Trinidad, For Sale

by Julian Foley
Researcher: Pedro Mosqueda

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Dany is a jinitero, a hustler.

Slouching against the white, wrought iron fence of the Plaza Mayor, he watches weary, sun-burnt tourists wander in and out of a simple church the Spaniards left behind more than a century ago. A blue-bereted policeman on the corner watches too, stoic and motionless. Behind him, a fierce orange sun slips into the horizon. When its glow fades, he disappears, out of sight. On cue, Dany is in action. He calls out to a young couple: "Hi, how are you," first in English, then in Italian. A "bon jour" finally turns their heads.

He's on them quick, flashing a sweet, jaunty smile as he makes his pitch in fluid French. He is afrocubano, tall and dark, handsome even beneath the dingy tee-shirt and faded red shorts he spends his days in. The silver rings that weigh on his long fingers flash bright against his smooth skin. His confidence is contagious. "I can get you anything you need," he tells the couple: private lodging for two in a real Cuban home, just $20 a night; a succulent home-cooked lobster served with fried bananas and fresh green tomatoes for $5; a guided horseback ride into the nearby Escambray mountains to visit the magnificent El Cubano waterfalls and swim in its pools. He absentmindedly snaps his right hand as he talks, trying to add urgency to his offer.

But the two have their response ready: They already have everything they need, thanks. He lets them go. Undeterred, he returns to the fence and gets ready to try again.

Dany is one of Cuba's new entrepreneurs, and this is the new Cuba. If the people of Trinidad have something to sell, he will make sure the foreigners– the yuma – buy it. In return, he gets a cut off the top. And everything is for sale in this pristine colonial city on the island's underbelly. From the slew of government controlled resorts, hotels, restaurants, and shops – even bars and clubs – to the counterfeit cigars sold from dark corners, a two-tiered, post-revolutionary economy has developed to divest tourists of their money.

There is no shortage of pocketbooks. Each day, sleek tour buses wobble over the cobblestone streets in the town's old center to dump their loads: Europeans, Canadians, even Americans – package tourists shipped in from the beachfront resorts on the white sand Peninsula Ancon just twelve kilometers away. Over the last ten years, tourism in Cuba has grown from a trickle of Soviets and native vacationers to a $2 billion industry, thanks to a careful opening to foreign investment. Most of the money goes to straight to the government – desperately needed hard currency to pay the island's external debt – but Cubans have found ways – legal or otherwise – to keep some of it for themselves.

"Every country has a national sport," explains Dany – whose name, along with others in this piece, has been changed to protect his identity. He grins unabashedly. "Cuba's is looking for dollars."

"Every country has a national sport," explains Dany – whose name, along with others in this piece, has been changed to protect his identity. He grins unabashedly. "Cuba's is looking for dollars."

Just on the outskirts of town a luxury tourist bus from Havana rolls into an empty lot. Eager Trinidadians are already there, pressing their faces to the metal gate that keeps them out. They know the schedules by heart.

Disoriented and groggy, I step off the bus just as the din erupts. A taxi driver grabs a couple's bags and hoists them on board without waiting to be asked. Jineteros and homeowners wave makeshift white business cards and call out prices as the foreigners disembark, fighting to lead us to private rooms. "Ten dollars. It's my house. Very comfortable," one tells me, shoving his card in my face even after I have brushed him off. Three others follow me, two on bicycle, one on foot, up the gentle hill into town in a contest of endurance until finally, two give up, and I reluctantly give in to the third. The bus stop is just the beginning. The proto-capitalist cacophony here never quiets.

In the center of town, skirting the landscaped squares and magnificent colonial mansions that tourists come here to see, open markets line the narrow, labyrinthine streets. Vendors wait behind tables laden with crafts – painted gourds, handmade maracas, and polished wood statues of drummers and dancers – for spendthrift visitors to wander through. Beautiful handmade linens, patterns nearly identical, hang one after another along the curving sidewalks, filling an entire alley with billowing sheets of white. "Good prices," a woman assures someone who stops to look. "Fifteen dollars," she says, to get the bargaining started. "And I'll give you a necklace for free."

photo by Mimi Chakarova The city streets of Trinidad.

Just around the corner by the tall, brilliant blue wooden doors of the Galeria del Arte, an old man, white sideburns peeking out beneath a dilapidated straw cowboy hat, sells photo-ops with his donkey for 50 cents. Selling on the street has been legal since 1993, but this is hardly capitalism: hefty government license fees and taxes divert most of these vendor's profits to government coffers. They pay for the right to sell, regardless of how much is sold. Unless they have another source of income, one bad season can wreck them.

So an illicit tourist sector has developed alongside the legal one, and the jineteros are its tour guides. "What's worse?" asks Dany's friend Manuel who sells counterfeit cigars. "Selling cigars on the street, or robbing and begging? They call us bad names, like pimp, but we are just trying to make a living."

A living, the people here will admit only from the privacy of their dining rooms, that the socialist system – even one bolstered with tourism revenues -- can no longer provide. Basics goods that Cubans covet, like toilet paper or meat, are simply unavailable most of the time in the tiny storefronts that accept the Cuban peso. Instead, they must be purchased in dollars from the special stores that were initially opened to serve tourists. A government salary that may have been plenty to live on in the 1980s is today, on average, worth about $12. That buys about five bottles of vegetable oil in a country where everything from chicken to bananas is fried. "If everyone had pesos," says Dany "if I spent pesos, if you changed money to pesos, it would be fine. The problem is that everything requires dollars."

He, for one, would like to return to the days before the "Special Period" – the years of economic austerity that began when the Soviet Union's collapse left the heavily subsidized Cuban economy in virtual freefall. "Maravilla," a marvel, is how he remembers it. He kisses his hand and blows it to the wind. But then, he was only ten when it started.

Dany, like most in his field, prefers to work at night, when the darkness provides cover from anyone who might be watching: police wandering around their quadrants, looking for trouble-makers, or the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) representatives – neighborhood spies – sitting on their stoops keeping an eye on the streets. He knows where they are and is careful to avoid them, even though some people say they aren't as watchful as they used to be.

What's worse?" asks Dany's friend Manuel who sells counterfeit cigars. "Selling cigars on the street, or robbing and begging? They call us bad names, like pimp, but we are just trying to make a living."

Hungry tourists looking for a good meal are his easiest prey at this hour. Tonight he positions himself at the bottom of the escalera – the wide stone staircase next to the church that unfolds onto the sloping town below. A dominoes game in the street has attracted a small crowd. Lively salsa lures foreigners up the steps to an outdoor bar; further up is a terrible state-run restaurant. Both sell in dollars only, and it is rare to see a Cuban there who isn't serving or performing. So Dany doesn't mind stealing their business. And he knows he offers a superior product.

With a sharp eye, he spots an Italian couple he found dinner for the night before and sidles up beside them. "You want to eat?" he asks in an animated whisper, slipping his arm around the man's shoulders. They remember him and pause to hear him out, laughing to each other at his persistence. His irresistible grin and impressive high-school Italian wins them over again. "Come on," he says, motioning, and they follow him obediently, trustingly, as he steers them towards the dark streets behind the Plaza. He stays a pace ahead of them to avoid suspicion, and his eyes never stop moving.

"There is a lot of fear here," he told me. And some say racism, too, despite the official words to the contrary. Manuel thinks that he and Dany get questioned by police more often than white jineteros because of their dark skin. But Dany disagrees. "We just stand out more when we are walking with the tourists," he says. "White Cubans blend better."

