HAVANA — The young teacher trolling for bargains along Avenida de Italia in a pink polka-dot halter is amused by all the foreign folderol over recent government announcements that ordinary Cubans could now buy cellphones, computers and microwave ovens.
"I can't afford to buy food to cook in pots," Idelma, who like most Cubans questioned by foreigners doesn't want to give her full name, said with a dismissive laugh when asked whether she's eyeing a microwave to make her domestic life easier.
It's the same for cellphones, which cost a new subscriber $137 for activation and a minimum of $20 in prepaid minutes every two months to maintain the account. The average Cuban worker at state-run enterprises, which still constitute 90% of the economy, earns just $17 a month.
President Raul Castro's decision to rescind prohibitions against Cubans owning high-tech and energy-consuming appliances has sparked expectations here, and abroad, that more fundamental change is on the horizon aimed at freeing Cubans from the shackles of a planned economy that imposes on most a daily struggle for subsistence.
But for workers such as Idelma, a $300 microwave represents a year and a half's income and is another reminder that those without U.S. currency are second-class citizens here. About one-third of Cuban households benefit from monthly remittances from relatives abroad, and growing numbers get dollars from tourist tips or joint-venture employment, but state employees are no more likely to buy the newly available baubles than when the items were forbidden.
Urban workers unable to afford the long-banned luxuries contend that the government is just eliminating the foreign middlemen who have long obtained cellphones and other electronics for Cubans -- for a fee.
"These aren't changes to our system. They are indications the government recognizes it was losing money to the black markets," said Eduardo, who works nights at a warehouse but drives a friend's car as a taxi to earn most of his income.
At ETECSA, the Cuban-Italian joint venture that operates cellphone service in Cuba out of a modern office in the leafy Miramar district, dozens of blue-uniformed sales agents review contracts for cellphone service in air-conditioned comfort. Cubans previously had to bring a foreign "friend" to sign up for the service. Payment was in advance and in hard-currency cash for all equipment and services, the same conditions that will apply to Cubans who want service.
Rudi, a Cuban artist recently returned from a hard-currency-earning tour of his works abroad, came to the shop two days before the restrictions were eased.
"I can't buy a mobile phone in my own country, even though I have the money!" he groused. He had a cellphone bought abroad and needed only the service contract and SIM card to get connected, but had to rely on a North American friend.
Outside Havana, another free-market reform effort by Castro is stirring broader interest.
Beyond the five-story blocks of dreary apartments, where urban sprawl gives way to tidy rows of crops and roadside farm stands, those tilling the rich soil of this tropical island see hope for boosting output and income as socialism's micromanagers bow out.
That Cuba produces so little of the food it needs despite a year-round growing climate is one of the nagging forces driving Castro to shake up the status quo in the countryside. Cuba imports more than 80% of the commodities distributed in the monthly ration basket, notes Paolo Spadoni, an expert on the Cuban economy who teaches at Rollins College in central Florida. He estimates that food imports cost Havana more than $1.6 billion a year.
In an effort to dramatically expand crop output, the leadership has begun making more land available to farmers and allowing them to sell fruit, vegetables, meat and milk at prices set according to demand, instead of government edict.
At prosperous farms such as a 25-acre plot in Barbosa, half an hour from the capital, the expectation of doubling cultivated acreage and profit has the private collective planting from sunup to sundown.
The eight laborers who work the land earn 35 pesos for an eight-hour day, only about $1.40, but a kingly sum in a country where a month's work, whether by a manual laborer or a doctor, brings home less than $20.
"We are getting more land because we've shown what we can do with it," Victor, the farm's agronomist, said proudly of the state loan of another 25 acres for their collective.
The work is grueling, with only two oxen and not a mechanized vehicle in sight among the orderly rows of lettuce, corn, carrots, peppers, spinach and tomatoes.
Private farmers remain uncertain how far Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel less than two months ago, will go in removing the ideological obstacles to initiative and independence. But they believe their fortunes can change quickly.
