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- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: Cuba: Interview with Gail Reed
- Message-ID: <1992Aug19.191200.6089@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
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- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:12:00 GMT
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- /** media.issues: 202.0 **/
- ** Topic: Interview with Gail Reed in Cuba **
- ** Written 4:43 pm Aug 18, 1992 by dhellinger in cdp:media.issues **
- Interview with Gail Reed
- Havana, June 10, 1992
-
- Gail Reed is a U.S. journalist and correspondent for the Pacifica
- News Network and for Radio Havana, Cuba, an international broadcast
- service. Her book, Island in the Storm, an account of the October
- Cuban Communist Party Congress, is available from the Center for
- Cuban Studies, 124 West 23rd St. NY 10011 ($12.95 paper, 200 pp).
- The Interview was conducted for the St. Louis Journalism Review
- (SJR) by Daniel Hellinger. It will appear in the Sept. edition;
- please credit SJR for any reproduction.
-
- SJR: How did you come to your present work and career in Cuba?
-
- Reed: I first came to Cuba in 1970. I was part of the anti-war
- movement in the States. My first trip was part of the Venceremos
- Brigade. We spend a couple months on the Isle of Youth picking
- grapefruit. After that I work with the Brigade and other Cuba-
- related projects. The reason I came here is that I got married to
- a Cuban, otherwise I probably would still be in the States. I'm a
- journalist by profession, having been trained at the Columbia
- School of Journalism, so it seemed the most logical thing I could
- do here. Which is what I did when I came to stay in 1978.
-
- SJR: It's been said you were the only reporter from the U.S. who
- covered the Communist Party congress in October 1991.
-
- Reed: They always put that down, even though I tell them it makes
- me seem like I'm a spy for one side or the other. Only the
- national press could cover it. I went as part of Radio Havana,
- Cuba.
-
- SJR: What's your evaluation of the U.S. journalists who've come
- down here to cover Cuba recently?
-
- Reed: A couple things have to be taken into consideration. One is
- a reciprocal arrangement between Cuba and the United States which
- began when the U.S. government threw out the Prensa Latina [the
- Cuban wire service] reporter in Washington. Since then Cuba has
- severely limited the number of full time U.S. correspondents that
- it's willing to acredit here, because the U.S. will acredit no
- Cuban journalists. To be fair to the U.S. journalists, that limits
- the amount of time that they can spend here, unlike some
- journalists from other countries, who get to know the country and
- spend a number of years here building up contacts and expertise.
-
- There are problems with U.S. journalism in general that we also
- tend to see here. I was in Nicaragua a few years back, at a press
- conference given by Sergio Ramirez [then vice president]. I heard
- reporters asking one another, "Who is Sergio Ramirez?" This
- [ignorance] is a great problem, and you see it moreso now than ever
- before in Latin America. Also, now that the Cold War is over,
- Latin America, Africa, and Asia are ignored. For the New York
- Times and The Washington Post, it's not an important part of the
- world to cover, which I think is a dangerous trend.
-
- The third thing which has been affecting the U.S. press coverage of
- Cuba in the last few years has been its almost wholesale buckling
- under to U.S. foreign policy objectives as stated by the Bush
- Administration. I think it's especially pronounced with Cuba, as
- Cuba-bashing has sort of become a sport in the U.S. press.
-
- SJR: Could you give as more specific example?
-
- I was in the U.S. just recently, and just when you think you're
- never going to be amazed again, you're amazed again. I happened to
- see this article by John Newhouse in the New Yorker in the April 27
- edition. It was such a classic piece of nonsense that I'm not sure
- you could consider it even good disinformation.
-
- He was here for the Missile Crisis conference in January. In one
- paragraph he would say something like, "We were told by the
- Politburo that Cuba had imported a million bicycles, but neither I
- nor any of my colleagues ever saw a great many bicycles on the
- street." Three paragraphs later: "Fidel Castro told us they had
- imported a million bicycles. Again that suspect number." Three
- paragraphs later: "You have to be very careful when you go around
- Cuba at night because there are so many bicycles on the street."
- I mean this guy actually think that people have amnesia not just
- from one war to the next but from one paragraph to the next.
