With the aid of money sent by a cousin living in
She bought a freezer, a juicer and some cups. She installed a new water faucet and was about to add a sink to go with it, as well as chairs and ingredients for the food she was going to sell at her doorway in
And then it all fell apart. Former President
Álvarez abandoned her application for a small business license.
Now the administration of new President
But so much has changed over the past two years that Álvarez is wary of reviving her plans — an example of the caution with which many Cubans are greeting the new measures and confusion about how they may work.
The government's lack of hard currency has hit imports, so it's extremely difficult to get reliable supplies of the flour, coffee and cheese Álvarez would need for her products — and prices for those scarce goods have been soaring.
That crisis also collided with the local government's effort to fix deep-rooted problems by eliminating an old two-currency system while raising pay and prices last year. That coincided with the emergence of a black market for foreign currencies and sharply added to inflation. While the new peso is supposed to be valued at 24 per dollar, people on the street sometimes offer 100.
“You earn very little with this. It doesn't give me enough to make an investment," said Álvarez, who has turned to a less costly form of making money for her family — giving manicures.
There are no official figures on how much money family and friends abroad send to Cubans, but the
About 400,000
By 2021, remittances had fallen to about
The impact of remittances far predates Obama, however. Cuban economist
Much arrived in the wallets and handbags of travelers. But for years,
The Biden opening removes many limits on transfers — but didn't specify how they can be made.
The old
So Cubans are finding other ways.
“The flow of remittances never ceased to arrive. The Cuban, with his creativity, has invented excellent mechanisms" to send money, said Erich García, a 35-year-old programmer and specialist in cryptocurrencies.
Some people have used those virtual currencies like Bitcoin to shift money to Cubans electronically. Garcia estimated that about 100,000 have cryptocurrency accounts. But those, too, have complexities and drawbacks. Commonly used cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have lost more than half their dollar value since November.
Visitors to the island sometimes bring in dollars for their own relatives, or those of friends. Some do it for those they barely know, and charge a commission.
Others send in packages of food and personal care products, and recipients trade what they don't need to neighbors.
Some websites even let people pay Cuban cellphone bills from abroad — credits that Cuban recipients sometimes trade.
“We have to wait to see what solutions are offered by these measures," Garcia said.
During his campaign, Biden promised to undo many of the new restrictions Trump had imposed, though the tough Cuban government crackdown on an outburst of protests last year may have made that politically impossible for
Still, the measures announced this month, in addition to relaxing limits on transfers, also call for resuming the processing of visas for Cubans in
“The measures that
Andrea Rodríguez is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
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