By PAUL COAST Tribune Havana Correspondent. HAVANA — It’s Sunday morning, seven a.m. A jackhammer is pounding away in the background. Heavy trucks are moving in — I wake up cursing. It’s another ‘‘micro-brigade’’ hard at work, 500 yards outside my back win- dow. Despite the insanity of the hour, I’m smiling as I lurch into the kitchen for a demi-tasse of fine Cuban coffee. The volunteer work of the micro- brigades never stops. Teachers and taxi drivers become weekend builders. Thousands of Cubans mobilize to tear down the old and bring in the new. The country is buzzing with activity as it con- tinues to rid itself of its pre-revolutionary past. A 30-miniute walk through the nastier part of Old Havana tells you why. Houses and apartments are in bad shape. Running water is on for one houra day. Plumbing that was inadequate 50 years ago is crumbling. Over-crowding i is _ the norm. The small undisturbed sections of Old Havana serve as constant reminders of - what it was like to live here under the fascist Batista and his friends in Washington. Cuba's income back then went straight into the pockets of the dictator and do- zens of U.S.-based multi-nationals. The few dollars that were spent on public works generally paid for improvements on neighborhoods where the wealthy lived. Spending money on housing for - ordinary workers was unheard of. But that’s an old story now. MASSIVE RECONSTRUCTION Those ‘‘untouched’’ sections of Cuba are fewer and fewer every day. Renova- tion and construction is taking place ona massive scale. Cuba’s future is in the hands of the people and they know exactly what they’re doing. On the housing front, the micro- _ brigades and regular construction crews are hammering away seven days a week. The building boom makes Canada’s con- struction industry look like small pea- nuts. In a country where unemployment has become an abstract concept, there’s always another building site to go to, another road to be paved. * The net result is that many Cubans are moving into a new apartment for the first time in their lives. The significance of that is lost on most North Americans until you realize that a new apartment means hot and cold running water, unin- terrupted electricity, privacy, a safe place for the kids to play, and a modern kitchen, bathroom and living room. By Latin American standards (or Canadian standards, for that matter) Cuba has become a workers’ paradise. But the nitty-gritty day to day work is far from utopic — it’s damn hard. And that’s one reason the world watched thousands of Cubans leave the island for Key West a few short months ago. Karl Marx would have called them “‘lumpen’’ but the people here have a another name for them — ‘‘Excoria’”’... “*scum’’. They’ve coined a few other phrases too, but “‘escoria’’ sums up their gut reaction to those who abandoned Cuba for the land of Coca-Cola and Lee jeans. A NATION OF PRODUCERS To get a handle on this phenomenon, let’s put it in a Canadian context. Try to imagine how you'd feel if you and your friends had sacrificed a lot of money, a lot of years and a lot of sweat knocking down an old dilapidated house to build a new and innovative co-op — a place where you had enough space and con- veniences to live comfortably without signing over a rent cheque every month PACIFIC TRIBUNE—DEC. 19, 1880—Page 6 Havana is a contrast between the old and new. to some greedy landlord. After putting up with a two-bit apartment in the bad part of town for 10 or 15 years, the co-op is ready to move into. At this point, your - cousin Erie — who’s been watching from the sidelines with a beer in his hands — demands a rent-free room in the co-op by virtue of the fact that he’s ‘‘one of you’’. *‘After all, we’re blood relatives, ain’t we?”’ he drools. Your reaction would be predictable: Two-and-a-half years ago I met Ramon Castro — Fidel’s older brother. I was with a dishevelled group of jour- nalists, all of us from the ‘‘developed”’ world. We were visiting an experimental agricultural station just outside Havana. Castro stood there, ankle-deep in cow manure, looking like a character from a Hemingway novel.. He was determined to leave us with one message: *‘Cuba is a nation of producers, not consumers’’. That simple slogan was lost on many of my colleagues. The fact is, to be successful in their plan to create a developed socialist socie- ty, Cubans understand that it’s a long, hard road to prosperity. They want to be self-sufficient, and that takes time. They want to: avoid the pitfalls of con- sumerism, and that requires discipline. Above all, they never want to return to the days of poverty and injustice, and that means continuing to act on the cour- age of their convictions. THE ‘FREEDOM FLOTILLA’ _The Cubans who left their homeland just couldn’t hack it. Lured by a Madison Avenue — Hollywood image of the Un- ited States, they hopped the first availa- ble Chris-Craft to Florida. Relatives and friends there paid hundreds of dollars to the fast-buck artists who swooped in like vultures to load up their boats with pay- ing customers. Also among those who journeyed north were a considerable number of low-life types: rapists, con-artists, petty-thieves, small-time hustlers and so on (it was so bad that several Cubans turned on their heels and left the harbor to go home when they saw who their fellow shipmates were going to be). Those who left were not fleeing politi- cal or religious persecution. They were not refugees. They were running