Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:24 PM EDT
By Catherine Bremer
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."
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