Apr 11, 2007, 01:28 AM
By Catherine Bremer | April 10, 2007
HAVANA (Reuters) - Martha, a Cuban pensioner, has enough to eat with her food ration book and a monthly stipend equivalent to about $10. The government has sent her a mattress on credit and she is on the list for a new Chinese-made fridge.
Yet, even after selling fried plantain snacks on the side, she can't save enough for the $7 bags of cement she wants to patch up her leaky wooden house on the edge of Havana.
"We can't think about luxuries. From the moment a Cuban wakes up he must think about food, and that's all," she says, rocking on her porch.
While the outside world watches Fidel Castro's slow recovery from stomach surgery and speculates about Cuba's future, talk in Cuba is still more about the daily battle to stretch one's income than the politics behind it.
Older Cubans get tearful at the idea of a post-Castro Cuba. Younger Cubans say they are tired of living in a time warp.
But in a country with no public opinion polls and a state-run media it's hard to measure what Cubans really think, and there is a long-held reluctance to criticize the one-party communist system to foreigners.
"We don't have extreme poverty in Cuba. But we have to be inventive. We don't have time to think about politics," said Martha, 59, who withheld her last name.
From the fuller menus in family-run snack joints to the Chinese-made clothes in once-bare government stores, Cuba is visibly better off than a decade ago, when it was recovering from the economic dive caused by the Soviet Union's collapse.
But for government employees, from teachers to doctors, a pair of jeans still costs two month's wages.
Since Cuba began issuing small business licenses in the 1990s, to cushion the blow from losing Soviet aid, a sliver of society earns above the roughly $15 monthly state wage doing things like filling cigarette lighters or selling books.
But they still have their heads down, focused more on making ends meet than on whether their 80-year-old leader's long absence from view means Cuba is on the cusp of a change.
ACCOUNTANTS HITCHHIKE
In crumbling Old Havana, Estrella is an economics graduate but works cutting hair in her windowless front room, struggling to make enough pesos to buy U.S.-priced hair products.
"All the debate is going on outside. Here, things are quiet," she said, then changed the subject to ask for help getting a modern hair trimmer from abroad.
The state-run economy is in better shape than in years, thanks to exports of medical services, tourism, high nickel prices, Chinese loans and generously financed Venezuelan oil.
With a nod to its free education, housing and healthcare, the United Nations ranks Cuba 50th out of 177 nations on its 2006 human development index, a measure of living standards, beating Jamaica, Mexico and socialist ally Venezuela.
Yet Cubans can't buy or sell cars or houses and hardly any have mobile phones or computers. Even accountants hitchhike.
Many Cubans rely on remittances from relations abroad to buy imported goods, which are priced in "convertible pesos," roughly equivalent to dollars.
Some get coveted jobs in tourism or work unofficially as tour guides, salsa teachers or escorts for romance-seeking tourists. In back streets, others hawk factory goods.
"I can't do anything with my pay," said Ricardo, who said he rolls 100 luxury cigars by hand each day, earning the equivalent of a U.S. cent for each one, and makes extra hawking a few to tourists.
NOBODY WANTS CHAOS
At home, Cubans stretch meat portions over several meals. Parents who can afford disposable diapers wash and reuse them.
Many dream of the end of the U.S. trade embargo and an economic opening that could bring a new world of fast food and shopping.
Yet they also fear a sudden change that would threaten their free schooling and hospitals. The state-run media paints a bleak picture of life under capitalism, and many Cubans see the outside world blighted by violent crime and wealth divides.
"We have a big advantage over other countries. Whatever happens with Fidel, no one wants what we have to be taken away," said Vincent Valdez, 52, as he fished off Havana's Malecon sea wall for something fresh for supper.
Living in a strange silence that was until recently filled by the long speeches of their leader, Cubans say what they fear most is instability.
Cuban emigres in Miami danced for joy when news broke of Castro's health problems. But any notion that Cubans at home might topple communism in the streets has long faded.
"Many people are angry. It's a bit like a pressure cooker," said one Havana resident. "But nobody wants chaos."
Meanwhile, analysts abroad wonder whether signs that Castro has recovered enough to take a more active role might limit designated successor Raul Castro's ability to engineer Chinese-style reforms.
"Though Cubans have a good amount of admiration and respect for Fidel they are tired of revolutionary rhetoric. They are ready for Raul to start meeting the significant pent-up pressures for a better standard of living," said Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington.
