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By Thomas Ginsberg. Knight Ridder News Service.
The Miami Herald, March 21,
2002.
HAVANA - When Yasnay Martínez couldn't earn enough at a Cuban shirt
factory to support herself and daughter, she peddled fruit on the street.
And when police busted her black-market trade in bananas and oranges, she
considered peddling her body.
''Prostitution? Sometimes I get asked to do it,'' admitted Martínez,
29, sitting in a friend's closet-size apartment at the end of a Havana alley. "But
I don't want to do it, because women are losing their value -- they're selling
themselves very cheaply here.''
Martínez's unsavory dilemma is far from unusual. After a decade
without Soviet subsidies that once buoyed their economy, ordinary Cubans have
come to depend on countless private, often illicit, ways of making ends meet.
Cuba recently purchased several food shipments from the United States, the
first in four decades, which offered a teasing hope for many here that the
41-year-old U.S. trade embargo might end soon. But it is not so much the embargo
that Cubans blame for their hardships as it is Fidel Castro's rigid economic
control.
''This is our fault; we did this to ourselves,'' said Bárbara Rodríguez,
40, a gardener who lives with her mother in the basement of a dilapidated
building in historic Old Havana, surviving on the equivalent of $15 a month, if
they're lucky.
''Fidel has no money hidden away for us. He's just entertaining people with
[criticisms of] the blockade,'' said Rodríguez, who spoke to a reporter
more openly than many because, she said, her only son already has emigrated. "The
real problem is the system here. And it's just as bad as it always was.''
Many Cubans say they simply cannot get by on wages paid by the only legal
employer -- the government -- even with such necessities as health care and
housing provided all but free by the state.
Cubans lucky enough to work for a foreign joint venture -- the Cuban-Spanish
tobacco industry, for example, or the Cuban-British golf course -- may get a
bonus in dollars from the foreign partner that is worth many times their Cuban
peso salary.
But for the majority, the sole legal alternative to a state wage is
arduously obtaining approval for self-employment. The few permitted one-person
jobs include hairstylist, farmer and bookseller but exclude physician,
translator or even taxi driver -- pursuits that are likely to involve a lot of
responsibility, or a lot of cash.
Therefore, ordinary Cubans have had to become frugal and imaginative. In the
biggest cities, many people interviewed said they scrounge on the side for extra
money, preferably U.S. dollars, which seep in from tourists and Cuban exiles.
Dollars -- legal for ordinary Cubans to possess since 1993 -- form the basis
of a huge, parallel, cash-only economy that dwarfs the Cuban peso. By one
dissident economist's estimate, there may be $3 billion in U.S. dollars in Cuba,
helping keep afloat the island's $19 billion economy.
The chase for cash adds up to a wearying daily challenge for most people,
and a debilitating strain on government-run enterprises from which people often
steal goods to peddle on the black market.
Rosa Santana, 27, of Matanzas, 60 miles east of Havana, counts on getting
rent, education, health care and most food staples from the government at low or
no cost. While well-connected Cubans get first crack at the communal goods and
services, the system does seem to spare even the poorest citizens the abject
misery common in other Latin American countries. Still, to feed and clothe
herself and her 12-year-old daughter, Santana figures she needs 500 to 1,000
pesos each month, or $19 to $38 at the unofficial exchange rate of 26 pesos to
$1. But her salary as an accountant in the government-run employment agency is
just 254 pesos -- about $9.70 -- a month. So she closes the gap by obtaining
rolls -- she prefers not to say how -- from a state-run bakery to resell on the
street. She also has sold pigs she raised in her tiny backyard.
''Maybe in a month I make 200 to 400 pesos on top of my salary . . . so I
can usually get by,'' Santana said. But she acknowledged she had thought about
leaving Cuba. "I don't want my daughter to do what I do, to go through the
same things that happened to me.''
For the self-employed, things are slightly easier.
Joaquín Manuel Díaz, 50, quit work as a carpenter in the
mid-1990s and got approval to open a restaurant in Candelaria, 50 miles west of
Havana. Now serving pork from pigs he raises in his backyard, Díaz earns
about 5,000 pesos ($192) a month, 25 percent of which he pays in taxes. The
remainder sustains seven family members and himself.
''I have to work harder here than I did as a carpenter, but there was also
less reward as a carpenter,'' he said.
In a bedraggled section of Havana, far from the hard-currency tourist hotels
off-limits to most Cubans, María Elena Pupu runs a legal, one-woman
hairstyling business on her spartan porch.
Charging 5 pesos (19 cents) for a haircut and 20 pesos (77 cents) for
coloring, Pupu said she earns 1,000 to 2,000 pesos -- $38 to $77 -- a month,
enough to support her family of three.
''We make enough to buy things in the free markets once in a while,'' she
said.
In the state-run free markets, also known as ''dollar stores,'' Cubans can
buy as much as they like if they have dollars -- and can pay U.S.-style prices.
A 16-ounce can of baby formula costs $4.50, a two-pound bag of rice $1.20, a
liter of rum $9.50.
Such necessities as rice and milk can be had much cheaper at special state
bodegas.
But the goods are strictly rationed: Eggs, when available, are eight per
person per month at 10 centavos (.38 cents) each; bread is one roll per person
per day for 5 centavos (.19 cents); milk, at a half-peso (1.9 cents) per quart,
is only for children under 7.
For meat -- a rarity -- and vegetables, Cubans must go to costlier
''agro-markets,'' where long lines often form when a coveted product shows up.
For most anything else, there's the black market, which also runs mostly on
dollars.
Enrique Cabo García, 35, hustles bootleg music burned on black-market
CDs at $3.50 each -- dollars only. U.S. copyright laws are hardly his first
concern; he has a license only to be a private DJ, not a peddler.
''I live with my mother and three children, and we have two houses to
support,'' said Cabo García, who used to make 249 pesos ($9.50) a month
as a state-employed electrician. "I need a lot of money.''
Even further down the scale is prostitution, which flourishes despite a
crackdown and stiff penalties.
Martínez, the one-time shirt-factory worker, said her prostitute
friends earn $50 to $80 a night, more than she made at the factory in a year.
So far, she said, she has taken money for sex only once and resists the life
of a prostitute.
''Now I'm trying to sell anything; I'm selling hot dogs on the street,'' she
said, scoffing at the government line that her plight is caused by the U.S.
embargo. "It's all the fault of the people who run this country.'' | 
