Havana/Buenos Aires - Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike represent a destructive march through the alphabet as the lethal sequence of tropical storms that have hit the Caribbean.

As a result of the four consecutive storms in as many weeks, Haiti has a death toll of close to 350 with scores more people missing while Cuba has four dead after having evacuated about 1.6 million people.

Winds, rains and floods have caused extensive agricultural and infrastructure damage to both Caribbean nations; however, their responses to the storms have been as different as their cultures.

The French-speaking Haiti is one of the most unstable countries in the world with the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti deployed there since 2004 in an effort to patch things up. It has about 9 million people with a majority of the population living in poverty, with a per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) of about 1,300 dollars.

Haiti is plagued by violence and high inflation. Rapidly rising food prices sparked riots that cost Jacques-Edouard Alexis his job as prime minister in April, and his successor, Michele Pierre-Louis, was not formally appointed until July.

Spanish-speaking Cuba is far from perfect, but stability can count as an advantage with a regime that has remained in place since 1959. The government in the Communist country was led until February by the same man, Fidel Castro, who has since been succeeded by his own brother, Raul.

It has a strong centralized government in which the structure of the Communist Party and other such organizations permeate society to its roots.

Cuba has a population of 11.4 million with a per-capita GDP of about 4,500 dollars. The government claims it can provide for every one of its people although observers said the government hardly covers Cubans' basic needs, and thousands leave the country every year in search of a better future abroad.

"The world has observed with admiration our people's conduct in the face of the ravages of Gustav," Fidel Castro said in an article published Monday.

The leader of Cuba's communist government might appear to be using propaganda to provide encouragement to his countrymen at a difficult time. However, the figures back up his claims: hundreds dead in Haiti and four in Cuba from the massive storms.

The Civil Defence and comrades in positions of responsibility "have been moving everywhere," the elder Castro said.

"I think that our country is in a position to save the lives of its citizens, and families will receive material assistance and food for as long as they need until they recover - in the shortest possible time - the capacity for food production," Castro assured Cubans.

About 1.6 million people had been evacuated from the most threatened areas by Tuesday. However, in Cuba, evacuation doesn't mean taking them to shelters but to the safer homes of relatives and friends.

Although homes in Cuba might be old and shabby, they are far more stable than the shantytowns of Haiti. And despite having little of value, Haitians are reluctant to evacuate, fearing looting.

State control in Cuba is in place both to impose evacuations and to calm fears of losing property to anything other than the storm.

Just in case, Yamila Pena of the provincial attorney's office in Havana warned that those tempted to resort to crime under cover of the storm will be met with "maximum severity."

What remains to be seen is the situation in Cuba and Haiti after the immediate rescue efforts.

Haiti has been pledged millions of dollars in relief from the United Nations and European Union.

However, Cuba, which was already facing food shortages before the storms hit, saw its request to the United States to lift the decades-long US trade embargo flatly rejected. It sought the measure to facilitate reconstruction.

Even Fidel Castro warned that the task at hand will not be easy.

"We should be more rational than ever and fight wastage, parasitism and complacency," he said. "We have to act with absolute honesty, avoiding demagoguery or any concession whatsoever to weakness or opportunism."

His solution is the same in everyday life as in disaster, calling on revolutionary militants to "set an example" and "give everything for the people, even their lives if that should be necessary." (dpa)