古巴私有化制度之初体验

Working from her back porch turned beauty salon, Whana Lamiles supplies a code of various-ranging red polish. The former math teacher charges the equivalent of 50 cents for a manicure.

I loved my career, she says, but I didn't make enough to survive. This won't make me rich, but I make enough to live on.

Like many Cubans going into business for themselves over the last eight months, relatives abroad help keep her afloat with a steady supply of nail polish.

This mobile phone doctor wouldn’t be in business at all if it wouldn't for the start-up money that an uncle in Miami sent him. He cracks encryption codes and fixes his phones, most of them sent from family abroad.

Cuba announced the biggest shake-up to its Soviet-style economy last year, publishing guidelines on how to set up small businesses that it hopes will offset massive layoffs in the state sector and provide a steady flow of tax money.

It's been a bumpy ride for both micro entrepreneurs and the government in a country where more than 90 percent of the economy is run by the state. This new private gym didn't even know how to get the word out.

The biggest challenge is just that so few Cubans even know what's spinning in, as she says.

The most common complaints are the lack of wholesale outlets to buy products and the high cost of taxes and government fees. Private restaurants got a break last month when the government more than doubled the number of dinners that are allowed to sit to 50 and announced an amnesty on the payroll tax. This popular restaurant just off G Street has other problems. A sandwich stand a couple blocks away picked the same name: G-spot.

The legal means to get them to remove their sign don't exist, he says.

In recent months, Cubans have taken out over 200,000 licenses to set up a shop. But the government itself has said many won't survive, which means people here are getting a taste of market competition for the first time in their lives.

Shasta Darlington, cnn, Havana