Most of the changes in Cuba have really just taken place since January 1998, when the Pope visited. The direct result of his visit was several hundred million much needed dollars flowing into Cuba, but more important it served to legitimize the place to many who were used to thinking of it mainly as a tropical gulag. 

I know the whole world loves the avuncular John Paul II, and certainly he’s a far cry from people like Alexander VI and xx, as popes go. But popes have never been friends of either free minds or free markets, as JPII evidenced in his most important sermon in Havana, where he excoriated the evils of classical liberalism, “which subordinates the human person to blind market forces and conditions the development of peoples to those forces”. It’s amazing he’d say something as dim as that, implying that wise, selfless, and judicious bureaucrats are needed to approve commerce between consenting adults. And say it while in Cuba, of all places. 

Of course the Church has always had, at best, a rather mechanistic view of how the economic world works. Somehow it seems stuck in the 13th century, which many Catholic theologians still fondly recall as the “greatest” of centuries, when guilds controlled the marketplace, usury was a crime, the peasants were quiescent, and Rome pretty well called the shots. My choice, however, might be its antithesis, the 14th, which overturned the entire constipated order of the Middle Ages.

The bad news about the 14th was the Black Death, one of history’s great catastrophes, which carried away over 25% of the population. But the good news was the plague not only shattered the concrete-bound feudal system, but caused a labor shortage, with concommitent higher wages and labor mobility. The plague, to use Schumpeter’s phrase, resulted in a gigantic wave of “creative destruction”. The cities started growing and castles (which were really just dungeons surrounded by rural concentration camps) started to disappear, paving the way for the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the overthrow of the Established Order. Notwithstanding its great wealth and prestige, the Church has been in decline ever since. 

Far be it from me to accuse the Pope of insincerity, but if JPII really wanted to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, the equalize of the distribution of wealth, and get the attention of those of us who are driven by blind market forces, etc., etc., he might consider liquidating the Church’s immense assets for the benefit of those in need. At least that’s what any reading of the words of the Church’s founder might have you believe should be done. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Just as most people seem to want to clutch the material world ever more closely to their breasts as they age, when they should be lightening up, the same is true of institutions. And the older the institution, the more calcified, and distant from their founding principles, they inevitably get. Like most everybody in a position of power, I’m afraid JPII talks the talk better than he walks the walk.

In any event, the Pope came not to free the serfs in Cuba, but to bring the Catholic Church back into the public arena. He may, or may not, have succeeded in that. As far as I can determine, most educated Cubans are very secular in outlook, and the uneducated are mostly partial to Santeria, an eclectic admixture of voodoo and Catholicism. But in terms of doing good for millions of people, JPII should be canonized as Cuba’s patron saint. His visit singlehandedly ignited a boom both in tourism, and the investment to handle it. The boom is an unintended consequence; but most major events, whether a visit from the Black Death or JPII, tend to have unintended consequences. And in both cases the net result was positive. Viva el Papa!

In 1996 Cuba saw one million visitors, 1.3 million in 1997 and over 2 million in 1998. At this point, it’s impossible to get a hotel room without an advance reservation. The cat’s out of the bag; the world is starting to become aware of Cuba as on of the truly great travel destinations. And I expect growth to be hyperbolic from this point. 

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