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By Karen Branch-Brioso
The Tampa Tribune

HAVANA - Jose Antonio Torres, an orthopedic hospital nurse, is off-duty. Officially.

Unofficially, the 28-year-old is waiting for a client in one of two unlicensed jobs he works to feed his three children, with a fourth on the way.

He’s supposed to have a state license to charge people for rides on his bicycle taxi. But a license and taxes for the self-employed can be hard to get and cut deeply into profits. So he’s running his side business por la izquierda. Literally, “to the left.” “Under the table” is a better translation for the way many Cubans get by these days.

Even licensed bicitaxis aren’t allowed to give foreigners a ride. But Torres says he’ll do that - in a downpour: “If it’s raining, I’ll take a tourist because the police duck indoors.”

The hard currency that foreigners pay him makes it worth the risk.

Getting access to such currency is another thing. So Cubans try different methods.

Some stick to state-salaried jobs or pensions and hope for occasional help from a relative abroad. Some ditch beloved careers for tourism jobs that bring in foreign currency-based tips, multiplying their income several times over. Others seek the limited government licenses to run their own businesses, earning more than most state-salaried jobs.

Or people such as Torres work multiple jobs. Sometimes with the state’s blessing, but often not.

He makes 441 pesos a month - barely $20 - as a nurse. He makes 100 pesos a morning delivering food ingredients for a small, family-run restaurant and tries to make an additional 200 pesos a day in taxi fares. A tourist paying with hard currency gets him there much quicker.

Cubans navigate between two currencies. They earn salaries in pesos - worth about a nickel each - and use them to pay for basics such as rice, utilities, fruits and vegetables. Then there are Cuban convertible pesos, called “CUCs” for their Spanish-language acronym. When foreigners exchange currency, that’s what they get.

More and more establishments, such as restaurants, hotels, taxis, entertainment venues, department and well-stocked grocery stores, accept only CUCs. Each is worth 25 times the regular peso’s value, or about $1.20.

For many families, hard currency - such as dollars - from relatives abroad helps them get CUCs to buy products impossible to find with regular pesos. Beef, for example, is sold only in hard-currency stores. Same for electronics and hair products.

The U.S. government, with its decades-long embargo against the communist nation, strictly limits the money its residents can send to family in Cuba. In 2004, the Bush administration tightened the purse strings even more. A U.S. resident can send just $100 a month to a household. Before, extended families could contribute up to $100 per relative. Now, only immediate family can legally send money.

Later that year, the Cuban government banned the use of U.S. dollars in retail stores, requiring them to be exchanged into Cuban currency.

Even the $100 limit can have a significant effect. That’s nearly 2,100 Cuban pesos, more than triple what a Cuban doctor makes in a month.

Without such help, some say they couldn’t make it.

Nereida Avila Martínez, 77, has family in Tampa that has helped her out over the years. Otherwise, her only income is a 200-peso retirement pension - less than $9 a month.

“Thanks to them, I survive,” Avila Martínez said in her Havana apartment.

Torres, the nurse with three jobs, has a brother in New Orleans. They aren’t in contact, so he doesn’t have access to dollars through that means. He says remittances sometimes can create tensions between the have-dollars and have-none.

“There are a lot of families who depend on remittances,” Torres said. “There are pros and cons to it. There’s jealousy of those who don’t work, who live off nothing but air. You should work, even if you can afford more comforts because you receive dollars.”

In neighborhood corner stores, Cubans pay fixed prices for a set amount of basic goods that are rationed for pennies. Items such as rice - less than 2 cents a pound. Chicken - 3 pennies a pound.

Elsewhere, the prices are more malleable, depending on where you’re from. Or what you can afford. For the same ride on his bicitaxi, Torres will charge a Cuban national 60 pesos, or $2.88. He’ll charge a tourist $5.

The Self-Employed

Most of the roughly 170,000 cuentapropistas - the self-employed folks blessed by the state with licenses to run small businesses - earn their money in pesos. But they earn more of them than their state-salaried counterparts, enabling them to buy into hard currency.

Jose Angel Martinella, 45, recently joined that group.

His office is a table piled high with fruits, vegetables and beans in the cool, shaded confines of a farmers market. No more work in the sweltering sun. That ended four months ago when he quit his job on a street cleanup crew. The ripened guavas he sells for a peso - or two or three, depending on their size - perfume the air around him.

Then there’s the money.

He takes home 800 pesos a month: triple his street-cleaning wages and four times what he made before that as a member of Cuba’s national judo team. But even with an income of about $38 - a decent sum by state-salary standards - life’s not easy.

Martinella fondly reminisces on his years as an athlete: “Wages were low, but they gave us everything. You didn’t pay for anything: housing, food, transportation. Now I have to pay for food, for the bus.”

He has another expense as a cuentapropista. He pays as much as 125 pesos a month in taxes.

‘This Is My Life’

Carmen Arias Leyva styles only Cuban hair in her Old Havana beauty shop. No tourists. She is prohibited under the state license she has had to run the shop for 18 years. But sometimes prices differ among her Cuban clients. She’ll charge more from those who earn more.

“I charge what they can afford to pay,” said Arias Leyva, 51, as she dabbed a reddish tint to the roots of Rosa María Marrero, a lab technician who makes 360 pesos a month.

Then it was Mayelín Pantoja Hernández’s turn in the chair for highlights. The computer engineering student teaches Web site production for 370 pesos a month.

