Cuba Fever

It is just past two in the morning, but the dusty streets in the central Cuban town of Jaguey Grande are jammed with people. This is a flat village. Not one of its modest colonial-style buildings is above two stories in height; there's nothing that even the most optimistic guide could call a tourist attraction.

With the national TV stations shut down for the night, no movie theaters or nightclubs anywhere in sight and few homes with VCRs or air-conditioners, young men and women mill about the town square, drinking and flirting under a velvety sky. They stroll or ride around on Chinese- or Cuban-made bicycles. Dogs curl up under the trees, their tongues dangling, panting from the heat.

"Hey, Juan, you got a room to rent, buddy?" a man asks from the backseat of a dark-blue Toyota compact with a license plate that reads Turismo, identifying it as a rented vehicle. The car is leased to one of the passengers up front: a Cuban American tourist and her local cousin. As a Cuban citizen and resident, the guy calling out to Juan couldn't legally rent it, regardless of how deep his pockets.

"Me?" asks Juan, whose mustache drips foam from a just-opened beer. Juan is drunk, teetering in the middle of the street.

"Yeah, you," the man says good naturedly. He's the town's unofficial housing coordinator, the first to rent to foreigners. In Jaguey Grande, everyone knows one another---where they live, what they do for a living, how many relatives live abroad and how many extra beds they might have at home.

"Look," says the man inside the car, nodding at the customers he's delivering to a room on the other side of town, "I have to take care of these folks and then I've got a batch of Japanese tourists---Japanese tourists! I need every room I can find. Will you let me know?"

The Japanese, it turns out, are the talk of Jaguey Grande. The couple in the car mean money. They're on their way to the home of a regional-tourism official who is not licensed to rent rooms but will do it this one time as a favor---and for $25 U.S. a night. When they arrive, they'll find that the room has its own entrance, its own bathroom with an atypical hot-water shower, a set of thin but fresh towels folded on the bed, an air-conditioner and a tape player on the dresser with cassettes of Marc Anthony and the Buena Vista Social Club.

But the Japanese---the mother lode of arriving tourists---are practically an invasion. Even as the housing guy sets off to deal with these visitors (who've arrived after two days of flights including a stopover in Mexico), the very first direct commercial flight from Japan to Cuba is arriving at José Martí International Airport in Havana.

Though Cuba does well with Canadian and European tourists and an increasing number of visitors from the U.S., it has recently targeted Japan in a bid to obtain more foreign currency. According to Cuban tourism statistics, of the 1.7 million tourists who visited the island in 1999, Japanese accounted for about 5000, and officials would like to see that figure at least double.

"You speak Japanese?" Juan asks Jaguey Grande's housing guy before he drives off. The guy shakes his head, grinning. "Don't need to. They speak English," he says. "Just like those Germans who stayed all last month, they all speak English. See, we're ready for when the Americans get here."

And then he laughs and laughs.

Tensions between Washington and Havana may have hit a peak during the Elián González crisis last year, and both Democrats and Republicans have promised to continue isolating and harassing Fidel Castro. But on the streets of Havana and even the rural roads around middle-of-nowhere Jaguey Grande, the U.S. and Cuba are closer than they've been in decades.

People talk openly about things American, and odd occurrences---such as Japanese tourists---are interpreted as portents of good relations with the U.S., even as a kind of rehearsal. These days, despite Fidel Castro's recharged anti-U.S. rhetoric and the protest plaza recently built in front of the U.S. Interests Section (the American embassy in all but name), it is neither unusual nor unpatriotic to hear Cubans talk freely about a time when the two nations might have normal relations, including unfettered travel and mutual economic interests. On the streets there are constant rumors about secret deals to end the four-decade-long embargo, and the animosity.

Cubans---both officially and unofficially---are planning for that eventuality. In Varadero, the country's premiere beach resort, the majority of tourists are Spaniards and Italians, but the signs are in English. Grocery, reads the marquee above a convenience store, Beach indicates the route to the sea from a hotel, Pool points the way to chlorine. Restaurant menus often have English translations with American fare such as pancakes and hamburgers.

