New York Times
January 5, 1958. p. 17.
Agents of Regime
Takes Fee From Almost Everyone in Large-Scale Corruption
By Robert Alden
Special to The New York
Times
HAVANA, Dec. 24—The “collector” is an important man in the Cuban way of doing business.
The owner of a small food store says: “I pay $2 to the ‘collector’ every time I pull the shutter of my shop up in the morning. I pay him $2 when I pull it closed at night.”
The taxicab driver pays the “collector” $1 for the right to stay at his taxi stand for three hours and, depending on the volume of their business, a precise scale of payments is exacted from each of the thousands of street vendors.
The “collector” is the agent of the Government, the man with the outstretched palm who is the key figure in the large-scale corruption in Cuba. People say that the Government gets its cut from every business venture or project.
Diplomatic observers report that while there has always been corruption in Government in Cuba, it has never been as efficient and all-embracing as it is under the regime of President Fulgencio Batista.
In some quarters it was noted that the small business man was being strangled economically, especially in cities like Santiago. There the anti-Batista rebels led by Fidel Castro are most active, and business has suffered because people are afraid to venture from their homes at night.
Santiago merchants are finding it more and more difficult to meet their payments to collectors. Some have been forced out of business while others, unable to make ends meet, are barely hanging on.
There are sharply varying opinions as to the political significance of the widespread corruption in public offices. One diplomatic view was that this condition was an accepted thing in Cuba.
“People expect it and have no hard feelings about it,” the diplomat said. “There has always been corruption here and people accept it as a natural way for a man to do business when he has gained public office.”
However, several Cubans interviewed at random, expressed an opposite view. They were very angry. They said that the Cuban people hated to pay hard-earned money to fill the pockets of persons who were already enormously wealthy.
One insisted on taking the writer to a new gambling casino frequented by many persons high in the Cuban Government or Army. The automobiles that drove up to this place were the longest and shiniest that money could buy. The women wore chinchilla capes and sported diamonds as big as robins’ eggs. Thousands of dollars changed hands at each throw of the dice.
The next day the voluntary guide took the visitor to Las Llaguas, a section of Havana hard by a city dump where people lived in almost unbelievable squalor in shacks made of palm fronds.
Ten or fifteen persons were crowded into a room. There were no sanitary facilities, no running water, no electricity.
“Ah, but we have air conditioning,” one Las Llaguas resident said with typical Cuban good humor. “When El Norte [the north wind] blows, it takes our roof right off and we get plenty of air conditioning.”
Scrawled on a wall with red paint that was difficult to eradicate was a sign reading, “Down With the Corrupt Batista.”
“These people are bitter, very bitter,” the guide said. “Those who profit from corruption never hide their wealth here but rather flaunt it. The young people who live here, almost without hope, are just waiting for the day that they can overturn things.”
Observers here are in general agreement that the loss of political liberties is the most important factor causing political unrest in Cuba. But most of the agree that corruption and the resultant extremes of wealth and poverty must also be taken into consideration in assessing the people’s discontent with the Batista regime.