-
- It's difficult to get anything resembling a positive treatment of
- Cuba in any mainstream press in the States. As we move further
- into this election year, it's going to get more difficult. You've
- got Clinton getting the edge on Bush by coming out in April in
- Miami for the Torricelli Bill [to prohibit subsidiaries of U.S.
- corporations in third countries from doing business with Cuba].
- Bush had to counter-attack. So they're playing this little game,
- not unlike the game that Nixon and Kennedy played before the Bay of
- Pigs. The election year far from helping, has hurt Cuba.
-
- SJR: Some Cuban officals discourage visitors from talking with
- opponents of the government. Do you talk to them?
-
- Reed: I've met with them and talked with them. Probably what you
- get from the officials is not based on what these people are going
- to say. Afterall, they're not going to say anything you can't read
- everyday in the Miami Herald. [The official] concern . . . is
- probably more about visitors [whose] primary purpose is . . . to
- hear what these people have to say. I don't think it should be an
- issue. If you feel you need to meet with them, you should be able
- to.
-
- SJR: Why is question of opposition parties so sensitive?
-
- Reed: For Cuba a new party is not just another party. Another
- party is an option in a context in which the United States, the
- world's most powerful country, has done everything but declare war
- against Cuba, which is another thing that is not taken seriously
- enough in the States. "Oh well, the blockade hasn't really been
- all that effective," is one the comments you read in The New Yorker
- article.
-
- Cubans . . . aware that the Nicaraguan Sandinistas lost power and
- that the United States has an infinite gamut of weapons to use
- against Cuba, not the least of which is trying to wear people down
- by a blockade. "If your government would just give in, you'll have
- everything you want." Yes, they've taken a very hard line.
-
- SJR: Isn't there a danger that the government will lose touch with
- the people if no opposition parties are permitted?
-
- Reed: In Cuba today you have to separate this [question of a
- multiparty system] from the question of how is it that the average
- Cuba gets his or her voice heard. Are there channels for that
- person to get heard? This is a much bigger and in a sense more
- profound question because at this time, that's where the battle
- front is. No socialist society has been able to effectively take
- advantage of giving all people a certain standard of living and
- thereby preparing them to play a role at the grassroots in the
- business of government. That's the step that socialist societies
- have not been able to take, up until now.
-
- SJR: You spoke of separating the question of opposition parties
- from the question of how people communicate with the government.
- Can people -- and journalists too -- freely citicize the
- govenrment?
-
- Reed: I find my neighbors and my co-workers to be very outspoken,
- and I mean in terms of the decision-making process, not just the
- issues. I guess that there are stories that as a journalist you
- could not get printed in Granma [the party newspaper]. In my own
- particular case, there is a significant degree of give and take and
- argument at every level. I don't see much Party control over this.
-
- SJR: Could you publish an article blaming the Sandinistas rather
- than the U.S. for their defeat in the 1990 elections?
-
- Certainly. People debate all the time how much they were
- responsible . . . for their defeat. That's an open debate in
- journalistic circles here.
-
- SJR: Do you feel any sort of self- or official censorship in what
- you write?
-
- Reed: I think that the only times that I have felt that I had to
- step back and remind myself that it's Radio Havana, Cuba that I
- work for and that I can't speak for myself is on some international
- issues that concern Cuba, but where Cuba has chosen not to get
- involved. I have not felt that about the Cuban national scene.
- Obviously I idenfity with Cuba, but I feel like I'm using my own
- brains. Nor am I'm being overly edited.
- SJR: Where has the media performed poorly?
-
- Reed: I don't think there's anyone in Cuba satisfied with the
- media. On the other hand, I haven't found anybody yet who's
- figured out just what the media should be doing. And I say that
- quite consciously without meaning to be superficial about it.
- These are not exactly the conditions under which flowers blossom.
- It would be an interesting study to see what happened to Cuban
- media during periods of less U.S. pressure.
-
- The media has been sometimes been afraid to point out difficulties.
- That is not healthy because it eventually makes people think that
- what they read in the newspaper isn't so. For example, if you have
- this great feature story about the family doctor program on Cuban
- television, and yet your family doctor never shows up and you never
- see a story about this, then you think, "How am I to believe that?"