At the old Du Pont mansion, once a symbol of capitalist decadence, the nearby golf course has been refurbished to tournament specifications with the idea that a Tiger Woods may one day grace its immaculate fairways. "Soon," says the official receptionist at the visitor center half seriously, "very soon." Already, she says, the Japanese love it. A billboard boasts: "Eighteen more reasons to love Cuba: Varadero Golf Club." Among the many T-shirts sold at the local shops is one that shows Cuba with a golf club laid across it. Photos of Che Guevara golfing pop up on postcards.

American tourists should feel right at home when they get here. Subtitled Hollywood films are frequently showcased Saturday nights on state-run television. Illicit video clubs carry American movies long before they're available at Blockbuster. Last July, Gone in 60 Seconds and Coyote Ugly---the latter not yet released theatrically in the U.S.---were offered at $2 apiece in a modest video club in Havana's working-class neighborhood of El Cerro.

Throughout the island, American music is heard constantly from state-run radio as well as Miami commercial broadcasters---not just the U.S.-sponsored propaganda station Radio Martí. Translations (and English originals) of American literary classics such as Ernest Hemingway and popular fare such as John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus can be found on any bookseller's shelf out on the plazas, along with previously censored titles by expatriate Guillermo Cabrera Infante and the never officially banned but controversial books of Zoe Valdes.

The Internet also fuels interest in things American, particularly among Cuban youth. In Havana, though Internet access is limited to the most privileged, e-mail is available to only a select few and computers aren't legally sold to most of the citizenry, everybody wants to learn how to operate one. The emphasis is on business programs solidly based in capitalism. The black market is booming, with PCs ranging from $400 to $1000. Scores of individuals are making a living under the table, tutoring, consulting and making repairs.

The government itself has recently opened two cybercafes: one, at the venerable Hotel Nacional, is primarily for its guests; at the other, in the old capitol building, tourists---and some clever Cubans---can get online for $5 an hour. That's expensive for most natives, who typically earn $12 to $15 a month, but on any given day, a good number of customers are Cubans communicating with relatives abroad, or doing business and research. (Unlike China, Cuba does not appear to completely block unfriendly websites; unless it was a fluke, it took only a couple of tries to connect to the Cuban American National Foundation, the exile lobbying group that was deeply involved in the Elián mess.)

"When they create a Yahoo Cuba--- like Yahoo Argentina---I will be ready," says Felix Santos, who goes to the cybercafe to develop his Internet skills. Though he doesn't say so, because he can't legally get on while using his own name and ID, he goes in with tourists who sign him in.

The Internet, like so much of the language of tourism and the new economy in Cuba, runs in English. New words---el mouse, e-mailiar, la shopping, biznez---have crept into the island's vernacular.

"I come to surfiar," Santos says without a hint of irony or guile.

Rogelio Gonzalez (not his real name), who won entry to the U.S. via the annual visa lottery and is now waiting for a Cuban exit permit, says, "Young people are desperate for the Americans to get here."

•

But not everyone is in such a rush, and some people---especially the elderly and the peasantry---are actually somewhat wary.

"When we have trade with the Americans, what will happen?" asks Francisco Sanchez from Cojimar, just outside Havana. "They can force countries to do things. I don't want to lose what we have. My wife, she has had two surgeries. Do you know how much we paid for them? Nothing. And look at how much of a fight the U.S. government is putting up not to have free health care. They won't respect our system, I know it."

Cuba's much-vaunted medical system---though plagued with a lack of supplies and want of new technologies---is what Cubans know will be most threatened by a U.S. presence. But there is also a fierce pride in what Cubans see as independence from the behemoth to the north. "Look at how big they are, and how little we are," says Irma Morgado, a 74-year-old widow from Ciego de Avila who lost a son during Cuba's military intervention in Angola. "No matter what they throw at us---I don't trust them, they're treasonous---we survive, we keep going."

Still, even Cubans like Sanchez and Morgado understand that the country is changing. To anyone but the most willful Castro foe, the evidence is everywhere that Cuba is doing better. Roads that two years ago were worse than minefields are now smoothly paved. Traffic in Havana is motorized again, with sleek American antiques battling rush hour alongside bikes, corporate Mitsubishis and tourist-rented Japanese compacts. The mangy dogs that roamed the city a few years ago, abandoned by owners who could no longer take care of them, are virtually gone, and the lines at the dollar-only veterinary clinic require hours of patience. Business on Montes Street---where locals reign and tourists are an oddity---is brisk. Cubans themselves look healthier, more substantial.