He glances over his shoulder one last time before he leads the Italians into the living room of a private home. Two women watching television don't even look up as they pass through into the tiny, badly lit dining room of this unlicensed, illicit paladar. Dining rooms like this are hidden all around the tourist part of town, behind colonial Cuba's trademark mélange of pink, blue, or green wooden doors. Some paladares are legal, but the license is prohibitively expensive for Cubans who only have enough room in their tiny houses to seat eight to ten guests. Dany's services, a mere dollar or two per guest compared with up to $500 per month for a license, are cheap. So most who serve food to tourists do it quietly, and keep it small enough that the CDR are willing to let it go.

Dany stays only a moment to see his charges seated at one of two rickety tables – mismatched plates, silverware, and scratched glasses laid out on a plastic tablecloth. "They want lobster," he whispers to the woman of the house. "I told them five dollars." He'll get his cut later. Within seconds, Dany is back out on the street, looking greedily for his next catch.

Dany's other big moneymakers are the casas particulares, the private homes in which Cubans rent out rooms to more budget-conscious tourists. Most are licensed, but proprietors who do not have the time or nerve to go out into the street to find their own customers still have to pay Dany a $2 per night for every guest he delivers. This, on top of the $150 per month per rental room for the license and 10 percent yearly income tax they pay the state, means scarce profit. The government justifies the fees by the heavy housing subsidies every Cuban receives, but many people have to secretly rent out additional rooms or sell egg and papaya breakfasts to their guests just to afford them.

The town is teeming with jineteros tonight, jockeying for untapped tourists. David, tired and grungy-looking beneath his 5 o'clock shadow, is trying to pull in anyone Dany hasn't gotten. In another life he'd be a scientist. He studied geophysics for three years before the Special Period began and he had to give it up to work. At 31, he doubts he'll go back to school, but he hasn't stopped reading and studying on his own. He has plenty of ideas, like almost everyone here, about what the dollar economy means for Cuba's future.

"The government knows that Cubans are inventive and that they will find a way to survive, but shhh," says David, leaning across the table in a dingy paladar, whispering. He thinks a little extra money making has been tolerated as a safety valve for discontent as long as it's kept quiet. But it's a theory no one in Trinidad wants to test. The 1500 peso -- $75 dollar – fine for selling anything without a license, be it a taxi ride or a steak dinner, is enough to keep everyone on edge. And Cuba has its own three-strikes law – on the third fine, it's off to prison.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

But now that the economy is picking up, David fears the government is trying to phase out the entrepreneurial class, and him and Dany with it. There are eight new luxury hotels in various stages of planning and completion rising up on the peninsula to accommodate an influx of visitors that has been increasing by 5 to 10 percent per year since 1995. Names like Sandals and SuperClubs of Jamaica, even Club Med, have teamed up with Cuban companies to fill in the island's spectacular beachscapes with all-inclusive resorts and five-star restaurants. In theory, the tourists will have everything they need at these new hotels – lobster, air conditioned rooms, guided horseback rides and scuba diving, even painted masks and woven straw bags – and all of their dollars will go to the investors and the state.

"It is very difficult to get a small business license now" David says – licenses that many of the jineteros use as a cover for their real work -- and the government is supposedly cracking down on the people who wait at the bus station to greet potential customers.

For now, though, there are plenty of tourists to go around, even towards the end of the peak November through April season. Dany has made three sales tonight. In addition to the Italians he took to dinner, he dropped a pair of Americans at the most expensive paladar in town, and found rooms for them too. All in all, a pretty good evening.

And as for any twenty-something, a hard day's work means a night of play. Dany lopes up the hill behind the church, through a labyrinth of barely-lit streets towards home, to change out of his dirty sneakers and sweaty clothes. The underground tourism economy is still in full swing in this part of town. He passes a guy standing in his doorway who offers "real Cohibas, just like Fidel smoked" to every passerby. "My mother works in the factory," he whispers to the unwitting tourists. More likely, the guide books will warn you, they are fakes, rolled from the tobacco sweepings that ended up on the factory floor. Dany, however, insists he can get the real ones, but says he only offers them to tourists he has befriended.

