Castro's rebound calming for Cuba Life in Havana still swell for the rich

Castro's rebound calming for Cuba Life in Havana still swell for the rich
By Reed Johnson
Los Angeles Times

Havana - In the once-crumbling Plaza Vieja in Old Havana, a European
men's clothing store has opened its expensively refurbished doors a few
yards from a fancy new Austrian microbrewery.

The clothing store's plush, wood- lined interior is stocked with upscale
sporting and casual wear reminiscent of Brooks Brothers or L.L. Bean,
while the microbrewery's sparkling counters, mood lighting and clientele
of tourists and laid-back locals seems more Caribbean party hot spot
than one-party socialist state.

A few miles to the west, next to swanky beachfront hotels, elite Cubans
live in modern, glass-fronted condominiums and park their power boats in
the adjoining canals.

Along the Malecon, the city's famous seafront promenade, a construction
site advertises its future occupant: a sleek new tapas bar.

Nearly three weeks ago, when President Fidel Castro checked into a
hospital with reported internal bleeding after making an unprecedented
power transfer to his brother Raul, speculation swept the globe
regarding his island's economic and political fate.

Despite decades of think-tank predictions that Castro's eventual decline
or replacement would provoke crisis in the government and chaos in the
streets, the old warrior's convalescence seems to have engendered

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