Hope and hopelessness in Havana
Edelman, Marc
FERNANDO RODRIGUEZ is clean shaven, but he makes a pulling motion under his chin as if he's stroking a long beard.* It's one of the many euphemisms Cubans use for Fidel Castro. "Este tozudo...
...Shortages of basic necessities are fewer than five years ago, but they are still significant...
...With his help, she's stockpiling surgical gloves, disposable hypodermics, and antibiotics, in case anyone in her family needs an operation...
...Foreign nongovernmental organizations and embassies have to hire local employees from Cubalse, a state agency...
...It's a vague term, including, in addition to prostitutes, the male cigar vendors and unofficial tour guides who try their luck around the hotels and the MalecOn...
...He uses puta, Spanish for "whore," rather than the Cuban slang jinetera, derived from jinete or "rider...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...Alarcon was an illiterate teenager when he joined Castro's rebels in 1957, hoping to avenge his wife's murder by Batista's army...
...Cubans can't buy beer now except with dollars, and Cecilia accepts that as a cost of getting the economy back on track...
...Between 1972—when Cuba entered the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the Soviet-bloc common market—and 1985, the country enjoyed annual growth averaging nearly 6 percent...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...The retreaded '57 Chevy tire...
...Cuban cows lived for generations on feed concentrates from the Soviet bloc...
...Today each of these fundamentals is in question, as young people forgo university education to hustle tourists, intellectuals sell cherished personal libraries on the sidewalks, and physicians drive taxis...
...For habaneros, the most extended and passionate discussions revolved around survival—their own and that of the regime...
...When Soviet feed shipments ceased in 1990, milk output fell nearly 50 percent in just a few years...
...Cecilia needs a drink more than ever and asks people on the street where to buy rum with pesos...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...A kid, perhaps ten years old, guides us through the unlit hall and muddy backyard of what once must have been an elegant mansion...
...But it is harder to generate dollars from education than from medicine, even if foreign students pay fees...
...embargo, health care has been among the government's top priorities, with expenditures dropping less than 10 percent in 1989-1997...
...The young man at the counter apologized sheepishly...
...Many NGOs and embassies dole out extra dollars to employees under the table, a practice called getting paid "on the left...
...Her pride in her training and accomplishments is apparent...
...4) the singular charisma and wiliness of Fidel Castro, acknowledged even by the "disaffected...
...Everything turned out okay, but Julia lives with the fear that next time it might not...
...A structuraladjustment program—recessionary, but with a commitment to minimizing regressive impacts on income distribution—succeeded in reducing the public-sector and balance-of-payments deficits and in stabilizing the market value of the peso...
...Between 1989 and 1993, average per capita calorie consumption dropped 34 percent and protein intake 40 percent...
...There aren't a lot of places where Cubans can earn hard currency...
...A few young Cubans confessed to envying their Miami cousins' cars and gold chains...
...Cuban agronomists crossed Holsteins with local breeds to create new, phenomenally productive animals...
...People with relatives abroad or a family restaurant now enjoy living standards beyond their less fortunate neighbors' wildest dreams...
...Typically, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that needs a secretary or a driver will budget a monthly salary, say U.S.$200, which it pays to the state...
...Hospitals are in such need of supplies and equipment that the number of operations dropped by 31 percent— heart operations by half—in 19901995...
...The CUNY-Caribbean Exchange Program funded his trip to Cuba...
...The U.S.$140 exit visa...
...His indignation is a complicated mix of wounded national pride and threatened masculinity...
...MARC EDELMAN teaches anthropology and Latin American studies at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center...
...Damn that son of a whore...
...Ochoa became a fall guy when intelligence indicated that Washington was about to denounce Cuba's involvement as a transshipment point for Colombian cocaine...
...Francisco doesn't want to say either...
...We are speaking one month after Pope John Paul II's trip to Cuba, and Fidel has just given a seven and one half hour speech that, whatever it may lack in coherence, undeniably demonstrates physical vigor...
...Este tozudo cumple setenta y dos anos el trece de agosto," he remarks casually "This obstinate one turns seventy-two on August 13...
...The number-one objective of the regime is to save the revolution," explained a long-time European resident of Havana...
...See, I guessed right," I tell him...
