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What bothers me about all of these little "reforms" is that whether its computers, or hotel rooms, Cubans simply cannot afford these consumer goods/services. Cubans live on the subsistence level. Unless, some relative from Miami sends money over, the average Cuban family will not be able to stay at one of those $200+-a-night hotels. And why should a family from Miami send a couple of hundred dollars to a family member in Cuba to spend a couple of nights in a hotel? The money would be sent to buy clothing, supplies for a home repair, food or something like an air conditioner.

Of course, all of these er, uh "reforms" will receive a lot of lip service from the mainstream media that will laud Raul's democratic reforms.

Yes but now all the jineteras will be able to legally go to these hotels in search of johns (are you listening, Eliot Spitzer?).

I know we are all frustrated with this, but, call me an optimist, we can always hope these little changes will snowball into a domino effect....after all the soviet union did not come down in one day.

I'm well aware that these small changes are designed to appease, but human nature dictates that the more you receive the more you desire.

Ventanita,

I like to be an optimist too, but Castro, Inc., is a singularly evil regime and they have for 50 years taken one step forward and then 2 steps back. It's this tango that they've been dancing non-stop. They will liberalize something out of sheer necessity or to get positive mainstream media PR, and then just as quickly rescind it. Remember the much lauded paladares? When they started to become successful, Castro had a hissy fit and accused the restaurateurs of becoming "millionaires" and raised the taxes and penalties so high that most of them had to close down, or how he started permitting a new line of self-employed jobs, and then outlawed them. The farmers markets are another thing. Did you know that farmers markets were permitted in the 1960s? They were then outlawed and then permitted again.
Everything goes back and forth with this regime.

know we are all frustrated with this, but, call me an optimist, we can always hope these little changes will snowball into a domino effect....after all the soviet union did not come down in one day.

I think these are cosmetic changes but little by little the domino effect will work in favor of the cuban people

They'll be trumpeting the fact that they have "changed" to the rest of the gullible world media.

See, it all depends on who does the CAMBIO.

No, it depends on how deep the changes are and for what purpose they are made. Are they being made because it's unjust to discriminate against your own citizens and treat them as inferior to foreigners? Or are they being made for propaganda purposes, meaning they are cosmetic changes made to appease those who are pressuring Cuba to change?

It's hard to trust the regime, specifically while it's being led by a castro, after 50 years of lies and propaganda.

These changes are great to the untrained eye, but in our eyes they are merely changes that will favor the communist government in the international landscape.

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