HispanicBusiness

Angela, who like many Cubans interviewed for this story spoke on the condition that her surname be withheld, works at a family-run restaurant in Camaguey in central Cuba. When asked how her business turns a profit, she at first struggled to answer, and then finally explained, "I charge more than what I bought it for."

If that seems obvious, it isn't for ordinary Cubans. For most of the past 50 years, they haven't known sole proprietorship or private initiative. Her simplistic knowledge of business speaks to how long the road to economic health is for Cuba. Its per person purchasing power ranks 111th among the world's 195 economies - though that's still ahead of 12 other countries in the Western Hemisphere, all of which have market economies.

Capitalism was anathema to Fidel Castro, founder of the modern Cuban state who turned rule over to his brother temporarily in 2006 as his health failed, and then permanently in 2008, when it became obvious that he would never regain the vitality needed to be a head of state.

Fidel Castro nationalized foreign companies and all private property decades ago. For most of his rule, the country favored collective farming and state enterprises that became icons of inefficiency. It took in billions in subsidies from the Soviet Union, which bought the country's sugar at prices far above prevailing world rates.

Cutting a second harvest of tobacco near Vinales, southwest of Havana, farmers Osmani Duarte, 45, and Antolin Perez Diaz, 63, chuckled when asked what's changed for them.

"Nothing," they responded, noting that tobacco remains a state crop and source of needed foreign earnings. The price they earn from the government remains fairly constant but they aren't sharing the profits, they said.

Ariel, a career farmer in central Cuba, said there have been some reforms that give farmers more control of their crops and to whom they can sell. It's meant direct sales to the tourism sector and greater access to previously untilled land.

Even with the changes, Cuba is unlikely to look like any of its free-market Latin American neighbors anytime soon. Raul Castro made that clear in a speech he gave a year ago unveiling the reforms at the 6th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party - the first such gathering the party had held in 13 years.

He criticized the Cuban system, particularly the system of rationing food that over the years had become "an intolerable burden to the economy and discouraged work." But he couldn't quite utter the words "private sector" in announcing a shrinking role for the state.

"The growth of the nonpublic sector of the economy, far from an alleged privatization of the social property as some theoreticians would have us believe, is to become an active element facilitating the construction of socialism in Cuba," the Cuban leader said, carefully choosing "nonpublic sector" over "private sector."

That hesitancy colors Cubans' embrace of entrepreneurialism, recalling the mid-1990s, when Fidel Castro reluctantly allowed the first paladares as he tried to navigate the end of Soviet subsidies. There were so many restrictions that most were forced to operate illegally if they wanted to make money.

For example, pizzerias were permitted, but back then the government rationed flour and individual citizens were not given enough to run a restaurant. This led to purchases of flour on the black market, and this flour was of a different color. It made it clear to any Cuban that the restaurant was operating illegally.

Today, flour is sold openly and not on a black market, though the possibility of a change of mind is always present.

Some U.S. officials believe what's taking place is being carefully managed to lessen an inherent contradiction: The more the government opens the economy, the more it embraces what it stood against for five decades.

Adding to the uncertainty is the fact that the driver of the reforms is Raul Castro, 80, who ran the Cuban armed forces for decades before he became president. As army chief he turned to free-market concepts to make the military self-sufficient in crops and parts production. He's also placed military cronies in high places, suggesting the reforms are calculated with an eye toward just how much liberalization can be tolerated.

"The military is really the economic engine of the country, so it's done within what the military feels it can manage," said Vicki Huddleston, a retired U.S. ambassador who ran the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1999 to 2002. "You have no civil society (in Cuba) is what it amounts to."

Another U.S. official currently involved in American policy toward the island called the reforms "nibbling at the margins."

Still, for Cubans like the barber Suarez, it's all worth it, even if he has to pay the government $12 to $15 a month for his license.

"I don't have to hide anymore," he said. "I can promote myself."