...While it is notoriously difficult to gauge public opinion in a society where dissidence has high costs, I found little sympathy on the streets of Havana for the old elite, ensconced for nearly forty years in south Florida and perceived as nostalgic reactionaries, pining away for a world that no longer exists...
...Much of the budget has gone to primary care, particularly the network of neighborhood family doctors, which has managed to relieve pressures on the overextended hospitals...
...Now, Jose concedes, he has to deal with the black market to provide milk for his family...
...It was "a disaster and a disgrace...
...Probably not...
...Health, Education, and the Dollar "The 'special period' has been more 'special' for us than for the leaders," Julia Dominguez declared...
...Similar drop-offs occurred in almost every other type of agriculPOLITICS ABROAD tural production, with the exception of beans, root crops, and fruits and vegetables, which registered smaller declines...
...Gustavo Salazar, a muscular army veteran and one of the Malearn cigar salesmen, commented tersely that "Fidel got rid of Che and General Ochoa too...
...This deep-rooted nationalist impulse, together with the generalized fear of growing inequalities, fuels Cubans' suspicion of "solutions" that emanate from the exile community...
...You're Cuban, right...
...Names and minor identifying details have been changed...
...Here there have been too many enganos, too many betrayals and lies...
...The conflict with Washington is probably the one basis of the regime's legitimacy that still has major resonance for Cubans...
...All the hustlers begin this way, and out of boredom I've taken to playing along with them...
...Young people who earlier might have entered universities now perceive that opportunities lie elsewhere, in the "second economy," tourism, or jineterismo...
...When I reveal I'm from the States, he presses me with questions about racism...
...Two years ago another son had an appendectomy and the hospital lacked the most basic supplies...
...THE EDEE0Rs DISSENT / Fall 1998 17...
...executives interested in investing in Cuba when the blockade ends...
...But I've just tuned in at a particularly pertinent moment during a rebroadcast of Castro's recent seven and onehalf hour speech...
...How might social justice, one of the revolution's main claims to legitimacy, he balanced with both market 12 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 freedoms and the inequalities that the market generates...
...N.B.: All socioeconomic data in this article are derived from a UN study by the ComisiOn Econ6mica America Latina y el Caribe entitled La economia cabana: Reformas estructurales y desempe n- o en los noventa (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997...
...Cubans use it to mean "to obtain" or "to succeed...
...Many Cubans remark that the regime never figured out how to handle the people's intensely individualistic Caribbean joie de vivre, trying discipline on some occasions while also seeing the island's extraordinarily dynamic musicians and artists as an enormous asset...
...Jineteros, who may be of either sex, "ride along" with or hustle foreigners...
...Or, like the black law student RamOn, they are forced to take time off from studying to hustle...
...To my surprise, though, the subject hardly ever arose unless I brought it up...
...Some results of the visit were already evident—a release of political prisoners, an upcoming high-level' meeting with U.S...
...The disaffected, aware that Castro was always ambivalent about C he's legacy, see the bearded rebel as another victim of the regime...
...To appeal to apathetic youth, the regime resurrected the cult of Che Guevara early in the "special period," holding him up as an example of selflessness, sacrifice, and solidarity...
...We pay them on the left," one foreign cooperation functionary snickered to me...
...level...
...dollars for a bottle of Cuban rum...
...As Cuba engages the global economy, its educated population is a major comparative advantage...
...Please use inclusive language so that we don't have to make adjustments during editing...
...In Cuba, this process is playing out amid the tensions between the new inequality and the state's historical commitment to the population's wellbeing, the frustration of a growing diversity of interests and views in a one-party state, and the conspicuous disparities between rhetoric and lived realities...
...2Espanol...
...Even during the "special period" triggered by the USSR's collapse and the tightening of the U.S...
...Cana," she exclaims, using Cubans' favorite expletive...
...Tti eres cubano, dverdad...
...Castro had his own cattle farms and devoted personal attention to improving the dairy herd...
...They ply foreigners with offers of cigars, rum, tours, rooms to rent, meals in private restaurants, girls...
...To Our Contributors A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your manuscript...
...2Italiano...
...Cubalse then pays the employee perhaps U.S.$12 a month in pesos...
...In my room I turn on the television and see Castro in the midst of condemning "medieval chastity belts" and "the old society, where young men would go straight from courting their girlfriends to the bordello...
