Cuba 2001

By Juliana Barbassa

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Heat waves rising from the cracked pavement make the red flower print on a plastic bag shimmer. A bored teenager, the third in line for a public phone, shifts impatiently, her lemon-yellow Lycra top glaring bright in the sun. Second in line, a man in a baseball cap checks her out, but settles his glance on the tourist fumbling in her huge American backpack for change, a credit card, or whatever these Cuban phones take.

"Where are you from? Spain?" he asks, without waiting for an answer.

"Where are you staying? When he finds out where, and that I'm paying $15 a night, he laughs and rolls his eyes.

"I can offer you a room for much less… Close by, a block and half, maybe two. Come see."

Welcome to Cuba. The public phone takes only dollars. So does the portly hot dog vendor taking advantage of the phone line to sell ice-cold TuKolas — Cuban Coke — and Havana Club Rum. So do the neighborhood kids, who give a lost tourist directions for a dollar fee, and the cab driver, who won't take Cuban pesos— even as a tip. They want dollars. So, in fact, does the Cuban Government.

This may still be Castro's Cuba, but the evils the Revolution came to vanquish— the dollar, tourism, private enterprise and inequality--are pushing through the widening cracks brought by the fall of the Soviet bloc.

Described by Castro as a necessary evil, these small allowances to capitalism are taking root and seeding change at every level of Cuban society.

"It was like giving an asphyxiating patient a breath of oxygen," says Marta, who rents rooms in her house. "First, he recovers. Then he wants more."

The advent of the dollar and private enterprise means that the worker's paradise now has winners and losers. Staying close to the party line and putting in a few hours in a state-owned company for a peso salary no longer guarantee a good living. This is a new game, and the one with the most dollars wins, whether the money comes from hard work or from relatives abroad. Surprised, Cubans are seeing the other face of government. In addition to public service, which in Cuba includes health and education, the government also taxes the entrepreneur and competes against businesses for tourist dollars. Still, even with tight regulations, a little taste of economic freedom goes a long way.

"It was like giving an asphyxiating patient a breath of oxygen," says Marta, who rents rooms in her house. "First, he recovers. Then he wants more."

To get more, Cubans everywhere, in legal businesses and in underground markets tweak the rules and cheat the state. Highly educated Cubans have dumped low paying professional jobs to work in tourism for dollar tips. In the race for dollars that followed economic reforms in the 1990s, Cubans use what they have: they rent their houses, sell the country's communist appeal—Che beret' and tee shirts--and invent a thousand ways to stretch what little income they have.

During the special period, as Cubans call the economic mess they have been sorting through since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the easy credit and cheap oil coming from the Soviets dried up. Cuban sugar, which had been sold at artificially high prices, found no buyers, and the island's fragile economy, fed on subsidies and barely standing on its old sugar and tobacco legs, collapsed.

"With the demise of the Soviet Union, we had to change, says Antonio Ravelo Narino, a Cuban economist. "It was like a wedding; if one person dies, you can't expect the other to go on living with the dead. We were trying to live with the dead."

The government opened the island to tourists and their dollars in the early 1990s, but that was not enough. To control spiraling inflation, the threat of unemployment, and a grinding depression, Castro gave in to what was already happening in black markets and inside homes all over the island: he legalized the possession of dollars. He also allowed small private enterprises to flourish under tight regulations and permitted foreigners to invest in mixed ventures.

"If we hadn't been allowed to fend for ourselves, put up our businesses, things would have exploded," Alejandro, the hot dog vendor by the payphone explains as he polishes the shiny aluminum countertop.

If Cubans had to scramble for hard currency to survive, so did the government. When tourist dollars were not enough to pay expenses and service Cuba's $22 billion foreign debt, the government looked for ways to cash in on the remittances that relatives abroad sent to Cubans on the island. The answer was government-owned dollar stores. These quickly appeared on every corner, selling everything from Italian biscotti to television sets. The majority of Cubans, however, still lived on pesos, and with an average wage of 240 pesos – about $12 dollars—no one earned enough. An average family needs at least $50 a month to survive, so by the mid-1990s Cubans everywhere went into the streets to make up the difference between their peso salary and the dollar reality.

"This is the land of magical realism," Fernando explains on the way to showing me the room he has for rent. "Incredible things happen every day so that people can go on. People invent."

