In Cuba, a “boulevard” is a wide street of shops open only to foot traffic, no cars. In 2016, when I took this picture, the bustling, relatively clean Bulevar San Rafael that stretches from Galeano Street to El Prado and Havana’s Central Park stood out in sharp contrast to earlier times. From the 1990s to the early 2000s, dingy, Soviet-style storefronts and trash dominated this once quaint commercial landscape. Yet around 2014, when President Obama opened relations and relaxed rules banning US-based individual investment in Cuba’s entrepreneurial sector, things changed. Small businesses and a leisure economy open to average Cubans (not just foreign tourists) got a new lease on life. Wanting to experience for herself what many thought was a permanent era of change for Cuba, UF Gator Genesis Lara, now a scholar and professor of Caribbean history, visited Cuba. To his delight, she took my son Elías on daily bulevar strolls. Havana, June 2016
