Cubans grab licence to make money

Published on Friday 4 February 2011 19:12

MARISELA Álvarez spends much of the day bent over a single electric burner in her small outdoor kitchen. Her knees are killing her. Her red hair smells of cooking oil. But she hasn't felt this fortunate in years.

"I feel useful; I'm independent," said lvarez, who opened a small caf in November at her home in this scruffy town 25 miles from the capital, Havana. "When you sit down at the end of the day and look at how much you have made, you feel satisfied."

Eagerly, warily, Cubans are taking up the government's offer to work for themselves, selling coffee in their front yards, renting out houses, making rattan furniture and hawking everything from bootleg DVDs to homemade wine.

Hoping to resuscitate Cuba's crippled economy, President Ral Castro opened the door to a new, if limited, generation of entrepreneurs last year, after warning that the state's "inflated" payrolls could end up "jeopardising the very survival of the Revolution".

The Cuban labour federation said the government would lay off half a million of its 4.3 million state workers by March and issue hundreds of thousands of new licences to people wanting to join Cuba's tiny private sector, in what could be the biggest remodelling of the state-run economy since Fidel Castro nationalised all enterprise in 1968. By the end of 2010, the government had awarded 75,000 new licences, swelling the official ranks of the self-employed by 50 per cent.

Streets once devoid of commerce in towns like Bauta and in Havana are gradually coming to life as people hang painted signs and bright awnings outside their houses and mount roadside stalls. An electronics engineer, who for years operated in the shadows, now publishes leaflets that claim he can mend every appliance under the sun. A practitioner of Santera sells beaded necklaces, ground sardines and toasted corn used in ceremonies at the tin-roofed shop in her yard.

lvarez and her husband, Ivan Barroso, took out a licence for the caf and another to sell meat and fish. Now the couple does a brisk business serving soft white rolls filled with garlicky pork and fresh tuna for 60 cents at a wooden counter in the gateway of their house. lvarez, a former school librarian, runs the caf with her stepson.

About 85 per cent of all Cubans with jobs are employed by the state, earning about 12.50 per month in exchange for free access to services like health and education, and a ration of subsidised goods.

Fidel Castro grudgingly allowed the private sector to take root in the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union brought the Cuban economy to its knees. Over the years, however, the government stopped issuing new licences and suffocated many businesses with taxes and prohibitions.

This time Ral Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel in 2006, says things have changed. In a speech to the National Assembly in December, he urged members of the government and the Communist Party to help the private sector, not "demonise" it. It is essential that we change the negative feelings that no small number of us harbour toward this kind of private labour," he said.

Many remain sceptical. Juan Carlos Montes ran a private restaurant on the patio of his Havana home for five years but became worn down by nit-picking inspectors and closed it in 2000. Now he is reluctant to try again.

"When someone who has made the same argument for more than 40 years suddenly changes their tune, you have to have a lot of faith to believe them," he said.

His wife, Yodania Snchez, has been trying to change his mind. She has a licence to rent two rooms in their higgledy-piggledy house and pays about 150 in taxes every month, whether the rooms are occupied or not.

"The changes are really positive; there are new opportunities," she said as she cleaned their tiny kitchen. "People want Cuba to become Switzerland overnight, and that's not possible."

But Montes swears he will not open a new restaurant until there is a wholesale market. "People can't get what they need to run a business," he said. "The carpenter has no wood. The electrician has no cable. The plumber has no pipes. Right now, there is no flour in the shops. So what are all the pizzerias doing? They have to buy stuff that is stolen from bakeries."

The government says it will set up a wholesale market - though it might take years - and this year will import 80 million worth of goods and equipment for the private sector. For now, carpenters like Pedro Jos Chvez are allowed only to do repairs, rather than make things, because there is no legal market for wood. His workshop, perched on a roof top in the Vedado area of Havana, is filled with crude machines made of salvaged parts because proper tools are too expensive.

"It's absurd that they will give you a licence to work but they won't give you access to materials," Chvez said. "Cuba is falling apart," he added, gesturing to the crumbling buildings nearby. "We could help rebuild it."