Word: octavio
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...Octavio lives better by betraying the system. We stop in front of his pristine white bungalow in the Havana suburb of Miramar. A knock on the door brings a discreet peek from behind freshly painted shutters. A voice murmurs to come around into the garden. Suddenly, we could be in Miami. American rock plays softly; red and blue lights color a trimly clipped lawn. Our host offers a hamburger, steak, perhaps a lobster? Red or white wine? A rum collins...
...runs one of Havana's new speakeasies. Home restaurants are legal, but as a university-trained engineer, Octavio is barred from private enterprise. His official job earns him 300 pesos a month, a good salary in Cuba, but that equals a mere $2.50, the cost of a pork sandwich and a bottle of Labatt's beer on his patio. "I have kids, and they need to eat. They want ice cream, things in the stores," says Octavio, "so I do this. I have to have dollars...
...chicken and beef bought at the new dollar stores. Saturday nights his tables are full of "friends of friends" who can pay 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...
...feels no remorse about cheating a government that he believes has failed him by its lies and mistakes. "First you have to guarantee food, then you guarantee health and education," says Octavio. "Their priorities are backward. They spend on sports! You can't eat sports." Yet this son of a family that was well off before the revolution is not keen about the capitalist changes. "I think it's an error to give purchasing power to the dollar," he says. "My family lost financially from the revolution, but we gained spiritually, we gained morally...
...most of the past 131 years. Revolutionary heroes severed all ties to the Vatican as punishment for Catholic support of the landed elite and European intervention. Last week Mexican and church officials finally re-established diplomatic relations. "It is the end of an archaic debate," Nobel-prizewinning poet Octavio Paz told the local press. "We have problems too immense to be wasting our time with problems that are a hangover from the last century...