Cubans debate changes, but ask where's the beef

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Change is a word that can still get you into trouble in communist Cuba, yet it is on everyone's lips these days.

As the nation debates a future without ailing leader Fidel Castro, expectations are rising that change will come, at least in the way the one-party state runs the economic life of its 11 million people.

But 15 months after the 81-year-old Castro fell ill and his brother Raul became acting president, few policy changes have been made and Cubans are wondering when they will come.

In meetings held over the last two months in neighborhoods, work places and Communist Party cells, Cubans criticized the shortcomings of the socialist system born from Castro's 1959 revolution, venting their frustration with 16 years of hardships since the Soviet Union collapsed.

People stood up to complain about low wages, high food prices, poor housing, restrictions on travel and, above all, a two-tiered monetary system that limits access to consumer goods to those Cubans with hard currency.

"We want deeds, not words. Before we had money and there was nothing to buy. Now the shops are full, but we have no money," said a Havana housewife who did not give her name.

Raul Castro, who is considered more open to market reforms than his brother, has encouraged media exposes of glaring faults in the 90-percent state-owned economy. His call also paved the way for the nationwide process of public meetings.

In a July 26 speech this year, the younger Castro, 76, said "structural changes" were needed in agriculture to kick-start Cuba's deficient food production.

Yet in recent weeks at least 20 youths wearing wristbands with the word "CAMBIO" --meaning political change-- were detained by police for several hours and reprimanded for wearing "counter-revolutionary" propaganda allegedly supplied by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.

"Cubans want a change of mentality, because this system doesn't work anymore," said Luis Miguel, a state employee who hitched a ride on Havana's Malecon sea boulevard.

"No one owns anything, so they don't look after anything and steal from the state to get by," he said. "Things must change, everyone said the same at the meeting."

"They have to do something now that they have heard people speak their minds," said Jose, a travel agency manager who did not want to be fully named for fear of losing his job.

Like many Cubans, both men agreed that a bureaucratic state should not be running small businesses, from restaurants and bars to shoe-shines and barber shops.

WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Cuban officials say they are processing thousands of reports on proposals made at the meetings between August and October, and decisions will be taken in due course.