21
HAVANA — Alejandro, a 20-year-old history student at the Universidad de la Habana, proudly shows off a sampling from his collection of foreign currencies.
"Chile, Argentina, Bahamas," he trumpets while shuffling the money he has just pulled from his wallet. "Do you have Canadian dollars — just for looking? In my whole life, I've never seen Canadian dollars." He marvels at the royal blue of a $5 bill and says he dreams of visiting the "very good country" to the far north.
"I want to travel," says Alejandro (who, like most Cubans speaking to foreigners, is wary about giving his full name). "In Canada, you work and you get money. In Cuba, you work and you get nothing."
But now, for the first time in Alejandro's life — and that of the generation before him — expectations of being able to profit from their labour or see the world outside their insular nation are on a dramatic upswing as the communist country undoes some basic tenets of the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.
A Cuban woman studies her new mobile phone in Havana. Cubans are allowed to access to cell phones as part of new president Raul Castro's economic reforms. (Adalberto Roque/Getty Images)
Related Articles
President Raul Castro, who officially succeeded his frail, 81-year-old brother on Feb. 24, has shocked many with his hasty moves to introduce a flurry of economic and administrative reforms that Fidel had dogmatically resisted for decades.
The biggest, and potentially most subversive, came a week ago with a decree that will allow those who retire or leave their jobs in public enterprises — more than 90 per cent of working Cubans are state employees — to gain title to homes or apartments normally reserved only for workers. It amounts to nothing less than property ownership.
The decree came on the heels of the April 10 removal of wage limits on state salaries — henceforth, those who work more will be duly rewarded. While meant to encourage productivity in Cuba's woefully inefficient economy and thwart discontent with salaries that average less than $20 a month, the elimination of the wage ceiling transforms workers from comrades into free agents and entrepreneurs.
Despite the "more perfect socialism" spin put on it by an editorial this week in Granma, the state-run newspaper, it's clearly counter-revolutionary — especially added to Raul's other recent moves, such as allowing Cubans to own cellphones, DVD players and personal computers; to stay at hotels previously reserved for foreign tourists; and to become private farmers.
Raul Castro, 76, is negotiating a fine line. He is trying to initiate just enough change to alleviate the pent-up anger — and demand — Cubans have accumulated during five decades of political repression and economic decline, without undermining the Communist Party's grip on power.
But as reform-minded communists have discovered everywhere, outside perhaps China and Vietnam, it is rarely possible to open the door to political and economic freedom just partway.
On the eve of its 50th birthday, is communist Cuba on the cusp of joining its fallen Soviet allies among history's failed experiments?
A sub-ultimate leader
Most Cuba experts agree that Raul Castro, who ran the military with an iron fist before succeeding his ailing brother on an interim basis in 2006, is no softy.
But with his popular reforms, he is imitating every other charismatically challenged politician — from Paul Martin to Gordon Brown — who follows a lider maximo (ultimate leader, as Fidel called himself): He's trying to get his approval rating up.
"Raul is pragmatically going step by step" by removing the "nasty little irritants" that cause deprivation for average Cubans, says Arch Ritter, a professor of economics and international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. "In the longer run, it's hard to predict where these steps will go.
"There is still a solid phalanx of people who support the regime, and not just in the military. … Fidel and the party have presented themselves as the embodiment of universal virtue and morality. A lot of Cubans certainly don't buy that, but a lot do."
Eliminating travel restrictions, as Raul has all but vowed to do, might swell the ranks of those pushing for change, as more Cubans see other ways of life with their own eyes rather than through the propaganda lens of the state-run media and schools.
