JOE CONTRERAS: This is Varadero, the premier beach resort of Cuba and a Mecca for the roughly one million foreign tourists who visit the Caribbean island every year. The money they spend is one of the major reasons why Fidel Castro shows no signs of giving up power as long as he lives. A growing number of those tourists are American citizens, an estimated 22,000 traveled here without the required approval of the U.S. government last year. They are the most visible sign of a profound and historic change: the beginning of the end of the U.S. trade embargo against Castro's Communist regime.

AMERICAN TOURIST: I came to Cuba I wanted to come here actually before...while Castro was still in rule, before he dies because I don't really know what's gonna happen afterwards. I wanted to come before the flood of tourism, I guess if it ever opens up. And I feel like it's one of the last countries to be relatively untouched by the American influence.

JOE CONTRERAS: The relationship between the United States and Cuba is tangled and full of contradiction. Consider this: one of the Havana-based entrepreneurs who targets the American tourist market is this man, Philip Agee. He is a former CIA spy who is now trying to make a buck by breaking the embargo. Agee wrote a book exposing covert U.S. operations in Latin America during the 1970s, incensing the US Government which canceled his American passport. But now the secret agent has turned travel agent.

PHILIP AGEE: I felt like I was an agent for change even when I was in the CIA until I began to realize that the people who we were supporting didn't want to see any change at all. And that was one of the things that led to my resignation. But in terms of being an agent of change right now, yes, I hope to help change U.S. attitudes towards Cuba officially, if I can, if I had any influence at all, but mostly the ordinary people who come here to see the Cuban Revolution.

JOE CONTRERAS: That agenda is not surprising coming from an unabashed supporter of the Castro regime.

What is surprising is that, for reasons of their own, a number of corporate executives, American congressmen and state governors also believe it's time for a change. Namely the removal of all existing restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba. There was a time when there were no restrictions.

In the fifties, Cuba was a playground for hordes of Americans with a taste for casinos and cathouses.

But the door to Cuba began to close in January 1959. That's when leftist revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro rolled into the capital and seized power.

By 1962, America's relationship with Cuba had soured so badly that the United States severed all economic ties with the Communist regime.

The embargo made it illegal for U.S. companies to trade with Cuba, or for American citizens to spend dollars there. The United States and Cuba became distant neighbors.

Castro turned to the Soviet Union, and for 30 years he could count on a billion annual foreign aid package from Moscow to help him feed his people. But the collapse of the Soviet Union cut that lifeline in 1991, and food shortages became a fact of life here. And the door to the United States remained firmly closed.

But this began to change in the waning months of the Clinton Administration. In October 2000 Congress passed legislation allowing Cuba to buy U.S. food and medicine - provided the regime pay up front in hard cash.

No way, said Castro. He vowed never to buy a single grain of rice under the stringent conditions imposed by the U.S. government. But in November of last year Hurricane Michelle ripped through central Cuba, killing five people and devastating vast swaths of the countryside. In a major policy reversal, Havana decided to purchase $35 million dollars worth of U.S. food to alleviate the plight of hurricane victims.

This ship, for example, brought 500 tons of chickens from a Mississippi port to eager Cuban consumers. For those under the age of 40, it was the first time they'd ever seen American goods steaming into Havana harbor. And what began as a one-off emergency relief measure has since evolved into a thriving trade relationship.

At the Cuban Foreign Trade Ministry I spoke with the official in charge of imports to Cuba. Pedro Alvarez, a man who understands the power of profit over politics.

PEDRO ALVAREZ: When the immense majority of American farmers and American people realize that the blockade is absurd and that it hurts them as much as it hurts us, then the embargo will end.

JOE CONTRERAS: The embargo is still officially in place. But the new American laws permit companies that obtain special licenses from the U.S. Commerce Department to sell goods to Cuba for cash. As a result, purchases from the United States now stand at $110 million dollars. Officials in Havana say that figure could double next year, and dozens of U.S. companies want to get in on the action. Many will come to this convention center in Havana next week for an event that would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago: the first-ever U.S. food trade fair in Cuba. The fair is sponsored by ADM, Archer Daniels Midland, one of the largest agri-business corporations in the United States. And there will be other industry heavyweights including Hormel, Cargill and Tyson Foods.

PEDRO ALVAREZ: It's the first opportunity for U.S. producers to compete in the Cuban market.

JOE CONTRERAS: This Communist bureaucrat, who calls corporate capitalists his good friends, is living proof that economics can make strange bedfellows. I saw that a day later during my visit to ADM's corporate headquarters in Decatur, Illinois.

