Maria Perez

Naples (Fla.) Daily News

HAVANA — Alba Lara lives in a one-room apartment in a Centro Habana building that is crumbling all around her.

A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling about three years ago, hitting Lara on the head. When she regained consciousness, her head was covered in blood.

“This is falling apart little by little,” she said of the building. “It’s uninhabitable.”

Outside her apartment, the hall floor is held up by a few slanted poles. Electrical wires are exposed, and water leaks down, forming a pool below. Lara burns egg cartons to fight off the mosquitoes that come into her apartment.

On one wall of the building is a message written in Spanish: "No queremos morir bajo los escombros.” (“We don’t want to die under the rubble.”)

Lara can't afford to move. What she earns cleaning apartments goes for food. She buys chicken, oil and maybe some bread.

“I have struggled a lot. And I’m going to die struggling,” she said.

ECONOMIC PROMISE

More than five decades after the communist revolution, many in Cuba are still struggling, working the land past retirement age, living in precarious homes or spending most of their income on food.

As Cubans pay their final respects to Fidel Castro, some analysts outside the country argue the economic system the leader created, and that has opened some to capitalist markets, hasn't been able to deliver all that was promised.

Brian Fonseca, director of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University, said under the Batista regime overthrown by Castro, rampant corruption prevented everyone from benefiting from a free market.

Castro’s revolution was aimed at eliminating a class system that alienated many, Fonseca said. But the Cuban government focused on preserving power and distributing wealth to keep the revolution going, and did little to generate wealth, he said.

That has left a poor country where people struggle, he said.

“Fidel always said history was going to absolve him, meaning that where he was going to get Cuba was a place of social equality and that the means would no longer matter — the repression and the violence — because he was able to achieve this higher level of utopia,” Fonseca said. “But he’s fallen very short of that.”

Many Cubans praise Castro as a good leader who fought for something better and who delivered on his promises despite the U.S. embargo.

But Cuba's problems are bigger than the embargo, Fonseca said. About $6 billion a year goes to Cuba from the United States — $4 billion in goods and services that families bring in and $2 billion in currency, he said.

"The embargo has played a role, but I wonder how exaggerated that role truly is," Fonseca said. "But I know the narrative on the island is, 'Oh, it's the embargo.' "

While some Cubans who are entrepreneurs or who work in tourism or who have relatives in the U.S. have seen their conditions improve, everyday life in Castro's Cuba has not changed much for many in decades.

'I'D LIKE A GOOD HOME'

After Hurricane Sandy knocked down Enilda Cara’s home in 2012, her son collected what was left of the house's wooden boards and built her a new place on the slope of a mountain in El Cristo, about 10 miles from Santiago de Cuba. Concrete blocks and stones laid along the slope serve as steps to the house, with views of mountains and a valley covered by deep green, thick vegetation.

Light comes through the gaps between the boards of Cara's home painted in marine blue with a tin roof.

“When it’s windy, it’s cold,” she said.

If she has to, she wears a coat inside, along with tights and a quilt.

Cara, 70, lives near friends. A neighbor, who grows food that Cara cooks, heats water on a fire in his yard so she can take a shower.

A small black and white TV is on. Castro’s ashes are arriving in Holguin.

“He worried about everyone,” Cara said of Castro.

He was a great leader, she said, and his death saddens her.

Cara completed only the sixth grade. Before the revolution, there were no schools in the countryside, she said. Her father was a farmworker with a parcel of land. She was never hungry, but they lived a modest life.

Things got better after she married. But her husband, who worked in a copper mine, died 16 years ago. She now lives on a pension of 200 Cuban pesos, or about $8 a month.

The money pays for food, and she uses another 47.50 Cuban pesos each month to pay the government for her low-energy fridge. It’s taking her 10 years to pay it off.

Sometimes, when it doesn’t rain and the dam dries, running water stops and a cistern has to deliver water to her rural neighborhood. There’s no sewage system. She cooks on a hot plate.

Cara would like a home of brick, not one of wood that rots fast. “But the cement is expensive,” she said.

Maybe one of her grandchildren will build her a new home, she said.

“I’d like a good home to finish living my life,” she said.

BETTER AFTER THE REVOLUTION

Porfirio Quiala, 70, has been growing mangoes for 22 years on about 5 acres of his father's land near El Cristo. Neighbors use donkeys to travel along paths like the one to his home on the side of the mountain. There is very little road left down the slope, only pieces of pavement and concrete.

In the nearby town of Camey, there once were four factories that made marmalade and other sweets with mango, pineapple and other fruits. Quiala's family earned enough, but life in Cuba generally wasn't good before the revolution.

“The people of Cuba lived really badly,” he said, as he sat, a machete hanging from his waist, on a rusty chair under a tamarind tree overlooking the mountains.

His mother paid to send him to private school, but he never liked it. He later studied and became a mechanic. Quiala worked as a driver and then in a state-owned tractor company, earning about $5 a month. He left that job after 25 years to take over his father's land, which the family would have lost to the government if they stopped farming it.

Life in Cuba is better after the revolution, Quiala said. At least now, no one threatens farmworkers like they did under Batista. Perhaps one day, the U.S. embargo will end and things will get better, he said.

Tourists take dampened spirits of a mourning Cuba in stride

“There have been tough times, but one tries to get by,” he said.

Looking back over his life, Quiala said his economic situation really hasn't changed much since the days when he was a boy.

“As Julio Iglesias said: ‘Life stays the same,’ ” he said, referencing the popular Spanish singer.

Last year, Quiala made 20,000 Cuban pesos, about $800, selling his harvest. There were years when he earned more. But that money must last an entire year.

He used to have water from a spring pumped through pipes, but someone stole the pipes. He and a neighbor bought new ones, but someone stole those. Now, he just relies on the government cisterns for water.

Without an irrigation system for his mangoes, Quiala hopes for rain.

“What is needed is that nature helps us,” he said.

Hurricane Sandy forced him to rebuild his home. It’s a simple construction of concrete, but it will survive another storm, he said.

Quiala will spend the rest of his days here, working until he can no longer. And then he will pass his family's land to his brother.

“I’ll tell him: ‘I need you to come here, because I can’t work any longer,’ ” he said.

But that won't be for a while, Quiala said.

“I have to die here, with the boots on,” he said.

Contributing: Maryann Batlle, Naples (Fla.) Daily News