By EIGHT o'clock each morning, old Havana's narrow streets are busy with children, exuberant, neatly dressed and ready for school, while a group of elderly men play draughts and smoke cigars on a park bench.
Pick any other city in Latin America and the exuberant children would be grubby street kids, selling chewing gum or shining shoes. The city centre would be choked with pollution and full of old people struggling for a living, facing impossibly low pensions and the demands of extended families who cannot afford to take care of economically unviable parents.
In Cuba, both the very young and the elderly enjoy a dignified existence, with few frills but little real hardship. In between, however, the majority of Cubans are experiencing a serious food shortage, with one item after another reduced or eliminated from the ration system, which until now insured the equal distribution of scarce supplies.
In a shop I overheard a Cuban youth detailing the positive side of the revolution: "Health, education and sport."
The downside, he said, was "breakfast, dinner and tea".
"Only six eggs this month," Ms Nancy Suarez said as she returned from the state food warehouse last week, carefully counting the monthly ration of 42 eggs allotted to her family of seven. The next problem was finding cooking oil, which costs the equivalent of a week's labour on the black market.
The state warehouse is just the starting point for the daily search for food, more difficult all the time, as meat, vegetables and milk become a nostalgic memory, with beans the last staple left each week.
"The main aim of every young Cuban nowadays is to leave the country", said Mr Pablo Verb itsky, an Argentinian theatre director who came to Cuba for a fortnight in 1961 and never left. Mr Verbitsky was deeply inspired by the revolution, but is disillusioned at the current dollarisation of the economy.
"Baggage handlers and chambermaids earn more in tips in a day than I do in a month," he said, gesturing at a luxury hotel opposite his workplace.
The dollarised economy has been devastating for doctors, teachers and salaried workers, while Cubans involved in the tourist industry have suddenly joined the upper class.
"You must have noticed the progress since your last visit," commented Mr Raul Roa, Cuba's last ambassador to France, where he served from 1988 to 1994. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, with catered Chinese food and good rum keeping spirits afloat among a dozen of the revolution's privileged sons and daughters, offspring of comandantes and other notables.
In Cuba, progress means the opening of farmers' markets, pizza stalls and other food outlets, an important concession aimed at easing the food crisis.
The result, however, has been the division of Cubans into haves and have-nots on a scale unseen since 1959, mortally wounding the ethics of a revolution which was once the pride of the Americas.
"Fidel has sentenced us all to hunger," said Ms Celia Valen zuela (71), living in the midst of the crumbling splendour of old Havana. Ms Valenzuela described herself as a "practising revolutionary and a practising Catholic" who admires President Fidel Castro's leadership but feels that the country urgently needs change.
"He should make a deal with them," she said, as her daughters looked nervously at each other, as if expecting a lightning bolt to fall from the sky in retribution for the perceived blasphemy.
Ms Valenzuela's "them" refers to the Clinton administration and the Miami-based Cuban exile lobby, who hold power of life and death over the island as medicines and food supplies are blocked by the US embargo.
The government has responded in different ways, importing sardines from Chile or distributing cheap rum and beer through a pipa, literally a pipe, attached to a motorbike, which travels through Havana neighbourhoods. People turn up with everything from paper bags to five-galllon drums, to fill up with alcohol, as oblivion becomes a better option than sobriety.
"The revolution was beautiful," recalled Ms Migdala Contreras (62), who participated in the overthrow of the pre-Castro dictator, Fulgencio Batista, but has since grown weary of the ongoing sacrifices.
Where once she dreamed of a relaxed retirement in a house by the beach, she now cleans her daughter's home and minds her granddaughter. There are state nurseries but the attention is poor, as no one wants to work for $10 a month in an economy which functions according to the dollar diktat.
What is remarkable is the Cuban people's patience at each new hardship, as generalised discontent does not translate into generalised dissidence.
The nation's active dissidents are viewed as "career professionals" who struggle against overwhelming odds, isolated from the people they claim to represent.
The vast majority of Cubans want their system to change, and fast, but they don't want to see Dr Castro humiliated, or to lose the welfare guarantees which still distinguish the island from its neighbours, including the US.