ISN'T IT MORE A COCONUT TELEGRAPH?:

THE CUBAN GRAPEVINE (James Scudamore, Summer 2011, INTELLIGENT LIFE)

Someone told me that if I really wanted to understand how Cuba was changing I should visit Papito the hairdresser. I ended up in a quiet Old Havana street of shuttered houses in varying states of repair. Some were literally falling down, but there was building work in progress here, too: further evidence of the restoration programme that is bringing some of the near-mortally neglected buildings back to life.

I reached what I thought must be Papito's door. Two chickens caged under an upturned crate clucked gently on the cobbles outside. Some kids who had been playing baseball in the street capered past me up some crumbling stone steps and into an adjacent doorway. At the end of the street I could make out the imposing shadow of a statue of General Máximo Gómez on his horse. Behind it, Atlantic spray shot up in the air over the cars that puttered up and down the Malecón.

The salon would be discreet (there is no sign) were it not for the plaque outside the front door that commemorates what Gilberto Valladares Reina, known to all as "Papito", has done for this neighbourhood--which gives you a clue that he's more than your average barber. Climb the creaking stairs to his first-floor premises and you begin to get the picture. This is not just a salon, but also a commissioning art gallery (the theme is hairdressing). It's also a museum of social history, showcasing ancient cameras and typewriters (and hairdressing equipment) that might still be in service elsewhere in Havana, but have here been accumulated and displayed for their historical interest. And it's also a hairdressing school.

"Hairdressing is what saved me," says Papito, who is gym-built and charismatic, and sports a bewilderingly complicated utility-belt of hair-related tools. "I hated school. I ran away a lot. I got into trouble. And if someone hadn't taught me this trade I think I would be in worse trouble right now. So I wanted others to benefit from the advantages I had."

He currently has 11 pupils, all recruited from the deprived streets immediately surrounding the salon. He's already opened a second salon across the street where his students can train, and, in a third building, a second art gallery that also doubles as a community gym. In a way he's a kind of magnate, with two crucial distinctions: first, every one of his premises has at least two different uses; second, every one of his businesses benefits the community at large. Which might explain why, after initial suspicion, the state has so enthusiastically sanctioned his projects.

"If they see that this kind of social enterprise works, and that it's good for the community, they'll be better prepared for the next thing that comes along," he says. "But they need to be shown the examples."

This is trailblazing stuff. Cuba nationalised retail business in 1968, after which any form of private enterprise, from renting out a room in your house to selling bananas from a barrow, could be deemed "speculation". Everybody broke the rules, because you couldn't not if you wanted to survive, but if you were dobbed in by a "reliable source" you were in trouble. However, since late 2010, and facing public-sector redundancies, the government has been tentatively encouraging small-scale private enterprise. Things are moving slowly, partly because old bureaucratic habits die hard (the red tape is excruciating), but now you can apply for a licence to run a coffee shop or a snack bar that will be more than just a workers' collective.

People call the protean language of the regime Granmática (Granma being the state newspaper that is named after the implausible little pleasure boat that brought Fidel, Che and 80 other revolutionaries over from Mexico to start the revolution). And the expression favoured by Granmática when the issue of reform comes up is "updating the revolution". It is reform born of necessity: changes are made not because the regime wants to make them, but because it has to. That Cuban resourcefulness extends from those in high office stretching their definition of what revolution actually means, to people like Papito, who will benefit most from the new entrepreneurial spirit because they're the ones most prepared to test its limits. As so often before, Cubans are evolving, and adapting, and making the best of the situation. They have, after all, known worse times than these.

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