-
- You get an awful lot of theory in Cuban journalism school, but you
- don't get a hell of a lot of concrete practice. A mentality is
- fostered of waiting for the news to come, they don't go out and get
- it. That reinforces the kind of superficiality and top-down
- production of news. There are also tremendous material problems.
- Whether or not you can get a dissenting view in Granma is sort of
- a moot point right now because Granma has so little space they can
- barely get their own stuff in.
-
- SJR: Should the media be more autonomous from the government and
- the party?
-
- Reed: I don't think that the issue is so much autonomy, although
- that's part of it, as it is the media themselves not having figured
- out what kind of role they want to play. They swing from one
- extreme to another. A few years ago Granma's pages were wild. You
- had this column that was half a page of readers' opinions. But it
- wasn't just like The New York Times letters to the editor. Granma
- put itself in the interesting spot of saying that they would
- investigate and answer every single thing that was brought up by
- every single reader. They were almost a ministry.
-
- It would go from the sublime to the rediculous. I remember one
- time I got the water pump in my building fixed because I threatened
- to the people of the water company that I was going to write to
- this column in the paper.
-
- SJR: Why was the column discontinued?
-
- Reed: The thing that finally laid it to rest, which was
- unfortunate, was the great tuna fish story. There was a big
- problem that tuna fish was not being distributed to all the stores
- and had spoiled. At that time things were very tight with the
- Soviet Union, and it turned out that the Soviets were the ones
- responsible for this whole mess. That created a quandry. You want
- to be strong at certain points, but you don't want to be public
- with every complaint.
- The other side of the pendulum is limiting very much what can be
- put in the paper to offical pronouncements, etc. We've gone
- through that kind of period as well. Print media, I think anyone
- who's read a newspaper here will agree, is probably Cuba's weakest
- media. The strongest is radio, especially provincial and community
- radio, because they work very directly with people's concerns.
- There are call-in shows and talk shows, all kinds of things that
- relate very directly to what people's concerns are, and that's been
- very successful.
-
- SJR: In 1989 there were 19 dailies, and now there is just one,
- Granma, which is hard to get. How do people cope?
-
- I think people are looking much more to other media. First of all,
- you can hardly ever get the paper. Also, Granma is limited because
- it is the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba. Some of
- the other print media, like Bohemia magazine and even Juventud
- Rebelde ("Youth in Rebellion"), although an official publication of
- the party youth, are much more interesting.
-
- Bohemia last year published an excellent series based on polls. It
- was a very extraordinary and fascinating set of articles, certainly
- not all positive. There were opinions about national government
- and whether the national legislature is doing anything or just
- having sterile debate; discussions about why it is that some
- extraordinary percentage of children, something like 70 or 80
- percent, are no longer born to married parents. No one's getting
- married in Cuba. There are all kinds of social phenomena being
- explored in these publications that are not explored in Granma.
-
- SJR: What is the quality of television news?
-
- Television is revamping its format. There is a program, Hoy Mismos
- ["Ourselves Today"], that starts a 7:30 at night and goes to about
- ten. Don't be surprised if you see "Peter Jennings, ABC News."
- They've got CNN and Echo. It's stuff taken from national and
- international sources. But to overcome the economic problems and
- the blockade, it's not an easy job.
-
- SJR: How does the Cuban press treat the Cuban American community?
-
- Reed: I think its treatment has changed a lot. There's a lot more
- sophistication not only about Cubans in Miami, but in general about
- Cuban exiles abroad. There used to be an approach that treated
- them monolithically. You find now a much more vaired approach as
- it becomes clear to Cubans abroad themselves that they are not a
- monolithic community. For example, this whole fight between the
- Miami Herald and Jorge Mas Canosa [leader of the right wing, Cuban-
- American Foundation] has been reported. There's still a lot to be
- learned here in Cuba about that community, in terms of generational
- differences, in terms of conceptions of the past, perspectives,
- etc. But I think they're on the right road to understanding and
- reflecting it.
-
- SJR: The U.S. media calls the policy an "embargo." Why do you and
- the Cuban government call it a "blockade"?
-
- Reed: The Cubans say its a blockade in violation of international
- law because it goes beyond limits on trade between the U.S. and
- Cuba. Last year the Treasury Department got $40 million more than
- they asked for to enforce it. It must be the single case where
- somebody got more money than they asked for out of Congress. So
- Treasury is rolling with money to go sniping at people all over the
- world.
