Cuba: The Big Change

The joke on everyone’s lips was that Obama should stay in Havana for a month, because in preparation for his three-day visit more had been done to fix up the place than in the previous half-century. In fact, the visit is happening because enormous change has already taken place, most of it at the urging of Raúl Castro, but there is only occasional grudging recognition of that. “Things are better,” an outspoken woman I know said, “but not enough.” There is no more of the desperate hunger that afflicted everyone in the days following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Microwaves, rice cookers, and, most significantly, cell phones can all be legally purchased, and my outspoken acquaintance can shout her objections to the way things are at the top of her voice, not sharing my concern that someone might hear. (A concern that keeps me even now from identifying almost everyone in this story. The list of Cubans punished for speaking to foreign journalists is too long, and repression of the formal opposition too active, to take any sort of freedom of expression for granted.)