While communist diehards in impoverished Havana continue to toast to Fidel Castro's supposed recovery, the rise of insecurity and competitive individualism continues to spread across Cuba. The world, meanwhile, continues its guesswork in regards to the health of the longest serving leader in history, though the true state of affairs remains unknown to most. Trapped in between the West and the communist dictatorship, desperate for personal freedom and dignity, are the Cuban people.
As Cuba faces the ongoing U.S. embargo and tough E.U. economic policies, a young entrepreneur from Europe has used the deadlock to his and his Cuban family's advantage.
"A majority of Cubans have no higher education. Why bother in a country where a waiter earns many times the salary of a doctor?" the man who prefers to remain anonymous said one night after we finished our dinner. Most Cubans have also never left the country, he says. This has left many segments of society ignorant of their situation compared to that of their contemporaries in other countries.
"For example, to bribe customs in my country you have to pay at least €2,000 ($2,755). Here, 30 CUC ($32) is sufficient," he said, suggesting Cuban customs officials could do much better for themselves if only they knew of going international bribe rates.
But lack of access to outside information is only one of the many problems Cubans face. A more pressing one is being able to put food on the table. And to do this people go to some lengths. One of the quickest and surest ways to make money is selling fake cigars to tourists.
The money that can be made from selling the fake cigars, however, is petty cash compared to what can be made selling real ones. Those who can afford to pay factory workers on the side, bribe customs, and know how to finally sell the real cigars without violating eBay laws stand to make a profit many times larger.
"Cigars are my main business. A friend of mine, who used to work in the government's cigar factory, pays current employees a small fee to pass him the products, which he then prepares at home as he would in the factory," the entrepreneur explained to me as we entered a house in Municipio Playa, Havana, where his next order was being prepared. "The difference is that he earns $60 per box, rather than the five CUC ($5) a month he would otherwise earn. I then sell it on. My list of clients includes some top-corporate names in Europe," he added.
"I combine this with tailor-made holidays over the internet. Between cooking, chauffeur service, guiding and prostitutes, [I have] had eight Cubans earning more than their monthly salary on any one given day," he said.
"I like to see myself as somewhat of a Robin Hood. I help my family and friends in Cuba, at the same time as it allows me to lead a comfortable lifestyle," he said as we sat down in the four-star hotel lobby to wait for his new set of customers who had flown in from Naples the night before. They wanted to have a look at the prostitutes waiting for them by the pool outside.
But the girls were later sent away for not being good-looking enough. The man who had brought the women there was the young entrepreneur's nephew, the group's driver for the week.
"You have to be corrupt to work your way around a corrupt system," said Miguel (alias), the former factory employee friend of "Robin Hood," as we went to collect his monthly ration of rice, cooking oil, and toothpaste.
"People seem to think of Havana as the wealthy tourist playground it was during the Batista regime," he said referring to the 1950s era that preceded Castro. "But look closely and the reality is quite different, or maybe it is just the same...," he said after we walked into the local meat market, the temperature inside 110 degrees.
"Would you serve your child meat like that?" he asked me, as he pointed at a pile of rotting meat with flies all over it, the smell poignant. Yet outside the market along a road of decrepit houses with shuttered windows, old and poor continued to line up to sell what little they had, hoping to be able to afford at least a piece of the meat.
"This is why I do what I do," Miguel said. "I'd rather it is me, than my mother begging in front of the tourists, on the streets of Havana Vieja."
Late that night Miguel's mother explained her position. "Because I myself am an anti-socialist, I cannot tell my sons to work for the government. But what young people here tend to forget is that in their rush to get ahead, people here will marry their worst enemy," she said. "You cannot trust anyone and it is when the tourists have left that the police come knocking on your door. That is how I lost my father."
In a televised interview with the BBC, Castro's estranged daughter said, "I think my father deeply despises the Cubans, because he has done nothing but ruin the country and use the people."
But maybe Castro is not the only one who is guilty. For 48 years a regime-change has never seemed so imminent, yet the prospect has only lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one.
"It is clear that change must come from within if we are to re-gain our dignity," said opposition leader Oswaldo Paya, from his home in Cerro, Havana.
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