CAN a rice maker possibly be revolutionary? There they were, piled up one atop another: Chinese-made rice makers selling for $70 each. Beside them, sleek DVD players. Across the well-stocked electronics store were computers and televisions and other household appliances that President Raul Castro recently decreed ought to be made available to everyday Cubans, or at least those who could afford them. Since finally succeeding his ailing 81-year-old brother Fidel in February, Castro, 76, who appeared before hundreds of thousands of Cubans at a May Day rally on Thursday in the capital, has been busy with a flurry of changes. In the last eight weeks, he has also opened access to cellphones, lifted the ban on Cubans using tourist hotels, and granted farmers the right to mange unused land for profit. More is on the horizon, government officials say, like easing restrictions to go abroad and the possibility of allowing Cubans to buy and sell their own cars, and perhaps even their homes. Each of these changes may be microscopic in contrast to the outsized problems facing Cuba. But taken together, they are shaking up this stoic, time-warped place. Just how far Castro will be willing to tinker with the country his brother left him and what, if anything, he is using as his playbook nobody knows for sure. Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to reinvigorate the ailing Soviet system led to its collapse and Cuba's abandonment. More inspiring is the mix of consumerism and pragmatic authoritarian politics that sparked growth and reinforced Communist Party rule in China and Vietnam. China is now Cuba's second-largest trading partner, and Vietnam is one of the first countries that Castro has said he will visit, although no date has been set. Leaders from both countries visited over the last year and had exclusive sessions with both Castro brothers. Cuba analysts say that Raul Castro, as the longtime defense minister, maintained close ties to both countries' militaries and has close aides who know the countries well. “This is the Asia model,” asserted Robert Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University. “Still, the signals he has sent are so faint and so tentative that it's not at all clear where he wants to take Cuba or where Cuba will go.” Marifeli Perez-Stable, vice president for democratic governance at the policy analysis group Inter-American Dialogue said: “He's never going to say. I'm not sure he even knows it. But he is following China, and even more so Vietnam,” meaning that Castro was hewing to a more go-slow approach. As in those countries, economic freedom is one thing, and political liberty something else. On the latter, Cuba's government has given every sign that it is intent on holding the line. Castro's early tinkering has already laid bare an uncomfortable, and potentially destabilizing, reality in a country that for 50 years has been run as one of the world's most rigid socialist systems: that some Cubans are far better off than others, whether because of remittances from relatives abroad, ties to the ruling class or unauthorized money-making ventures on the side. For now, his government seems willing to accept those disparities, tolerating the notion of class differences while continuing to cling to a Cuban vision of socialism that includes food subsidies, free education and health care for all, Castro's backers in the government say. Whether that approach will satisfy Cubans, who are quickly becoming more aware of their relative consumer deprivation, is another question. A rice maker alone costs more than three times the average monthly state salary here. Conversations on the street, away from the lines of people buying what is newly available to them, reveal discontent. Castro's model, what the state-run newspaper has called “more perfect socialism,” appears to be a Cuba with a greater correlation between the work one puts in and the resulting reward. One of Castro's most far-reaching moves may be his announcement giving farmers the right to manage unused land for profit. Cuba spent $1.4 billion importing food last year and, as a result of rising food prices, will spend $1.9 billion this year to get 20 percent less food, which officials call an untenable situation. Scrapping the long-standing practice of dictating planting decisions from Havana, the government will allow more local control, officials say, and hopefully homegrown food. But what about non-farmers? Would Castro be willing to expand on his older brother's experiment allowing some private restaurants and rooming houses to operate? What about permitting private auto mechanics, hairdressers and tutors, all of whom exist in today's Cuba but on the sly? Washington has dismissed the measures as falling far short of the kind of needed structural changes. “I see it as somewhat sad that after 49 years of shortages and suffering and repression people are now allowed to buy a rice cooker,” said Carlos Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, whose family fled Havana in 1960 when he was 6. “Our read is that these are tactical moves designed to buy some time.” When it comes to truly loosening the political elite's grip on power, in fact, Castro has not ceded much ground. He has encouraged everyday Cubans to come forward with their critiques of the way things are functioning, although he insists that the proper way to do so is through Community Party channels. When a group of women whose relatives had been jailed held a demonstration outside Castro's office recently, a team of stern-faced female officers showed up to haul the so-called ladies in white away. “When difficulties are greater, more order and discipline will be required,” Castro told party leaders recently, announcing that he would convene the first party congress in a dozen years in the last half of 2009. “For that, it is vital to strengthen institutions.” – The New York Times __