He arrives on his sagging doorstep and squeezes through the chicken wire gate in no time. High up on a dusty road where the cobblestones have faded into dirt, this tiny house his father built long before the revolution is too far from the Plaza Mayor to be part of the government restoration plan. The whole town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but although a good portion of the tourism revenues go towards maintaining its genuine Cuban character, most is reserved for the tourist sector. So Dany is financing his own restoration project. His overgrown side yard has already given way to a bare gray cement skeleton that will one day be a new house for the two of them.

His mother isn't around anymore. She was only 23 when he was born and wasn't ready to settle down with his 62-year-old father. Now she lives in Cienfuegos, about an hour from here by bus, and has a new family.

Dany pulls his dog-eared Union of Young Communists (UJC) card from his wallet and holds it up to the light. "It means I am an exemplary youth," he says, smiling.

From outside the door Dany can hear the Soviet-made radio crackling from the dining room, where in a dark, cluttered corner, his father sits with his eyes closed, rocking slowly in his time-worn chair. The bedroom father and son share is the only other room, save a small entryway and a crude kitchen. A pot of thin bean and squash soup is already heated up. "He is a good son," says Dany's father, getting up from his chair. At 84, he is still fit beneath his brown wrinkled skin from a lifetime of cutting cane. His smile is bigger than Dany's as he lifts his eyes toward the ceiling, as if to thank God for his good fortune.

Dany sits down at an old wooden table covered with dirty white canvas. "I am twenty-two now," he says, his voice tinged with frustration. "I probably won't be finished building until I'm twenty-six or twenty-seven." His brother, who might have helped, is in prison for "evading work." Dany could go to jail too, if he gets caught doing what he does, but he won't get cited for being idle. He is still considered a student while he waits to be admitted to the nearby National System for the Formation of Tourism Professionals (FORMATUR) school.

Even though he has been making a decent living in the last year, the $40 or $50 a month he makes on the street is not enough to buy the dollar-only cement he needs to complete the house. For that, he'll have to go to work in the formal, government controlled, tourism industry of high-class restaurants and luxury hotels – these days the most lucrative job a Cuban can hold.

"There are many people who just sit around and beg tourists," says Aragon, the white-haired 78-year-old who rents his donkey for photos. "I myself don't believe in begging, but if a tourist wants to give me something, that's different."

Dany pulls his dog-eared Union of Young Communists (UJC) card from his wallet and holds it up to the light. "It means I am an exemplary youth," he says, smiling. And, he believes, it is his ticket to a real job in tourism. "I'd like to be a tour guide," he says, "because I love learning the languages." And traveling the country, meeting people from around the world, staying in nice hotels, eating good food, and most importantly, earning dollar tips.

The school Dany has his future riding on is one of twenty-two FORMATUR schools in the country that train Cubans of all ages and backgrounds – from highly educated professionals changing jobs to recent high school graduates – to serve food, make drinks, sweep floors and greet guests. The training is mandatory for job placement even in the lowest tier of the tourism industry. The school also prepares the select few who prove their worth for management positions in one of the five independently operating tourism companies that fall under the government's tourism ministry. The really lucky ones go from FORMATUR to one of the Spanish or Canadian companies that have joint ventures or management contracts in hotels around the island.

Unless a student enters the program straight from secondary school, getting in is no small feat. Applicants need a graduate degree, recommendations from the local CDR representatives, teachers and employers, and all of the things typically associated with university admissions. They will also have to pass tests on politics, economics, geography and history, and be screened and intensively interviewed by a psychologist.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

"This is a very selective process," says Jose Irarragorria Leon, the Secretary General of Trinidad's 600-student FORMATUR school, gesturing at the piles of papers on his disheveled desk. And given the high demand, it has to be. Irarragorria has no doubts about applicant's incentives: "What would you rather do, be in the hot sun picking fruit, or would you rather work in tourism?" he asks, lighting up a filter-less cigarette in his cramped and stale office. But he denies that only the most committed communists are offered the opportunity to choose. "We try to find the best students. If a person comes straight from jail, would you want them to manage your new hotel?" he says defensively.

