Cuba's Road Not Taken: Costa Rica
Costa Rica is becoming Latin America's Silicon Valley while Cuba slinks deeper into the abyss - a story of missed opportunities
One of the most challenging assignments I had as a U.S. diplomat was driving the length and breadth of Cuba to monitor the human rights of Cubans who attempted to flee their country, yet failed and were repatriated. Under a landmark agreement with Castro regime, the latter agreed to allow us to visit the returnees to ascertain how they were being treated. Meeting with Cubans in their own homes gave us unprecedented insights into their lives, dreams and frustrations. Most opened their hearts to us, some were visibly nervous, likely having been threatened by the authorities not to criticize the communist regime. We were closely surveilled by the secret police and occasionally harassed, as once when they slashed the tires on my car.
I especially recall one very smart young lady who, over cafecitos and cookies, told us that “they may control my movements, but they’ll never control my mind. They can make all the threats they want, but inside I am a free woman.” She went on to assert that “if the opportunity presents itself, I will attempt to flee again.”
I came away from my Cuba assignment sad that such a dynamic and educated people, particularly the youth, are unable to achieve their potential as long as they are trapped in the ideological crypt created by the Castro brothers.
Having recently returned from nearly three weeks in Costa Rica, I got a glimpse of what Cuba could and should have become — the road not taken that would have led to a prosperous democracy, offering a great future for young people, a place that attracts immigrants rather than compelling its people to take flight.
Costa Rica and Cuba constitute Latin American counterparts to Bedford Falls vs. Pottersville.
“We’re not imagining the future; we are building it, with those with whom we share values,” declared Costa Rican president Rodrigo Chaves at a high-tech conference in the capital San José recently that included U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Costa Rica is being touted as the “Silicon Valley of Latin America.” Intel invested $350 million in the country in the 1990s to build a semiconductor manufacturing plant, the only one in Latin America. It has recently invested another $1.2 billion to expand it. Other investors, including Abbott Laboratories and Procter & Gamble, have followed in Intel’s footsteps, so that by 1998, electronics exports surpassed the traditional top exports of bananas and coffee — accounting for more than 60 percent of GDP growth.
One sees in and around San José new technical high schools and colleges that include AI in their curriculum. Costa Rica is crucial to the U.S. effort to reduce dependence on microchips from China. Last year Washington designated Costa Rica as the first strategic ally of the United States under the Chips and Science Act of 2022, which provides $20 billion to Intel to boost the production of computer chips and will further benefit the Central American country.
Costa Rica is an upper middle income stable democracy which abolished its military in 1949. The budget previously allotted to the military is now dedicated to providing health care services and education. Ninety-nine percent of its energy comes from renewable sources. Though hosting over a million refugees (mostly from Nicaragua and Venezuela), the unemployment rate is just over eight percent. President Chaves is a U.S.-educated economist and former World Bank official.
No doubt about it. Costa Rica has played its cards right and faces a bright future.
Meanwhile, in Cuba. . .
Hundreds flooded the streets of Santiago last month shouting “food and power!” They were protesting food shortages and electrical blackouts lasting up to 18 hours a day. A half million Cubans have emigrated since 2022 — four percent of the population. This out-migration is hollowing out the education and health sectors as teachers, doctors, dentists and other health providers call it quits and leave. For the first time, Havana has requested the UN’s World Food Program to provide powdered milk for the country’s children.
Cuba skated for decades relying on sugar daddy handouts from the Soviet Union and oil-rich Venezuela. Trouble is, both shared Cuba’s status as failed socialist dictatorships, resulting in the former’s collapse in 1991 and the latter degrading into the economic basket case it is today. Ninety-nine percent of Cuba’s energy is generated from antiquated, failing oil plants. The paucity of foreign currency reserves prevents Cuba from paying for the oil imports it needs. The result is a steady downward economic spiral and consequent decline in living conditions.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, a life-long communist party apparatchik, naturally, passed blame for Cuba’s troubles onto outsiders:
“Networks of mediocre politicians and terrorists lined up in South Florida were trying to heat up the streets of Cuba with their interventionist messages and calls for chaos.”
And, as always, U.S. economic sanctions. While these certainly inflict damage on the Cuban economy, they’ve also long proven to be the communist party’s best friend, a convenient scapegoat to try to cover up the regime’s decades of gross mismanagement.
Out of desperation, the Cuban government has resorted to easing up on restrictions on private enterprise, allowing citizens to form companies with no more than 100 employees. While this initiative has led to a burst of capitalist activity, private business constitutes only 15 percent of GDP. And the party has a reputation for lifting controls on private enterprise in troubled times only to reimpose them later.
Traveling around Cuba, one sees a beautiful country falling apart: once magnificent architecture crumbling with plants and trees growing from fissures, dilapidated utilities and infrastructure, people with little or no work milling around or engaging in some side hustle. Each week in Havana, an average of three buildings implode or partially collapse. I published a novel years ago, Havana Queen, where the story centers on the residents of a noble but crumbling urban apartment building, their lives reflecting Cuban society more broadly. This book, praised by the author of the James Bond series, also caught the attention of the regime, whose propaganda machine denounced it as a “subversive act against the Cuban government” and me as a “Yankee ex-intelligence officer.” Needless to say, I haven’t been back to Cuba since.
In his poem, “The Road Less Traveled,” Robert Frost wrote,
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
This could pertain to both Cuba and Costa Rica. Each took a road less traveled: Cuba chose the communist path; Costa Rica took the democratic path (in contrast to most other mid-20th century Latin American nations). In each, their decision indeed has “made all the difference” today.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.
It really is a stark contrast. One hopes that these developments in Costa Rica foreshadow a brighter future throughout Central America. (One shouldn't disregard the efforts of the current administration – notably, the office of Vice President Kamala Harris – in this endeavour. Unlike Republicans, Democrats understand that the way to stem the tide of refugees is not solely to build walls but to encourage prosperity in the region.
However – and i really do not wish to be seen as 'that tankie guy' – a judgement upon Cuba's past half-century which neglects the unrelenting efforts at sabotage by the United States is a rather hollowed-out appraisal.
I don't mean to come to the defense of communism. I'd no doubt find it an abhorrent system to live under, and doubt very much that it could ever approach the kind of utopia its cheerleaders have always touted.
Nor would i wish to soft-pedal the repression of Castro's regime. But what of Guatemala and El Salvador? Chile? Or Greece, for that matter, in the years of the generals?
That's not all to say that your comparison is not valid. Would that Cuba had had the opportunity to prosper after ridding itself of a tyrant without coming under the control of another. I don't entirely blame the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy for Castro's embrace of communism – the very influential Che certainly was already on that path – but do believe that the reaction of the United States was rather ill-conceived from the start.