Elian's Cuba

At the Marcelo Salado primary school in Cárdenas, Cuba, the teacher addresses herself each morning to an empty seat. "Elián González," says Yamilín Morales Delgado during the roll call of her first-grade class. And as he has for the last four months, the boy who shares Elián's desk answers, "Presente." In its new coat of paint, the school has become a shrine to the 6-year-old who isn't here. Like their peers around the country, students wear Elián T shirts with their uniform red pants or skirts, and every morning the principal relays the latest news about their missing classmate. A photograph of Elián adorns one wall.

The tributes evoke a stable island order under attack from without. But they also bear the contradictory signs of a different Cuba, one reshaping itself uncomfortably from within. In the photograph, the uniformed Elián sports a pair of Nike sneakers, a status symbol that can be bought in Cuba, but only with American dollars. Beneath the dueling ideological stereotypes generated in Miami and Havana, modern Cuba is as complicated as the future of its missing son.

If Elián returns to Cuba, what kind of life awaits him? He will certainly be a national hero, favored by the propaganda machinery of the Communist Party. Yet he will also face the same challenges as any 6-year-old living under a regime that, as the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations recently reported, "has lost the struggle for the hearts and minds of Cuba's youth, few of whom long for a future under Cuban-style socialism." As the rhetorical battles raged on American and Cuban shores last week, government-run Cuban television aired a stark tale of two cities: first an American school awash in carnage, followed by an idyllic sweep of happy students at Marcelo Salado--where would you think Elián belonged? Touting the nation's safer streets, tighter communities and a higher literacy rate than Miami, Cuban TV broadcast only dour footage of Elián in Florida. To see the boy smile, Cubans had to use illegal satellite dishes or homemade antennas to tune in to American news broadcasts.

In some ways, young Elián might expect a nurturing life in Cuba, sheltered from the crime and social breakdown that would be part of his upbringing in Miami. Because Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, works as a cashier in a tourist resort, the family already belonged to the nation's well- off stratum, who has access to American dollars. The boy's relatives in Miami can offer further support: Cuba now even has ATMs that dispense dollars from foreign banks. The education and health-care systems, both built since the revolution, are among the best in the Americas, despite chronic shortages of supplies. Yet Elián's prospects would be limited. Cuban doctors barely earn a living wage. Among many of the nation's youth, the greatest scarcity is hope.

On the streets of Cárdenas last week, a harder portrait of daily life emerged. This city of 75,000, about two hours east of Havana, shows scant signs of the nation's sluggish economic recovery. Horse-drawn carts trundle along beside ancient Detroit sedans and slightly less vintage Soviet Ladas. "Life is very difficult," the grandfather of one of Elián's schoolmates told NEWSWEEK, insisting on anonymity. "There is not enough milk, there are not enough clothes, there's not enough rice. It's very difficult for children every day." Paper and pens are scarce; toilet paper is nearly nonexistent. Few Cubans have access to personal computers, let alone the Internet, which is heavily restricted. Salaries in Cuba, set by the government, average about $8 per month; the top professions pay about $30 a month. The government provides ration books for eggs, rice, sugar, coffee, beans and cooking oil, so families don't starve--they just have to stretch nine eggs and some rice and beans into food for a month.

This scarcity, though, is only one side of the Cuban economy. On a recent afternoon, in her Cárdenas home, Amarylis Durán, 45, offers a glimpse of the other side, the world of the dollar. Amarylis's daughter and son-in-law work in the nearby resort town of Varadero, where, like Juan Miguel González, they can cull tips or other income in U.S. currency. The Cuban government, which once resisted foreign tourism, is hoping to draw 2 million visitors this year. The Durán home, while modest, shows the fruits of this foreign trade: a new bathroom stall, a television, brand-new bicycles. Elsewhere in town, the signs are even more visible. Like their counterparts all over the world, Cuban teens bob to the latest beats of 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys, posing in the baggy pants of Tommy Hilfiger or Calvin Klein, bought dearly in the dollar stores or brought by relatives visiting from Miami. Amid all the agitprop for Elián, a prominent bit of graffiti in Havana is a giant Nike swoosh.

One Cuban nickname for the dollar is fula, after the gunpowder used in Santería ceremonies, and its impact has been duly explosive. People with dollars--either from the tourist trade, the black market or remisas sent from friends or relatives in the United States, which are now estimated at $800 million annually--can buy consumer goods in government-run dollar stores; citizens with Cuban pesos cannot. The currency has upset the social order. Teachers leave schools to earn more money catering to tourists; prostitution has flourished. The dollar has value; it also has values: American music, fashion and conspicuous materialism have proliferated along with the currency, to the alarm of the Cuban government."We used to live in a glass bowl, sanitary and pure," Castro said in 1998. "And now we're surrounded by viruses, the bacteria of alienation and egoism that the capitalist system creates."

