Copied here as I think this covers all the bases really well, even if I don't agree on every point.
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This article is designed to help you to understand the
damage that random gift giving is doing.
It is based on the knowledge and experience of several travellers who
have made multiple trips to Cuba, often for extended periods of time.
The article is NOT intended to be a commentary on
charitable donations, or the idea of giving gifts to family or friends. It is about the disruptive practice of
tourists visiting a country and randomly handing out relatively useless gifts
and trinkets to Cubans they do not know, or worse, handing out expensive
presents at random - or to resort
workers, who are already among the wealthiest of Cubans.
Basic misconceptions
This practice of random gifting is based on the two main
misconceptions about Cuba:
1. Most people seem to think
that Cubans are poorer than they are (and have little idea who is poor and who
is not in Cuba).
2. Cuba is a socialist country
that does not conform to the international conception of a democracy (even
though - contrary to popular belief - it does have its own version of
elections)
These two things combined lead many tourists to act the
way they do. Mostly out of misconceptions as to the Cuban reality. Few to none
out of any desire to do harm. Many because they think they are doing good
because they have personally seen the smile on the maid's or child's face.
Getting back to points 1 and 2: The thing is that Cuba is
not the poorest country on earth and Cubans, while definitely poor by North
American and Western European standards, are not the poorest in the world. This
is not just in comparison with poor African countries, but also compared to
many - if not most - of its immediately comparable neighbors. But Cuba is not
located between Canada and USA or in the Alps squeezed in between Switzerland
and Austria. It is located in one of the world's traditionally poorest regions.
Apart from colonies that are heavily subsidized by USA, France, UK, Holland or
Spain, what countries in that region are traditionally blessed with a
flourishing economy? And when was Cuba? The poorest 5-10% of the population in
Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, El
Salvador and Nicaragua are much poorer than the poorest 5-10% Cubans.
Without getting into too much detail none of these countries
provide its citizens with the following:
1. A basic rationing system
that provides every single citizen with enough food to survive on (but
admittedly not enough to feast or get fat on).
2. Heavily subsidized basic
living expenses such as cheap to almost free: Housing, electricity, water.
3. Free health care and free
education.
This is all provided in Cuba.
If severe poverty is measured on factors like hunger,
lack of housing and basic health care, Cuba cannot be considered a poor
country.
Have a look at OECD ranking of countries based on per
capita BNI, showing that Cuba is ranked as being somewhere between the 109th
and 152nd poorest country on Earth. That is out of 196 countries (or expressed
another way, between the 44th and 87th richest). (http://www.oecd.org
/dataoecd/32/40/43540882.pdf)
By way of another indicator, the World Bank ranks these
196 countries based on GNI. Based on
rankings from highest to lowest, Cuba falls at 73rd, placing it slightly below
the center of the "upper middle income" group.
Way of life - costs of living
Many gift-givers use the low Cuban wages as the prime
argument for bringing gifts. The average wage for a Cuban is indeed 12-25
dollars monthly, and yes, that does sound ridiculous. So the next thought is "who
can live off that?" and the answer that many come up with is "nobody
can", because it’s tempting and obvious to compare that money with the
daily lives of the tourist and nobody in Canada or Europe can live off 20
dollars for just a week, let alone a few days. But Cuba is not Canada or
Europe. The difference is that the house
of the visitor to Cuba is not free, and it is not possible to go to the local
market in Canada or England and pick up basic food (libreta) supplies for a
week for a few dollars - and water and electricity costs a fortune, not to
mention cost of kindergarten and putting a kid through college. A Cuban can pay
all his monthly bills with 2-4 dollars.
Apart from the extremely low living costs many Cubans
have other “enterprises” outside their regular job, and thus make additional
money, sometimes earning more than they do from their government wage. The economy in Cuba is much different than
that which the average tourist is used to.
In a sense, many of the first-worlders are as strapped in their own
economy as what some Cubans are in theirs (in these crisis times even
more). There are probably many tourists
who – after all expenses are paid – do not have much more to spend on
chocolate, parties and rum than what Cubans have. And some that have less.
Another argument for gifting is the one of “there are
many things that the Cubans can’t get.”
Like in any other country there may be a lack of supply of certain items
at certain times. Often these shortages
are temporary, and within a matter of days, the shortage disappears
altogether. Or there may in fact never
have been a shortage in the first place.
Sometimes the reports of shortages come from the reports of misinformed
tourists who are basing their understanding of a whole country on some off-hand
comment by a resort worker.
