Cuba's 'Battle of Ideas' More Than Propaganda

HAVANA, Cuba — They call it the "Battle of Ideas," but it's far more than just a propaganda war against Cuba's archenemy, the U.S. government.

Over the past decade, what started as a catchy revolutionary slogan has turned into a campaign to refurbish long-neglected houses, schools, hospitals and other buildings, as well as a guiding principle for the transformation of Cuba's educational system and other institutions.

"The Battle of Ideas is more than just ideological," said Dr. Francisco Blardoni, director of the Fructoso Rodriguez Orthopedic Hospital in Havana, which was expanded as part of the campaign. "You must have action and a basis in reality. All of these works are being done to improve the situation of the Cuban population."

Propaganda campaigns have always been a staple of life in communist Cuba. Instead of advertisements for consumer products, billboards carry revolutionary sayings, portraits of fallen heroes and defiant calls to defend the country against American imperialism.

But the Battle of Ideas has become something more. There is now a high-level minister in charge, with broad powers extending to every corner of Cuban society, from the reorganization of universities to the refurbishing of Cuban weather stations.

At the heart of the campaign is Cuba's aging communist leader, Fidel Castro, 80, who reportedly was immersed in the details of the program before he fell ill last summer and turned over power to his brother, Raul.

"Fidel spent more than 7,000 hours planning all of this," said Otto Rivero, a member of the Cuban Council of Ministers charged with overseeing the campaign. "The guiding principles are that there are no problems without solutions, that we must act with speed and that the priority is the interests of the population over the bureaucratic contradictions."

The U.S. government and Cuban exiles in America assert that most Cubans endure meager lives of stark repression, low wages, poor health care and almost no chance to buy the few material goods available in the Cuban economy.

While there is no independent verification of the statistics, Cuba is clearly attempting to repair its dilapidated infrastructure and deliver more goods and services to its people.

The campaign comes against a backdrop of never-ending speculation about Cuba's future.

Critics say Castro's successors will face a restive population tired of decades of material want, especially the island's millions of young people, for whom the glories of the 1950s revolution are mostly stale textbook lessons.

Viewed in that context, the Battle of Ideas and its slow progress at rebuilding the island's crumbling infrastructure could well be Castro's final effort to help his revolution survive.

"We hear complaints from Miami about Cubans saying they get poor health care," Blardoni said. "If you had come to this hospital three years ago, you would have found a place badly in need of repair. But we have made those repairs and are serving our people with the latest and best technology."

The roots of the Battle of Ideas go back to the case of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who survived a 1999 raft trip to Florida that claimed the life of his mother. Elian became the center of a nasty tug-of-war between Cuba's government and Miami's Cuban exiles, sparking months of angry rhetoric before the boy was finally returned to Cuba.

But instead of fading away after Elian returned in 2000, Cuba's barrage of propaganda gradually broadened in scope and took shape as the Battle of Ideas. Now, seven years after Elian's saga, the campaign has been enshrined as part of Cuba's national identity.

Armed with computer-generated charts and graphics, Rivero recently gave a briefing to foreign reporters, marching through reams of statistics about the Cuban economy, educational system, infrastructure challenges and health-care accomplishments.

Success in the Battle of Ideas, the reporters were told, can be tallied by thousands of projects that have been accomplished in institutions across Cuban society. Among these are the restoration of 84 hospitals, the expansion of 498 small medical clinics and the installation of 155 high-tech medical machines.

Dozens of run-down schools have been rebuilt, while 34,877 new social workers have been trained to aid the population. All levels of education have been reorganized with a focus on information technology, and university classrooms have been moved into Havana's suburbs and cities around the island.

Every child now gets computer instruction from the age of 6, along with English language classes beginning in the third grade.

The Battle of Ideas even extends to the effort to train the next generation of Cuban Olympic champions, along with the opening of youth video clubs, in which more than 20,000 young people have created short movies and video presentations.