Near Cuba, wary kin wait for proof of a new path
By Damien Cave
MIAMI — Fashion boutiques, restaurants, a bank — Jorge Gomez plans to help his relatives in Havana open whatever business they want. But when?
Like many Cubans on and off the island, Mr. Gomez has been scrutinizing the Cuban labor federation’s announcement last week that 500,000 public sector workers would soon be laid off and expected to find jobs in small private enterprises, possibly reshaping Cuba’s state-dominated economy. That declaration, though, was not yet enough for Mr. Gomez; not enough to offset the memory of previous economic openings that Fidel and Raúl Castro later slammed shut.
“You start something and they just tell you to stop,” said Mr. Gomez, 40, the owner of a money transfer business here, as he waited for his flight to Havana. “It’s a system designed not to function.”
Cuba, it seems, is still being watched with wary eyes here — and the nation’s plan to step toward an unknown economic hybrid could hang in the balance.
The expatriate community in South Florida, often so vehemently at odds with the Castro government, is a natural — and perhaps necessary — source of capital for the private sector Cuba says it must expand to resuscitate its economy.
A growing number of Cuban-Americans are already reconnecting with the island, making use of the Obama administration’s decision last year to abandon restrictions on their ability to travel there and send money to relatives.
What many people now ask is whether Cuba is being forced by economic hardship to respond with its own halting, vague form of welcome.
Just over a month has passed since President Raúl Castro told the National Assembly that the state’s “inflated rosters” would be trimmed, opening the door to self-employment in jobs like carpentry or rabbit-raising, and for more workers to form cooperatives.
Experts say that the changes proposed by Cuban officials are far greater in scope than previous ones; for instance, the government has said that for the first time in decades Cubans will be allowed to hire workers who are not relatives.
But at this point, according to business owners and analysts, the government’s intentions do not appear to have led to any clear spike in money sent to the island by relatives, or of goods that might help entrepreneurs get started.
The evolutionary plan, yet to be fully outlined, has instead raised as many questions as it answers. Where will businesses buy supplies? Will an influx of capital to some, but not others, foster new class and racial tensions, since Cuban-American wealth is largely concentrated among the white exiles here? What taxes will these new businesses pay, and how much profit will be allowed before the government steps in?
“Things move very slowly in Cuba because they are very, very concerned about breaking the balance of power with economic reforms,” said Jorge Sanguinetty, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, a research group. “This is the reality. They don’t want to emulate Gorbachev when he started making reforms in Russia and the whole thing came down.”
Mr. Sanguinetty, who served as a senior economic official with the Cuban government until he resigned in June 1966, said that Cuba might be just beginning the long, painstaking process of rebuilding the most basic economic relationships. He noted that Cuba even eliminated accounting schools in the first decade after the 1959 revolution because officials thought money would be unnecessary, and that many Cubans had no experience with credit cards, banks or checks. Now, he said, the government must move forward — with import-export licenses, with clearer communication about rules — if it hopes to make entrepreneurs a vital element of the economy.
Mr. Gomez said he wanted some legal reassurance that investments would not be lost to a government crackdown.
Serafin Blanco, owner of Ñooo! ¡Que Barato!, a huge discount store where recent arrivals stock up on $1.99 flip-flops and other items for relatives to resell in Cuba, said the American ban on tourist travel to the island would need to end before businesses could take off. “That is when there will be enough money circulating to support these small stores,” he said.
Other Cubans have told their relatives that they need to see neighbors succeed under the new system before they dive in.