Perhaps the most significant sign of better times is the construction going on throughout the island. Though new hotels still rise like spaceships in places like Varadero, what's impressive is how much rehabbing there is at the private level. Whether in Havana's posh Miramar neighborhood or in the central city of Santa Clara, Cubans are adding second floors to their homes, refurbishing porches, putting in new bathroom tiles.

Not far from a small white pantheon in honor of Hemingway in Cojimar---the fishing village in Old Man and the Sea and the departure point for the 1994 raft exodus---a neighbor is building a pool overlooking the bay.

Whether it's bricks or paint, the building materials are usually stolen or illicitly acquired on the black market. Ask anybody where he got the concrete for the new patio floor, and the answer's always the same: a shrug and a story of a stranger who came by and just gave it away or sold it for pennies. And then, of course, a wink.

(continued on page 220)Cuba Fever(continued from page 88)

In Havana, if not the rest of the island, it is possible to find fresh meat, green vegetables, American and European car parts (one guy in Old Havana is known for the prerevolution Chevy parts his brother sends him from Miami), gasoline, up-to-the-minute French fashions, CDs by exile artists such as Gloria Estefan and Willy Chirino (even in some government-operated stores), Adidas running shoes, Tiffany antiques, Armani glasses, a plate of hummus or Chinese food or a Mercedes-Benz. In addition, an increasing number of shops now accept Visa and Master Card from non-American banks.

Up on 70th Street in Havana, at a supermarket, there is ample evidence of the U.S. embargo: Kellogg's cereals cover shelf upon shelf; Snickers bars and even the soda Materva can sometimes be purchased here---all of it arriving via third countries such as Mexico.

This doesn't mean there aren't occasional shortages. Last summer, for example, there wasn't a lightbulb to be found in Havana. Often the process of a legal buy can be Kafkaesque. Getting a phone can take years, with priority given to exemplary workers, veterans and the well connected. Buying a car---about the most rarified of privileges, available to less than one percent of the population---means an even longer wait and a terror-inducing income verification. Payment is almost always in cash. It's no surprise that the vast majority of new cars are sold to foreigners. Cubans would be hard-pressed to explain even if they could get the necessary $30,000 to $40,000.

•

According to an August announcement by Cuba's vice president, Carlos Lage, the island's socialist economy grew 7.7 percent in the first half of 2000 compared with the same period the previous year, guaranteeing it would surpass the official annual growth target rate of 4.5 percent.

In Miami---the Cuban-exile capital--- this economic news was received with derision and skepticism. Exile media immediately took apart Lage's numbers: Exile economists appeared on TV and radio to emphasize that the island remains a questionable investment and that Cubans themselves are rarely the beneficiaries of any improvements.

Some Cubans, such as Rogelio Gonzalez, also argue that the figures are misleading. "The economy doesn't work here at all," he asserts. "It's artificial. The only things that work are the policies he wants." Gonzalez refers to Castro, whose name is rarely said aloud, even by partisans. Instead, people pull at imaginary beards or touch their chins.

Lage himself cautioned against reading too much into the August figures, noting that Cuba continues its recovery from the economic catastrophe that befell it when the Soviet Union collapsed. He talked about fewer government-mandated power outages and better food availability, but he also admitted to medical shortages, transportation problems and continued difficulties with housing.

Most Cubans---even Gonzalez, on the verge of emigrating---will volunteer that things are better now than they were five years ago. With the exception of medicines, most of what exiles bring as gifts can be found in Havana. What is needed are dollars.

Although the Cuban government legalized the U.S. dollar in 1993 as a last resort to save the economy, it has maintained an ambivalent relationship with its new currency. Last year, there was talk of switching from the dollar to the euro, but the euro appears too uncertain for the Cubans right now.

Hitching their currency to the dollar is widely recognized as critical to Cuba's economic recovery, but it is also broadly blamed for a new series of problems. Because the government has steadfastly refused to pay its own workers in dollars--- and the vast majority of Cubans are directly employed by the state---a double economy has developed, and with it a double morality.