Resorts and 'smiling faces'
Most visitors to Cuba come back and praise the kindness
of Cubans. That is so true. But it used to be truer. It is undeniably harder to
make friends in Cuba than it used to be. Of course, not all Cubans have been
turned into beggars and scam-artists whose whole lives are based on getting
money from tourists, but it seems the average tourist is making sure that more
are created every day. An example is the
growing business in a few towns that the jeep tours go through ... kids line
the road, tourists toss dollar store “gifts”, and the kids turn all their stuff
over to the organizer. (Oh, but the smiles on the face of the kids bring tears
of joy to the eye of the giver!)
On to the good old maid here. Nobody in Cuba receives
more gifts from tourists. The crazy thing about this trend of spreading western wealth in resorts is that by far the
most of good-natured, private tourist aid in Cuba goes to the same people: The
maids and bartenders and workers at the resorts. On a number of occasions
people post that they leave 20 CUC for the resort-maid weekly. So let’s try and
do an impossible but fairly qualified low-down on her income and spending
money: Assume that 15 CUC is the average (because there are likely people who ‘only’
tip 10 CUC weekly or one a day) then she is taking home 150 CUC weekly if she
does just 10 rooms. That’s 600 CUC monthly. Now she is getting the same amount
of food as any other Cuban for (basically) free so she will be using her 17 CUC
monthly government salary to take care of bills and will still have something
left. That comes to 600 CUC monthly to spend. A chicken costs 1 or 2 CUC, a
pack of cigarettes cost 0.20 CUC. So that is definitely more than many of the
people that leave the tips and gifts for her have to spend after all expenses
are paid. Is this estimating on the high
side? Perhaps, but many people mention
tipping as much as 5 CUC per day. No
doubt there are some that do not tip at all.
But even allowing for the extremes, if the average tip is 1 CUC per day,
or slightly less, the maid is collecting several times her monthly salary just
in tips. This calculation does not include
the 15 baseball-caps, 25 bars of soap, 15 bottles of shampoo and all the other
items that she takes home to sell in the village (even a maid can only wash her
hair so many times daily). Some maids have rooms where they store their goods.
They do not have room for it all at home.
Turning children into beggars
And then there is the willy-nilly off resort gifting,
which is even worse. Tourists invading schools with pencils or throwing candy
at children from tour busses. Teaching children at an age where they are
learning how the world revolves, that it's way better business to stand by the
road waiting for the tourist bus than getting an education. One can only
imagine the consequences when these children turn young adults having been
raised thinking of all foreigners as a quick way to gifts and money. Those tourists
that spend their time in Cuba off resort do not have to imagine, the
consequences of two decades of thoughtless gifting is all too real.
There are now schools in Cuba (located near resorts) that
have guards posted by the entrance to stop tourists from entering and
disturbing the children.
Cuba is Cuba
So what can be done then, realizing (perhaps) that good
intentions are only creating a bigger gap between rich and poor in a society in
which the system intends that all are equal, and that years of random gifting
in Cuba has nothing for the progress of the country and made it a constant
hassle for many tourists to visit? Turning doctors and scholars into resort
bartenders or street pimps and university graduates into prostitutes - instead
of teachers, nurses or professors.
Here are two things that can
be done:
1. Tip according to local
standards and realize that there are other people in the 40 other rooms at the
resort tipping as well. And leave any material item and larger cash sum with
organizations in Cuba that have a much better overview of who needs the aid and
a way to get the aid there. None of which is in any way possible to know for a
regular tourist. If it is the 'save-the-world' gene that has you handing out,
consider helping out in countries that are in dire need of help. Look no
further than Cubas nearest neighbor, Haiti, for instance. A starving Haitian
living in the streets of Port Au Prince would probably be shocked to see
well-fed Cubans being handed gifts and money just because they hold that one
quality that in the mindset of many tourists qualifies them for immediate
material aid: They are Cuban.
2. Accept that Cuba is Cuba
and not Canada, UK or Italy. That the world is a varied place, and that
there are other ways to live and make a
country go around than what most
tourists are used to. And go there with a solid conscience that the simple fact
that you are traveling there makes a huge impact on Cuba's economy. A
contribution that is already being spread out into every corner of the country
through all the above-mentioned government initiatives (Food, housing, school,
hospitals). And thus head there knowing that the trip-purchase itself is doing
Cubans good.
The greatest gift is respect and friendship. That is what
'real' Cubans are interested in. The Cubans who beg for the shirt off your back or the
soap in your bathroom or the peso in your pocket, may not need those items at
all. And by giving randomly a tourist is only making sure that begging and
hassling tourists stays a profitable business. And that more Cubans are turning
to this way of life. An effect that does nothing good for Cuba - and nothing
good for any tourist visiting Cuba.
From Elizabeth Hill
12 March 2015
