Julio, an entrepreneur in Trinidad – a touristy, colonial-era city 335 kilometres east of Havana – told me a few years ago: ‘It’s making me nervous – the government hasn’t made any changes for a while.’ Cubans have seen some momentous ones over the past 10 years, but the familiar pattern is of a long-awaited lurch forward followed by a crunch into reverse.
All economic-policy decisions take place against the dark backdrop of the 60-year-old US trade embargo, whose effect on the general population has, at times, been severe. The horizon blackened almost completely in the 1990s, as US politicians sought to capitalize on the catastrophic loss of trade and financial assistance that the collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated. During that desperate decade, known in Cuba as the Special Period, the government was forced into Chinese-style reforms. This set in motion a cautious course of economic liberalization which Cuba has stuttered along ever since.