-
- SJR: For example?
-
- Reed: The United States has said that it will not buy any steel
- that is manufactured with an ounce of Cuban nickel by European and
- Candian companies. Cuba has the second largest nickel reserves in
- the world. Another case is that of the pediatric heart center,
- which has been importing equipment from a Swedish firm for years.
- But it has just been prevented from importing a piece of equipment
- for the children's hospital because it has small filtering membrane
- patented in the United States. With the blockade, anything that is
- sold to Cuba that has passed through U.S. hands or been
- manufactured with U.S. technology cannot be imported by Cuba.
- Economically, the challenge is to change the oil economy. You can
- take almost everything else away, but you've got to have the oil.
-
- SJR: The U.S. media sometimes cites the great gap between tourists
- and most Cubans as "tourist apartheid." Is this an issue here?
-
- Reed: Oh yes. But when you figure out what a spot Cuba is in
- economically, then you can appreciate that they don't have a
- choice. You get hard currency off the visitors who come to this
- country, or you don't. That hard currency tranlates into
- antibiotics; it translates into paper for my kid's notebooks; it
- translates into very basic items like oil.
-
- It was always very educational to pass through another Latin
- American country before you came to Cuba, because the inequalities
- elsewhere were so vast and devastating. It's still greater than in
- Cuba, but it's still a tragedy that most Cubans now live so much
- below the level of the foreign tourists. Everybody's aware of it,
- but what can you do about it.
-
- SJR: How long can Cuba hold out?
-
- I don't think you can predict that necessarily. One thing to
- consider is that the Cuban leadership has shown itself to be
- extraordinarily versatile and intelligent, especially in dealing
- with the United States. Otherwise they wouldn't be here today.
- I am very confident that they are a step ahead of George Bush. I
- think another key factor to look at is how far they can go to
- making this country a participatory democracy. I use that term
- advisedly because I know that the United States [thinks it] has the
- patent on the term "democracy." But that is paradoxically the
- potential strength of Cuba today, if they are able to bring people
- more into decision making at all levels.
-
- SJR: How will participation help the economy?
-
- Reed: Well, for example, the country is going over to a new system
- of enforcing labor discipline. Before, for example, a worker who
- was consistently late could be sanctioned, but the worker could
- appeal it to the muncipal tribunal, and then it went on up through
- the court system. Now, every single workplace is going to have
- their own elective court, elected by secret ballot of the workers,
- that will rule on cases of labor discipline. It should be
- wonderful.
-
- SJR: Isn't there a danger of corruption in upper eschelons of the
- government, among those who have contact with tourists and the
- world economy?
-
- Reed: I have the opposite sense, because I think people have become
- much more sensitive to what Cubans would consider corruption and in
- the U.S. would consider "perqs" or part of the job -- like having
- a fan or an extra bottle of rum. If I have a foreign client who
- takes me out to dinner, I have a privilege over other Cubans, but
- the question comes down to what's the point of my work. Do I do it
- to enjoy myself or to try to make things better for the Cubans? It
- isn't always easy to determine.
-
- SJR: Is Cuba planning to remain a major sugar exporter or to change
- over?
-
- Reed: There aren't many options at present. They don't have a
- practical option of just dumping sugar and doing something else.
- Cuba is the world's most efficient producer of sugar. Zero
- petroleum is used in the sugar mills -- though distriubtion is
- another matter. They use bio-gas (gas derived from cane) from the
- sugar itself in the mills. We may get newsprint soon from bio-gas.
- All of the reams of reports that Cuba just took to the earth summit
- were printed on paper made from cane derivatives.
-
- This is not to say that they aren't interested in diversification,
- but in the short-run, they've concentrated instead on developing
- sugar derivatives, especially related to biotechnology, and they
- lead the field. For example, they are marketing PPG, a remarkable
- chemical discovery that reduces cloresterole in the blood in half.
- They're gettng a dollar a tablet for PPG.
-
- SJR: Should we encourage bad dietary habits in the United States
- to generate oppositionn to the blockade?
-
- ** End of text from cdp:media.issues **
-