But that is not the government's only concern. If it were too easy to work in tourism, everyone might do it, draining other sectors like agriculture and education, where salaries are paid in pesos. In the mid-nineties when Cuba's drive for tourist development began in earnest, surprising numbers of highly educated people left their jobs in education and engineering to clean toilets, sweep floors, or serve beer in the new tourist resorts in Varadero and Jibacoa. If a maid earns an extra $30 in tips in a month, she has tripled her government salary. And it isn't just the cash. Employees get other perks too, like jabas, the monthly baskets of food and personal items that are only available in dollar stores – good cuts of meat, shampoo, lotion. There is ample opportunity for cheating, too. A bottle of rum only costs three dollars at the dollar market, and a mojito -- the lime, rum and mint drink that is Cuba's trademark -- sells for two dollars at any bar. An enterprising bartender could easily bring his own bottle to work and pocket the money from the drinks he makes with it.

Dany suspects that, given the high demand for tourism jobs, the people who run la bolsa, the lottery system by which FORMATUR graduates are selected for job interviews, can be bribed. "Give them fifteen dollars," he says, "and they'll pull your name." He'll get to test his theory after he graduates, if he dares.

"Sure tourism brings in a lot of money for the state," says David, who is surprisingly candid in his criticism, "But it also brings money to those who can get it, and that breeds corruption."

But if tourism money is creating new temptations for people in privileged positions, it is also reinforcing the loyalties of the people who have access.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

"Everything is perfect in Cuba," says Eduardo Ruiz, who says he earns an extra $30 or so dollars in tips each month driving tourists to the beach and back in a bright yellow, egg-shaped, open-front taxi. "When you want a house, they give you a house. No one sleeps on the street here," he says.

David, who lives in a tiny, bare, cement-floored apartment knows it isn't so black and white. He and his wife pay ten dollars a month to escape his extended family. Scraping enough money together for rent isn't easy. For him, everything is hardly perfect.

"Es una imagen," he says of the Cuban ideal – a facade, a mirage. He still takes pride in the benefits socialism has brought to Cuba – good education and free healthcare the most obvious among them – but he is not blind to the contradictions the dollar economy has created.

On the street that runs behind the escalera, a barefoot young mother, bowing with the weight of a wide-eyed baby that clutches her side, spends her afternoons asking tourists for money to buy formula. All over town, parents and teachers are worried about their children, who have already figured out that tourists are walking candy dispensers. And then there is Maria, a hunched old woman with no front teeth who walks around most days begging tourists for dollars and neighbors for used cooking grease.

"There are many people who just sit around and beg tourists," says Aragon, the white-haired 78-year-old who rents his donkey for photos. "I myself don't believe in begging, but if a tourist wants to give me something, that's different." But then, he is fortunate enough to have a donkey at his disposal.

Maria isn't so lucky. She doesn't have a donkey to photograph, an extra room in her house to rent out, or an old American car to offer tourists illicit rides in. "I have always been poor," she says, scurrying off nervously, as if that were explanation enough. With a government ration card that only provides enough beans to last a week, it is easy to see where the fault lines are in Cuba's new economy.

"Before the Special Period, you could eat perfectly well, just with pesos," says David. "You could buy clothes, too. But now, prices keep going up and up." He blames the dollar economy for that.

