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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Castro reforms: DVDs, farms for Cubans |
| 2008-04-03 |
| Cubans snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time Tuesday as Raul Castro's new government loosened controls on consumer goods and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land. Combined with other reforms announced in recent days, the measures suggest real changes are being driven by the new president, who vowed when he took over from his brother Fidel to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans. Analysts wondered how far the communist government is willing to go. "Cuban people can't survive on the salaries people are paying them. Average men and women have been screaming that at the top of their lungs for many years," said Felix Masud-Piloto, director of the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University. "Now after many years, the government is listening." Many of the shoppers filling stores Tuesday lamented the fact that the goods are unaffordable on the government salaries they earn. But that didn't stop them from lining up to see electronic gadgets previously available only to foreigners and companies. "They should have done this a long time ago," one man said as he left a store with a red and silver electric motorbike that cost $814. The Chinese-made bikes can be charged with an electric cord and had been barred for general sale because officials feared a strain on the power grid. On Monday, the Tourism Ministry announced that any Cuban with enough money can now stay in luxury hotels and rent cars, doing away with restrictions that made ordinary people feel like second-class citizens. And last week, Cuba said citizens will be able to get cell phones legally in their own names, a luxury long reserved for the lucky few. The land initiative, however, potentially could put more food on the table of all Cubans and bring in hard currency from exports of tobacco, coffee and other products, providing the cash inflows needed to spur a new consumer economy. Government television said 51 percent of arable land is underused or fallow, and officials are transferring some of it to individual farmers and associations representing small, private producers. According to official figures, cooperatives already control 35 percent of arable land — and produce 60 percent of the island's agricultural output. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #13 Can they get new outboard motors for their cars? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-04-03 19:48 |
| #12 Momentum moves in one direction only. Cuba is in for a massive headache though. The minute they open up, all the rich Cubans in Miami want their farms and estates back. The US can help collapse the Commies there by allowing Cuban sugar into the US, but only via capitalism norms, no state sugar allowed. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2008-04-03 15:10 |
| #11 #10 Mitch H, this is the type of thing I was alluding to in #7 |
| Posted by: AlanC 2008-04-03 13:58 |
| #10 I give 'em about a thirty percent chance of this running away from Raul into a full-bore Hungarian border collapse. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2008-04-03 10:26 |
| #9 Does that mean they can also hire tourist-grade hookers? I think the Thais have that one cornered, but there's always the point of travel time. Better add hops to that crop menu. Beer could be the deciding point. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-03 09:27 |
| #8 ...and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land. Just a thought, you might want to start with basic food stuff. Make lots of it and cheap. We've found that if you feed them enough, they're too fat to revolt, just sit around and bitch a lot. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-03 09:24 |
| #7 The beginning of the end......It's been known for a long time that what brinds down dictators is when they relax a little bit and things improve. Expectations soar and reality can't keep up. It's the delta between expectations and reality that breeds the revolution. When things have started to improve, the first dip can be the trigger. See Czarist Russia, Soviet Union and others. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2008-04-03 09:02 |
| #6 And all this time I thought Cuba was the workers paradise. You mean it wasn't? Who knew? Does that mean they can also hire tourist-grade hookers? Doubt it, Michael Moore, Code Pink, and the rest of the Left wouldn't want to pay more for hookers. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2008-04-03 08:39 |
| #5 They can't survive on the money that they have, but they can bomb the stores and buy all this chinese made crap? That is in direct direct conflict with what it just said? |
| Posted by: Enver Fleremp9285 2008-04-03 06:58 |
| #4 On Monday, the Tourism Ministry announced that any Cuban with enough money can now stay in luxury hotels and rent cars, doing away with restrictions that made ordinary people feel like second-class citizens. Does that mean they can also hire tourist-grade hookers? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-04-03 01:10 |
| #3 I say we just bomb them with dollars. If we completely pulled out all the stops on tourism and took one of the uninhabited keys and made it into a free trade zone, it would work wonders. People are naturally enterprising. Once people get a taste of making their own money, they will want the government to get out of their way so they can make more. Open up tourism, and enterprising Cubans will be providing tour guides, shoe shines, morning papers, food stands, just about anything the tourist wants. And there is no way for the government to control tips. Slip a $20 to a Cuban for a job well done, and pretty soon he has hundreds of extra dollars. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-04-03 00:36 |
| #2 And no, you can't replace the high-altitude bombers with Hornets, dammit. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-04-03 00:24 |
| #1 And so it begins. I have said all along the way to crush Fidel was overflights of high-altitude bombers dropping copies of the Sears catalog and the weekly Walmart flyer. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-04-03 00:22 |