The Cuban Coin in Year Zero of the reform

By Gerardo Arreola

From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

HAVANA – His grandfather was a prosperous merchant who lost all his business after the 1959 revolution. Miguel Ángel Morales Menéndez has spent one year at the head of his own restaurant in the same house where his family has lived for four generations, in the heart of Old Havana.

The reform undertaken by President Raúl Castro broadened the market space and restored the personal ownership of resources such as houses and cars, an action that broke away from the policy that, for 50 years, limited the full ownership of private individuals over their property.

Miguel Ángel, 37, was able to open his restaurant because now a private individual can operate in a tourist area, something that was previously prohibited. The eatery has a spacious dining room, because restaurant operators no longer are required to hire only relatives and it can serve 50 customers simultaneously, not just the 12 that were allowed. If Miguel Ángel wanted, he could sell the house, built of stone in 1882.

Cuba is in the year zero of the reform, which began when the Communist Party Congress endorsed the new policy. As of November 2011, there were 357,663 microentrepreneurs, more than three times the 99,917 who operated in September 2010, when the law changed. The emerging private sector will bring in more than 2 percent of tax revenues in 2012.

In November 2011, the state recorded 6,000 sales and 2,000 donations of cars and 301 sales and 1,315 donations of homes. The dimensions are tiny, but contrast with decades during which none of this was possible.

One of the most significant results is that now it is possible to sell a house, regardless of whether it was acquired through payment, which was prohibited before the reform. Thus, a virtual and silent amnesty was granted to those who operated in the real-estate black market for years.

The state retains most of the companies and the monopoly of public services. Among other limitations, a person cannot own more than one home; buying new cars is selective, and employers pay higher taxes as they hire more employees. But now the market place is recognized, as well as the actual exercise of personal property.

The right to trade in autos and housing is given by the law and is exercised before a notary, said Vice President Marino Murillo in August 2011. The individual does not have to ask permission, as was required before. "When an official has to start approving things," Murillo added, alluding to corruption and the black market, "the last thing he wants is for the process to slow down […] and if you want it to go fast […] there is nothing more to say …"

The Cuban Coin

Ramón Menéndez, a native of Asturias, Spain, arrived in Cuba in 1920, at the age of 15. He came with a brother, several cousins and some money to begin the adventure of a lifetime. In 1924 he began buying a three-story mansion within walking distance of Havana Cathedral, on the installment plan. On the ground floor he installed a grocery store and a wine-and-tapas bar.

He flourished by selling on credit, paid for the house in full, bought apartment buildings and rented the apartments. The store-bar was called The Cuban Coin and gained popularity before Ángel Martinez in 1942 opened the now famous Bodeguita del Medio in the same neighborhood.

Upon the triumph of the revolution, Menéndez continued his businesses, but in 1964 began to lose them, the result of nationalization. At the end, he lost everything. He kept the house and worked as manager of a state-run store until he retired.

In a revolutionary offensive, the government confiscated the small and medium businesses that remained in private hands. Socialism and nationalization officially became one. We didn’t stage a revolution here to establish the right to trade, said Fidel Castro on March 13, in a landmark speech. He promised that he would close all bars and warned that there would be no future in Cuba for commerce, self-employment, private industry or anything similar.

Small farmers survived and, for short periods, the market of supply and demand for food and consumer goods reappeared. In the 1990s, during the crisis that followed the Soviet collapse, small private businesses became legal again, albeit under tight restrictions.
In the new stage, Miguel Ángel has converted the largest part of the house into the restaurant that bears the old name, The Cuban Coin. When his grandfather died in 1987, at age 82, he spoke only about the store. It was his first success and the last thing he remembered.

Miguel Ángel studied tourism, learned the secrets of bartending at El Floridita and became an instructor of waiters. But his goal was to someday reopen the business that his grandfather spoke so much about.

"I was always thinking about it," he says. "On my days off, I would do something in the house, getting a feel for the space. I knocked down a wall; I removed a beamed ceiling. This has been taking shape since 2007. Many people told me that it was wrong, that it would never be allowed."