Exile Stories
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The Economist explains
Why Cubans are still fleeing to America May 2015
A CURIOUS asymmetry exists across the 90-mile Straits of Florida that divide Cuba from the United States. This month American businessmen won permission from their government to start plush new ferry services to Cuba for the first time since the United States trade embargo was imposed in 1960. Moving in the other direction are thousands of impoverished Cubans in makeshift boats and rafts, risking their lives to flee the communist island despite a five-month-old thaw in relations with America that both governments hope will bring more prosperity to Cuba. In the first quarter of the year the number of Cuban migrants arriving in America more than doubled, and 2,460 have been apprehended at sea since October. Why this gap between rhetoric and reality? read more |
"There is an expression here, “resolvemos,” which translates roughly to, “we’ll figure it out.” It’s a national mantra, used in every household to describe overcoming challenges. People will say, “I resolved eggs today,” meaning they were able to find eggs. You learn to make do and you realize you need less than you think."
by Lexi Mainland
Until 2012 Cubans could own their homes but not sell them.
Houses could be passed down to family or they could be permutadas - traded. The trade - la permuta- still is commonplace in Cuba. In 2012 a new law approved the sale and buying of properties between residents in Cuba. Vender - sell Permutar - trade Now real estate agents have emerged as one of the categories of legalized private businesses approved in 2013. Yet mortgage financing is not available in Cuba. Espacio Cuba |
At the heart of Cuba’s growing racial inequalities lie a complicated set of historical and contemporary factors, including the devastating effects of the Special Period. Since then, state salaries and benefits no longer suffice to make ends meet, and people need to obtain hard currency or the convertible Cuban peso (CUC) to do so. Because legal access to hard currency/CUC is limited to Cuba’s tourist industry, foreign companies, the growing but still small, private entrepreneurial sector, and/or family remittances from abroad, many Cubans are forced to supplement their state wages by participating in the informal and often illegal economy. Moreover, the lucrative hard currency/CUC sectors are all highly correlated with race."
by Katrin Hansing, Cuba Counterpoint Oct 2015 read more