Word: havana
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...road outside Havana, where weeds grow through the train tracks, and the crumbling buildings, colors fading into a decorator's dream, alternate with wild trees and shrubs in the most gorgeous, postapocalyptic way, is where it first happened, when we first got an idea of how it all worked...
...have a few hours to lose. But until then there are cars, and occasionally the back of a bicycle, and the hope that someone will stop. So the man in our car tells us where we're going, and then we're off, eastbound, through the outer parts of Havana, along the train tracks, more and more green, past the heartbreaking roadside propaganda, 10 miles, 15 miles out of the city's center...
...night. (Best yet, the help is obsequious and a 50[cent] tip would do just fine!) After being turned away at the daunting gates of the massive Club Med, we drop our luggage next door and set out to the area's most fiery hot spot, the Cafe Havana, a huge disco/Hard Rock-style fun provider. The place is overflowing with tourists from around the world, come to see how the Cubans entertain...
...poverty, Cubans are eager to buy from the U.S. To the extent Castro allows, they are trying out capitalism, creating new private businesses, from boarding houses to pizza-delivery services, primed by the annual $800 million that family members in the U.S. send them. Many even draw dollars from Havana ATM machines, via accounts set up by U.S. relatives in Canada and Europe. But for Cubans, entrepreneurship is fraught with migraines, from exorbitant government licenses and taxes to graft. And for those who have no access to dollars, despair--and resentment--is rising. At the same time, Cubans are worried...
...financial structures will change," insists Peter Nathan, a Connecticut businessman who is taking a medical-products exhibition to Cuba in January--the first U.S. trade show there since Castro's 1959 revolution. Health care, though advanced in Cuba, suffers severe shortages. At Havana's William Soler Pediatric Hospital, the German and Japanese equipment is obsolete. "It seems medically unethical," says director Dr. Diana Martinez, "not to let Cuba buy this equipment more cheaply from...