...In 1992-1994, new laws liberalized foreign investment and small business activity, reformed banking and taxation, and legalized possession of dollars...
...Late at night I wade through the hordes of jineteras in hot pants and halter tops who surround my hotel...
...He's disgusted by what has become of Cuban women, most of whom, he claims, are no longer interested in Cuban men...
...Cuban scientists have developed innovative treatments for Parkinson's and night blindness and invented an impressive range of biotech products, including meningitis B and hepatitis B vaccines, anticholesterol and anticlotting medications, antibodies that prevent rejection of transplanted kidneys, and treatments for vitiligo (loss of skin pigmentation...
...RamOn asks me bitterly if I've seen "the thirteen-year-old whores who hang out in discotecas and smoke marijuana...
...The tension from the street had started to abate with the first sips of rum, but now it's rising again...
...And its first method of survival is extracting dollars from wherever it can, just like any other Cuban...
...Economic reforms and the introduction of a legal market economy allowed Cuba to step back from the abyss of 1993, but they also generated new tensions...
...However, with prostitution rampant, official rhetoric about social well-being and wholesomeness rings hollow...
...Tenuous Legitimacy and an Uncertain Future Young people's changed expectations make for a political generation gap that separates them from the middle-aged and elderly revolutionDISSENT / Fall 1998 n 15 POLITICS ABROAD aries, who are Castro's core supporters...
...Obstinate" in living so long...
...Castro still gives marathon speeches, but his listeners seem most interested in oblique hints of change or possible signs of decrepitude...
...Minutes later she dashes over and returns with the pilfered bottle wrapped in newspaper...
...Condom use is not widespread, and Cuba does not have access to the 250 million condoms a year needed for the sexually active population...
...What are we coming to in this society...
...We will not consider manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several publications...
...Arnaldo Ochoa, one of the first Cuban officers trained in the Soviet bloc, fought with Venezuelan guerrillas in the 1960s and later commanded Cuban troops in Angola and Ethiopia...
...In February, for example, Radio Havana reported that the 1997 infant mortality rate was 7.2 per thousand live births—below the U.S...
...they ask...
...The waitress brought them the beers but no glasses...
...Almost everybody had gone to see the pope, including many nonbelievers...
...Cecilia remarks on the new glasses and asks Luz where she got them...
...Although they take pride in Cuba and its achievements, they also long for greater ease in "resolving" life's basic necessities and tolerance for their varied and heterodox opinions...
...Both supporters and critics of the regime, however, appropriated the symbol of the "heroic guerrilla" and infused it with new meanings...
...RamOn is after a bottle of cooking oil worth U.S...
...she cries...
...With fuel and imported chemicals in short supply, the gardens are organic by necessity...
...In hanging on to power after almost forty years...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...Several young Cubans told me they experienced serious hunger in 1993 and 1994...
...A young, Moscoweducated university professor, he is a dedicated revolutionary...
...Before talking informally with dozens of Havana residents from all walks of life, I had expected the pope to be a central topic of conversation...
...Aida Perez, a skilled plastic surgeon, works in a hospital for "medical tourists...
...Open-air marketplaces now offer everything from rice, sweet potatoes, and plantains to fresh scallions and parsley...
...After the revolution, he rose through the ranks, serving as Che's bodyguard, an instructor in the "Special Schools" for foreign guerrillas, an "internationalist combatant" in Algeria, the Congo, Bolivia, and Angola, and a colonel in the Interior Ministry in charge of Castro's personal security...
...Affluent Argentines and Brazilians who want a butttuck or face-lift come to Havana and pay bargainbasement prices to go under Aida's knife...
...He was so offended that on the way out of the bar he slipped four POLITICS ABROAD glasses into his shoulder bag...
...Yet Cuba also boasts state-of-the-art research laboratories and "medical tourism" clinics...
...Here whites have all the good jobs...
...On the sidewalk, Cecilia is flushed and breathing fast...
...But health officials fear that sex tourism could fuel an epidemic, canceling out whatever dollar earnings it generates...
...Here they say your country is the most racist on the planet, but I know that's not true, because there are so many outstanding black athletes and artists...
...His disillusionment, mixed with continued egalitarianutopian aspirations, mirrors the attitudes of many Cubans...
...Aspirin and antibiotics are often virtually unobtainable...
...Here we only accept hard curI4 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 rency...
...Few U.S...
