Cuba's Entrepreneurs Come Creeping Back

JANUARY 26, 2004
Business Week
By David E. Gumpert

In Fidel Castro's topsy-turvy workers' paradise, hard-currency tips mean that street performers and self-employed chefs live better than surgeons

If you're worried that your business might fail and you'll wind up as a bellhop, hotel maid, or street musician, I have some glass-is-half-full news for you. Such nightmare scenarios may not be as bad as you imagine, especially if the U.S. ever reestablishes relations with Cuba. At that point, you'll always have "the Cuban option" for beginning life anew.

... I learned about Cuba's unusual approach to entrepreneurship during a recent five-day tour of Havana and environs. I was there as the closest thing to a tourist American law will allow -- I went with a group from my synagogue under a special "license" issued by the Treasury Dept., to visit and support Cuba's Jewish community. But, of course, I played tourist as well, and could only marvel at the revised economic order Fidel Castro has created.

... Today, tourism accounts for about 60% of the country's "exports." In the process, though, Cuba's supposedly classless society now consists of two classes: the destitute class, including many professionals, who rely on Cuba's nearly worthless pesos, and the entrepreneurial class, which works in Cuba's tourist industry, earning the dollars that make the wheels go round. The most enterprising Cubans find a way to work with tourists, and acquire dollars via tips. Bellhops, waiters, hotel maids, tourist guides, and street musicians earn anywhere from $150 to $1,500 a month from tourists, astronomical sums in a country where the typical salary is $20.

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http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2004/sb20040126_8082.htm

and denying them the opportunity to make a buck hence the trade embargo and travel ban.

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!