It comes courtesy of the award-winning cocktail waitress at Waoo!, a private restaurant run by 41-year-old Cuban entrepreneur Alain Rodriguez. “The recipe for success is maintaining the real taste of Cuba, whether that’s in the food and drink or our taste for life,” he told me.
Businesses like Rodriguez’s are among the most visible examples of economic reforms — that are fueling small, private enterprise — already launched by President Raul Castro.
Rodriguez, a former sommelier at Havana’s famed El Nacional Hotel, says he set up his own business just over two years ago in a house owned by his cousin and financed with his own savings and some investment from relatives in the United States.
Now small businesses like his could get substantial new cash injections thanks to measures announced by President Barack Obama, which came into effect Friday.
Among the changes, it will be easier for Americans — and their spending money — to come to Cuba.
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“All that business of Fidel and the Revolution is a very pretty story but it’s got nothing to do with now,” she said.
“Now its different. Young people want to go to good places, a disco, an all-expenses paid hotel and with a state salary you just can’t do that.”
Above her workstation, Yero has scratched a sign into the fluorescent light fitting. “No money. No nail do.”
A warning that Cuba’s once-cherished dream of forging an egalitarian society may be dimming.
