Capitalism on display at Havana shopping center

Capitalism on display at Havana shopping center
Ray Sanchez/Direct from Havana | Direct from Havana
April 28, 2009

HAVANA

The Palco supermarket on the outskirts of Havana offers a glimpse into
the pent-up demand for consumer goods in Cuba. It caters mostly to
foreigners but more and more Cubans are passing through -- to browse and
to shop.

The giant American mall-style parking lot is surrounded by a cafeteria,
a hardware store (jaccuzis are available), along with perfume,
chocolate, lingerie and shoe shops. Most weekends, the lot is packed.

The complex is one of the few places in Havana where people can shop for
expensive imported products, which are routinely marked up to more than
twice their retail price elsewhere in the world. A pack of Gillette
shaving cartridges, for instance, costs about $20 – the average monthly
salary of many Cubans.

There are packs of bite-size Snickers candybars, six packs of Coca-Cola
and shelves of Kellogg's cereals. In a country where red meat is rare,
Palco customers line up at the butcher area to select among different
slabs of fresh imported beef.

Located near the homes of ailing former President Fidel Castro and other
Cuban leaders, the stores cater not only to foreign diplomats,
businessmen and tourists but increasingly to Cubans fortunate enough to
have hard currency. These tend to be workers in the tourist trade or
successful black marketers, or those who have overseas relatives sending
them money.

Many Cubans have been conditioned by scarcity, especially the hard years
after Soviet aid vanished in the early 1990s. So they instinctively buy
in bulk, especially products that routinely disappear from shelves for
months, such as toilet paper. It is a habit adopted by many foreigners
on the island.

Window shopping and browsing have become favorite pastimes, with some
Cubans walking half an hour from their homes to see what others are
buying, even if they can't afford to partake.

"It's interesting for me," one middle-age browser said recently. "You
hope one day we'll all be able to buy these things."

Consumer goods from around the world are for sale at Havana shopping
center where most Cubans can't afford to buy -- South Florida
Sun-Sentinel.com (12 May 2009)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-cuba-column-042709,0,5372942.column