"Legitimacy of the system will be based less on what Fidel offered and more on what material well-being Raul can deliver."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinam...m+%2F+News
HAVANA (Reuters) - Martha, a Cuban pensioner, has enough to eat with her food ration book and a monthly stipend equivalent to about $10. The government has sent her a mattress on credit and she is on the list for a new Chinese-made fridge.
Yet, even after selling fried plantain snacks on the side, she can't save enough for the $7 bags of cement she wants to patch up her leaky wooden house on the edge of Havana.
"We can't think about luxuries. From the moment a Cuban wakes up he must think about food, and that's all," she says, rocking on her porch.
While the outside world watches Fidel Castro's slow recovery from stomach surgery and speculates about Cuba's future, talk in Cuba is still more about the daily battle to stretch one's income than the politics behind it.
Older Cubans get tearful at the idea of a post-Castro Cuba. Younger Cubans say they are tired of living in a time warp.
But in a country with no public opinion polls and a state-run media it's hard to measure what Cubans really think, and there is a long-held reluctance to criticize the one-party communist system to foreigners.
"We don't have extreme poverty in Cuba. But we have to be inventive. We don't have time to think about politics," said Martha, 59, who withheld her last name.
From the fuller menus in family-run snack joints to the Chinese-made clothes in once-bare government stores, Cuba is visibly better off than a decade ago, when it was recovering from the economic dive caused by the Soviet Union's collapse.
But for government employees, from teachers to doctors, a pair of jeans still costs two month's wages.
Since Cuba began issuing small business licenses in the 1990s, to cushion the blow from losing Soviet aid, a sliver of society earns above the roughly $15 monthly state wage doing things like filling cigarette lighters or selling books.
But they still have their heads down, focused more on making ends meet than on whether their 80-year-old leader's long absence from view means Cuba is on the cusp of a change.
ACCOUNTANTS HITCHHIKE
In crumbling Old Havana, Estrella is an economics graduate but works cutting hair in her windowless front room, struggling to make enough pesos to buy U.S.-priced hair products.
"All the debate is going on outside. Here, things are quiet," she said, then changed the subject to ask for help getting a modern hair trimmer from abroad.
The state-run economy is in better shape than in years, thanks to exports of medical services, tourism, high nickel prices, Chinese loans and generously financed Venezuelan oil.
With a nod to its free education, housing and healthcare, the United Nations ranks Cuba 50th out of 177 nations on its 2006 human development index, a measure of living standards, beating Jamaica, Mexico and socialist ally Venezuela.
Yet Cubans can't buy or sell cars or houses and hardly any have mobile phones or computers. Even accountants hitchhike.
Many Cubans rely on remittances from relations abroad to buy imported goods, which are priced in "convertible pesos," roughly equivalent to dollars.
Some get coveted jobs in tourism or work unofficially as tour guides, salsa teachers or escorts for romance-seeking tourists. In back streets, others hawk factory goods.
"I can't do anything with my pay," said Ricardo, who said he rolls 100 luxury cigars by hand each day, earning the equivalent of a U.S. cent for each one, and makes extra hawking a few to tourists.
NOBODY WANTS CHAOS
At home, Cubans stretch meat portions over several meals. Parents who can afford disposable diapers wash and reuse them.
Many dream of the end of the U.S. trade embargo and an economic opening that could bring a new world of fast food and shopping.
Yet they also fear a sudden change that would threaten their free schooling and hospitals. The state-run media paints a bleak picture of life under capitalism, and many Cubans see the outside world blighted by violent crime and wealth divides.
"We have a big advantage over other countries. Whatever happens with Fidel, no one wants what we have to be taken away," said Vincent Valdez, 52, as he fished off Havana's Malecon sea wall for something fresh for supper.
Living in a strange silence that was until recently filled by the long speeches of their leader, Cubans say what they fear most is instability.
Cuban emigres in Miami danced for joy when news broke of Castro's health problems. But any notion that Cubans at home might topple communism in the streets has long faded.
"Many people are angry. It's a bit like a pressure cooker," said one Havana resident. "But nobody wants chaos."
Meanwhile, analysts abroad wonder whether signs that Castro has recovered enough to take a more active role might limit designated successor Raul Castro's ability to engineer Chinese-style reforms.
"Though Cubans have a good amount of admiration and respect for Fidel they are tired of revolutionary rhetoric. They are ready for Raul to start meeting the significant pent-up pressures for a better standard of living," said Frank Mora, a Cuba expert at the National War College in Washington.
"Legitimacy of the system will be based less on what Fidel offered and more on what material well-being Raul can deliver."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinam...m+%2F+News