How capitalists in communist Cuba are an economic lifeline

Cuban's communist revolution targeted private businesses, making them largely illegal. Today, they proliferate, while the socialist economy collapses.

A modern grocery store with shelves stocked with everything from pasta to wine takes up one location in central Havana once occupied by a drab state-owned flower shop, whose ceilings and walls have been repaired and repainted.

An old business State Glass Factory in suburban Havana now houses a showroom for a private company selling Cuban products. -manufactured furniture.

And at the port of the Cuban capital, forklifts carefully unload American eggs from a refrigerated container. The eggs are destined for a private online supermarket which, like Amazon Fresh, offers home delivery.

These companies are part of an explosion of thousands of private companies that opened their doors. In recent years in Cuba, a remarkable change has taken place in a country where such businesses were not permitted and Fidel Castro rose to power at the head of a communist revolution determined to eliminate capitalist notions such as private property.

But today, Cuba faces its worst financial crisis in decades, brought on by government inefficiency and mismanagement and an embargo decades-long U.S. economy that led to a collapse in domestic production, rising inflation, constant power outages and fuel shortages. , meat and other basic necessities.

So the island's communist leaders are going back in time and welcoming private entrepreneurs, a class of people who They used to call them “dirty” capitalists.

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