Mario Díaz worked for 20 years as a heavy-equipment operator at a sugar factory. Now he works as a gardener in a Havana hotel. When we talked to him, he was using a machete to trim a grass lawn. One of his four children is asthmatic. "Our Cuban doctors are very good," he said. "But they have no medicine to give my daughter. Sometimes I can do something for a guest. Whatever tips I make, I give to a friend who works in the hotel infirmary. She sells me the medicine for my daughter."
Marta Garza, a hotel maid, had a similar story. "I took my father to the hospital last week," she told us. "The doctor told us he had to take an antibiotic drug, but that the hospital didn't have it in store. The doctor wrote out the name of the medicine, and I had to go buy it on the black market. Because I work in the tourist trade, I had the dollars to buy it. Otherwise, my father would have died."
In addition to jobs in the hospitality industry, the influx of tourists has created opportunities for entrepreneurs. Juan Barquín quit his job as a computer programmer to become one of the new, legally registered entrepreneurs. He sells his paintings and sculptures out of a small shop near the old Cathedral of Havana. The work is of professional quality, which is why Juan got his license even though college graduates are supposedly prohibited from working as entrepreneurs. On Saturday, the plaza in front of the cathedral is filled with artistic entrepreneurs selling their souvenirs from small stands. As we stood and watched, we spotted a government official moving from stall to stall, making sure that each vendor had a license to do business.
While the best business is selling to tourists for dollars, other small-scale entrepreneurs are trying to meet the local demand for consumer goods. These entrepreneurs, who deal in pesos, sell their homemade wares from small tables and stands that are often set up in front of government stores with empty shelves. Except for farmers selling from the roadside in rural areas, there are no food products for sale on the legal private market. Most of the merchants were selling small plastic products like cups, pieces of costume jewelry, cooking pans, simple toys, combs, and small art objects.
One of the vendors was refilling disposable butane lighters. We watched as he took the top off a lighter, checked the flint, then squirted a shot of butane into the tank before putting it all carefully back together. He kept his supply of butane in what had once been an aerosol can of insecticide.
The Black Market
The Castro government brings tourists in with cheap packages, then fleeces them when they want something extra. A lunch of roast chicken and black beans with rice at La Bodegita cost us $40 for two; a daiquiri at La Floridita was $3.00. A box of the better Cuban cigars can cost $70 or more in a government store. An evening at the Tropicana Night Club cost $70 without the drinks. A taxi ride from our hotel into the city, a distance of about 20 miles, cost $30 each way. Car rentals start at $70 a day.
A thriving black market offers the tourist some of those things at bargain rates. A tourist can't walk more than a block along a street in Havana without meeting at least one black-market merchant offering to sell cigars, rare coins, a private taxi, a meal in a private home, or a date with whichever sex one might prefer. Pedro Aguero works as a porter in a tobacco factory, but we met him in the middle of the afternoon on a Havana street, where he quoted a price on a box of Monte Cristos that was less than half what we would have paid in a tourist store.
From what we could see and hear, most of the consumer items sold on the black market have been stolen or diverted from government distribution channels or from one of the non-government charities supported by U.S. voluntary agencies that are permitted to make shipments under the embargo. Even so, the black market offers a much wider variety of goods than the newly legal entrepreneurs do, including such hard-to-find items as medicine, bicycles, and gasoline.
Still, there is no guarantee that anything will be available on the black market, even if you have dollars. We needed a car for a day, and we found the owner of a well-kept 1953 Chevy that would be worth a small fortune at an antique car auction in the United States. He agreed to take us where we wanted for half the price it would cost us to rent a car. The deal fell through when he couldn't find any gas for sale even though he had both coupons to buy legal gas and dollars to buy black-market gas.
Walking back to our hotel one afternoon, we encountered another thriving part of the black market. We were joined by six schoolchildren, who followed along, talking and singing English-language songs they had learned in school to entertain us. Just before we reached the hotel, two young women walked up to our group and identified themselves as the mother of one little girl and the aunt of three of the other kids. They were hoping we might invite the two of them into the hotel for a romantic evening--in exchange for dollars, of course.
The Cubans call them jineteras, a play on the Spanish word for jockey. Any male tourist who strolls outside his hotel will meet several of them, even if that's not what he's looking for. They work only for dollars, but they will happily accept tips of surplus aspirin, shampoo, old T-shirts, or anything else a tourist is willing to leave behind.
The aunt, Hortensia, an outgoing brunette, obviously had some experience in her new profession. Dalia, a reserved blond, acted nervous and embarrassed. Unlike Hortensia, she didn't joke about the possibilities that might develop if we invited them to accompany us back to the hotel. When asked, Dalia shyly admitted that she is married. Her husband works in a chicken slaughterhouse, making 150 pesos a month, plus one small package of chicken scraps and chicken fat. If Dalia met a tourist who liked her, she could make more in one night than her husband makes in six months. We spotted both the women later in the evening as they sat with a group of Spanish tourists, drinking Cuba libres by the pool. Dalia looked at one of us and blushed for a moment before turning away.
Breaking Away
Any Cuban holding American money is permitted to shop in government dollar stores that serve both the tourist industry and the diplomatic trade. In the hotels, the dollar stores are small shops that carry suntan lotion, film, medicine, soap, and rum drinks. Bigger dollar stores outside the hotels sell cookies, candy, imported cigarettes, and other consumer goods.
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