Posted on Thu, May. 22, 2008
By Miami Herald Staff
Cuba@MiamiHerald.com
HAVANA --
On weekday afternoons at the Claudia boutique shoe store across from
Havana's famed sea wall, ladies jockey for their turn to purchase spiked
sandals and sequined purses.
At the Galeria Paseo shopping mall next door, pet vitamins go for $17,
dress shoes sell for $82 and electric bikes go for as much as $800.
Forget trying to find a DVD player at the mall -- or at most other
electronics stores for that matter. They sold out weeks ago.
The rush to purchase goods previously not available or banned debunks
the long-held belief that Cuba's economy is so dire that all its
citizens are strapped for cash and food. It also underscores a vast
economic divide in Cuba's economy and shows that a significant portion
of Cubans -- primarily in Havana -- have disposable income.
The buying frenzy finally lays bare what Fidel Castro struggled against
and long denied: Cuba indeed has an increasingly privileged portion of
society, even as the average state wage is about $17 a month.
After decades of being denied basic possessions like computers and
microwaves, many Cubans here have emerged to take advantage of a series
of new consumer liberties offered by Raúl Castro, the country's first
new president in 49 years. Shortly after taking office, he liberalized
the sale of items that had previously been sold only on the black market.
The measures were an about-face to the policies held dear to his older
brother Fidel, whose socialist revolution was based on the theory of
equality. If everyone could not afford it, Fidel did not permit it.
''I would say 70 percent of Cuba has no money, or just barely enough,''
said Luis, a cab driver. ``Thirty percent is doing OK. Of that, 10
percent of them, whoa, has money. I'm in the 30 percent. I did not buy a
new DVD player when they came out; my home computer plays DVDS.''
Experts stress that the financial boom being felt in some homes is
hardly universal. People in eastern provinces and cities far from
tourist destinations have much less access to coveted dollars.
A University of Miami study showed that even as far back as 2002, there
were 44 times more dollars circulating in Havana than Guantánamo, on the
eastern tip of the island.
The DVD players made available for purchase lasted just hours on the
first day last month that Cuban electronics stores began to sell them.
'I see these DVDs and bikes flying off the shelves, and I ask myself,
`Where is all this money coming from?' '' said Margarita, who makes $10
a week working at a craft fair.
The first day DVDs went on sale, people in Cardenas -- the small town
east of Havana that is home to Elián González -- lined up at 5 a.m. at a
store that did not open until noon. Some 7,400 people signed up for
cellphones in the first 10 days the service was offered to locals, the
Cuban government media reported.
''Despite 45 years of being forced to live in egalitarianism, Cubans
don't really buy into that,'' said Ted Henken, a Cuba expert at Baruch
College in New York. ``Being forced into it actually created a lust for
materialism. Cubans just want to consume. They want to live in the
modern world, have cellphones, have flat screen TVs. These are human
aspirations.''
Now, Henken said, they are conspicuous consumers obsessed with symbols
of prosperity and modernism: ``They want part of the American dream.''
That desire was evident at one housewares store in Old Havana.
'You should see the customers -- they don't want just any DVD player.
They want the latest one. They come in here and ask, `Do you have the
one with a flash memory drive?' '' said Juan Carlos, a clerk. ``This
pressure cooker costs $68 -- that's six months pay for me -- and people
buy it. You see this stupid thing that chops onions for $22? People buy
that, too.''
He stopped to tell a customer she had best buy the washing machine she
wanted immediately, because there would be none left by morning.
''They arrived today,'' Juan Carlos explained, ``and I've already sold
three.''
The purchases are being paid with money from years of remittances from
abroad, illegal businesses and legal jobs that pay dollar tips. These
are the ''new rich'' who were long scorned by Fidel but were the first
to benefit under Raúl's economic policies.
They are the class of Cubans who wear knock-off Dolce & Gabbana T-shirts
and the latest sun glasses. They have home computers and digital
cameras. Many already had a DVD player when Raúl Castro lifted the ban
last month.
An estimated 60 percent of Cubans get remittances from abroad, further
padding nest eggs across the nation.
Much of Cubans' purchasing power comes precisely because state salaries
are so low. The wages are so insufficient that they virtually force
people to break the law in order to survive. Somebody who works Cuba's
black market can make a state worker's monthly wage in a single day.
In the three months since Fidel Castro gave up power for good, the Cuban
government has finally acknowledged its previously concealed reality:
Cubans watch foreign movies on DVDs, don't much care to wash their
clothes by hand, and are willing to pay 60 cents a minute for cellphone
calls. While the vast majority of the country's 11.2 million people,
particularly those outside the capital, still struggle to get by on
meager salaries, some Cubans have cash savings they are eager to spend.
''There is money in Cuba. There are also serious class divisions,'' said
Carlos, a bicycle taxi operator whose $90 monthly earnings are about 10
times what retirees make. 'Fidel warned of this when they legalized the
dollar in this country [in 1993]. He said: `People are going to get
rich, and the rest of you are going to live in misery.' And that's
exactly what happened.''
Carlos sports a gold ring he paid $40 for and plans to get a gold chain
next. He would rather not eat, he said, than wear sneakers that were not
Adidas.
''All this illustrates the differences between Raúl and Fidel,'' said
Dick Cluster, a Cuba historian at the University of Massachusetts,
Boston. ``Raúl is more inclined to publicly recognize reality, even if
it's unpleasant. He recognizes all the things he legalized are things
that went on in the black market. Fidel tended to impose his sense of
justice on reality.''
''They may have had this idea to eliminate social class, but that's
impossible to do,'' said Julio, a masseuse who said he makes about $200
a month. ``People are going to make money based on their ability and
intellect. . . . The government knows this and has recognized it.''
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