“Flee the country where a lone man holds all power: it is a nation of slaves”
Simon Bolivar

Cuba has the only truly communist economy in the world other than North Korea. And the entrenched, unquestioning commitment to that economic dogma is alive and well amongst the government elite, to whom the Chinese model of economic liberalisation combined with firm central control over political power appears to be an anathema.

Based on observations during our short visit to Cuba in July 2007 (and, no, we did not go there to lie on the beach), and everything I have read before and since, reformist dreamers will wait a long time yet for substantive changes to take place.