Only recently has the government finally begun to pay a select group of workers with hard currency, sometimes depositing their salaries in state-supervised bank accounts that can be accessed through the equivalent of automated teller machines.

"My attitude is, you don't rip off the customer, and my employees had better not rip me off," says the owner of a legal paladar (a home restaurant) in East Havana. "The only entity that's OK to steal from---because they deserve it---is the government."

Cubans, of course, have done the math: The government charges for most things in dollars---a meal for two at a nice state-run restaurant can easily cost $30 U.S.---but pays its workers in pesos, meaning an average monthly salary will pay for about half that meal. For someone like Morgado, who lives off a pension of 59 Cuban pesos a month left by her son (that's about $2.50 U.S.), a restaurant meal is unfathomable.

On the streets of Havana, air-conditioned taxis for tourists charge (in dollars) prices only a little cheaper than in New York or Chicago. Ten-peso taxis for Cubans tend to be jalopies that make frequent stops in order to keep the business viable. These cabs, charging the equivalent of about 50 American cents, can't legally pick up tourists, which means the locals have a chance at the service. But the drivers are a surly lot. Gypsy cabs charge a few bucks, depending on distance, and drivers generally hawk their services in whispers while slowly cruising tourist areas.

While most Cubans still rely on their monthly ration book, it's no secret the government has been slowly weaning them off it, reducing its guaranteed goods to a minimum: six pounds of rice a month per person, 20 ounces of beans, half a pound of salt, three pounds each of white and brown sugar, about two ounces of coffee every two weeks, enough pasta for two servings a month, maybe one bar of soap about six times a year and a small package of laundry detergent every couple of months.

This forces Cubans to buy staples at la shopping---the dollar stores---where things are priced about the same as they are in the U.S. For Morgado, this has meant taking in laundry in order to buy fundamentals.

"There's no embargo," declares Yayeme Brinquez, a lithe young woman in Girón, the city known for the Bay of Pigs invasion and Castro's most celebrated victory. "If you want sweetened condensed milk, they won't give it to you through the ration book anymore, but you can get it at the dollar store. That's the new way, that's all."

"Day-to-day life is being reconfigured," says Magali Espinosa Delgado, a former professor of Marxist philosophy and aesthetics who is now a freelance cultural critic. "Social change is happening faster and beyond the control of the state. The fact that people have to hustle to make ends meet means they're frequently developing what we could graciously call bad habits. This is not good in the long run."

One bad habit, incidentally, is already on the way out, or at least seriously curtailed. The Nineties were a remarkably thriving decade for prostitution, harking back to the prerevolution days when Cuba was known as "the brothel of the Caribbean." Initially, the island's socialist leaders, who had put a premium at the beginning of the revolution on eliminating the sex industry, seemed shocked by the turn of events. Later they seemed to play into it: Government-sponsored advertisements for Cuban beaches and nightlife in the Nineties were often explicit and exploitative.

Prostitution in Cuba, however, was always complicated. Though there were specific prices for specific acts, many of the women weren't looking for money so much as a way out of the country. Thousands married Spaniards, Italians and Mexicans, and then emigrated. Many were surprised when they got to their new countries to discover their husbands weren't as well off as they'd said, or that they were never intended to be true spouses but, rather, sex slaves. Horror stories abound on Havana streets, frequently told by women who've returned.

"Nobody believes I married for love," admits Brinquez, who has a visa and exit permit to join her new Spanish husband in Madrid later in the month and bristles at any suggestion that she may have wed for material reasons. "My husband is an average person, a working person. And I would never seek asylum, because this is my country. But I'll also tell you this: I stopped looking at Cuban men a long time ago. They're too---how shall I put this?---prosaic."

In the past couple of years, the Cuban government has cracked down on the local sex industry. Gone are the lines of pretty girls and pimps along the Ma-lecón and in the once notorious Habana Libre Hotel lobby; gone too are the Lycra-clad hitchhikers on every corner. Prostitution still exists, but it's more discreet now. The girls hang out at particular clubs, and rooms in private homes rent for the night, not the hour.