But for people like Eduardo who have dollars, the good life is not an illusion. The division between the dollar-rich and the dollar-poor is visible on any street. Bright-white Adidas sneakers stand out against worn-out loafers. Well-off kids in their drab yellow school uniforms crowd into a dollar market in the tourist part of town to buy sodas and little packages of cookies or candies. Flashy watches and gold chains are conspicuous next to naked wrists and callused hands.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Seventeen-year-old Chuchy is the essence of the new consumer. She has had her heart set on a career in tourism for years. Never mind the bored look on her tanned, round face as she serves customers at the state-run Restaurante Via Reale just off the Plaza, writing orders on scraps of paper, or her hand, and setting down drinks under the direction of a senior server. She gives away her real motives even as she professes her love for service: her wild, frizzy blond hair is pulled back to show off aquamarine and gold plate earrings that match one of several rings adorning her childish hands. A gold-colored watch, its shine already fading, tells her when it is time to go home. These are things that in Cuba, only dollars can buy, and she, like Dany, knows that a job in tourism is the fastest way to get them.

Chuchy is in her last year at the Escuela Economia, the secondary school that feeds directly to the FORMATUR, where she can study for one, two or three years, depending on how high up she wants to go. To work in one of the peso cafeterias near the Parque Cespedes in the Cuban part of town, she needs only a few months of training, but to work with foreign tourists, she'll need language proficiency. In the meantime, she earns enough tips doing her internship at Via Reale to keep herself well dressed.

Her husband already works as a waiter, and his mother works in a gift shop at the Costasur Hotel on the peninsula. From the outside, the house they all share looks like any on the dusty block. But inside, it is a veritable temple to all the things that tourism money buys: a Panansonic 5-CD changer, a new television and VCR. The family even has a car in the cinderblock garage behind the house. Their stereo cost $450 in the dollar store. That is twice as much as it will cost Dany to put a roof on his new house.

In this egalitarian society, the disparity between people like David and Maria, and Cuchy's family has not gone unnoticed. Even the Communist Party leaders here readily admit that dollar tips are creating inequalities and upsetting the wage structure. But discouraging tipping, as they did in the early 1990s, was ineffective, and asking workers to hand over their earnings for redistribution proved unrealistic. Boris Turino, the frumpy but charismatic Secretary General of the Communist Party at the new Trinidad del Mar hotel – there are party representatives in every hotel in Cuba – has begun to think that tips are a good thing. "If I ask a waiter, did you get a tip, and he says no, I know that he did not give good service," Turino says. And since Cuba's five tourism companies compete against each other for revenues, good service feeds the bottom line.

His pressed, sky blue collared shirt is open just enough to show off the flat, round, silver pendant, his initials scripted across it, that hangs on a modest silver chain against his hairless chest. Crisp khaki shorts have replaced his dirty red ones, and as he strides out into the street, his new Adidas reflect the moonlight. All, he explains, are gifts from tourists.

So instead of fighting the realities of the tourism industry, the government began boosting other sectors in 1999, including a 30 percent increase in public health and education salaries and productivity bonuses distributed as magnetically striped cards that can be used in dollar stores. In some industries, like fishing, where the incentives for cheating are high, salaries are now paid partially in dollars.

"In the Special Period, when there was no money, and when the economy was down, that's when there was a move of professionals trying to get into tourism," says Turino. "Now things are stabilizing."

Sitting in front of his ancient, Soviet style television with its faux wood siding and milk-bottle-bottom-thick screen, Dany isn't so sure about that. The beans and rice dinner he ate for what seems like the millionth night in a row has left its usual hole in his stomach. He isn't willing to trust that a beefed up government salary will keep meat on his table. If he wants the real goods, he has to rely on hard currency -- dollars.

When he steps out the door, hollering good night to his father over the still babbling radio, Dany is a changed man. His pressed, sky blue collared shirt is open just enough to show off the flat, round, silver pendant, his initials scripted across it, that hangs on a modest silver chain against his hairless chest. Crisp khaki shorts have replaced his dirty red ones, and as he strides out into the street, his new Adidas reflect the moonlight. All, he explains, are gifts from tourists.

