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Armando Soler
HAVANA, April (www.cubanet.org) - "Hey, friend, need an application? I
can let you have one for 5 dollars. Tax stamps? No problem, I’ll sell them
to you with the bank certification".
The smiling young man plying his trade in front of the Santos Suárez
office of the Department of Migration and Foreigner Control surfed up and down
the line of waiting faces. The documents this young merchant is offering are
either official forms of the feared Interior Ministry or else, the exclusive
province, as the tax stamp and the bank certification, of the National Bank of
Cuba.
He has competition; there are a few others doing the same thing. During
consecutive visits over several days, I’ve confirmed they are always the
same ones.
That they can operate without hindrance right in front of the offices of an
organization that is justly famous for the rigid control it exerts over the
citizenry is, to say the least, suspicious. But the black market in documents is
only one aspect of the island’s underworld. Society swims with fluidity
through the illegal traffic of influence and merchandise.
The catalogue of obstacles faced by Cuban citizens daily is extensive. Those
faced by Cubans who would leave the country are overwhelming. They have names,
like the Housing Authority, the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of
Justice. These and others are all co-participants in the one governmental scheme
designed to control every possession owned by the citizen, and the citizen
himself.
The net of influence peddling to expedite the conclusion of migratory
procedures has many facets. It can be the sale of the required police record, a
‘gift’ that will ensure that the housing dossier be processed
promptly, or a bogus X-ray film for the medical certificate, a relative bargain,
but all quoted in dollars.
Everything changed when the dollar hit the streets. The old, the presumed
repositories of the ideals of ‘59, look lost and perplexed on the streets,
selling loose cigarettes or soft drinks from the dollar stores. The young pay
them no mind. They are after the green.
Joaquín works at a dollar store. Every day, he buys, legally, at a
different kind of dollar store, ten cases of beer. He takes them to work and
sells them, in between the government ones, for a small profit.
"Just think," he says, "I cover expenses and make a 25 dollar
profit per day. I just hope this lasts."
Jobs like these can be bought and sold at commanding prices. Demand for them
is high.
Yoyi is a 21-year-old baker. He is dressed in flour dust and 80-dollar
sneakers. His official salary is 240 pesos, or less than 10 dollars a month.
He says, "By day, we sell the government’s bread, by night, we
sell ours. I clear 200 to 300 pesos per day."
Each one-pound loaf of bread sold this way costs the consumer 10 pesos, or
what a professional worker can expect to earn in one day.
We might call it organized crime if we defined it as a group of individuals
who come together to commit crimes in a systematic manner, under an
organizational hierarchy, and, to boot, making use of the nation’s
resources.
Versión
original en español
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