“They earn very little, so I’ll charge her 60 pesos for highlights,” Arias Leyva said. “And for roots, I’ll charge her 60 pesos. A haircut is 10 pesos. I can’t charge more. They can’t afford it.”

She said she’s not tempted to take in tourists, who must go to state-run salons that charge convertible pesos for services: “If I fix a foreigner’s hair, an inspector would show up and take my license away.”

Though she charges in pesos, the hair products she uses - peroxide, hair color, even shampoo and conditioner - are available only at stores that accept convertible pesos. That makes overhead high. She wouldn’t change her career over it.

“This is my life,” she said, surveying her one-room salon, barely a foyer that gives way to a large, well-kept apartment she shares with her husband and adult son. “It’s what I love to do.”

Free Education, Health Care

Across Havana, plenty of people such as Arias Leyva stick to doing what they love, despite the wages.

At the lunchroom at Camilo Cienfuegos National Primary School on a recent afternoon, María Rosa Fajardo’s first-graders squealed with delight as she led them in an impromptu merengue lesson. She makes 450 pesos a month, about $21. For a dozen years, she has taught in the free education system. Before that, she was a beneficiary, earning a teaching degree free.

Even postgraduate education is free. Jorge Morales, 47, an obstetrician in central Havana’s Luis de la Uceta Polyclinic, didn’t pay a penny to earn his medical degree and his specialty. He was able to choose his specialty as an obstetrician because he served three postgraduate years caring for patients in a rural mountain region of eastern Cuba, where doctors were scarce.

He works six days a week for 600 pesos, less than $30 - far less than those earning tourist tips. He teaches medical students on Saturdays. He does ultrasounds and exams in a cramped room at the clinic. He makes house calls. He performs surgery - abortions on Fridays. Once every six days, he pulls a 24-hour shift at a hospital.

“All health care is free. Surgery, too,” Morales said. “And when a doctor orders you a treatment, that’s free.”

Despite the lower pay and long hours, he’s proud that his 26-year-old daughter is following in his footsteps.

The Cost Of Survival

Many, however, don’t necessarily do what they love.

Electronic specialists who would prefer to tinker with gadgets are instead driving tourists around to make a better living.

After earning his degree as a mechanical engineer in 1980, Orlando Vaillant went to work as a professor for 400 pesos a month. The salary was good then, when the Soviet Union heavily subsidized the Cuban government. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that changed.

Subsidized petroleum from the Soviet Union evaporated, leading to a crisis in Cuban agricultural production that was heavily dependent on fuel. The island went through what leader Fidel Castro referred to as the “Special Period,” with widespread food shortages.

Cuban waistlines shrank. So did their buying power.

“Four hundred pesos was a good salary from 1980 through 1992,” said Vaillant, 58. “Then came the Special Period, and the peso was trading 100 pesos to the U.S. dollar. It wasn’t enough.”

He left for Jamaica in 1995, where his Jamaican-born mother lived. He made connections with tourism agencies. Then he returned to Havana in 2000 with Cuba’s economy improving - but not so much to make a professor’s or a mechanical engineer’s salary as lucrative as a career in Cuba’s top industry: tourism.

He bought a car in his mother’s name because most Cubans can’t get government authorization to buy a car - unless they’re famous doctors, athletes or artists. But foreigners can.

Vaillant uses the car to give city tours at $8 an hour.

“This has helped me to survive - me and my family,” Vaillant said.

He makes about $400 a month. Por la izquierda.

Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at kbranch-brioso@tampatrib .com or (813) 259-7815.

CUBAN SALARIES

The $100 per month that U.S. residents can send to immediate family translates into about 2,100 Cuban pesos. Below are the monthly salaries quoted to The Tampa Tribune by Cubans drawing government salaries.

Policeman: 870 pesos

Obstetrician/gynecologist: 600 pesos

First-grade teacher: 450 pesos

Nurse: 441 pesos

Lab analyst: 360 pesos

House painter: 305 pesos

MAKING A LIVING AS A HAIRDRESSER

Carmen Arias Leyva, 51, has been a hairdresser for 30 years in Havana - the past 18 years as the self-employed owner of Peluquería Carmen. Here is a look at her income and some expenses, much of which she must pay for in convertible pesos.

Her income varies with the flow of her clientele, who can be only Cubans, paying her in pesos.

“I make 300 to 400 pesos a month, but around holidays like Mother’s Day I can earn more - 600 or 700 pesos a month.”

Arias Leyva has “owned” the roomy apartment behind her small one-room salon for decades. Cubans pay a mortgage of sorts - in pesos - to the government. Once Arias Leyva pays off her 6,000-peso mortgage, about $288, she’ll have the right to pass it on to her son when she dies. When that happens, the government will begin assessing another mortgage against her son. Often, it’s less than the original mortgage.

When Cubans leave the country, they are required to pay off any outstanding mortgages - and they don’t always have the right to pass the property on to a family member when they go.

Monthly after-tax income: 300 to 700 pesos - $14.50 to $33.60

Monthly income taxes: 400 pesos - $19.20

Mortgage: 80 pesos - $3.84

Bottle of shampoo or conditioner: 1 convertible peso - $1.20

Hair color: 2.30 convertible pesos - $2.76

Highlights: 1.25 convertible pesos - $1.50

Peroxide: 1.20 convertible pesos - $1.44

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