Inventing a living is how engineers like Fernando end up on a Havana sidewalk convincing a tourist to follow him home. His is the story they all tell: his peso salary in a management position with a state-owned company was never enough, and since the legalization of dollars in 1993, he has been earning his dollars any way he can--selling instant photographs that he takes of couples in restaurants, renting pirated videos, and sometimes renting a room in the home he shares with his sister. Inventing.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

He has no license for renting rooms, but like many other Cubans, Fernando has mastered the tight-rope walk between punishable illegalities and everyday infringements that most officials ignore. Renting videos was not one of the categories of self-employment that the government legalized in 1993, but from the second floor in one of Havana's old mansions, with soaring twenty-foot ceilings, peeling paint and faulty plumbing, Fernando makes his own rules. One tape goes for 25 cents, a bargain next to the official government rentals--$5 a membership and $1 per rental. What's really priceless is the selection: while state-owned video rentals limit the movies available to those that have been officially sanctioned, Fernando's solid wood china cabinet offers a range of new releases that rivals Blockbuster's shelves: Terminator, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and 300 others. Cubans, he explains, as he flips from channel to channel through a pirated satellite hook-up, prefer action and violence. He stops at the Playboy channel. "I don't record this stuff. A government official might look the other way if his kids are watching rented movies, but if they start watching pornography, then he might want to find out where it is coming from," he says, shrugging off the question about what would happen if he were caught.

"When ordinary things become crimes, then you make an ordinary man a criminal," he says. The television set flickers. Urban Legends, a popular series, comes on. He starts recording.

Not all private businesses on the island are outside the law. Currently there are 150,000 legal, licensed businesses in Cuba, ranging from shoe-shiners and plumbers to small restaurants and private homes that rent rooms to tourists. A few chosen occupations—initially 110, now 157--opened up for private enterprise in fits and starts. The number varies according to governmental whim.

"The government tries to limit this sector as much as possible" says Roberto Orro, a Cuban economist now living in Puerto Rico. "It had to accept it because there was no other option, but it was certainly against its will. There are people who are not politically faithful to the government, and now those people have the possibility of obtaining a certain economic independence."

Paladares, for example, the tiny restaurants named after a canteen in a Brazilian soap opera, were ordered shut in December 1993, with Castro accusing the owners of the still tax-free establishments of illicit enrichment. The need to create employment and jump-start the economy forced the restaurants open again weeks later. They operate under tight rules and close inspections by several government agencies that have the right – if not the manpower—to check everything from hygiene to tax compliance.

These regulations squeeze many legal businesses underground. Once they disappear from government lists, the businesses that give street life in Cuba its flair—1950s taxi cabs, food vendors, cigar hawkers— flourish without taxes or regulations, making enough money to pay the occasional fines and still make a comfortable living.

Meanwhile, legal paladares can only serve food bought at government-owned dollar stores at retail prices. The rules say receipts must be kept handy for frequent monthly inspections that come any time between 5 am and 10 pm. The establishments are forbidden from having live entertainment, and must stay away from main streets and popular tourist hubs. But it is difficult to know to what extent these rules are respected, since even legal businesses seem to follow some of the rules and ignore others.

Regulations squeeze many legal businesses underground. Once they disappear from government lists, the businesses that give street life in Cuba its flair— 1950s taxi cabs, food vendors, cigar hawkers— flourish without taxes or regulations, making enough money to pay the occasional fines and still make a comfortable living.

Take Fernando's favorite paladar in Santa Fe, 40 minutes west of old Vedado, past the upscale oceanside neighborhood of Miramar, and far from where most tourists stray. We get to the seating area in the backyard by walking under the front hedge, along the house, and through the patio where dozens of caged parakeets hang amid ferns. When we emerge from the ferns, we run into the restaurant owner, who stands elbow deep in blood, dissecting fresh chicken. She prefers not to give her name.

"Our advertisement are our clients," she says, explaining why no visible sign hangs at the front. Her sister, squatting on the floor, inspecting buckets of chicken parts, is more direct: "Unnoticed, we do much better than by calling attention to ourselves."

A quick glance around shows why the two sisters want to keep their secret: the first rule for paladares, no more than 12 customers at a time, is disregarded. This place has 12 tables. A restaurant this busy also needs many employees, which according to rules, should all be family members.

Are they?

"Well," says the owner, laughing with her knife in hand. "It is as if we were all a big family. Everyone puts this address in their identity booklets, so that when inspectors come… you know."

