From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Cuba: Interview with Gail Reed
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:12:00 GMT

/** 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 **
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