BY THOMAS GINSBERG
                      Knight Ridder News Service

                      HAVANA - When Yasnay Martínez couldn't earn enough at a Cuban shirt factory to support herself and
                      daughter, she peddled fruit on the street.

                      And when police busted her black-market trade in bananas and oranges, she considered peddling her
                      body.

                      ''Prostitution? Sometimes I get asked to do it,'' admitted Martínez, 29, sitting in a friend's closet-size
                      apartment at the end of a Havana alley. ``But I don't want to do it, because women are losing their
                      value -- they're selling themselves very cheaply here.''

                      Martínez's unsavory dilemma is far from unusual. After a decade without Soviet subsidies that once
                      buoyed their economy, ordinary Cubans have come to depend on countless private, often illicit, ways of
                      making ends meet.

                      Cuba recently purchased several food shipments from the United States, the first in four decades, which
                      offered a teasing hope for many here that the 41-year-old U.S. trade embargo might end soon. But it is
                      not so much the embargo that Cubans blame for their hardships as it is Fidel Castro's rigid economic
                      control.

                      ''This is our fault; we did this to ourselves,'' said Bárbara Rodríguez, 40, a gardener who lives with her
                      mother in the basement of a dilapidated building in historic Old Havana, surviving on the equivalent of
                      $15 a month, if they're lucky.

                      ''Fidel has no money hidden away for us. He's just entertaining people with [criticisms of] the blockade,''
                      said Rodríguez, who spoke to a reporter more openly than many because, she said, her only son
                      already has emigrated. ``The real problem is the system here. And it's just as bad as it always was.''

                      Many Cubans say they simply cannot get by on wages paid by the only legal employer -- the
                      government -- even with such necessities as health care and housing provided all but free by the state.

                      Cubans lucky enough to work for a foreign joint venture -- the Cuban-Spanish tobacco industry, for
                      example, or the Cuban-British golf course -- may get a bonus in dollars from the foreign partner that is
                      worth many times their Cuban peso salary.

                      But for the majority, the sole legal alternative to a state wage is arduously obtaining approval for
                      self-employment. The few permitted one-person jobs include hairstylist, farmer and bookseller but
                      exclude physician, translator or even taxi driver -- pursuits that are likely to involve a lot of
                      responsibility, or a lot of cash.

                      Therefore, ordinary Cubans have had to become frugal and imaginative. In the biggest cities, many
                      people interviewed said they scrounge on the side for extra money, preferably U.S. dollars, which seep
                      in from tourists and Cuban exiles.

                      Dollars -- legal for ordinary Cubans to possess since 1993 -- form the basis of a huge, parallel,
                      cash-only economy that dwarfs the Cuban peso. By one dissident economist's estimate, there may be
                      $3 billion in U.S. dollars in Cuba, helping keep afloat the island's $19 billion economy.

                      The chase for cash adds up to a wearying daily challenge for most people, and a debilitating strain on
                      government-run enterprises from which people often steal goods to peddle on the black market.

                      Rosa Santana, 27, of Matanzas, 60 miles east of Havana, counts on getting rent, education, health care
                      and most food staples from the government at low or no cost. While well-connected Cubans get first
                      crack at the communal goods and services, the system does seem to spare even the poorest citizens
                      the abject misery common in other Latin American countries. Still, to feed and clothe herself and her
                      12-year-old daughter, Santana figures she needs 500 to 1,000 pesos each month, or $19 to $38 at the
                      unofficial exchange rate of 26 pesos to $1. But her salary as an accountant in the government-run
                      employment agency is just 254 pesos -- about $9.70 -- a month. So she closes the gap by obtaining
                      rolls -- she prefers not to say how -- from a state-run bakery to resell on the street. She also has sold
                      pigs she raised in her tiny backyard.

                      ''Maybe in a month I make 200 to 400 pesos on top of my salary . . . so I can usually get by,'' Santana
                      said. But she acknowledged she had thought about leaving Cuba. ``I don't want my daughter to do
                      what I do, to go through the same things that happened to me.''

                      For the self-employed, things are slightly easier.

                      Joaquín Manuel Díaz, 50, quit work as a carpenter in the mid-1990s and got approval to open a
                      restaurant in Candelaria, 50 miles west of Havana. Now serving pork from pigs he raises in his
                      backyard, Díaz earns about 5,000 pesos ($192) a month, 25 percent of which he pays in taxes. The
                      remainder sustains seven family members and himself.

                      ''I have to work harder here than I did as a carpenter, but there was also less reward as a carpenter,''
                      he said.

                      In a bedraggled section of Havana, far from the hard-currency tourist hotels off-limits to most Cubans,
                      María Elena Pupu runs a legal, one-woman hairstyling business on her spartan porch.

                      Charging 5 pesos (19 cents) for a haircut and 20 pesos (77 cents) for coloring, Pupu said she earns
                      1,000 to 2,000 pesos -- $38 to $77 -- a month, enough to support her family of three.

                      ''We make enough to buy things in the free markets once in a while,'' she said.

                      In the state-run free markets, also known as ''dollar stores,'' Cubans can buy as much as they like if
                      they have dollars -- and can pay U.S.-style prices. A 16-ounce can of baby formula costs $4.50, a
                      two-pound bag of rice $1.20, a liter of rum $9.50.

                      Such necessities as rice and milk can be had much cheaper at special state bodegas.

                      But the goods are strictly rationed: Eggs, when available, are eight per person per month at 10
                      centavos (.38 cents) each; bread is one roll per person per day for 5 centavos (.19 cents); milk, at a
                      half-peso (1.9 cents) per quart, is only for children under 7.

                      For meat -- a rarity -- and vegetables, Cubans must go to costlier ''agro-markets,'' where long lines
                      often form when a coveted product shows up.

                      For most anything else, there's the black market, which also runs mostly on dollars.

                      Enrique Cabo García, 35, hustles bootleg music burned on black-market CDs at $3.50 each -- dollars
                      only. U.S. copyright laws are hardly his first concern; he has a license only to be a private DJ, not a
                      peddler.

                      ''I live with my mother and three children, and we have two houses to support,'' said Cabo García, who
                      used to make 249 pesos ($9.50) a month as a state-employed electrician. ``I need a lot of money.''

                      Even further down the scale is prostitution, which flourishes despite a crackdown and stiff penalties.

                      Martínez, the one-time shirt-factory worker, said her prostitute friends earn $50 to $80 a night, more
                      than she made at the factory in a year.

                      So far, she said, she has taken money for sex only once and resists the life of a prostitute.

                      ''Now I'm trying to sell anything; I'm selling hot dogs on the street,'' she said, scoffing at the
                      government line that her plight is caused by the U.S. embargo. ``It's all the fault of the people who run
                      this country.''