The Web Tightened, and Havana Blinked

On June 19th, Cuba's National Assembly unanimously approved 176 measures that privatize a vast swath of its socialist economy, the single largest change to the Cuban model since Fidel Castro took power in 1959. Private real estate development, joint-stock companies, private banks, foreign ownership stakes in state enterprises, fast-food chains, all of it approved in a single session by a Communist Party that spent sixty-five years treating private capital as ideological poison.