Cuba: They've Got Their Beards to Keep Them Warm

First it was gasoline, then meat, butter, eggs, soap, toilet paper, garlic, onions, rice, beans, chicken, fish, coffee, shoes, and even, in this oft-steamy island paradise, beer. "Beer is unnecessary," said Fidel Castro, "in revolutionary Cuba." In their steady slide down the scale of living standards, Cubans heard last week that rationing would henceforth extend to clothing—shirts, trousers, dresses, and even to those snug slacks that Cuban women—and their men—love. Like any good Communist bureaucrat, the Maximum Leader an nounced through his Government Consolidated Products Enterprise that he was doing this so that clothes could be bought "in a...