...Companero," she barks at the clerk, "how is it possible that you demand of me, a Cuban citizen and a revolutionary, five U.S...
...Francisco's confession launches Cecilia on another harangue...
...If you are submitting to Dissent electronically, our e-mail address is dissent@igc.org . (4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...I EGITIMACY in any society is constructed or eroded in the countless small interi actions of everyday life, in concrete benefits, symbolic displays, and troubling indignities, in the realization of dreams and in their postponement or destruction...
...The food situation also improved as organic gardens sprouted on empty lots throughout Havana, some under government ministries that provide vegetables to their employees, others as profit-making ventures, and still others as initiatives of neighborhood groups that take over and cultivate unused land...
...Gustavo's view was that the leadership had aided foreign drug cartels because it brought in dollars...
...Yet, according to the United Nations, only about one-half of Cubans have regular access to dollars...
...Luz seems embarrassed and calls to the other room, "Frankie, tell your mama where you got these glasses...
...Her daughter-in-law brings a tray with the rum, mineral water, ice, and four tumblers...
...nationals to sue those who "traffic" in expropriated properties in Cuba—provides Castro a ready-made explanation for any difficulty and a justification for authoritarianism...
...One of the country's most highly trained and best-paid professionals, Aida earns a monthly salary in pesos equivalent to U.S...
...Descargas"—"disc harges ," "outbursts "— another favorite Cuban word...
...Is Castro out of touch...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...and (5) the confrontation with Washington, in particular the U.S...
...Each operation she performs nets the Cuban state several thousand dollars...
...Importantly, their political meaning is different when they are not equally shared, when virtually all Cubans have to resort to the black market, and when pervasive dollar grubbing displaces the cooperative ethic instilled during the almost three decades of relative abundance that preceded the crisis...
...Cecilia counters in an icy tone...
...When Soviet subsidies vanished, the economy went into a tailspin...
...We Cubans are a nation of walking time bombs...
...Did you 'resolve' the detergent...
...While official commitment to the well-being of the population and concerns about preserving a cornerstone of the regime's legitimacy figure in the continuing allocation of resources to health care, the sector is also an important source of dollars, through biotechnology exports, medical tourism, and the training of foreign medical students...
...Sometimes we just lose control and discharge over nothing...
...I loved Che...
...She reports this matterof-factly, never saying she feels exploited...
...Resolver—to resolve— the word is on everybody's lips...
...Ask for Soledad," he says...
...Stolen Rum in Stolen Glasses Cecilia Hernandez just turned sixty and retired from a high-level aviation job...
...Don't you realize you're not stealing from that business, you're stealing from the state, from the people, from . . ." Cecilia's tirade collapses in frenzied giggles...
...Acquiring these subsidized foods requires hours spent reconnoitering state stores to spot deliveries of sought-after items...
...Rum, though, is still available in bars and peso stores...
...The health care system, one of the revolution's greatest achievements, presents striking contrasts...
...Cuba lost two-thirds of its foreign commerce in 1990-1993, and the terms of trade for the remaining third deteriorated by 40 percent...
...And please remember that we can't consider articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...But many more appeared in the grip of an existential dilemma...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc.—they're the author's responsibility...
...So only foreigners, hustlers, and degenerates can shop here, huh...
...Please, compafiera, I'm a revolutionary too, in the Communist Youth, and I don't . . ." "I don't give a shit about your political militancy...
...I buy the beer, but Cecilia insists that the rum, at U.S.$5 a bottle, is a "rip-off...
...RamOn is a law student, with a wife and an infant daughter...
...What explains this seemingly paradoxical combination of high-tech achievement, atrocious shortages, and crumbling hospitals, a healthy population and impoverished health care professionals...
...Grandmothers hoard medicines against future calamities, even as they assert admiration for their neighborhood doctors...
...We've become more 'leftist' than ever...
...It causes genuine hardships too, particularly in the health care and transport sectors...
...Knock there...
...Posters heralding the trip were still visible in a few windows and even atheists recalled the occasion fondly...
...Their sophisticated irrigation and biological pest-control systems, indirect results of the massive investments in agronomic training and research that predate the 1990s crisis, allow them to grow lettuce and other delicate greens even in the summer months and to supply consumers as diverse as housing-project tenants, day-care centers, and tourist hotels...
