[dropcap]N[/dropcap]iuris Higueras climbs with heavy tread up the wrought-iron staircase to Atelier, a 50-seat restaurant that boasts graceful wood-panelled rooms and a broad terrace with sweeping views of the Havana skyline. Business seems to be booming.
Outside, Havana is bathed in the tangerine light of sunset. Inside, there is a happy hum of dining tourists and the cheerful clink of glasses. Yet Ms Higueras is in a funk. As with most nascent entrepreneurs in Cuba’s fledgling private sector — and indeed many Cubans — she is nervous.
“Things will change for the better, because they have to,” says the 47-year-old chef fatalistically.
There is good reason for Ms Higueras’ concern. On April 19, Raúl Castro, 86, will step down as president and is likely to be replaced by Miguel Díaz-Canel, 57, Cuba’s vice-president. It is the first time in almost 60 years that a Castro brother will not hold the post, and while the presidency is a largely symbolic role, the power shift comes at a delicate moment for the communist island.
Cuba’s Soviet-style economy, battered by hurricanes and hurt by dwindling aid from crisis-ridden Venezuela, is on the rocks. The state has seemingly cracked down on private businesses, again. And a once-budding relationship with the US, Cuba’s arch-enemy, has deteriorated after Donald Trump, the US president, partially reversed the detente launched by his predecessor.
Around 1million US visitors, over half of them Cuban-Americans, travelled to the island last year, spending approximately $650m, according to the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a consultancy. But tighter US travel restrictions have since slashed visitor numbers. Total tourist visits in 2017 were 4.7million.
“It’s been brutal,” says Ms Higueras. “Americans used to mingle with the Cubans. They visited private restaurants, they rented private homes, they used private transport. Other businesses then serviced them. But now the [supply] chain has broken. The impact has been very strong.”
A mysterious series of so-called sonic attacks that affected at least 24 US diplomats and their families in Havana, has further chilled tourism. The State Department’s current advisory recommends that visitors “reconsider travel to Cuba due to health attacks”. Outside hotels, the restored 1950s cars that once whisked US visitors on joyrides now stand idle. Cubans who rent out their homes via services such as Airbnb report falling bookings and prices.
“It’s logical: if you open a webpage, say, of TripAdvisor in the US and search for Cuba, you get a warning message. So obviously that has an impact . . . Americans don’t come,” says Leire Fernandez, co-founder of Clandestina, a graphics and T-shirt business in colonial Havana. “Our experience has been a 30-40 per cent drop in sales. It’s been the same for everyone.”
But Cuba’s private sector, which has expanded almost fourfold to account for almost 600,000 jobs or an eighth of the workforce since Mr Castro introduced reforms eight years ago, has not only been hurt by US actions. The Cuban state is also seemingly clamping down.
Several business licenses have been revoked as part of a process of “rectification” — most notably of Starbien, a restaurant co-owned by the son of a former interior minister. There are rumours of more curbs to come.
“We have to see what the final rules are,” says Miguel Ángel Morales, owner of La Moneda Cubana, a restaurant in Old Havana. “But if there are cancellations or limits on private business licenses, as the rumours suggest, that could create unemployment, which is not what the national strategy surely needs to be.”
The biggest unknown is April 19, when Mr Castro will step aside from the presidency. Most Cubans simply shrug their shoulders about its significance as it is a political affair beyond their reach. They are more concerned about getting by from day to day.
But a leaked video that showed Mr Díaz-Canel taking a traditional hardline in a private meeting of Communist Party members, has unsettled nerves.
Mr Díaz-Canel is a burly party functionary from the provinces and little is known of what he believes — or even if he will finally be chosen as successor. Cubans will “vote” in a pre-ratified slate of candidates for the National Assembly on March 11, which will then ratify formally Mr Castro’s successor in April. Mr Castro is expected to remain head of the Communist party and the armed forces when he steps down.
“We don’t know who the new president will be,” says Marta Deus, co-founder of Deus Accountants, which provides accounting services to the self-employed. “But I hope it will be a young person, who understands the social changes going on in the world.”
At least the rampant food, drink and price inflation that was driven by yesteryear’s tourist boom and that priced many goods beyond most Cubans’ reach, has cooled. “There have been some positive sides to the Trump effect too,” says Clandestina’s Ms Fernandez.
Internet access also continues to grow. Privately-employed coders have even sub-contracted their services to design Spanish websites abroad as bandwidth has expanded. “That kind of work would have been technically impossible two years ago,” says one, who asked to remain anonymous.
But such opportunities are beyond the reach of most, and after six decades of struggle there is a widespread sense of resignation, co-mingled with faint hopes for change as the so-called historic generation of ageing Cuban leaders step aside.
“Being Cuban is like Sisyphus,” says Esther Cardoso, a leading actress, who rents out her home to make ends meet. “You roll a stone to the top of the hill, and every night it falls back again. Now is not a time for dreams, it’s a time to make money and get by. That’s what Cuba has become today. It’s sad.”
