New Castro, same Cuba: hopes ran high when an ailing Fidel Castro handed power to his brother, Raul, but little has changed for the people of Cuba.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: President Raul Castro - Cover story

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

To learn something about life in Cuba these days, check out the listings on revolico.com, a website that's like a Cuban version of Craigslist: There's a person selling his place in the visa line at the Spanish Embassy in Havana to someone trying to emigrate, and offers of arranged marriages abroad. People with permission to travel outside Cuba are sought out to bring back clothes, electronics, and other goods that aren't available at home.

"In Revolico, one sees Cuba exposed, the daily lives of the Cubans, things that say much about the Cuba of today," says the site's founder, who lives in Spain but asked to remain anonymous out of concern for the safety of his family back in Cuba.

Cuba today is a place of great economic hardship and political repression. Despite some initial signs that President Raul Castro--who took over temporarily from his ailing brother, Fidel, in 2006 and then officially in 2008--might be willing to open the Communist nation up to the world, not much has changed.

In his first weeks as President in 2008, Raul Castro allowed Cubans to buy cellphones, computers, and DVD players for the first time, which many hoped was a sign of more substantial changes to come. But bigger reforms did not follow.

"Raul came to power telling the people they could open up," says Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami. "He allowed a short period of complaining, then he said 'enough' and began to clamp down. There's been no political change whatsoever, and very small economic changes."

THE REVOLUTION

Fidel Castro took control of Cuba in 1959, when he and a band of guerrillas overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. At the height of the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the Communist powers, Castro aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union, embracing its repressive political system, state-run economic model, and hostility toward the U.S.

Castro also nationalized, without compensation, U.S. businesses in Cuba. In response, Washington imposed an embargo that remains in effect today. (That's why Havana is full of vintage American cars like the 1950 Dodge and 1954 Buick recently for sale on revolico.com.)

In 1962, the Soviets deployed missiles in Cuba which is just 90 miles off the coast of Florida--and the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. After an American naval blockade of Cuba and 13 days of tense negotiations, the missiles were...