How Bad Is It in Cuba?

Even the brothels are closing:

This does not mean that those still in Cuba are acquiescent or happy. They are far poorer than their eastern European counterparts were in 1989: the average wage, at $20 a month, can barely feed a single person for a couple of weeks. You cannot spend any length of time in Havana without noticing the lack of food for the majority of Cubans. The mother of a friend, an old lady who lived in one tiny rotting room in a former brothel with her son, gets by selling matchboxes to her neighbours, having stolen them from the factory where she worked. Another acquaintance keeps pigs on her balcony and sells pork to a few locals. The luckier ones sell cigars or taxi rides to foreigners. An elite work in hotels.

I also love the contrast between Cuba and the U.S. implied by that last sentence. In Cuba, hotel workers are considered elite. In the U.S. hotel worker tends to be one of those "jobs Americans won't do.," so we hire illegal immigrants to work in our hotels (unless the job requires English proficiency).

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