Those bread-and-butter issues are driving the national debate over how far to tinker with the country's socialist economic model, rather than political demands for more personal liberty and electoral choices, said Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas.
Average monthly income for Cubans is less than $20, and many pensioners scrape by on $5 or $6 a month. Even with a monthly ration of staples that last about 10 days, those without access to dollars from tourists' tips or relatives' remittances from abroad often have little more than rice or a bread roll for their meals.
Remittances reach only about one in 10 Cuban households, leaving the vast majority living in conditions that would be considered abject poverty but for the free or subsidized services provided by the government. Analysts estimate that as much as one-third of the Cuban population benefits from the dollar infusion, as those getting help from abroad often spend money on black-market goods and services provided by other Cubans.
As Cuban defense minister, Raul Castro was instrumental in redirecting state and military resources to food cultivation in the difficult years after the Soviet aid cutoff. He deployed troops to the fields to oversee food production and help industries streamline in the absence of fuel and spare parts.
The younger Castro's defense industry operations, under an economic transformation blueprint drafted by Lage, partnered with foreign investors to develop today's thriving network of tourist hotels, buses and airlines, bringing in 2 million foreign visitors a year and bolstering hard-currency coffers by $2 billion annually.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and co-chairman of the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative of the New America Foundation think tank, said Raul Castro had been "re-energizing the bureaucracy" of the Cuban leadership during his interim tenure.
"Instead of having fiats from the comandante . . . he's been energizing [government ministers] and making them responsible for specific functions of the bureaucracy. That's very encouraging for Carlos Lage or whoever is ultimately the head of state," said Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who visited Cuba last spring.
Fidel Castro's position as head of the Communist Party remains arguably the more influential post of the three he has long held as head of state, party and government.
