Osmel Almaguer
Thousands of Cubans are trying their luck in different private businesses in response to the country’s new self-employment laws. For some, the adventure of opening up a cafeteria or offering any type of service is just that: an adventure.
We speak so much about the moral degradation of Cuban society that sometimes it feels we are deep in a quagmire that can’t get any worse. This isn’t exactly true, and we should not deceive ourselves that it is. This trend continues to grow and the “decent” appear to have become immune to it.
We had something of a scene in the farmers market here in Zone 6 of Alamar, Havana. It so happens that the manager of the State run market where root vegetables and other farm products are sold at subsidized prices was “let go” after his partnership with the private vendors across the street was discovered.
Anyone who rides a JAWA-brand motorcycle here in Havana should exercise caution these days, for there are reports of a band of thieves who have been stealing their electrical systems (and the police have not yet been able to capture them).
Living a stone’s throw away from Havana’s Via Blanca highway means being witness to a constant flow of buses, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians, of people who set out in search of their dreams every day. People headed to Havana’s east-laying beaches, workplaces in the city, the arms of a loved one, or the last place you would think of.
With over 2 million mobile phone users, Cuba has around half a million more cell phones than landlines. A number of “competent” authorities often speak of this proudly, as though the reality behind this phenomenon weren’t shameful.
To say that the eleven million Cubans who make up the island’s population are baseball managers is a playful way of stating that all of us know enough about the sport to take a crack at managing any team.
Faced with this situation, small, poor countries have no other alternative than to produce their food through their own efforts, without making large investments in production machinery. Cuba, whose government has recently been pursuing policies that point in this direction, is a case in point.
A new congress of Cuba’s Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) is nearing and winds of change seem to be coming with it. Such change would be a positive sign, an indication that Cuban authorities are beginning to acknowledge that something in this organization isn’t working too well.
Odalys, one of my mother’s neighbors, has a niece who’s made some significant additions to her wardrobe of late. She now has some rather expensive garments, but, no, she doesn’t have a salary that would make such luxury affordable.