Emigration is one way out of poverty for many Cubans
Los Angeles Times
HAVANA — The struggle to earn dollars plays out daily in the streets and
hovels of Cuba's underclass.
Elderly women beg surreptitiously in the alcoves of Old Havana's
colonial churches. Mothers bring infants to tourist haunts on weekends
to ask foreign visitors for "one dollar," a name that still sticks to
the convertible peso. Any service or skill is sold on the side, filling
the need for plumbers, builders, hairdressers and shoe-shiners.
Manicurist Mari Dominguez keeps the tools of her trade in a battered
shoe box under the sole chair in her one-room apartment: some cotton
batting, a shaved wooden stick, a nearly empty bottle of nail polish
remover and six bottles of colored lacquer so old the contents have
hardened into layers. Her son Josef, 32, recruits customers from Old
Plaza in Havana's historic center where he works as a gardener.
Josef's father fled to Florida 26 years ago with more than 120,000 other
people during the Mariel exodus. He has sent small amounts home to his
two adult sons.
But Josef won a U.S. visa in a lottery in the late 1990s, and recently
was informed he could emigrate. His father promised to send the $1,000
his son needs for a medical exam, security check, Cuban exit visa and
flight to Miami.
"I can help my mother better there than here," said Josef in passable
English. "I can do any kind of work. I'm strong and I want to be
successful."
"I don't want to leave Cuba but I must, because there is no opportunity
here."
http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2007/0122/biz/stories/cubaout.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment