Cuba struggles with recovery after three hurricanes

LOS PALACIOS, Cuba - More than four months have passed since Cuba was hit by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike; more than two months since Hurricane Paloma made landfall. Yet earlier this month, Gerardo Danilo Fuentes crawled along the wooden beams of a roofless house.

He had no materials yet to build the roof. He was just getting the structure ready for the day those materials arrive.

"Every once in a while, the state comes and gives out some supplies," said Fuentes, 49, a furniture maker. "But that's it. If your furniture was destroyed, if you lost your food ..." His voice trails off, and he shrugs.

Cubans praised their government for its evacuation planning that resulted in only seven deaths from the three hurricanes. The contrast with the United States' handling of Hurricane Katrina is not lost on residents here.

Still, many in this rural town on the western edge of the island remain upset over the pace of recovery and question whether Cuba's government - in which a centralized bureaucracy determines where every piece of aid goes - can handle the recovery.

"Some people are still sleeping in their houses looking up at the moon," said Juan Carlos Romero, a retired baseball player.

The government has put the cost of the damage at $5 billion - an overwhelming amount for such a small country, equivalent to more than one-tenth of its annual economic output.

More than 530,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. More than 30% of the island's crops were wiped out, forcing a country that already imports about $2 billion a year in food to bring in even more to keep people from going hungry.

U.S. relations still tense

Raśl Castro, who has been running the country since Fidel Castro underwent emergency surgery in the summer of 2006, has turned to new and old allies for assistance. Russia, China, Venezuela, Brazil and Bolivia have sent aid. Smaller Caribbean neighbors have also helped.

As has been the case for the half-century that the Castro brothers have ruled the island, cooperation with the United States was difficult.

The U.S. offered up to $6.3 million to the Cubans because, in the words of outgoing U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, "the best interests of the Cuban people will come before political differences."

Cuba declined the offer. Alberto Gonzalez of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., said if the U.S. really wanted to help it would've removed the economic embargo it maintains on Cuba for a short time to allow more assistance to come in.

"That's like if I have you held by the neck and I offer you an aspirin. If you want to help me, help me," Gonzalez said. He said without U.S. help, and as other countries suffer from the global economic crisis, Cuba has a clear shortage of building materials. And some Cubans on the island said that has led to sometimes infuriating methods