As more money comes in, Cuban society could diverge even more sharply between those with access to foreign currency and those without. The income gap is partly camouflaged in Havana, where youngsters in hip-hop fashions and sculpted hairstyles mix easily with office girls in short skirts. But leave the cities, and the disparities are clear.
I explored Pinar del Río, the countryside west of Havana, partly in a 1954 Chevy Bel Air with a Mercedes diesel engine. (All the old cars are hollowed out and kept running with replacement parts.) Streams and mountains have carved the lush green folds of the province. It is picturesque, verdant, rural – and poor.
Houses set beside bean fields are grim concrete blocks, with tin or thatched roofs. The ragged roads are filled with goats, horse carts, bicycles, and smoky motorbikes. Public transportation often means a large horse-drawn wagon. To get to a city, people walk to the highway and wave a few pesos at passing motorists.
Periodically in the distance loom large, abandoned buildings. These were boarding schools, the hulking skeletons of a failed experiment to wrench high-schoolers from their families in the cities and send them to the countryside to learn and work.
The fieldwork was hard, conditions harsh, and the isolation nearly complete. The experiment was abandoned in 2009.
Even in the countryside, anyplace with an attraction is hoping to cash in on the expected crush of tourists. Viñales, a farm town located near a national park and vast underground caves, has opened its doors – literally. In a town with only one main street, there are 732 casas particulares – rooms in private homes that now can be rented to guests under Cuba’s relaxed rules on capitalism.
“People are getting to know us. We are starting to get busy,” says Andres Caro, a retired police captain who supplements his $20-a-month pension with $40-a-night rentals of the small room he has constructed behind his house. It is painted pink, the inexplicable color of choice for the rental rooms. “It’s very quiet, very nice here,” he says. “In July, I had 12 rentals for two or three nights each.”
The townspeople are willing to sacrifice some of their peace for the income. On many summer evenings, the town plaza in Viñales is taken over by touring students who jell into a makeshift raucous party fueled by ear-piercing amplified music.
“This is great!” a young Frenchman yells over the electronic howl amid a gaggle of students.
“It usually ends by 2 a.m.,” shrugs Ernesto, who had rented me the (pink) room off his small living room, where I retreated.