Cuba Continues To Roll Out Reforms

Raul Castro Eases More Limitations On Daily Lives: More Consumer Goods, Land For Farmers

(AP)  Shoppers snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time Tuesday as Cuba loosened its control 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 substantial changes are being driven by new President Raul Castro, who vowed when he took over from his brother Fidel to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans. But even expert Cuba-watchers wonder how far the communist government will 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 mourned 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," said a 40-something man, emerging from a shopping center with a red-and-silver electric motorbike that set him back US$814 (euro520). The Chinese-made bikes can be charged with a power cord and had been prohibited for general sale because the government feared a drain on the power grid.

On Monday, the Tourism Ministry said any Cuban with enough money can 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 reform, however, potentially could put more food on the table of all Cubans while helping to develop 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.

"Everyone who wants to produce tobacco will be given land to produce tobacco, and it will be the same with coffee," said Orlando Lugo, the president of Cuba's national farmers association.

The change is a contrast to the early days of Cuba's revolution, when the government forced or encouraged private farmers to turn their land over to the state or form government-controlled collective farms. But without more details, it was difficult to tell the significance of program, which began last year but was announced only this week.

"If this means all land that's not being used, like for private farmers, cooperatives and state farms, is available, that's positive," said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert with the University of Pittsburgh. "Assuming, of course, they have the freedom to sow and sell whatever they want."

Lines formed before the doors opened Tuesday at the Galerias Paseos shopping center on Havana's famed seaside Malecon boulevard, and shoppers wasted little time once inside. There was no sign yet of computers and microwaves, highly anticipated items that clerks across Havana insisted would appear soon on store shelves, with desktop computers retailing for around US$650 (euro415).

Cuba's communist system was founded on promoting social and economic equality, but that doesn't mean Cubans can't have DVD players, said Mercedes Orta, who rushed to gawk at the new products.

"Socialism has nothing to do with living comfortably," she said.

Lines outside electronics boutiques and specialty shops are common in Cuba because security guards limit how many people can enter at a time. But waits were longer and stores more packed than usual at Havana's best-known retail outlets, and clumps of shoppers and gawkers clustered around display cases at smaller locales.

"DVDs are over there, down that aisle," an employee in a white short-sleeved shirt repeated over and over as shoppers wandered into La Copa, an electronics and grocery store across from the Copacabana Hotel.

"Very good! DVD players on sale for everybody," exclaimed Clara, an elderly woman peering at a black JVC console. "Of course nobody has the money to buy them." Like many Cubans, Clara chatted freely but wouldn't give her full name to a foreign reporter.

Government stores offered all products in convertible pesos - hard currency worth 24 times the regular pesos state employees get paid. The government controls well over 90 percent of the economy and the average state salary is just 408 regular pesos, about US$19.50 (euro12.50) a month.

Still, most Cubans have access to at least some convertible pesos thanks to jobs with foreign firms or in tourism, or cash sent by relatives living in the United States.

Graciela Jaime, a 68-year-old retired clothes factory employee, complained that widespread pilfering and greed has created a class of rich Cubans.

"Everyone wants to spend money and that is what's happening," she said. "If everything they earned went to the state like it should, there wouldn't be as much corruption as there is."

[dmgenet]

"WHAT EXACTLY HAS THE UNITED STATES ACCOMPLISHED IN ISOLATING CUBA?"

I agree, the US accomplished nothing. One wonders if the Cuban voting bloc in the US is stronger than pure reason (not the first time this has occurred). Florida is a very important state to politicians. Pandering at its best.

And I bet dollars to donuts that everyone from the President down to Congress and state level reps smoke Cuban cigars in spite of the so-called ban on trade. Having another island to vacation on so close to the US mainland would also greatly help the Cuban economy.

[frankson2]

WHAT EXACTLY HAS THE UNITED STATES ACCOMPLISHED IN ISOLATING CUBA? THE ANSWER IS NOTHING. THE REST OF THE WORLD TRADES WITH CUBA, OUR ECONOMIC SQUEEZE DID NOT BRING ABOUT REVOLUTION. ALL WE DID WAS HURT THE CUBAN CITIZENRY. THIS GOVT HAS A WAY OF BEING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY TIME AFTER TIME. OF COURSE OUR CORPORATIONS FARED MUCH BETTER WITH BATISTA

[louklou51]

I just wish I could buy Cuban cigars legally in the United States to try them and see if they are as good as I''ve heard they are.

[andrew_693]

It''s illegal to travel to Cuba or take any money there but to communist china, that''s ok because they provide the US with cheap goods and slave labor. These neocons want us to believe that the reason for not letting anyone visit cuba is because they are communist, the bottom line is, you can visit any country where there is no freedom as long as that country provides a service to the american corporations.

[apprxam]

Would those reforms include the right of returned property to the exiles? Or the Italian-American mob''s lost wages and interest on lost gambling earnings.

How dare we insist that they change to an Iraqi-style democracy. The most corrupt and undemocratic government on that island is King George''s Camp Bushland, USMC.

[jumkey]

It funny, but for all the abuses of freedom and liberty Castro has presided over Republicans would willingly enact even more draconian measures here in the US if they could.

"Conservatives" are the same the world over, whether Castro or the mullahs in Iran or Kim Il Jung or George Bush - they are all authoritarian and anti-freedom and anti-liberty.

[ranger1948]

I am hoping with this new leader maybe we can break down the barriers and become good neighbors with the cuban government. We have alkways been against them fior being communist, but i don''t see where there government is any worse than the one we have now.