AVANA — Manuel has two jobs: one that the government provides and another that provides for him.

By day he is a carpenter renovating once-elegant buildings into hotels and shops for the state, earning the equivalent of about $7 a month. By night, after having slipped a third of his pay to his foreman to leave work early, he steers tourists to private restaurants or sells them black-market cigars and rum.

Every dollar he earns in whispered deals helps buy food and other necessities that his monthly wage never covers. To the government he is a delinquent, but he thinks of himself as a survivor — both of his youthful idealism and the hard times since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and its aid.

"When I was young, we went to the square to sing and chant slogans for the revolution," said Manuel, 26, who declined to give his full name. "We did not understand. But now we feel deluded. If we had real work and good pay we could live like people anywhere else."

But Cuba is unlike anyplace else. Though billboards proclaim "Victorious in the New Millennium" and Fidel Castro still clings to the revolutionary ideals of an earlier generation, the unending scramble to make ends meet and the voices in the streets tell another story.

What economic growth there has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its subsidies has come through a painful invasion — not the gun-toting soldiers Mr. Castro always warned about but hordes of camera-carrying tourists.

Their money, however, serves more to remind Cubans of the gap between them and the outside world than to better their lives. Little trickles down to those who drive cabs, clean rooms or tote luggage, or to people like Manuel who hustle on the fringes. It is an encounter that pits the socialist promises of a class-free, egalitarian society against the realities of daily struggle.

"In any other country, working honorably, I could support my family," said Manuel. "Here, I have no future. This is not what my parents expected. Yes, what the revolution accomplished here was done nowhere else. But we need to improve. We need to open new paths."

Ever Loyal to Castro



There are those, like Alberto Estévez, who still believe in the old paths. A retired military officer, 59, he dismisses any doubts about his country's direction. He spends his days in his house in Matanzas, where he sells sodas and snacks from a counter in the doorway. "I think that little by little we will get out of this period," he said. "Besides, any country in the world facing a blockade like ours without a revolution like ours, it would not have survived for so long. For that, we have to acknowledge the skills Fidel has as a statesman."

Unlike younger people who recall only the hardship of the "special period" after the fall of the Soviet Union, Mr. Estévez remembers images of poor, barefoot children and destitute peasants from before the revolution. So while the country may not be able to give its citizens everything they want, he says, it also has to have its priorities.

"Everybody may want a car, but there would not be enough gas," he said. "The country would have to spend money on luxuries, when it really needs to spend it on education and other fundamental needs."

Upstairs his daughter-in-law, Victoria, prepared dinner of vegetables and chicken. A Ukrainian who married a Cuban and moved to Matanzas a decade ago, she is able to squirrel away a few dollars, taking advantage of her Ukrainian passport to travel to Mexico where she buys bogus designer shirts for $2 apiece to sell back home for $8 or more.

"You can't compare it to Cuba," she said of the Soviet Union in which she grew up. "Russian society was stronger. But not in ideology, because in ideology Cuba is stronger."

Joel, a family friend, dropped in for a visit after having spent the morning selling plastic bra straps downtown. He used to sell sandwiches, but when the government suggested that he bake pizzas, he decided to become a street vendor because it offered more freedom.

"To develop ourselves, we have to have capitalist means," said Joel, who is 28, "to take from it things like marketing and competition, because if we did not we would not get ahead. In capitalism the economy is about business and coping for yourself. But socialism will also stay with us. We have to have solidarity with our family and neighbors, to help them, not to dominate them or humiliate them." In some ways, he said, the hardships of the 90's helped prod Cuba into adopting economic reforms that rewarded individual initiative.

"We were parasites of Russia, sending them sugar while they gave us oil and other things," he said. "If we had done in 1965 what we are doing now, we never would have had the crisis that came after the fall of the socialist camp."

The Triumphs Wear Thin



Tony, a 35-year-old former construction worker who now gets a $1 commission for every tourist he sends to a private restaurant in Old Havana, also wonders what more could have happened if Cuba had changed in the early 60's. He is tired, he said, of hearing that health and education are great triumphs.

"We have been saying that for 42 years," he said. "What else is there? The revolution had great ideas in the beginning. It was brilliant. You have to admit, Fidel was a brilliant organizer. But he stayed in the past."

Tony grew up hearing about how bad the United States was, and how much better off Cubans were than the residents of impoverished third world countries. But there came a point when the comparisons just did not ring true anymore, he said. He left school when he was 17, saying it didn't make any sense to continue.

"I'm not saying I suffer like in Africa, but Africa did not have 42 years of a revolution," he said. "If you are comparing us for 42 years with the United States only in bad things, why not the good also? Don't compare me with those children who die in Africa. Compare me with the children who go to school in Miami on motorcycles. Compare me with the children who have food in their stomachs."

Yet the relentless propaganda about the evils of the United States has had an effect.

The Critical and the Curious

Marisa, a schoolteacher in Santiago, said she could not think of living in a place like New York.

"In the United States the children can't play in the street because they'll be stolen," she said. "Here they can go to the movies, to the beach, because nothing like that happens. There they kill them to steal their organs."