Cuba has no shortage of fertile farmland, but the country spends $1.5 billion a year importing about 70 percent of its food. The communist government's chronic struggle to get farmers to produce more is forcing authorities to grudgingly accept a greater role for market principles and the profit motive. Now authorities seem willing to go another step further, tolerating the rise of what might be described as Cuba's "free-est" market.

Fidel Castro no longer believes in communism. "The Cuban [economic] model doesn't even work for us anymore."