Cuba struggling to keep professionals from leaving
PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba — Calle Marti is a modest half-mile boulevard split by a simple winding flagstone path that’s bracketed by green grass, pine trees and curving blue cement benches.
But the project is part of a fragile experiment whose success or failure might help determine if Cuba is able to pull itself out of years of economic stagnation and brain drain.
The central avenue in the western city of Pinar del Rio, population 150,000, was redesigned over the last three years by a private firm of three 20- and 30-something architects hired by the communist provincial government — a contract that would have been unimaginable in Cuba just a few years ago.
Over the last decade, Cubans making state salaries of less than $25 a month have moved by the hundreds of thousands into the private sector — opening stores, restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts that have been among the few sources of growth for the island’s moribund centrally planned economy.