By Jean Stubbs, 9 August, 2020
“Some compare what’s coming with a category 5 hurricane.”
Among the many challenges Covid-19 has thrown our way is adapting to online screenings of the documentary followed by Q&A. Michael as director and myself as co-producer have taken part in three, and Reinaldo Funes, our key Cuban interlocutor, was able to join us for the first and third, the second being prohibitive for him due to scheduling and time difference. The first and third events were hosted in the UK and the second in Germany and Belgium.
The first was on 7 June, part of a series on ‘Latin America: Crisis and Coronavirus’, hosted by colleagues in Sheffield involved in Chile and Cuba solidarity. We were joined by some 50 viewers, and the recording can be viewed here. The second was on 4 July with 50 international students on the Erasmus European Master in Global Studies, hosted by the University of Leipzig, and moderated by Eric Vanhaute at the University of Ghent. The third was hosted on 26 July by Olivier Stockman of Sands Films Studio, an independent film, theatre and music venue in south London, and the screening and Q&A remain live for viewing on the Sands Films website https://www.sandsfilms.co.uk/studio-live.html. London-based Cuban writer Pedro Pérez Sarduy opened the event, sharing his memories of such a memorable date: the day the 1953 storming of the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba has gone down in history as marking the start of the Cuban Revolution. Perhaps because of the date and support from local Cuba solidarity groups, as well as the various networks through which notice of the screening circulated, the online ‘turnout’ was high – 820 in all, 470 on Facebook and 350 on Vimeo.
We had set out to make a thought-provoking documentary and the questions raised after each screening point to us certainly having done so – especially questions about Cuba today, not least the impact of Covid-19 bringing international tourism to an abrupt halt. We could obviously not have foreseen either during 2019. Health was not an issue we tackled in the documentary, though we knew of Cuba’s track record in public health, nationally and internationally; and Cuba swiftly and effectively rose to the COVID-19 challenge both at home and abroad, sending Cuban medics to aid countries (29 at last count) across the globe. International tourism, which featured centrally in our documentary as Cuba’s most recent commodity frontier, is altogether another question. The toll of the Trump administration further tightening the noose of its 60-year embargo had hit Cuba hard, but it was the wider economy that had been hit most. As we reported in late 2019, we weren’t even sure we would be able to launch the documentary during the December Havana Film Festival, as holding the Festival was itself was in question, amidst fuel shortages and power outages. The Festival did take place, we were able to have our launch, and we pressed ahead scheduling screenings for 2020, in the UK, Europe and USA. Then Covid-19 hit. It took a while to realise it would be with us in the longer term and not only did we need to plan accordingly but also keep ourselves informed for future discussion – and, who knows, maybe a sequel documentary!
Much of our filming had centered around Caibarién in central Villa Clara province, and in May 2020 the central town of Sanctí Spíritus, in the neighbouring province of the same name, was a regional hotspot for Covid-19. On 18 May, Escambray, the local town newspaper carried an interview by reporters Mary Luz Borrego and Yosdany Morejón with Oscar Luis Hung Pentón, president of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba, about the economic fallout and options facing Cuba as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The reporters began by declaring: “Some compare what’s coming with a category 5 hurricane.” Assessing the economic costs that would inevitably be felt worldwide, they put these on the magnitude of the 1929 Great Depression. At the time, the IMF was projecting a 3% contraction in the global economy, with spectacular drops in developed nations such as France, Germany, Italy, the UK and USA. What chance did an underdeveloped island like Cuba have, they asked. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean had just issued a prognosis of the economic and social impact on the region in the order of a 5.3% drop in GDP, and on Cuba 3.7%. As it turned out, these were conservative estimates.
A question inevitably raised by the reporters was the outlook for Cuba’s international tourism. As we explored in the documentary, Cuba has a long history of commodity exports, with the rise and fall of commodity frontiers linked to social and environmental degradation and a vulnerability to global markets. Since the crisis of the 1990s, international tourism had in effect become Cuba’s most recent commodity frontier. Like preceding frontiers, while an economic lifeline, it was not without social and environmental costs and was highly susceptible to world market conditions beyond Cuba’s control. Covid-19 came to show that with a vengeance, and for many signalled the need for a rethink.
Hung Pentón’s reply back in May are worth citing here: “Now is the opportunity for an alliance between tourism and health. Cuba needs to develop health tourism more strategically, with linkages to agriculture and industry. I believe tourism can retool to become a model based on nature and health. This is no time for grand hotels with communal pools, restaurants with buffet service, or tourism crowding our towns and cities.”
Two months later, in July, as the Cuban government moved to a phased lifting of Covid lockdown, a two-track strategy was announced of allowing domestic tourism on the mainland while restricting international tourism to the natural environment of the offshore keys, with stringent health requirements and monitoring. The strategy came with a raft of economic reforms, many of them agreed a decade ago but as yet not implemented. These include greater autonomy for an expanding domestic private sector, a reinvigorated programme for supporting industrial production and more leasing of land to bolster smallholder agriculture, with stronger linkages between the various sectors, and all undertaken in an environmentally friendly way.
At the time of writing, Havana has seen a worrying resurgence of Covid which led the authorities to declare the city back in lockdown, and it’s far too early to know how the reforms will pan out and how international aid and investment might play a role. Suffice it to note for now two news items published in the online national daily Granma in recent days. The first, on 3 August 2020 (also reported in the British press), was by Juan Diego Nusa Peñalver on BioFarma Innovations, a new joint venture created by BioCubaFarma and the UK-based SG Innovations Limited. The venture is to provide access to Cuba’s patent-protected portfolio of biopharmaceutical products, promote investment in new product development, and enable their commercialisation in Europe and the British Commonwealth. Special reference was made to clinical trials of several products developed by BioCubaFarma for the treatment of coronavirus, which to date have shown promising results in several countries which Cuba has helped during the pandemic. BioCubaFarma also has joint ventures with companies in China, Spain, Thailand and Singapore.
The second news item, on 7 August 2020, was a feature by Freddy Pérez Cabrera on the action plan for Caibarién that was given government approval earlier this year. The article covers several of the issues mentioned in the plan that are familiar to us, and will be to viewers, as ones raised in the documentary, and also makes mention of the Coastal Resilience project located there, funded by the European Union and UNDP. The article ends, however, on a cautionary note: while the strategic direction for developing Caibarién has been charted, how this moves forward “will depend on how the plan is taken up by the authorities, how people are involved, and of course the objective conditions of the country.”
It goes without saying we’ll be among those following developments on all three counts over coming months!