The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

[thaiexpat]

Just viewed this movie last week and it was refreshing to see how Cuba survived their peak oil [with no help from their bully northern neighbors].
I know it's an older movie, and got a bit of bashing by some earlier on this forum [maybe because it was too positive].....but I think that it deserves more discussion.

First off, it illustrates how countries [and people] can adapt and survive [thrive] during a crisis like peak oil. It was a humbling experience for the Cubans to be so suddenly thrust into peak oil when Russia collapsed.

Our scenario [in the developed world] will be a bit different in that there won't a sudden stopage of oil, but a more gradual slow down, hopefully giving us more time to adjust and come up with alternatives.

Also, it illustrates how much easier it will be for developing countries to survive and just take one or two steps back in time, where the developed counties will have much further to fall.

But the most important point it made is the 'power of community' in surviving peak oil, and that is the main ingredient that Amerika and other developed countries have drifted away from is 'the power of community' and good leadership to guide us thru the hardships ahead.

If you haven't seen 'The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil '.....I would highly recomend it, especially if you have developed a 'Doomer' depression from most of the apocolyptic movies that we seem to thrive on. This doccumentary actually offers some hope, for a change and gave me a much greater respect for our little island neighbor to the south that continues to survive dispite our bullying.

[americandream]

Instead of cheering on the destroying of the communists states and had we progressives in the West worked with socialists rather than throw in our naive green hopes with corporations, one wonders what the world might have been like. Cuba wont be around for long. It sets too much of a bad example of what the common man can achieve as a community without gouging the neighbours for personal gain.

[pstarr]

Better duck, here come the fascists.

I remember reading of some beautiful coastal habitat, rare ecosystems in Cuba without miles of gaudy hotels, Jimmy Buffet party bars, and parking lots.

Can't let that happen. But then the BP spill will probably rectify the situation and make all of Cuba fit for a modern shopping center.

[americandream]

I think any example of selflessness scares these creatures. They prosper with the persistence of the myth that humankind uplifts itself by being mean spirited and self centred.

The whole self-made thing is like a carrot dangling on a stick when one is confronted with the lifestyles of the rich and famous everyday. Only problem is, when you have something like the Gulf that robs you of your livelihood or some other personal tragedy, the realisation dawns on most that they are anything but middleclass or better off (in comparison to say those in the third world etc, etc. You know the usual blather so common these days.). When Cuba goes, we are well and truly in their grasp until this show caves in.

What a waste of my brief life.

Better duck, here come the fascists.

I remember reading of some beautiful coastal habitat, rare ecosystems in Cuba without miles of gaudy hotels, Jimmy Buffet party bars, and parking lots.

Can't let that happen. But then the BP spill will probably rectify the situation and make all of Cuba fit for a modern shopping center.

[efarmer]

That film is one of the most memorable and uplifting I have seen on the topic of peak oil and community coping with resource challenges.

To do such a thing in many parts of America, would require local and state government to waive the reams of rules and laws they have put into place to protect the value of, and the expansion of, the petroleum dependent sprawl of the last 60 years.

In essence, our national or regional disaster plans could have some thought given to how the government allows a Cuba style response to a possible severe fuels shortage instead of fighting one as a violation of land use and zoning laws. It is probably unthinkable for most of them, but it would offer an alternative citizen behavior path to the tragic ones that typically attend crisis and disaster.

It is more probable that they would just be backed down from enforcement by community consensus and
the fact that they were broke and hungry as well.

[Plantagenet]

Cuba hasn't even experienced Peak Oil, much less survived it. All they are dealing with is fuel shortages and economic problems caused by their geriatric leaders and an incompetent communist dictatorship and their failed socialist system.

There are estimated 5 BILLION barrels of oil in Cuban waters, and the Cubans are just starting to explore and develop it. The Cubans will have to produce several billion barrels of oil before Cuba actually reaches peak oil---and that probably won't occur for a few decades yet.

Cuba has ca. 5 billion barrels of oil offshore

[americandream]

Wont happen in the West until people are clean out of choices.

That film is one of the most memorable and uplifting I have seen on the topic of peak oil and community coping with resource challenges.

To do such a thing in many parts of America, would require local and state government to waive the reams of rules and laws they have put into place to protect the value of, and the expansion of, the petroleum dependent sprawl of the last 60 years.

In essence, our national or regional disaster plans could have some thought given to how the government allows a Cuba style response to a possible severe fuels shortage instead of fighting one as a violation of land use and zoning laws. It is probably unthinkable for most of them, but it would offer an alternative citizen behavior path to the tragic ones that typically attend crisis and disaster.

It is more probable that they would just be backed down from enforcement by community consensus and
the fact that they were broke and hungry as well.

