BY CRISTELA GUERRA • cguerra@news-press.com • September 14, 2010
1:10 A.M. — Facial expressions and reactions in Southwest Florida varied
in response to Monday's news that Cuba will reduce restrictions on
private enterprise while laying off half a million state employees by
mid-2011.
Some locals laughed out loud.
Some furrowed their brows in confusion.
Others frowned, angry and annoyed.
And others shook their heads and shrugged indifferently.
As part of Cuba President Raul Castro's push to remake employment on the
communist-run island, the government would increase private-sector job
opportunities to soften the blow of state layoffs.
That means more Cubans could become self-employed, forming cooperatives
run by employees rather than by state administrators.
The American Red Cross
Monday night at Azucar Restaurant & Bakery in Cape Coral, Adolfo and
Maritsa Cartaya tended to customers in the business they've owned since
2006.
"It's a very sad situation," Maritsa Cartaya said, shaking her head.
Cartaya is originally from Puerto Rico, but her husband is Cuban, and
she talks about the island as if it were her homeland.
"They (the government) never provided for their people," she said. "Now
they're going to finish them off."
Pipo Martinez, 50, a mechanic whose mother and other family members
still live in Cuba, is hopeful progress will rise from the ashes.
"If private business gets to the island, it's going to need day laborers
to do the work," Martinez said in Spanish as he left the restaurant and
bakery. "So right now, they have to drop the ax, but later on it will be
for the better."
Over at Mambo's Restaurant in the Cape, the outlook was grim, but the
mood light.
"I don't get it," said a laughing Andy Chiappy, 42, a Cuban-American
whose parents came to the U.S. in the 1960s. "Everything there is a
government entity. Who are they laying off and where's the private sector?"
Meanwhile, Cuban native Gonzalo Martinez, 75, was the portrait of
nonchalance, listening to the radio while smoking a cigar in his van
outside Mambo's.
"Castro said it himself," Martinez said. "The system has failed. That
island is ruined."
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