•

While some Cubans may be able to afford dollar taxis and groceries on 70th Street, there is plenty that Cubans can't do, no matter how much money they have. Cubans can't rent hotel rooms in their own names (and darker-skinned natives are still harassed, especially at Spanish-owned hotels, a constant source of embarrassment for the government). They can't travel out of the country for business or pleasure without state permission. They can't own and run their own businesses, and most can't legally buy or sell real estate, even their own homes.

Even when Cubans can legally access services, they are often treated as second-class citizens. In Guama, a reconstructed indigenous village designed to attract tourists (actors playing Indians whoop like in John Wayne movies), Cubans are allowed to take the scenic boat ride to the site but only by paying in dollars or at a price in national currency in line with their actual earnings.

But Cubans can pay in dollars only if accompanied by somebody with a foreign passport, and while there are dollar rides every few minutes, the peso rides---on which foreigners aren't allowed---are restricted to once or twice a day. Groups of Cuban schoolchildren, for example, wait for hours, as tourists blithely come and go.

"That kind of treatment makes me feel bad, inferior," says Brinquez. "But what can I do? I'm helpless to change it. It doesn't just happen to me, but to millions of people, about 11 million, to be exact."

Even Castro fans have a hard time justifying the disparities. "There are many things that we could enjoy just like the tourists," says Morgado, who says that she loses sleep worrying about Castro's well-being. "That is something I just don't understand."

•

This past year, locals heard the government was building new vacation condominiums for sale exclusively to foreigners in an area near the former Havana Yacht Club.

Popular reaction was swift and dramatic, and the government was embarrassed into restructuring the project. Last spring, word leaked that condo sales had been stopped but contracts already concluded would be honored.

The issue of real estate is particularly touchy. Although officially the idea of private property doesn't exist, real estate is probably the busiest business sector in Havana.

Acquiring property in Cuba can be a mysterious process---it requires a Cuban citizen willing to sign the deed or, in some cases, willing to marry a complete stranger. But it is done every day, despite the government's efforts to discourage it. Properties in Havana now go for between $3000 and $50,000---for a simple room to an exquisite seafront apartment. Houses sell for considerably more.

"I get offers all the time for my mother's house," says Gonzalez, whose family has a three-tiered home in Havana's Santa Fe neighborhood. "And I keep telling my mother---don't sell, hold on. She's old, and wants more security, especially now that I'll be leaving. But I've told her a thousand times: Wait for the Americans. The house will be worth half a million dollars then."

Although property owners are always officially Cubans, the real owners are not necessarily foreigners. More Cubans are buying for themselves, despite their official salaries and the lack of credit. Increasingly, Cubans are also fronting for U.S.-based relatives who provide cash. One strip in Varadero is popularly known as Hialeah Heights, after the Florida town.

The U.S.---Cuba bloodlines are also being nourished by the escalation of returning exiles, particularly retired seniors. Miguel Garcia (not his real name) is 74 years old and is living in Havana following a 20-year absence, having reunited with his first wife after a 30-year separation. It took him a year of visits to decide, then another two to finally get everything in order. Still, he keeps an address in Miami, and he goes back at least once a year to make sure every-thing is OK.

"I live here quietly, I don't bother anybody;" he says. "I spend my few dollars, and this way I don't live alone and in fear. Miami is too violent, too expensive for an old man alone like me. Here, we have a washing machine, a TV, a record player. I sit in my rocking chair and I am just fine with the world. I was nobody there. I'm nobody here, too, but at least people say hello and treat you like a person on the street."

•

Given the disparity between official salaries and the cost of living, where do Cubans get the dollars to live on? Some Cubans---musicians in particular but also artists, intellectuals and specially skilled workers---work abroad and return to Cuba with their earnings. Some Cubans are earning more in official posts, and many simply hustle.

But, according to Cuban and Miami sources, between $800 million and $1 billion comes in annually from Cubans abroad. In Miami, there are scores of agencies advertising services that send money to Cuba. Just about every flight from abroad carries passengers who serve as couriers for these agencies.

Given that most Cubans (even Castro) have relatives in exile, there is a steady flow of currency. In other words, the community that advocates tightening the embargo is the community that most supports the island.