I wonder if all that chicken was bought from a government dollar store, as mandated by the law. These are fresh, not frozen, and in residential areas like this, a quick stroll is long enough to spot chicken scratching in the backyard, or the unmistakable whiff of a home-grown pig.

photo by Mimi Chakarova A scene from a Cuban market. Currently there are 150,000 legal, licensed businesses in Cuba, ranging from shoe-shiners and plumbers to small restaurants and private homes that rent rooms to tourists.

A few feet away from the owner, on white plastic tables facing the ocean, the guests enjoy fried chicken and the breeze for just a handful of dollars. Far from tourist-heavy Havana, this place caters to Cubans who have thrived in the changing economy. The prices are lower than downtown-- $2.50 for rice, beans, fried bananas, and fried chicken -- but still in dollars. The owners have also done well, and the temptation to do even better is hard to resist.

To attract business to state-owned restaurants, the government does not allow paladares to serve seafood. With the ocean a few feet away, and family member working as fishermen, the two sisters are proud to point out that this is one rule they respect. "There are those who take the risk, but we try to stay safe," the owner says. "So many of them have been shut down, but we are still here."

As with Fernando's video business, the secret of surviving lays in knowing which rules must be respected, and in having a friendly relationship with your inspectors. Watching the sisters, Fernando tells me about a friend who rents rooms without a license, and pays his neighborhood inspector $50 a month to get away with it. "One month, he didn't have enough. He told the inspector, and immediately the man started naming the infractions he was committing: renting a room, serving food to foreigners without the proper sanitary precautions… My friend ran out and borrowed the money really quick."

At an open-air market by the Malecon, Havana's main seaside walk, William, a sculptor, echoes these concerns. As he talks, he whittles ebony into the slender figures of Cuban guajiros—peasants—and naked mulattas he sells to tourists.

"They didn't tell you to close down, but when they saw people were getting ahead in life, they started to force you to close: taxes went up all the time, until you were barely making a living, and the inspectors came at any time of the day to see if all the people working have licenses."

William and his brothers make a handsome living, finishing the month with more than $100 each in a country where the average wage is $12. However, like other Cubans who first experimented with profit a few years ago, he found taxes and regulations to be an unpleasant yoke. In 1992, when he and his brothers first started selling the sculptures they made as a hobby, they paid nothing to the state, since what they did was illegal. In 1993, selling arts and crafts was legalized—and soon the tax hikes began, from $2 a month in 1993 to $159 a month, plus a $3 a day fee for using the market. The monthly tax is fixed, independent of earnings, and another year-end tax is based on revenue.

Other businesses also pay taxes unheard of a few years ago: to rent a room to tourists in Vedado, the homeowner pays a monthly tax of $250 per room; to run a private cab that charges in dollars, the taxi driver pays $225 every month.

"Nowhere do people pay taxes like this," William says, shaking his head in frustration.

It is hard to tell whether William is really overtaxed, or just unfamiliar with the way capitalist countries work. Even if they pay over half their income in taxes to the government, Cuba's budding entrepreneurs are still making a killing relative to others on the island. Williams complaints about taxes have a familiar ring: he sounds just like small business owners everywhere. He just doesn't know it.

"There is no small business culture in Cuba," says Mayra Espina, a sociologist with a prominent research center in Habana, the Centro de Investigaciones Psicologicas y Sociologicas.. "They don't know how it works in other countries, and they feel they are being strangled by taxes and rules. When small businesses sprang up in Cuba illegally they had profit margins of 500%; now, with 200% gains, they think they are suffering. This doesn't mean the government isn't tightening the screws, but of course they also have to contribute to the state, and follow rules like everyone else."

In spite of their ingenuity and flexible understanding of regulations, Cuba's entrepreneurs are "a sector on the defensive," says Gillian Gunn Clissold, a professor at Georgetown University. "The Cuban government has become much more fierce about self-employment. It definitely is tightening restrictions and imposing new ones." Santa Fe alone had 22 paladares in the mid 1990s, when self-employment had just been authorized, and Cuban families began to dream in dollars. Now there are only two. The government is not issuing any more licenses for room rentals or paladares. And this neighborhood is no exception.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

"Self-employment was never fully accepted by the government," says Espina. "They saw it as a necessary evil, and the tension continues. When self-employment goes up, there is always a reaction: taxes go up, inspections are more rigorous, permits are no longer issued."

