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“He should have taken responsibility,” said Alexi, who asked that his full name not be used because he was discussing the Cuban leadership. Cubans’ morals had been broken, he said, by the “special period” of severe economic hardship that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, when many people resorted to stealing, scams and, in some cases, prostitution to get by

Standing shirtless outside his small house, Alexi pointed to his 24-year-old son, fixing a hubcap on the sidewalk. “How could I raise him with the same morals, when just to put rice, beans and pork on the table requires all kinds of illegalities?” he said. “I had to teach him the values of survival.”

Still, Havana has avoided the rampant crime and drug violence that plague many Latin American — and American — cities. And in spite of complaints about deteriorating manners, many Cubans maintain a sense of community and remain close to family, sharing food or helping out friends and neighbors.

growing up in an environment where cheating and duplicity were a way of living had bred cynicism. “This cynicism feeds into people’s lack of engagement,” she said. “Individual responsibility toward the collective is very low.”

Cubans complain that sliding professional standards, inexperienced teachers who are barely older than their students and a lack of public facilities have helped corrode people’s civic-mindedness.

Mr. Castro proposed a combination of education, promotion of culture and enforcement to restore the country’s civility. He called on workers’ unions, the authorities, teachers, intellectuals and artists, among others, to hold other Cubans to standards of behavior.

Several Latin American leaders would like to succeed him, but no one meets the necessary conditions: Cuba's blessing, a fat wallet, a country that carries enough demographic, political and economic weight, potent charisma, a willingness to take almost limitless risks, and sufficient autocratic control to allow him or her to devote major time to permanent revolution away from home.

Cuba has made Venezuela into its foreign-policy proxy, the Castro brothers need Caracas to remain the capital of the movement for it to retain any vitality. While Cuba is dependent on the roughly 100,000 barrels of heavily subsidized oil Chávez's regime supplies to Cuba daily, the island nation has a grip on Venezuela's intelligence apparatus and social programs. Chávez himself acknowledged last year that there are almost 45,000 Cuban "workers" manning many of his programs, though other sources speak of an even larger number. This strong connection allows Cuba to exercise a vicarious influence over many countries in the region. Caracas's clout in Latin America stems from Petrocaribe, a mechanism for helping Caribbean and Central American countries purchase cheap oil, and ALBA, an ideological alliance that promotes "21st century socialism."

Critical in all of this is the money at Maduro's disposal. The sales of PDVSA, the state-owned oil cash cow, amounted to $124.7 billion in 2011, of which one-fifth went to the state in the form of taxes and royalties, and another fourth was channeled directly into a panoply of social programs. This kind of management makes for very bad economics, a reason why the company needs to resort to debt to fund its basic capital expenditures, and for decreasing productivity,

China has helped mitigate the impact. The China Development Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China have lent Caracas $38 billion to fund some social programs, a bit of infrastructure spending, and purchases of Chinese products and services. Another $40 billion has been promised to fund part of the capital expenditures needed to maintain the flow of oil committed to Beijing.