Two decades later, Raul Castro has once again pulled out from the rabbit's hat "self-employment" as the remedy to deal with the country's acute economic crisis. Fidel Castro walks by his side as a traveling partner, forgetting the curses he bestowed against those he'd previously called "bandits" and "speculators." The "Political, Economic and Social Guidelines for the for the Party and the Revolution" [being discussed at this weekend's VI Communist Party Congress] are simply using a new side of the old sock of the revolution, another "betrayal" against the egalitarian postulates of state capitalism that Fidel Castro imposed on the Cuban people.
Once again, artisans and craftsmen are the weapon to prevent the revolution from sinking. Before there were 157 occupations authorized, now there are 178. Thousands of Cubans have solicited licenses to perform the most colorful of tasks. The revolution that once prided itself in providing a university education to all Cubans, now offers them the opportunity of a better life as a shoe repairman. The average salary of a doctor or engineer is less than $12 a month, while a barber can make five-times that much and even hire employees, which are euphemistically referred to as "hired laborers solicited by self-employed laborers to labor with them."