...The disparity between the speech and the spectacle outside is so surreal that for a moment I'm convinced that the technicians who pirate satellite television for the tourist spots have mistakenly captured a Miami comedy show feaDIS SENT /Fall 199 8 • 13 POLITICS ABROAD turing a Fidel look-alike...
...They loathe Miami's extreme consumerism, violence, and right-wing politics...
...He had made a few dollars repairing a neighbor's motorcycle and had gone with a friend for a couple of beers...
...Unlike in the United States, the hustlers here don't have substance-abuse problems, nor are they mentally ill...
...The ambience resembles that found elsewhere in Latin America—splendid heaps of produce, vendors' shrill cries, customers commenting on what's for sale...
...Cecilia negotiates a price of twenty pesos, less than a dollar, for a bottle of the best rum, and Soledad calls across the yard to two men in the rear door of a restaurant...
...Outside the tourist zones, I usually pass beneath the radar they use to detect foreigners...
...It also extends to Cuban women looking for foreigners to marry...
...Like pirates...
...In Angola, the Cuban government gave him carte blanche to traffic in diamonds, ivory, petroleum, and anything else that would raise hard currency...
...You can go to the restaurant around the corner, they might sell rum in pesos...
...RamOn cuts me off...
...Some call out to me, asking if I like them, if I'd buy them a drink...
...You wouldn't believe how bad the stress gets here...
...She's a grandmother and considers herself a revolutionary...
...She prohibits me from buying it...
...HISTORICALLY, the legitimacy of the Cuban revolution stood on five pillars: (I) the tremendous advances in living standards for the majority of the population, especially universal free education and healthcare...
...And some articles in the ration book, notably the eight-ounce per capita monthly allotment of cooking oil, are almost never available and have to be acquired with dollars...
...You know," RamOn continued, "I'm burning my neurons trying to resolve things that ought to be easily resolved...
...The incidence of AIDS has been low in comparison with other Latin American countries, mainly because of educational campaigns, widespread testing, and, at times, draconian efforts to cut chains of transmission...
...He nods, thrown off guard...
...How are the diverse interests that have grown up around private-sector activities to be represented in a system built on a centrally planned economy, a single party, and a single criterion of truth...
...Food, Sex, and the Market "Our cows didn't know the taste of grass," Jose Acuna laments, trying to explain why his son doesn't have milk to drink...
...In 1990, as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) withdrew its aid and then collapsed, Cuba's leaders declared an emergency "special period" that brought unexpected innovations and immense difficulties...
...The state decreed the immediate or gradual elimination of subsidies previously accorded most enterprises and established new incentives for especially productive companies and employees...
...Here we are toasting with stolen rum in stolen glasses...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
...Many Cubans believe the government tolerates sex tourism, despite periodic crackdowns, because it's a great source of foreign exchange...
...When I don't, we end up talking, sometimes for hours...
...travelers come here, and, with an olive complexion and slightly accented Spanish, I don't fit the image many Cubans have of the blond beast from the North...
...The "second economy" raises serious political problems...
...One of her sons married an Italian and lives abroad...
...The blockade— and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which imposes additional sanctions and enables U.S...
...The Ochoa episode remains a turning point not only because it highlighted how the revolution could devour its own, but because it weakened the Interior Ministry, the main internal security agency...
...The U.S...
...Prostitution is pervasive, and many suspect that the leadership POLITICS ABROAD has flirted with international drug cartels...
...You don't have any rum for sale in pesos...
...She speaks several foreign languages, has lived and worked abroad, and is a longtime jazz fanatic...
...I launch into an explanation of the complexities of racism in the United States and say that there's perhaps some truth in the propaganda...
...AlarcOn outlines a process of gradual disenchantment that began in 1967 with Castro's abandonment of Che's guerrillas in Bolivia, which grew as he observed the dollarization of the economy and the autocratic and increasingly corrupt practices of Cuba's top leaders, and culminated in 1996 when he sought political asylum in France...
...Cubans drink beer from glasses, not from cans," Francisco scowled...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...I reply...
...Argentino...
...Gustavo's interpretation of Ochoa's execution is borne out by the memoirs of Dariel AlarcOn Ramirez, (Memorias de un soldado cubano: vida y muerte de la revolution [Barcelona: TusQuets, 19971), one of a handful of survivors of Che's 1967 Bolivian guerrilla campaign...
