Castro's daughter says Cuban ecomony 'nonexistent'
Engineers and doctors paid $10 a month. Government-run barber and shoe shops. Widespread poverty and unemployment. Communism has left the Cuban economy in shambles, about the same half a century ago as it is today, the daughter of former Cuban President Fidel Castro told a large crowd at Penn State Worthington Scranton campus in Dunmore Monday night.
"The Cuban economy is nonexistent," said Alina Fernandez, who was a toddler when her father and a band of fellow revolutionaries overthrew the government in 1959. Fernandez was invited to speak at the university, followed by a question-and-answer session with the public.
Despite recent headlines about the Cuban government laying off at least 500,000 state workers this year and encouraging some of them to take private-sector jobs, Fernandez said it is going to take a new generation of leaders to instill free-market values and a capitalistic economy.
"It's not the first time it happened," she said of the layoffs and talk of free-market reforms coming to the island nation of 11 million citizens who still receive food-rationing cards from the government.
"Cuba is a society obligated to live on a black market basis. Almost nothing has changed."
