ABSTRACT
The shortage of gasoline has forced most Cubans to walk or take a bicycle to work; private transportation has been hard hit, and even the number of bus rides per day in the city of Havana has fallen by about two-thirds of its level in the late 1980s. Cuba still has very fine medical doctors, nurses, and other health care personnel. They can still fill out prescriptions, but it has become much harder to find the drugs that are medically prescribed. Cuban capitalism has been re-born in crime, and it has permitted the survival of the very government that remains pledged to suppress it— though it no longer dares to attempt such suppression. Cuba combine fears, incentives, exhaustion, repression, reform, resourcefulness, leadership skill, tolerated illegality, budding entrepreneurship, and the bonds of respect and affection that connect citizens to each other at a time of distress.