...2.40, something almost impossible to acquire in the nearly empty rationing outlets but easily available in the Hard Currency Recuperation Stores now found throughout Havana...
...Blacks like me don't have a chance...
...Economic austerity and the tourist boom have also lessened the ministry's effectiveness, because it now has fewer resources and has to keep an eye on many more people...
...Now let's see if you can guess where I'm from...
...I liked all that," he says wistfully of the USSR...
...In 1989, days after his conviction for treason and narcotics smuggling, he was executed along with three alleged collaborators, including the director of the government's Convertible Currency Department...
...She knows, though, that her colleagues elsewhere enjoy living standards astronomically higher than those of Cuban physicians...
...These measures unleashed long-suppressed entrepreneurial energy, brought enormous increases in tourism-related foreign investment, and generated a huge flow of family remittances from Cubans abroad (eight hundred million to one billion dollars in 1996...
...dollar has become Cuba's de facto currency, or at least the only one that easily buys sought-after goods, like bicycle parts or cooking oil...
...Later in the speech he deplores the return of prostitution, though he downplays it in the same breath...
...3) the elimination of "vices" of the "old society," particularly prostitution, drugs, and gambling...
...Most important, it allows Cuban leaders to cloak themselves in the mantle of nineteenth-century heroes such as José Marti and Antonio Maceo, who perished in the struggle for a Cuba independent of both Spain and the United States...
...Hey friend, where are you from...
...A sixtysixyear-old father of five from a tumbledown Havana barrio, Fernando isn't saying, but he's clearly thinking both things...
...blockade, and the invocation of the dream of Cuba libre...
...But he wouldn't have liked the inequalities we have now...
...At her son's apartment, Cecilia takes out a boom box and puts on a Dave Brubeck CD...
...They're friendly, polite, well educated—and desperate...
...Senora, I'm sorry...
...Gross Domestic Product plummeted by over one-third in the same period, idling factories, farms, and workers, and requiring severe food and energy rationing...
...Like so many Cubans, he's attentive to any sign that the leader may be aging, to any gesture that might betray weakening or augur change...
...Some young people ridicule the security men, easily recognizable, they insist, in the stodgy, prototypically Cuban pleated guayabera shirts now worn only by the 16 n DISSENT / Fall 1998 elderly and die-hard supporters of the regime...
...Che wouldn't have liked the dollar to be Cuba's national currency," Cecilia, the hot-tempered jazz fan, observed as she gave me a souvenir three-peso coin bearing the visage of the secular saint in his beret...
...We didn't build this country so that hustlers and scum and . . ." I grab Cecilia's arm and drag her away from the clerk, who yells that she's an "insolent old bitch...
...DIS SE NT /Fall1998• II POLITICS ABROAD Three-quarters of the land in state farms was turned over to cooperatives and private smallholders and, in 1994, farmers were permitted to sell their crops in markets where prices are determined by supply and demand...
...Glasses, she said, were for foreigners, there weren't enough for Cubans...
...From 1989 to 1996 the education budget fell 46 percent and the number of students in higher education plummeted 54 percent...
...To "resolve" the oil, he wanted to sell me cigars, probably a tobaccoworker friend's in-kind wages or perhaps simply lifted from state storehouses...
...RAMON APPROACHES me on the MalecOn, the beautiful sea wall that keeps the Caribbean from flooding Havana...
...Health indicators have held steady or improved despite the crisis...
...Chileno...
...Wide-ranging reforms managed to halt the downward slide...
...The Soviet people, my professors, the way we all shared happiness and difficulties...
...Finally, Francisco comes clean...
...She tells me that her house is in such bad shape that she has to invite me for dinner to her son and daughter-in-law's apartment, a small but airy space crammed with records, books, and magnificent tropical plants...
...2) the reduction of the grotesque inequalities of prerevolutionary days and the attainment of a modicum of dignity for the masses...
...The rationing system entitles each Cuban to six pounds of rice per month (60 percent of pre-1989 average consumption), seven or eight eggs, two pounds of fish, ten to fifteen pounds of root vegetables, and a hundred grams of coffee...
...I offer to get beer and rum and we head for one of the dollar-only stands that dot the hotel zone...
...He has an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth...
Vol. 45 • September 1998 • No. 4