On a recent flight from Miami, shouts of joy erupted upon touching down in Havana. "This is the most beautiful land seen by human eyes," an elderly fellow yelled out, echoing what Christopher Columbus was supposed to have said upon first seeing the island.

Cuban Americans visiting family in Havana are in a category all their own. Unlike other tourists, who are seldom searched upon entry to Cuba (Americans, the least legal of all, whiz by customs with rarely any trouble), Cuban Americans are welcomed home with a unique tax: They must pay for every gift they bring into the country.

Most exiles who travel to Cuba are the more recently emigrated---a quick glance at Miami Airport shows that few line up for processing as U.S. citizens. Most still carry Cuban passports, now accompanied by U.S. residency cards. So it is strange that they should be harassed at Havana's airport. These are, after all, people reconciled at some level with the revolution---not rabid right-wingers and rarely well off.

But it happens, and often with a manipulative appeal to sentiment. Though she was traveling on a Treasury Department license for her annual family visit, a Cuban American woman declared that she had brought no gifts but medicines (which are tax exempt). The customs officer was incredulous.

"Not even a blouse for a cousin? Something for your grandmother?" the officer asked. When the visitor insisted she was gift free, the customs officer searched every inch of her luggage, warning that there would be a fine if she were found to be untruthful. In the end, the woman did not pay a fine or a tax after the search revealed nothing.

In another case, a customs officer wandered among the returning exiles as they waited to be processed, offering an express service (to be paid at the exiles' discretion) to assure that their bags weren't lost and that the search would be minimal.

None of this, however, keeps the exiles away. According to figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation, a record 66,882 passengers flew from Miami to Havana last year, compared with 30,910 in 1998. Most of these visitors, of course, were Cuban exiles, many of them from Miami's 800,000-strong Cuban American community.

The other travelers to Cuba were Americans who applied for licenses under the embargo's rules. These included such high-profile visitors as Arthur Miller and the Baltimore Orioles. Thousands more flew from New York and Los Angeles in the first year of direct flights, totaling about 82,000 legal visitors. (In addition, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 Americans a year are sneaking into Cuba in violation of U.S. law, usually flying from Mexico, Canada, Jamaica or the Bahamas.)

•

The Elián González case did nothing but exacerbate bad feelings between Cubans on the two sides of the Straits of Florida.

"The people in Miami ended up basically saying that nobody in Cuba had a right to their children, that they had no control or influence over them---and to want to live here was tantamount to being a bad parent," says Garcia. "Well, people here felt implicated in that, perfectly average people like my wife. It was as if she were a bad person just for being here, without anybody asking why she chooses to stay here. And, you know, she lives with me. But it was all said so viciously, she felt hurt by it."

"The Elián situation was, for me, a sad thing," says Francisco "Sacha" Lopez, president of the writers' branch of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. "Our relations with the exile community had been changing. In the Eighties, there was a sense that we didn't need to be enemies with relatives or friends who'd left looking for better conditions. This was important because, after the Mariel crisis, the rejection on both sides was horrible.

"By the time of the Cojimar exodus," says Lopez, "things had changed. Some people even gave farewell parties to friends who were willing to submit themselves to the mystery of the seas. In the next few years, things continued to improve. Then this happened---and I tell you, people here were hurt, personally hurt. Everything Fidel had said about these people was suddenly true: They hated us, they betrayed us. They were so willing to do anything to hurt Fidel personally that they forgot all about us. Not everyone, I know, but it will take a while to rebuild any trust at all."

Even Gonzalez admits Castro got a boost from the Elián crisis. "Some stuff they just handed to him," he says. "Like saying the child would be tortured, that he'd be sacrificed if he was returned. That was just outrageous. Everyone was offended. Armando Gutierrez [the Miami family's spokesperson] was very proud that he was shown on Cuban TV saying Castro is crazy. But that is a limited vision. Here, that was shown to make the case for freedom of expression; thanks to Armando Gutierrez, the Cuban government can now say for a fact that you can even go on TV and call him nuts."