"I never buy my own clothes," he brags, shaking the too-big "titanium" watch that hangs loosely from his dark wrist. The only clothes he could afford anyway are the ones in the peso stores, most of them donations from Spanish or even American church and humanitarian groups. "Nobody likes the stuff the state sells. Everybody prefers el shoping" he says, referring to the dollar stores. What he doesn't get free from tourists, he buys on the black market. That's where he got the watch and the four silver rings that clutter his hands. The cologne he wears, though, must have come from Trinidad, since the same scent permeates every street corner and stoop where young Cuban men gather.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Heading toward the plaza, Dany thinks back to the Italians and their dinner, and wonders aloud if they will be going to the Casa de la Musica tonight, one of five state-run clubs tucked into the neighborhoods around the Plaza. If he finds them, they might pay his $1 entrance fee. Or maybe the French guys he talked politics with the evening before will. Anyone, really, as long as its not out of his own pocket. "Last night I had seventy pesos," he explains. "Three dollars, more or less. I could have gotten into the Casa de la Musica, but I couldn't have bought anything to drink. With pesos, we can't even go out in our own country."

The nightlife here isn't really intended for the Cubans anyway. Dany can hear the music spill out of the open courtyards all around town, filling the still-warm moist Caribbean air with a riot of afrocuban beats and the cheerful rhythms of Son, Cuba's folk music. The medley is the same every night. Songs from the Buena Vista Social Club are played again and again, in club after club, to make sure the tourists get the Cuba they expect. Even local music is a state enterprise, packaged and sold for dollars.

Some clubs are worse than others. Dany almost never goes to Las Ruinas de Sagarto, just around the corner from the Casa de la Musica. There, 20-year-old Daniel, dressed in african-print pants and a baggy green shirt, his Chicago Bulls hat left behind on a corner table, begins the night's show by raising his powerful, pitch-perfect voice over a pulsing drum beat. He has been singing since he was seven, when his father and uncles began teaching him the music and languages of Santeria, the afrocuban religion that was one of the few tolerated by the revolution. He plays everything -- the timbales, the guiro, the claves.

At Las Ruinas, Daniel accompanies himself with the gurino, a huge, hand-made beaded gourd that showers pellets of sound into the microphone. A thicket of wires connect a beat-up amplifier to an old tape player that records performances, night after night, onto tapes sold later for a little extra profit. Three men seated behind the timbales join in with a deep, insistent, rhythm that propels a motley group of costumed dancers who act out the work of the slaves who toiled in the sugar plantations here until they were freed in 1886. From their midst, a handsome woman in purple silk emerges, straight-backed and haughty. Waving a hand broom impatiently, face impassive, she shoves a straw hat towards a German man sitting in the front row. He's seen this before and reluctantly pulls his wallet out again. She moves on.

"It is all for the saints," Daniel says after the show. But it is clearly for the tourists' money, too. At the end of the night, when everyone else has gone home, the dancers and the players divvy up the tips, dollar by blessed dollar. Each of the players and dancers in Daniel's group also earns a small government salary. Like everything else here, there is a set process for becoming a musician and performing for the tourists – schools, tests, provincial auditions -- that controls who plays what and where.

Dany's friend Manuel is one of the luckier musicians. His band has built up an international reputation, so for him playing music means travel opportunities that most Cubans will never have. Half of his group is in Mexico performing now, and although he was not allowed to go this time, he expects to go next month. He will even get to keep some of the profits they make. All it takes, Manuel claims, is an invitation from abroad. While he waits, he sells cigars on the street. It is easy to see, from his Rolex watch and brand name clothes, that he's good at that too.

"I want to live in Cuba forever," Dany says passionately, tapping his hand to his heart the way people do here when they talk about their country. "But with money."

