Cuba Libre?

In Cuba, a country supposedly founded on egalitarian ideals, the Cuban select is as gilded as ever. This article exposes the secret lives of Havana's rich, just down the street from its many poor, are a reminder that this so-called "communist" paradise is anything but equal. In Cuba, taking pictures of the ruling family, the Castros, or reporting on their personal lives is prohibited; in the Press Freedom Index, Cuba ranked 167 out of 178.

The author writes:

 "How, you can almost hear Karl Marx asking from the grave, did an ostensibly communist country become so riven by disparity? The simplest answer may be that Fidel Castro's struggle for power was never truly a "peasant revolution."... Fidel Castro's interest in politics was never really Marxist...As a young man Fidel actually joined the Partido Ortodoxo, an anti-communist political party. The CIA told the U.S. Senate in 1959 that "we believe Castro is not a member of the Communist party," and, as late as 1961 American political scientists were still arguing over his status as a communist. Castro himself repeatedly denied an affiliation throughout his rise to power; it wasn't until after U.S. President Eisenhower refused to support Castro's presidency that he began to develop a relationship with the Soviet Union...Before taking power, Fidel referred to nationalization as a "cumbersome instrument," and pledged to not nationalize the sugar industry....Castro's former brother-in-law, Raphael Diaz Balart, said of Castro's motivations at the time: "He was just in that moment an opportunist leader who wanted to promote himself."

A one-legged man hawking CDs to tourists said he didn't believe Cuba, or the fates of the rich, would ever change. "They say about us, if we eat, we eat," he said of the ruling class. "If we don't, we don't."