Legal self-employment in Cuba has decreased at a rate of about 600 businesses a month for the last three years. Of the 200,000 licensed businesses in 1996 only 151,000 remain, according José Luis Rodríguez, the Cuban minister of the Economy. Some, like the owners of the paladar in Santa Fe, say the ones forced out failed to follow rules. Others, like William, the sculptor, feel the government is methodically squeezing the life out of the sector through tax hikes and a draconian enforcement of existing regulation.

Legal businesses may be closing, as government officials say – but they might be simply slipping off the official rolls, out of the government's grasp, and into the island's booming underground economy, where no one pays taxes, and the only rule is to stay in business. Flourishing illegal enterprise helps Havana feel far from depressed. "There are a lot of people doing this illegally," says Eugenio Espinosa Martinez, an economist with FLACSO-Cuba who teaches in the University of Havana. "No one knows how many, but you see them all over town."

In fact, any conversation with a restaurant owner, or a stroll down old Havana's cobblestone streets will show that even Cuba's legal businesses exist on both sides of the law. Just about any curb-side stall offering sandwiches and pizza harbors examples of the ingenuity that allows Cubans to survive. Instead of buying all his wood from government supply stores, William, the sculptor, whittles some of his figurines from the banisters and roof beams taken from old Havana's crumbling mansions. The taxi driver who takes a tourist home at night is likely to ask him to agree on a price beforehand, to avoid turning on the meter: "You pay less to me, I make a little extra money." Gisela, who rents rooms in her home, doesn't declare all the rooms she has for rent.

Joaquina, a sociology professor at the University of Habana who also rents rooms to make ends meet, explains, "This isn't the black market; there is nothing hidden. It is the market. Period." She started hosting foreigners during the special period, "right around the time when even toilet paper was scarce. I decided we'd had enough."

Her husband, Bienvenido, is a sailor, and returned home from his trips with food and clothing that the family could later sell to neighbors. Paying under the table with black market money, they moved their four-person family to a five-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms. More sailing brought more goods for sale, and they bought beds. Soon they had a profitable bed-and-breakfast that caters to the visiting professors and scholars Joaquina meets through the university.

"This isn't the black market; there is nothing hidden. It is the market. Period."

In 1993, as soon as it was possible, she legalized her business, and now pays the necessary taxes. Her business is perfectly legal, but talking over breakfast, she explains the web of small illegalities and daily infractions that she and others participates in. Take the bread, she says, pointing to one of tasteless, crumbling rolls Cubans buy at a subsidized price. "The bakery workers stretch the government rationed flour and oil, making bread that weighs just a little less than it should," she says. "At the end of the day, they make extra loaves, which they sell for a profit to people like me."

While she talks, the doorbell rings. The neighborhood pharmacist is delivering her daughter's migraine medicine.

Home delivery, in Cuba?

"This medicine only comes once in a while," she explains. "He knows we need it, and that we can pay in dollars, so he got prescription from a doctor he knows. When the medicine comes in, he brings it over. That way we don't have to check at the pharmacy every week, and he makes a little extra."

Joaquina and Bienvenido established their bed and breakfast, and now live on the winning side of the dollar divide. They can afford home delivery, weekends on the beach with the family, and occasional dinners in one of Habana's paladares where they drink their beers next to tourists. Like small business owners everywhere, they needed capital to start up. In a country where credit or loans are nonexistent, and salaries never see the end of the month, raising money is one of the most significant barriers to establishing even a small business like.

However, the dollars sent by Cubans living in Miami, Spain or Costa Rica could change that. Already the $800 million to $1.5 billion in yearly remittances supply would-be capitalists like Fernando, who rents videos without authorization, with seed money. He relied on money sent by his mother and brother who live in Miami to buy the VCRs he needed to set up his video rental business.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Whether the money helped start a business or put food on the table, remittances have been a lifeline for the economy of the country, and for the families receiving them. When the government legalized remittances in dollars in 1993, the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Cuban government used the tourist dollars and whatever it could capture of the remittances to service the country's debt, to buy essentials such as oil abroad, and to keep the bare essentials of its social system in place: subsidies on basic food items, and Cuba's renowned public health and education system.

"The net balance of these measures was positive for the government," says Orro, a Cuban economist living in Puerto Rico. "They managed to preserve the regime, and people felt relieved."

Cubans had just gone through the deepest depression in their history. Even the most basic necessities had been missing, and so they welcomed remittances, foreign investment, tourism, and all the measures taken to restore the country to some semblance of stability.