[thaiexpat]

As the title suggests.....it's all about the power of community and Amerika has drifted so far away from that concept because of their fierce independance and the isolation machines .....cars, tv, now internet [games], 'I-toys', numbing media, kitchen gadgets etc etc....
Michael Ruppert hit it when he said that the survivors will be large family units and tribes.
Here in Thailand, a developing country, 'the power of community' still esists as well as family values and there are even tribes that exist totally isolated from developed society.
I see the survivors of the future being the really small towns and communities, communes, extended families and the few indigenous tribes that we haven't whiped out yet with our diseases, religion and greed.
Unfortunately, it will be the middle class 'worker bees' and urban poor that will suffer the most.
And very unfairly, the rich who have the $$ to prepare and stock up [hoard] the last few necessities and luxuries if they have any foresight.

[Sixstrings]

Haven't seen the movie, but the people in this picture look a little too happy:



Fact is, the Special Period was utterly miserable..

Cubans had to resort to eating anything they could find. In the Havana zoo, "The peacocks, the buffalo and even the rhea" were reported to have disappeared.[4] Cuban domestic cats disappeared from streets to dinner tables.[4]
Cows in the island were eaten. Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill and eat a cow.[5] To combat illegal cow eating, the government established harsh penalties. A person can get more jail time for killing a cow (10 years in prison) than killing a human.[6] Those who sell beef without government permission can get three to eight years in prison.[6] Eaters of illegal beef can get three months to one year in prison.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period

I can't find a source now, but I remember reading a figure for their organic food production that wasn't anything close to food self-sufficiency. So really, the organic farming just barely got them through the Special Period after the USSR collapse -- but it was never enough, it couldn't have gone on indefinitely. I think they finally accepted US food aid in 1993.

So, the communal organic farming helped and was better than doing nothing but I just don't think it ever was the panacea that the permaculture folks make it out to be.

[americandream]

Any suggestions other than a mad max free for all, more wasteful Walmart style consumerism or hiding out in militia compounds waiting for the second coming, six strings.

[thaiexpat]

"Fact is, the Special Period was utterly miserable.. "

yeah, they went thru some hardships and things still haven't returned to normal [what ever that is any more]......but they did survive and a lot easier and better than the fat cows that Amerikans have become. in the movie they state that the average weight loss was 20lbs......I could sacrafice that easily.
Makes me wonder what kind of fines there will be for eating a 'big mac' when we run out??
And would that kind of scenario would be preferable to the 'mad max' type of life??
All in all, the doccumentary gave me a little more respect for the Cubans for weathering the storm and you can't deny that there are some lessons to be learned from them.....maybe more valuable lessons than they learned from us??

[Sixstrings]

Any suggestions other than a mad max free for all, more wasteful Walmart style consumerism or hiding out in militia compounds waiting for the second coming, six strings.

See, I just don't find anything romantic about what the average Cuban goes through day to day. If you were to talk to a Cuban, you'd hear complaint after complaint about what they don't have. You'd hear about how they still don't have any kind of food they want to eat, you'd hear how in the Special Period they had to make steaks out of banana peels. It's not a joke, that kind of deprivation is damn depressing -- hardly romantic, hardly exciting, and ultimately not preferable to a fully stocked Walmart.

Let me ask you this.. if being banana-peel-eating piss-pot poor is so great, then why does every developing nation want what we have? The Chinese, the Indians, the Brazilians -- none of them are happy with poverty, they all very much want Walmart, McMansions, shopping malls and cars for all.

EDIT: I will give you this much, I think the Cubans' current diet is actually very healthy -- almost all vegan, and few calories goes a long way to preventing all sorts of disease and extends life. But that doesn't mean they're happy about it.

[Sixstrings]

"Fact is, the Special Period was utterly miserable.. "

yeah, they went thru some hardships and things still haven't returned to normal [what ever that is any more]......but they did survive and a lot easier and better than the fat cows that Amerikans have become. in the movie they state that the average weight loss was 20lbs......I could sacrafice that easily.

Well, they were never obese or even overweight to begin with -- so 20 pounds is a lot. And that's an average, there would be communist party elites and probably the army who didn't suffer, and so the ones who did go hungry probably lost more than 20 pounds and skewed the average.

Anyway, I'll have to see this documentary.. doesn't look like it's on Netflix, is it new? I get what you guys are saying that there are lessons to be learned here. I've read up on this stuff before, and was especially impressed that they're able to grow so much food right in the city of Havana itself. But as I looked further into it, I learned that they never did and still don't grow enough food to fully feed themselves. So it's impressive, just not the Holy Grail and Answer to Everything. At best this kind of farming is supplemental.. Americans did a lot of this in the GD and WWII ("victory gardens.").

And by the way, the US should end the embargo.. the embargo is cruel, senseless, and counter-productive. The only reason we still have the embargo is because right wing Cubans in South Florida want it that way.

[americandream]

Sixstrings

I suspect anyone with half a brain and as totally self obssessive as we are as a society would by far prefer a life spent roaming shopping malls from dawn to dusk living beyond their means, feeding that self indulgence, than working a community garden for their weekly source of local produce.

That is precisely what occurred in the housing bubble and look where that got us. I anticipate more bubbles and yes, I also anticipate the eventual failure of Cuba. For the same reasons China and the USSR failed. We daily beam them images of the life of aplenty in the midst of their simplicity and hey, what do you expect. We live by a daily diet of the lives of the rich and idle and are equally afflicted.

