In Havana

The Havana correspondent for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Doreen Hemlock, reports today on the challenges faced by ordinary Cubans who must make ends meet in Fidel Castro's two-currency economy.

You know, the highly-egalitarian system under which workers get paid by the regime in ordinary and largely worthless pesos but can only buy the bulk of their daily necessities in State-owned stores that surprisingly, accept only a much more expensive convertible currency. Twenty-five times more expensive.

The report highlights a small and largely symbolic protest in Havana on Monday by women belonging to a group called the Federation of Latin American Rural Women, which is apparently campaigning (illegally, as far as the regime is concerned) to do away with the dual currency system.

Two members of the group protested by entering a pharmacy that sells goods in convertible currency and tried to pay for a bottle of medicine in ordinary pesos, which is, after all, the legal currency of Cuba. The cashier refused, and the manager took the bottle away.