"During the special period, we went through a phase called option zero, meaning zero gas," says Fernando. "Horses and mules were used even in cities." Even today, bicycles and bicycle taxis are common means of transportation. Cubans came close to starvation, Joaquina says. She remembers an epidemic of scurvy in Habana, when fresh fruit could not reach the city. The advent of the dollar changed all that. But even while they brought prosperity to Cuba, dollars also brought inequality.

Salaries in state-owned companies, which employ the vast majority of Cubans, are still low, but recently teachers, police, lawyers, doctors and nurses were given a raise. Some workers now get dollar bonuses that go from $5 to $20 as incentives to keep their poorly-paid state jobs, and to take the edge off their frustration. Others, like Joaquina, get a monthly supply of essential items only available in dollar stores, such as soap, deodorant and toothpaste.

However, the gap between the life these professionals lead with their peso salaries, raise and bonuses included, and the lives of friends or neighbors who get $100 a month in legally allowed remittances is too deep to be affected by a few more pesos or a month's supply of shampoo. Now, large income gaps exist between neighbors and family members, and the relationship between work and wage is distorted by the effortless affluence brought to some families by the dollars from abroad.

"This is the negative side of remittances," says Gunn, a professor at Georgetown University. "In Cuba, you can live very well doing absolutely nothing, if you are lucky enough to have relatives abroad. And you can work your butt off, you can be the most industrious, hard-working, entrepreneurial person onthe island, but if you don't have access to dollars, your children are probably running out of food at the end of the month. It has encouraged a mentality that reward is not related to work."

The divide between those with dollars and those without widens as Cubans who get money from abroad put it to work, setting up their own businesses, and generating even more dollars.

"We have to educate people all over again, to teach them to live in a capitalist world, even if we are in a socialist country. Before, after 10, 15 years working in the university, you got a car. You had the right to a car. Now, no one gives you anything, though some are still waiting."

"This money betters the quality of life of those who receive it, but they create a difference among neighbors that did not exist before," says Marta, who rents rooms in her apartment, and also receives money from her son in Miami. A picture of him posing beside his car is on the living room coffee table, facing away from the enormous home entertainment system that takes up a corner of the room. "A simple salary in pesos does not allow people to live with these same comforts," she says. "But I see it as a necessary evil."

Not everyone likes Cuba's new source of income, or the dollarized economy. Those who had bet on staying close to the party and moving up the ladder, accessing scarce privileges along the way, felt cheated as the relatives of immigrants, who were at best ideologically suspicious, and the island's new petit bourgeois became the new moneyed elite. "Many saw this as a betrayal," says Fernando. "They saw their possibilities diminishing along with their salary. They wanted to be recognized for their dedication to the common project, and many really wanted an egalitarian society."

The shift away from old Marxist rhetoric has been difficult, Joaquina explains. The ones who learn fast take advantage of the new system. The ones who don't, sink. "We have to educate people all over again, to teach them to live in a capitalist world, even if we are in a socialist country," she says. "Before, after 10, 15 years working in the university, you got a car. You had the right to a car. Now, no one gives you anything, though some are still waiting."

photo by Mimi Chakarova

While Cubans do their bit of magic to turn pesos to dollars, the Government is doing the same, trying to work its way out of an accumulated $22 billion debt while propping up the educational and health system Cubans constantly tout as the best in Latin America.

Cuba's strong economic performance in the 1970s increased its access to credit from commercial banks and international lending agencies, and the country borrowed heavily. Throughout the 1980s, the Soviet Union subsidized Castro's island to the tune of $4 billion a year. They also allowed Cuba to resell its surplus oil for hard currency. As early as 1985, however, with sugar and oil prices dropping, Cuba's situation started to deteriorate. The total debt reached 33% of Cuba's GNP, and by 1986 Castro declared a moratorium on commercial debt and on debt owed to non-socialist countries.

As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba was left with this debt, exports that dropped 80% between 1989 and 1994, and a GDP that fell by half. Even as Cuba sank, the United States continued to tightened the embargo.

Castro responded by opening the island to hard currency, and he proved as ingenious as any Cuban in devising ways to capture this bounty for the state. Now, dollars will buy just about anything on the island, but behind every hotel counter, every state taxi, and every dollar store is a government employee who is paid in pesos. The greenbacks go to the government; the employee keeps the tips.