All of this is a far cry however from what this planet can support and what we shall ultimately have to acknowledge, and which will be a lot closer to contemporary Cba than we care to admit. And in resorting to community en masse, we may well discover the pleasures of a simpler life. However, whilst the entire logic of this civilisation is devoted to promoting the self obssessed, what do you expect. There is no island in this ocean of widespread consumerism and to tell me that community is viewed as the inferior in this dynamic is hardly surprising. As of now, we are not a community but a collection of self absorbed individuals with the barest of communal senses. Look at how community has failed and is failing the peoples of the Gulf..and lamentably.

We haven't as yet seen the depths of self obsession we will witness in the terminal stages of capitalism. The best bits are yet to come.

[Plantagenet]

I also anticipate the eventual failure of Cuba. For the same reasons China and the USSR failed. We daily beam them images of the life of aplenty in the midst of their simplicity and hey, what do you expect.

The original premise of socialism is that capitalism is inefficient and socialized government ownership of the means of production and centralized planning would produce an economy that would make the people richer.

That didn't work out so well. Communist China and the USSR were much poorer then the west. Communist Cuba is not only poorer then surrounding countries now.....its much poorer than Cuba was back in 1959 before the socialists took over.

Its hardly the fault of capitalism that socialism failed to produce universal properity as promised by the socialists.

[Ibon]

Something I wrote on this topic back in March post984998.html?hilit=Cuba#p984998

I would like to take this opportunity to thank AmericanDream for his thoughtful posts. I don't agree all the time with what you say but your singular focus on capitalism and how it is churning out a world of self indulgent consumers is very compelling.

I do think you are giving capitalism to much credit though. I suspect the day will arrive when we will be collectively celebrating community values and look back at this era of capitalism as a dismal failure. Maybe we will even start to do that before capitalism takes us all the way to the end game of our self indulgence. I sure hope so.

[americandream]

Universal prosperity as in, an unremitting exhaustion of the earths resource base by way of annual growth premised consumerism, and communism, in the same breath, is an oxymoron. A communal order that revolves around American style object fetishism is not communalism, notwithstanding what mental gymnastics one may subject oneself to. By the very nature of its anti-commercialism, communist prosperity MUST, as a matter of fact, be of a different, less opulent magnitude.

Grasp this simple fact and you grasp the dialectic nature of systems.

I also anticipate the eventual failure of Cuba. For the same reasons China and the USSR failed. We daily beam them images of the life of aplenty in the midst of their simplicity and hey, what do you expect.

The original premise of socialism is that capitalism is inefficient and socialized government ownership of the means of production and centralized planning would produce an economy that would make the people richer.

That didn't work out so well. Communist China and the USSR were much poorer then the west. Communist Cuba is not only poorer then surrounding countries now.....its much poorer than Cuba was back in 1959 before the socialists took over.

Its hardly the fault of capitalism that socialism failed to produce universal properity as promised by the socialists.

[efarmer]

americandream wrote:
"By the very nature of its anti-commercialism, communist prosperity MUST, as a matter of fact, be of a different, less opulent magnitude."

<end of quote>

Q. What are you drinking Joe?

A. I'm having a bottle of People's Prosperity Light, it's got that big prosperity taste, but is less filling and it removes the toxic opulence that Capitalist injects in their brew, and gives you just a tad more flatulence to share with your comrades.

Q. It looks very similar to Capitalist's new Austerity Magnum Grande, but in a much plainer bottle.

A. True, but Austerity Magnum Grande is an unsustainable beer, People's Prosperity can continue to churn out 4 tenths of a bottle per every productive communal worker on a weekly basis, as well as build up a surplus in good grain harvest years.

Q. So you think I should give it a try?

A. In the old days, I would pull off a shoe and beat on the bar to make the pitch, but now
I figure for every week you turn a People's Prosperity Light down, I am 4 tenths of a bottle
closer to sucking the foam from an ice cold Prosperity Light, maybe even with a chaser of Worker's Paradise.

[Plantagenet]

efarmer has picked out the "money quote" ---thats for sure!

By the very nature of its anti-commercialism, communist prosperity MUST, as a matter of fact, be of a different, less opulent magnitude.

I travelled quite a bit in both the USSR before it collapsed and in communist China* before it allowed capitalism and I still travel there---I'm going back to China in the fall. You are quite right that communist "prosperity" was of a "different, less opulent magnitude" then western prosperity. The average person was much much poorer in both socialist societies then in adjacent capitalist countries. This pattern continues today with socialist Cuba and socialist North Korea.

Socialist economics failed in its promise to create greater prosperity then Capitalism---thats why the USSR collapsed and Communist China gave up on socialism.

However, the new system of state-owned capitalism in China is currently out-competing private capitalism in the west-----perhaps this new hybrid Chinese "state capitalism" system is the wave of the future? Its successfully taken China from a society of rural peasants and urban workers in Mao jackets riding bicycles to a very affluent society with ritzy shopping malls and SUVs in the cities inside a vast country filled with rural villages where rural peasants still plow with water buffalo.