WBUR: “Small Businesses Sprout Out of Front Yards in Cuba”

On the front patio of an elegant 1940s home in Havana's Miramar neighborhood, Cuba's new economy is on full display —it includes secondhand blouses, cheap shoes and a giant rack of pirated CDs.
One makeshift store and its booming stereo belong to 26-year-old Ivelis Ramos, who was laid off from her state job as a bookkeeper last year.
“I didn't used to have this freedom to relax, to dance and to talk to customers,” Ramos says. “Someday I'd like to have a real store of my own.”
Ramos is one of several vendors along the sidewalk who have tarps and tattered patio umbrellas to shield them from the brutal tropical sun. It looks like the kind of urban marketplace common to other Latin American capitals, but not Communist-run Cuba.