out on _ an irreversible process of revolutionary advancement that they weren’t prepared to plug into. It’s also worth remembering that even the most devipus criminals have a hard time ripping people off when they’re try- ing to operate out of towns and cities that are among the safest in the world. If you’re determined to live a life of crime you go where the grass. is greenist, and that’s definitely not Cuba. Here’s a quote from the daily Granma — it gives you an insight to the majority view: ‘‘People don’t get up before day- break and work hard for long hours in fields, the factories and the services to keep and feed parasttes. People do not ’ undertake a noble and heroic inter- nationalist mission, our blood was not shed in Cuba and other parts of the world, to defend, honor and lend prestige with our flag to this sort of ‘Cuban’.”’ The exodus evoked a lot of anger here, and that’s understandable. But it also has a tragic side. WELCOME TO AMERICA Those who ended up in the United States awoke to a rude surprise. The glory days of the American Way have long since disappeared, but it was news to them. The easy jobs and fat pay cheques simply don’t exist. The big houses with a Princess phone in every room belong to the rich. The shiny new LTDs and Camaros crowd the show- rooms but people have a hard enough time trying to fill their refrigerators, let alone their gas tanks. And the depart- ment stores! J.C. Penney, the Bon Marche, Sears: they’re packed to the raf- ters.with the latest gadgets and wizardry | from Japan but people aren’t buying. They’ ve run out of cash and their credit’s no good. And all the while, Jimmy Carter tosses the escoria around as a political football. The buck gets passed from the City of Miami to the State of Florida. Along the way the FBI moves in and uses State Troopers and the National Guard for ae. i ee “ee 88 i The first pucks Hriaddes were created in 1970. In the first six years alone they completed _ over 50,000 new housing Units. Cubans to one of the United States’ last — muscle. And the final insult: Get the out of the U.S. and dump them on Pue Rico. It’s over to the Armed Forces — — delivery boys who will escort the €X- remaining colonies. And that’s the end of the line — an army surplus cot in a dingy ‘temporary shelter’ designed for two people. Forget the dozens of health, zon- ing and fire regulations that are be: broken; the ten people who will mo into each hovel will have a wonderful view: Their backyard, frontyard and. boulevard will be a military base sur rounded by barbed wire and crawling with armed guards. _— fee Welcome to America the beautiful. Some of the Cubans who left the island — via the sea-bridge have tried to retum- Ignoring Cuba’s warning that skyjackers will be arrested and tumed over to U. authorities, several crazies have used Molotov cocktails, guns and knives t0 — force pilots to make the short hop to Havana’s Jose Marti Airport. Surpris¢, surprise — they’re now cooling theit — heels in U.S. jail cells, awaiting trial. . Thousands more have rioted against their U.S. keepers, attacking military personnel and smashing jeeps, furniture and their own living quarters. Many who were billeted in private homes have been — picked up for armed robbery, rape, breaking-and-entering and in a few cases; murder. ; A RESPECT FOR PEOPLE _ ‘The big losers in the whole mess are the children who were forcibly taken from Cuba by their relatives. At home they were guaranteed a comfortable and secure future. Free daycare, free prim-— ary, secondary and university education free medical and dental care, clothing; books, three square meals a day. Cubans pride themselves on the p tection and integration of children $ rights. A person growing-up here i= treated with respect and it’s taken fe granted that he or she plays an important role in the creativity and energy of the society as a whole. And in the United States? Child pros- titution, kiddie-porn, drug abus street-gangs, juvenile delinquency . it s all commonplace. It’s well-known that millions of Cu- bans marched past the U.S. Interests Section in downtown Havana to de monstrate their support for the rev- olution and to give the escoriaa send-off theyll never forget. What the U.S. re- fuses to accept, even after that mind- boggling action, is that each and every one of those demonstrators got up the — next morning, as free men and women, tO — continue what they started on January on ~ Ist, 1959. Again from the Granma: ‘‘They ‘still don’t know the Cuban people very well. They probably imagined that the Cuban people were tired and worn out by the struggle; that they could be corrupted, weakened, by consumer societies; that - they would capitulate and surrender. There is no other way to explain the illu- sion of imperialism, the ridiculous counter-revolutionary dreams of our enemies, the stupid euphoria of reac- tionaries all over the world given the ‘difficulties’ of our revolution. x ‘They ignore the fact that 21 years of — ‘revolution have left a very deep mark on the soul of our country — that our people are more conscientious, cultured, thoughtful, revolutionary, socialist, communist and internationalist than ever before. It has also made them more ex- perienced, tough and militant.”’ Despite what the wire-services would have you believe, the people who le: don’t represent Cuba. Insofar -as they represent anything, it’s the gloomy de- featism and desperation of humanity's s failed members.