Cuba: A touching beauty-[Excerpt] "The old men are too frail to schlep luggage at hotels. And the old women can't seductively sidle up to foreign men and whisper enticements in their ears -- something you can see on any busy street, any day or night, in Old Havana… Other old people pick up a few dollars by begging around Havana's exquisitely restored historic buildings, like those on the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza Viejo.…Beggars aside, a tourist runs into examples of the corrupting power of dollars literally every day and in unexpected places. ……….. Education and health care typically combine to lower birth rates all over the world, but those achievements weren't what struck me most. It was how peaceable everyone was together. [End Excerpt]
Capitalism's on the sly in Cuba--[Excerpt] By way of explanation for his illicit trade, he holds up his right hand and says, "Look at this." His thumb and two adjacent fingers are missing. Six years ago, Miguel caught his wrist in the bakery mixer, badly mangling it. A month later, his fingers were amputated because he could not afford the three pills needed daily to induce circulation. They cost $1 apiece, and, at the time, he was paid in bread -- six loaves a day. [End Excerpt]