Ironically, it was Fidel himself who began the process. During and after the revolution of 1959, much of Cuba's upper and middle classes fled the country, taking their wealth and skills with them. Castro's government survived largely through the patronage of Moscow. When the Soviet Union started to crumble in 1989, the blow to Cuba's economy was devastating. The gross domestic product plunged 35 percent in four years. Stores that once offered meager goods now went nearly empty. In desperation, Castro legalized use of the U.S. dollar (even though all Cuban jobs still pay in pesos) and allowed a limited market economy. The country has since enjoyed a modest recovery. Agricultural markets have chicken and produce in stock, available for pesos; dollar stores offer "luxury" items like butter, sweets and canned ham. Havana's harbor boasts a new terminal for cruise ships, and new hotels are rising from old rubble.

Yet civic life often becomes surreal. "Here everything is illegal, but everything is done," says a 32-year-old artist. A diplomat sneaks "subversive materials" to dissidents: reams of blank copying paper. A doctor and his girlfriend earn more money selling flowers illegally in two days than they do in a month at their government jobs. The same couple recently spent an entire two-week vacation inside his house because "there was nothing else to do." They mostly smoked pot and had sex, trying to forget about life. (For many Cubans sex is the only form of entertainment, since most others must be paid for in dollars.) "What we are witnessing is like a novel by Kafka illustrated by Salvador Dali," said one former high government official. "It's absolutely absurd."

The economic liberalization has not translated into greater social freedoms. Many Cubans still won't say Castro's name aloud, for fear of drawing government suspicion; instead, they stroke imaginary beards on their chins. Though Castro eased the ban on religion, "there is still no freedom of speech or assembly, and no labor rights," says Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch. The country's four most prominent dissidents are now serving prison terms for critiquing a Communist Party document; dissidents can be jailed for 20 years for nonviolent offenses like passing out DOWN WITH FIDEL pamphlets. Once the economy began to improve, Castro also drove tougher bargains with potential foreign investors, limiting the good that foreign money could do for the country. While politicians in Washington debate lifting the trade embargo, Castro has rejected or driven off some economic partners, serving to slow the nation's recovery even more.

To everyday Cubans, their aging leader is a constant presence, but a spectral one. At 73, he has been in power for 40 years, longer than any other world leader. Yet there is little cult of personality around the nation's El Jefe Máximo. Political posters, statues and street names instead celebrate revolutionary heroes like Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara. For security reasons--Castro claims to have been the target of 600 assassination plots--his Havana address and daily movements are a state secret, a bureaucratic invitation to speculation and rumor. Whenever he is off the public stage for an extended period, rumors circulate that he is dead or dying, often broadcast by offshore radio stations hostile to Castro. His aura derives in part from his bold defiance of the enemy up north, and the war of words over Elián only raises his revolutionary profile. Castro's "political base is anti-American," says one government official in Havana. "If he loses that, what's he left with? Nothing. Just a broken system whose few achievements are deteriorating more every year." Though he appears to be strong, Havana twitches with anxiety about his eventual passing. His likely successor, his younger brother Raul, lacks Fidel's charisma and authority. Many fear that his death will leave a vacuum, sparking a battle between hard-liners and reformers for control of the country.

The custody battle has rallied Cuba's youth in nationalist solidarity, at least for now. But the hearts and minds of Elián's generation may still prove elusive, lost not to ideology but to the shimmery lure of music videos and consumer goods. Last year a million Cubans sought exit visas, largely to the United States. At a recent concert featuring American and Cuban musicians, a Cuban university professor confided, the government's overarching appeal to "anti-Americanism is completely fabricated. The great paradox is that this country loves the U.S. more than any other. And the government has made it even more attractive by turning it into the forbidden fruit."

This is the bifurcated world to which Elián may soon return, in the fading years of its remarkable dictator. The boy will nestle again in a more peaceable society that treasures its children. But his life will oscillate to the contrary rhythms of this central Cuban paradox. As a shining symbol of the communist state, he will have access to the corrupting fruits of the new economy. He'll enjoy the best Cuba has to offer the things only dollars can buy. In short, his will be a version of the American dream, filtered through a glass, starkly.