•

The Elián crisis certainly wasn't the first time in recent history that things have seemed off-kilter in Cuba. At the beginning of the Nineties, when Castro dubbed the economic crisis the Special Period, the fact that revenue was coming in from Miami caused a strange unhinging of the social order. Suddenly, Cubans most loyal to the ideals of the revolution---those who had remained in Cuba and cut communications with their relatives in exile---found themselves getting the short end of the stick. Doctors and engineers were forced to moonlight as cab drivers in order to get their hands on dollars. That's when the black markets began to flourish.

"Although the government puts value on work and culture and puts tremendous effort into promoting honesty and ethical behavior, that only works as policy, not so much in real life," says Espinosa. "There's a huge gap between the noble values of the revolution and the facts of daily life."

In the meantime, Cubans scramble for tourist sector jobs, where tips make up for the difference in salaries. A tourist-taxi driver stationed outside the Inglaterra Hotel in Havana, for example, explains that his commission is only 18 Cuban cents per American dollar. In other words, he has to make $100 U.S. before he can take home 18 pesos. Less than $1 U.S. Tips, however, can add up to $ 100 U.S. on a good day, which makes his a coveted job.

Curiously, service is something of a problem. Visitors may find that clerks are frequently insolent and overly familiar. At an ice cream shop with a line snaking out the door, the clerks chose to take their breaks together and stopped everything to smoke and make phone calls. No amount of bellowing from the paying customers---including foreign tourists---fazed them.

Indeed, for the most part, Cubans seem to have a tough time making the connection between efficiency and the size of the tip. An intense pride keeps a lot of them from behaving in any way that might appear subservient, particularly to foreigners. When Americans finally arrive, they may be in for a few surprises.

"Right now, sure, there's a lot of doing for the tourists," says Brinquez, who worked in tourism. "But I can tell you, it's not goodwill. It's about the dollars. Without dollars, you can't survive in this country."

A passage from Lage's own report notes that growth in tourism, which is now the biggest source of hard currency and employs 80,000 people, has slowed to six percent from an average of 15 percent in past years. If the U.S. embargo were lifted, of course, that figure certainly would surge.

•

Yet even with a greatly improved economy, many Cubans continue to leave the island, both legally and illegally. Despite the recent tragedies of Elián's mother and the young Bueno brothers (who were eaten by sharks), Cubans still take to the sea for the U.S., perceived in the popular imagination as a place of greater economic opportunity.

"People don't leave without a reason," says Gonzalez, a doctor who claims his exit permit is tied up by politics. He has written Lage, he says, and Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's parliament, to no avail. "I'll have to work in Miami," he says. "I know that. But my brother has been in Miami only a few years, and he has a job, a car---the rights due a civilized person."

"You solve the economic problem in this country, and you've solved the immigration problem," says Ernesto Matos, a cab driver. "If you could make a living here, who would ever leave?"

But Gonzalez wants to leave, he explains, not just because of the possibility of a more comfortable life, but because he fears the future in Cuba.

"When Castro goes, there will be a struggle among his sidekicks, no matter that he has named his brother as his successor," he says. "And you have to understand, nobody thinks like him. Not his brother, not Lage, not Alarcon. I worry that it will be the same as Russia, that the party people become the capitalists. It would be a great hypocrisy, a great irony. But it is possible. Change has to come, but it can't be abrupt. What's really strange is that, for all his fury and, out of 100 of his words, 99 are anti-American propaganda, he still understands that better than most. Except for the part that's up to him: He will never step down, no matter what."

For most Cubans, Castro remains a powerful figure---and an enigma. Nobody knows exactly where he lives, whether he is or isn't married or how many children he has. But, no matter what his poll numbers outside Cuba are, he still has ardent supporters among his compatriots, especially among the elderly and the peasantry.

"When people talk about what comes after Fidel, I can't think about it," says Morgado. "I can't imagine Cuba without him."

"Fidel is like a tree," says Pablo, a crane operator in a small town with the unlikely name of Paraiso. "He grows and spreads his seed. In so many years, there are a thousand Fidels. Then a million Fidels. That's us---through us, Fidel will never go away."

American tourists should feel right at home. Hollywood films are showcased on state-run TV. Illicit video clubs carry movies long before they're available at blockbuster.

"The only entity that's OK to steal from---because they deserve it---is the government."