18.  THE WAITER AT EL COLONIAL said he wasn't a capitalist. His boss was.  He only earned tips.  I asked if  the difference between a capitalist and a socialist is in how much each one makes or in how he makes it.   He said he thought it's in how much one cares.  He didn't care.
    "But you don't get a salary from the state.  So you're not in the system."
    "Yes I am," he insisted.  He was still in school.  But he said he would soon finish his education and qualify for a state job.  He was only waiting tables because it was his family's house.  He said the big house surrounding the patio where I was eating had been a restaurant before the revolution.  So when the paladars were authorized, it re-opened.
  "You're not only a capitalist," I declared,"you're living on inherited wealth."
   But, he defended himself, his girlfriend had a state job, already, and when they married, the state would give them a house, and then they'd be regular socialists.
   "Why should you be?"
   "Because this is a socialist country and I live here."
   He wasn't juventud, but he had revolutionary conciousness and, apparently forgetting that he lived in a pre-revolution upper-class home (though, if I'd asked, he'd have probably said he didn't care),  he started listing the benefits of socialism just like the highschool girl in Havana.
     He didn't sound like a born-again, because he was talking fact, not fantasy, and, though I'm tempted to compare consciencious Cuban youth to young Republicans, because there is similarity in manner, there is more dignity in socialist certainty than in the certainty you've got it made.
   "So why don't you want to be a capitalist like your boss?"  I assumed his boss was an older person in his family.
   "I've never seen capitalism," he said, "and socialism works.  So why change it?  I don't believe in things I've never seen.  Oh," he decided to add, "except God."  Oh, well.  So much for human credibility.  
   He said everyone in Baracoa signed the petition.  I was only going to meet one person in Baracoa who knew different.

INDEX