ones who got a good job after graduation and paid it off. Many of my peers, having followed the path to success that was promised and pushed by our parents, found themselves failed by the system, drowning in debt, unable to reach the same levels of independence as their parents, and struggling to put their education to use. I can speak out against the government or other groups, but while my freedom of expression is protected, my life isn’t; someone who doesn’t agree with my beliefs or my existence could run me over or shoot or stab me. I can go to the grocery store and lose myself in shelves upon shelves of brightly-colored packages, buying whatever strikes my fancy, but despite the illusion of food diversity, almost all of my “choices” are produced by the same half a dozen companies (and unhealthily, to boot; more than half the food in grocery stores is chock-full of sodium and preservatives). And I can watch whatever I want, but just like grocery stores, six corporations own 90% of what I read, watch, or listen to, and all of my many, many hours of unfettered internet use come with staggering costs: the loss of my privacy and the sale of my identity.
All this to say: no freedom is pure freedom. Every right and privilege comes with a cost or caveat. But even the imperfect actualizations of a nation’s founding (or ruling) beliefs are ripe for reflection about which base freedoms make for the best society.
America’s set of freedoms allow us to be the sole architects of our lives, saying and doing and believing in only what we want to. We are allowed and encouraged to pursue happiness. But only in theory. In practice, deep-rooted systems of injustice—of racism, of classism—undermine our national rallying cry in the power of the individual and in the illusion of the American dream. A certain set of people decide how our society should work and who should have access to money and land and jobs. “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule,” said a Princeton study of American policymaking. Who does, then? A small and growing smaller class of ruling elites: wealthy people and businesses.
And even if our freedoms did work perfectly and not contradict each other—even if I could go practice my faith in my worship house and not get shot because of it—would they be enough?
What does freedom of expression mean if you don’t have good education that lets you develop thoughts to express and ways to convey them?
What does life and liberty mean if you fall ill but can’t access life-saving treatment because it costs too much?
I am not here arguing that Cuba is or has done it all right. Providing healthcare and education but shuttering dissident perspectives, undermining fair trials, torturing and killing outsiders is not a reasonable and just way to run a country.
But getting a lens into life in Cuba through our ten days there and the several books on the country I read before and during the trip made me think about what is a reasonable way to prioritize freedoms. Is it better to have a literacy rate of 100% or the right to disagree with the government? Is having guaranteed education more or less valuable than having the right to pursue whatever course of study, career, or lifestyle makes you happy? Is free and unfettered access to healthcare, including abortion, a more important freedom than the right to fair trial? How do you quantify quality of life and of opportunities when you’re comparing nations? And what would the fairest and best nation look like?
And our conversation with Yasmany brought it all home.
After he answered Diego’s question, the three of us moved into a slice of shade a few feet away and sat down on a peeling bench. Yasmany held up his hands.
“In the United States, it’s like this, right?” he asked, holding his right hand horizontally at his forehead and his left hand at his stomach. “This huge gap between the rich and the poor. Some people live in extreme wealth and some people in extreme poverty. But in Cuba,” he said, moving his right hand to his chin and his left to his sternum, halving the distance between them, “it’s like this. The range is smaller. You can never reach the level of success you could in America. But the floor of extreme poverty doesn’t exist. You will always have a base level of food, healthcare, a place to live.”
Guaranteeing that a higher ceiling will exist by allowing the existence of an inhumane floor does not seem like the way to build a fair society. I want something much more balanced. I don’t want to live in Cuba. But I don’t want to die medically bankrupt in the United States, either.
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