Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Cuba’s economic reforms. Part I looks at the reforms to date. Part II will examine the challenges facing future efforts.

Since assuming office in July 2006, Cuban President Raul Castro has been on a crusade to bring the Cuban economy into the 21st century. The hyper-centralized model imported from the Soviet Union in the 1960s "doesn't even work for us anymore," Fidel Castro admitted. ...