Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even as many other Communist countries are experimenting with economic reforms of one kind or another, Cuba has chosen to move in precisely the opposite direction. Within the past year Fidel Castro has pulled the plug on the country's once-thriving system of free-market farmers' stands and a program that allowed Cubans to build, buy and sell private homes on the open market, two of the touches of capitalism that he has permitted to take root in 28 years of rule. TIME Correspondent Laura Lopez visited Cuba with an American delegation from Indianapolis, host city for this year...
...nearby stand offered a dollar bill to the vendor, a wizened and near blind old man. He eagerly accepted it and carefully counted the change in Cuban centavos. Moments later, a policeman, obviously summoned by the crowd, was glaring sternly at the vendor. Dollar transactions are not allowed in Cuba, an onlooker explained. The old man ruefully handed the greenback to the visitor...
...homes. But in an effort to end the speculation that had begun creeping into the market, homeowners are now allowed to sell only to the government -- at its price. "The glories of the revolution are not based on money," Castro told the Third Party Congress in February 1986. Cuba's new slogan, Castro said, would be "Now we are going to build socialism...
Cynics were quick to ask what the country has been doing since he first made that vow at the outset of the Cuban revolution. Indeed, many of the problems facing Cuba have a distinctly familiar ring. World prices are sorely depressed for its two leading hard-currency earners, oil from the Soviet Union, which it exports on the spot market, and sugar. Moreover, bad weather has damaged the sugar crop; in recent years Cuba has been forced to buy shipments from other countries to meet its sugar-export quotas to the Soviet bloc. The resultant drop in foreign earnings...
...would not be where we are in 1987. Instead of taking prompt, intelligent action as soon as the dictator discredited himself, our leadership putzed. Now only two unpleasant alternatives remain. The situation is an echo of what happened in Iran, In Cambodia and in Cuba...