Word: malecon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Wednesday on the Malecon, where Havana meets the swelling breast of its bay. The Malecon is Cuba's promenade, its boardwalk, its Champs Elysees. Across the Straits of Florida in Miami, kingdom of dollars, citadel of wealth unimaginable, the exiles have a favorite T shirt: it portrays the Malecon after Castro's fall as an endless vista of shiny, neon-lighted fast-food joints. The crumbling, once graceful seafront is still a long way from that plastic vision. Potuombo gestures at the crowd in his cafe, who are placidly consuming not Whoppers or Big Macs but the tepid brown soda...
...laughing matter, however. In the past two weeks, three ferries have been hijacked by refugees trying to flee Cuba. And when crowds started gathering on Havana's Malecon seafront drive last Friday to see if hijackers would commandeer yet another boat, the police moved in, sparking a rock- throwing melee and the worst anti-government demonstrations since Fidel Castro came to power...
...government, desperate to limit the daily 12- hour blackouts of summer, spent some of its precious cash on cheap, dirty oil to fire the electric plants. But nights are still dark and silent; only the light from the tourist hotels casts a faint glow over the ocean-front Malecon. Havana is a ghost of itself, its once vibrant life leached out by hard times...
...revolution," and he has promised to debate change at the upcoming October party congress, although a multiparty system and a market economy are banned from discussion. The Union of Young Communists, with half a million members, has laid on entertainment for the young, giving pop concerts on the Malecon seaside drive. Twenty-four new government discos are promised around Havana...
...Castillito complex along the Malecon, for instance, boasts two restaurants, a video room with Sony TVs, a roller-skating rink, a disco with an Italian-designed light system and a pool with cavorting men and women. The entry fee to the government-operated club is only 1 peso (6 cents), a steal compared with the admission price at the Havana Club. Around Havana the youthful influence has spiced up revolutionary slogans, which are now splashed in neon colors on the walls. Sumate! (Get involved!) says...