Idalberto Estrada reaches for a squash at his stand in Cojimar, a Havana suburb. He and other vegetable vendors are among the few Cubans who have licenses to run private businesses. (By Manuel Roig-franzia — The Washington Post)
Idalberto Estrada reaches for a squash at his stand in Cojimar, a Havana suburb. He and other vegetable vendors are among the few Cubans who have licenses to run private businesses. (By Manuel Roig-franzia — The Washington Post)
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
COJIMAR, Cuba — Idalberto Estrada really wanted to make a sale.
He slashed a slender blade through the barklike brown skin of a yuca root, a staple of the meager Cuban diet. A woman with brightly dyed red hair leaned in skeptically, examining the root's white flesh beneath Estrada's sidewalk umbrella in this Havana suburb.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Estrada, 37, said, smiling hopefully.
The woman handed over a faded peso, and Estrada sighed with relief, knowing he was closer to breaking even for the day. In a country where more than 97 percent of adults work for the government and most private businesses are illegal, Estrada is an entrepreneur, opting for the risks and rewards of a tiny business over working for the state.
Estrada's experience as a mini-capitalist in this socialist nation was made possible by a mid-1990s reform that legalized about 150 types of micro-businesses and was pushed for by Fidel Castro's brother, Raúl. Fidel, 81, announced his retirement Tuesday after half a century of dominance, and Raül, 76, is expected to be named president when the National Assembly meets Sunday.
Estrada and the 100,000 to 150,000 other self-employed Cubans provide a glimpse of what the future might look like here, and help explain some of the low-intensity excitement about the possibility of historic change. Estrada sometimes earns three or four times what he made before quitting the Cuban navy six years ago, when his pay was the equivalent of $17 a month. He still struggles to make ends meet, but he is much better off than the overwhelming majority of his neighbors who live in rotting homes with spotty plumbing and have to feed themselves on state salaries as low as $11 a month.
Raül, who has been interim president in the 19 months since Fidel underwent multiple intestinal surgeries, has stoked hopes of even more dramatic change by hinting for months about "structural and conceptual" shifts in Cuba's economy. Economists and many islanders see much in Raúl's track record to suggest that he may expand private business opportunities and perhaps even restore some of the vaunted mid-1990s reforms that his all-powerful brother dismantled.
"I see it as a great possibility that Raül will make changes to Cuba's economy," Óscar Espinosa Chepe, a former Cuban government economist and diplomat who was imprisoned in a 2003 crackdown on dissidents, said in an interview. "He is much more pragmatic than his brother."
For all the expectations of a Raül Castro presidency, there is still a hint of suspense in the capital of Havana. Cubans, who love political gossip, have speculated since Tuesday about possible alternative scenarios, including the appointment of a puppet president from the Council of State, the selection of Vice President Carlos Lage instead of Raül or a theatrically staged demand by the National Assembly for Fidel to reverse his decision and make a triumphant return to the presidency. But even in the unlikely event that Raül is not named president, he would still be expected to play a huge role in shaping Cuba's economy.
Raü lpushed to make some self-employment legal in the mid-1990s as Cuba's economy was staggering and its populace starving after the Soviet Union collapsed. Besides allowing produce vendors, the government also began granting licenses for guesthouses, mechanic shops and small restaurants, known as paladares.
But the biggest change Fidel let his brother talk him into was allowing more tourism. About 270,000 tourists went to Cuba in 1989. By 2006, that figure had jumped to 2.2 million, with nearly one in four tourists coming from Canada, according to the Cuban government. Once a bargain, Havana is now one of the most expensive cities to visit in Latin America, with rooms at more than half a dozen top hotels going for $200 to $600 a night.
The influx of foreign money from tourism and joint ventures in mining, tobacco and citrus stabilized Cuba's economy in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (The Cuban government keeps up to 30 percent of profits.) And that's when Fidel Castro's government began taking back some of the business liberties it had granted.
The longtime leader complained about "inequalities" that self-employment was creating and railed against a "new rich class" that was paid by tourists in U.S. dollars that had much more buying power than the Cuban peso. In 2004, his government stopped granting self-employment licenses for 40 types of businesses. Among those who could no longer work for themselves were masseuses, magicians and clowns. Other businesses remained technically legal but were effectively closed because licenses weren't renewed.
The number of self-employed Cubans plummeted from 200,000 in the mid-1990s to 100,000 now, according to Antonio Jorge, a recently retired Florida International University economics professor who was a top finance official in the first two years of Fidel's reign. The Cuban government says 150,000 people are self-employed.
There was also a major crackdown on paladares, the small restaurants that were thriving because their owners were preparing meals that were far superior to the drab offerings in most state-run restaurants. In the late 1990s, it was estimated that Havana had more than 1,000 paladares; some of their owners were achieving worldwide fame. Now, there may be fewer than 100, said a Cuban government economist who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.
Privately, another Cuban official justified many of the closings, saying paladares were shut down for sanitation violations. But the Cuban government economist said the majority were forced out of business by the state, which then clandestinely became the real owner of several successful paladares that pretend to be privately owned. Other paladares stayed in business by bribing government officials.
"They want to get rid of us all," said a paladar owner who asked that his name not be revealed.
Raül Castro hasn't focused on Cuban restaurants in his public speeches, but he speaks frequently about the farmers who supply them. Jorge and the government economist each predicted that Raül might begin deeding farmland to campesinos, or poor farmers. During a speech last July, Raül — who is known for his wry, biting humor — said he'd admired the marabú growing on the roadsides. Marabú is a thorny bush that spreads across untilled fields. The message was clear: Cuba's government-controlled farmers were not doing their job well. Currently, half of Cuba's arable land is not cultivated, but many here believe private ownership of some farmland would free farmers to produce more in a country that imports 80 percent of its food.
Estrada, the Cojimar produce vendor, often buys his squash and yuca from José Francisco Anaya Leån, a 58-year-old Cuban. Unlike Estrada, Anaya Leån is not self-employed. He farms government land, then sells three squash at very low prices to the government for every one he sells to vendors such as Estrada at a higher price.
Anaya León may have a guaranteed buyer for most of his crop, but he doesn't make enough to live decently. Estrada said he has no guaranteed buyers, but he flipped a cabbage in his hand and smiled anyway.
"Everybody in the world would want this, to be independent," he said. "Human beings are ambitious."
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