This is also true for Cubans who work for foreign companies doing business in Cuba. And there are an increasing number. "The Cuban workforce is excellent," says Demarco Epifanio, the head of Brazil's Cuban subsidiary of its oil company Petrobras. "But there are no links between Petrobras and the Cuban employee; we contract them through the state. If I need someone, I call CUPET— Cuba Petroleum. I pay them, for example, $2000 a month for an accountant. They pay the accountant maybe some 400 pesos."

Four hundred pesos means $18 – and the government pockets the difference. The same is true in all foreign enterprise. Employees only keep their dollar tips.

Chavitos are an unusual economic tool, and one of the more curious aspects of Castro's efforts to reap dollars for its own uses.

But to make sure it gathers even those modest sums and remittances, the government has established Tiendas de Recaudacion de Divisas, literally, Stores for the Recapture of Hard Currency. That's where Cubans must go for just about anything they need.

And even by American standards, the prices are high: $300 for a 13" television, $30 for a table-top fan, $5.70 for cookies and juice. The inflated prices at dollar stores effectively act as a hidden tax on the dollars Cubans earn in remittances. Any attempt to tax this income would simply drive them underground, so government stores absorb these dollars instead.

"These dollar stores?," asks Ravelo, a Cuban economist. "They're there for those who get remittances. The government gathers up these dollars, and with them buys what it needs."

Of course, there are Cubans who do not have dollars. For their convenience, the government has posted CADECAS— Casas de Cambio, or exchange booths—all over the island. There, tourists can sell their dollars, but when Cubans try to buy these dollars with pesos, what they get are Cuba's version of Monopoly money— pesos convertibles, convertible pesos, or chavitos, as they are known. On the island, they are worth the same as dollars, and can be spent at any government dollar store. Leave the island, however, and the game's over; chavitos have no value.

Chavitos are an unusual economic tool, and one of the more curious aspects of Castro's efforts to reap dollars for its own uses. With these convertible pesos in circulation, "the government does not have to sell dollars," says Espina, a Cuban sociologist. "They buy dollars, which they can use, and they sell chavitos, which people can still use as if they were dollars."

Chavitos came about when the government felt the need to reward state workers with some access to the dollar stores, but did not want to let go of the dollars it had. "Different sectors started emitting vouchers that were worth so many dollars," explains Espinosa. "Soon, there were so many vouchers in circulation that no one knew which ones were valid."

It is hard for the economy to function effectively with three different currencies in circulation, and economists agree that this measure must be limited to the period of economic recovery.

"Cuba is preparing itself aggressively for the day the American embargo falls," says Epifanio.

How long that will take, however, is anyone's guess. There are positive signs: since 1995, Cuba started informal talks with the Paris Club of Creditor Nations, which holds most of its foreign debt. The economy has been growing modestly at 4.4% a year since 1995 with a projected growth of 5% in 2001. Foreign investment, another main source of hard currency, continues to grow substantially, particularly in telecommunications, mining and tourism.

"We need to learn to compete within the harsh reality of a capitalist world, even as a socialist country," says Silvia Domenech, a professor of economy at the Escuela Superior del PCC, the Cuban Communist Party's school of higher education.

Since the legalization of dollars, Cuba's economy has stabilized, inflation has slowed, and the Cuban peso now hovers at around 22 to one dollar. The island still needs hard currency, and Castro needs more than just a stable economy. "Cuba is preparing itself aggressively for the day the American embargo falls," says Epifanio. "If it ended today, they'd be in trouble, because the United States would take over with people and capital. They are trying to develop their own infrastructure so they'll be able to stand on their own."

To build the independent Cuba that Castro and many Cubans believe in, the country is still working hard to bring in dollars – from foreign investors, from family abroad, or from tourists willing to exchange hard cash for the lingering appeal of communism. Even Che Guevara's romantic image is for sale at tourist markets, looking forever into a future that never came as Cubans scramble in the present to balance along the dollar-peso divide. Never mind that the $10 Che t-shirt, or a cheap reproduction of his red-starred beret would cost the average Cuban a month's wages; this is the land of paradoxes, and the impossible is shrugged off daily as people "invent" ways of living in dollars while earning in pesos.

While the island braces itself for whatever may come—real economic independence, or market-driven globalization—Cuban citizens are doing the same. Fernando dreams of getting an American MBA, and writes asking about the GMAT and university applications. In Castro's Cuba, he is reading Adam Smith and John M. Keynes, soaking up his lessons in capitalism straight from the source. Inventing himself a future, wherever that may be.

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