Word: fidelity
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...situation was desperate, it put out a call for advice. One plan proposed some 40 or 50 steps the government needed to take incrementally, beginning with putting food on the table. Then it moved on to reforms of various kinds and, finally, far down the list, to legalizing dollars. Fidel pointed to the dollar measure and said, We will start here...
...consensus says Castro is being forced to legitimize what the Cuban people are doing illicitly. "I think people push, and he eventually accedes," says a Western diplomat. "I don't see any fundamental decision by Fidel to change his ways of thinking." A foreign businessman exploring joint ventures is certain that Castro is simply showing the pragmatism of a smart politician: "He's not doing any of this because he likes it but because he will do whatever he has to do to survive...
They want reform, but they don't know what kind. Bright young technocrats eagerly describe a world where capitalist energy will coexist with communist caretaking. An older woman involved in joint ventures insists that Fidel's system needs only modest tinkering. A grizzled mine worker warns against any changes that bring back inequality. Reporters are invited into the country, but top officials decline interviews: they no longer seem to know what the party line is. "There is a new incoherence," says a Western diplomat in Havana. "It's not pluralism, but different people have different ideas about where the country...
...reluctantly -- Cubans are determined to change in their own way. No matter where you go on the island, what stratum of society you probe, you hear the same mantra: the achievements of the revolution. What they call the revolution is not communism, not socialist ideology, not even veneration for Fidel. "The achievements of the revolution" is code for cradle-to-grave health care, free and universal education, and generous social-security payments. Castro brought these benefits to millions who had almost nothing before the revolution, and after 34 years they are fiercely proud of the guarantees -- so rare in Latin...
...dollars for food they cannot find elsewhere. If his neighbors snitch, the government will confiscate everything. Wearing a white polo shirt, gold Seiko watch and Italian shoes, Octavio shrugs at the danger. "I will do what I must for my family," he says, "no matter what Fidel ((he makes the beard gesture with his fingers)) says...