The easing of rules against selling produce at market prices -- previously considered exploitation -- is expected to boost income and buying power among farmers. Urban Cubans hope the step is a sign that more opportunity for self-employment also will emerge in the cities.
Entrepreneurial by nature and exposed to the dollar-bearing tourists who flood Cuba each year, city dwellers saddled with low-wage jobs often moonlight to make ends meet.
Many of the young people plying the bustling Malecon seaside promenade to clandestinely hawk salsa music CDs or lure customers to dance halls and private restaurants say they want to open their own businesses and be their own bosses.
"I can't feed my family on what I earned working for the government," said Joel, who left his transportation engineering job to chauffeur tourists in his late father's 1954 Buick.
He is among the growing ranks of urban Cubans rejecting state employment in favor of working "on the left," the unsanctioned black-market activities that fill yawning gaps in services across Cuba. The Communist Party daily Granma reported last month that nearly one in five Havana residents refuses official employment.
That's not to say they aren't working.
A walk down Concordia, one of the ramrod-straight streets paralleling the Malecon, reveals a bustling warren of underground industry. Sparks fly out of an auto-repair yard behind a partially opened gate. A cobbler with bench and stool just inside the open door to his apartment examines a pair of loafers with soles peeled back. A barber working out of an apartment entryway no bigger than a closet swivels a young boy streetward to show his father the buzz cut.
Near the Partagas cigar factory, off-duty workers hawk the products they are given, two per day, as supplements to their $10 monthly pay. They purloin ribbon-hinged boxes, gold leaf bands and government certificates of authenticity for the Cohibas or Montecristos, selling entire boxes of 25 at one-third the state price.
Brothers Alberto and Carlos scurry along Amistad, behind the Capitol, in search of the coronas sought by a foreign shopper.
Carlos shrugs when asked whether their business might emerge from the fringes at some point, if and when the government embraces more fundamental change to allow Cubans to make and market their own products.
He disparages the official line that the government's huge profits from premium rum and cigars fund the island's universal healthcare and education.
"I studied to be an engineer, but if I worked in that field my family would starve," the clandestine cigar hawker says. "We'll believe in change when we can have a dignified life from our salaries."
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carol.williams@latimes.com
