CASTRO BEGINS REFORMS IN CUBA
Cubans snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time on Tuesday as Raul Castro’s new
government loosened controls on consumer goods and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land.
Combined with other reforms
announced in recent days, the measures suggest real changes are being driven by the new president, who vowed when he took over from his brother, Fidel, to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans. Analysts wondered how far the communist government is willing to go. “Cuban
people can’t survive on the
salaries people are paying them. Average men and women have been screaming that at the top of their lungs for many years,” said Felix Masud-Piloto, director of the Centre for Latino Research at DePaul University. “Now after many years, the government is listening, the Associated Press quoted him as saying.” Many of the shoppers filling stores on Tuesday lamented the fact that the goods were unaffordable on the government salaries they earned. But that didn’t stop them from lining up to see electronic gadgets previously available only to foreigners and companies. “They should have done this a
long time ago,” one man said as he left a store with a red and silver electric motorbike that cost $814. The Chinese-made bikes can be charged with an electric cord and had been barred for general sale because officials feared a strain on the power grid. On Monday, the Tourism Ministry announced that any Cuban with enough money can now stay in
luxury hotels and rent cars, doing away with restrictions that made ordinary people feel like second-class citizens. And last week, Cuba said
citizens would be able to get cell phones legally in their own names, a luxury long reserved for the lucky few.
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