South Bronx to South Bay
Cuba libre Forget Costa Rica. Forget the Bahamas. Forget Mexico for sure. It’s Cuba we’re all longing to see. The land of Cugat and Arnaz, of Hemingway and the Buena Vista Social Club, of vintage cars and rollicking bars. Not to mention baseball. Fidel’s little admission recently made to a reporter from Atlantic magazine — and then quickly retracted — that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore” was soon followed by his brother Raúl’s announcement that a whopping half a million people on the government payroll would be dismissed by next March, leaving them to find or create their own jobs in a loosened-up private sector. Equally whopping was his estimate that there are yet another half-million state employees who do virtually nothing and will also be released in time. “We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world where you can live without working,” President Raúl Castro wryly noted. Talk about transparency. Such admissions, and such concrete proposals with hard numbers and even a fixed date, you seldom get from any leader, much less any “dictator.” Something’s happening on that island, and this is just the beginning. Details of the…
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