In the end it is me that gets Dany into the Casa de la Musica, an old red brick courtyard with arched passageways and a lit-up stage on the back side of the escalera. A stern policeman is standing near the door when they arrive, his conservative green uniform almost comical next to the skimpy spandex dresses the Cuban women wear. He is probably just doing his rounds, but Dany won't take the chance of walking in with his new friend. Cubans accompanying tourists are automatically suspect, and he doesn't feel like being hassled. So instead, barely hiding his embarrassment, he takes my dollar outside and walks in ahead of me, looking around for his friends and an empty table. He spots Manuel, already talking to some foreign girls. The Italians are here, too. Dany slaps the man five, puts his arm around him, and before long, the man hands him $4 for a bottle of Havana Club Silver Dry rum. That's $3 less than the Italians would have been charged. Passed around the table with a can of coke, the bottle lasts as long as the music does.

Dany and his friends are not the only locals at the club. It is one of the few places in town that has dancing, and that is what the Cubans come for. The courtyard is full of sexy young men and women, dressed for flirting. When the salsa rhythms start, the dance floor fills up with bodies moving fluidly together, swinging in time to the rattling maracas and singing guitars. The irresistible motion and insistent invitations soon lure the tourists up from their seats. They are conspicuous in their clumsy steps and the sporty shorts and sneakers they spent the hot day in.

The end of the night, when the band reels in the wires and the stage clears, is when the real fun begins. The pumping bass of Cuban rap comes blaring through the loudspeaker and suddenly everyone is up, stomping and thumping and rapping along. It is mostly young people left now, and even the visitors know what to do. This is what Dany has been waiting for. This is Cuban time.

Later, walking home, Dany passes a group of young Cuban women, tube tops hugging as tightly as their spandex skirts, with an entourage of tall pale-skinned foreigners. "One, two, three," he counts out loud, taunting. "four, five. Five girls for four guys?" he asks. "Two for one. I guess that is the Cuban way." There is a fine line here, between a good time with a Cuban girl and outright prostitution. Dany wouldn't think of pimping women – "straight to prison," he explains -- but there is nothing to stop women from accepting a few drinks, maybe a new dress, from a tourist, and going home with him for a few more dollars. I overheard a couple of men complain, though, that like everything else here, the women aren't as cheap as they were a few years ago.

photo by Mimi Chakarova

Tourism has been called the locomotive of Cuba's economy. And indeed, it is the driving force behind internal development, and the primary source of hard currency to service the country's $22 billion external debt. But even as it relieves financial pressure, tourism and the dollar economy it has spawned are redefining Cuba's priorities. People who once gave the proverbial middle finger to their powerful northern neighbor are now increasingly dependent on its currency. Highly educated engineers, doctors and teachers are giving up their careers to drive taxis and scrub hotel bathrooms. The tenet of income equality that underpins socialism itself is being allowed to disintegrate in the name of economic growth. And everything Cuban is now up for sale – music, art, even women. Like any export-based economy, the good stuff is appropriated for the foreigners.

But those same dollars that are driving women to prostitution and the elderly to begging are saving ordinary Cubans from reliance on a government that can no longer feed them. Dany is angry that he needs dollars, and yet desperate to get more. It disgusts him to see the women he went to school with cozy up to tourists, but even he relies on a tourist to buy him a drink or pay his way to a club.

Dany doesn't ask for much: a house big enough for him and his father to live comfortably; a bus ticket to Havana to visit his sister, so he doesn't have to hitchhike for an entire day to get there. But to get these things, he has to have dollars.

"I want to live in Cuba forever," Dany says passionately, tapping his hand to his heart the way people do here when they talk about their country. "But with money."

He fingers the pendant at his neck and wrinkles his dark forehead as he looks out over the Plaza Mayor. On nights when he is sad, he comes here to watch the stars, taking over one of the benches that during the day belong to the tourists. From here, he can listen as the music dies down and the bars slowly empty out, as the hushed voices of couples dissolve into the darkness, as the footsteps of the foreigners fade away. At last, when the quiet settles in, the town belongs to him again. And from where he sits, it is easy to understand why he stays. "With enough money," he says, "Cuba is everything."

 

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