A pioneer in opening commercial links to former U.S. enemies like the Soviet Union and China, ADM has thus far sold 40 million dollars worth of soy beans, corn, wheat and rice to Cuba.

JOE CONTRERAS: Y teniamos una entrevista con este ejecutivo de Archer, Daniels, Midland.

At ADM, I was told that ideology should not get in the way of good business. This from the company's vice president for marketing, Tony DeLio.

TONY DELIO, VP, MARKETING, ADM: I think we're doing this primarily because it makes business sense, and because we do have an abundance of food.

It's not really around the politics. It's about improving the quality of life of the Cuban people.

I think the Cubans get a fair price. This is truly a win-win business situation. The real winners on this are the American farmers that now have a new market for their crops and 90 miles from our shores.

JOE CONTRERAS: The real winners, perhaps, will be companies like ADM, which stand to reap hefty profits from open trade with Cuba. But what may be good business for some is a very personal matter for others.

The State Department's Otto Reich fled Cuba as a teenager soon after Castro seized power. His family lost everything, and he's never been back. In the 1980s he was put in charge of the Reagan Administration's propaganda campaign against the Castro-backed Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Today, as the Bush Administration's point man on Latin America, Reich says U.S. companies should think twice about doing business with Castro's Cuba.

OTTO REICH, STATE DEPARTMENT: I'm very pro-business. I came from the private sector into government. I believe in private enterprise. But I also believe that companies have to be very careful when they get involved in trying to change a foreign policy for strictly profit reasons. Companies are in business to make a profit. But I think that they also have certain moral standards that they should abide by.

JOE CONTRERAS: Reich warns that Castro is using Cuba's newfound relations with major U.S. companies to support Havana's efforts to undermine the entire embargo. But there are those in President Bush's party who think that lifting the embargo isn't a bad idea. In fact, the first state governor to set foot on Cuban soil in 40 years was a Republican, George Ryan of Illinois.

SENATOR GEORGE RYAN, (R-IL): I think we ought to treat Cuba like we do any other country in the world that we do business with, whether they're communist countries or whether they're dictatorships, or whatever- our biggest commodity is democracy, and we ought to be spreading that any place we can. And what made this country great is free trade.

JOE CONTRERAS: The State Department's Otto Reich disagrees.

OTTO REICH: The embargo was intended to send a signal that the United States was not going to recognize the government of Castro or prop him up. And I think one thing that we should not fool ourselves into is to think that totalitarian regimes can be changed by trade and tourism.

SENATOR GEORGE RYAN, (R-IL): I have yet to see any evidence that the embargo that we put on Cuba has had any impact. If we continue to hold the embargo, we're really hurting the Cuban people, probably more than we're hurting ourselves.

JOE CONTRERAS: And there's no doubt that the Cuban people are hurting. In the post-Soviet era. Most Cubans have put their dreams on hold. The average wage is $10 a month. Many foods are rationed.

Sections of the once-glamorous capital city are crumbling after years of neglect and decay. Infrastructure is antiquated. Power blackouts are frequent. And, an inadequate public transport system forces white-collar workers to try to hitch rides. Some get lucky.

The influx of American dollars has provided much needed hard currency to Cuba. But it has also deepened the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

Skilled professionals have abandoned their careers because they make more money in tips than they do working in the field they were trained for. This man, who asked not to be identified, gave up his career in architecture to drive a cab for tourists.

So as the Cuban economy becomes increasingly dollar-ized, some Cubans are left out of the economic loop.

LYDIA HERNANDEZ DELGADO: There's nothing. There's nothing of nothing. Everything is in crisis. There's food but there's no money to buy it.

I visited Havana food markets to gauge the reaction of ordinary Cubans to the prospect of closer ties to the United States. Not one of them voiced any second thoughts about an American presence on the island.

SANTIAGO IZQUEIRDO: The logical thing is for the embargo to disappear. It would be beneficial for both peoples, the Cuban people have a lot in common with the American people because we have a lot of relatives over there and vice versa.

JOE CONTRERAS: The only people I met who had misgivings about a warming of relations between Cuba and the United States were young American tourists.

AMERICAN TOURIST: I'm hoping that the Cuban people and the Cuban government will be smart enough to retain some kind of identity. And hopefully things will, will still have a Cuban element and there won't be a McDonald's and there won't be a Starbucks. There'll be some kind of a Cuban chain.

JOE CONTRERAS: Philip Agee doesn't worry about creeping Americanization.

PHILIP AGEE: Americans could come here by the millions and they would be far more changed than any of the Cubans they came into contact with. The Cubans are going to change Americans, profoundly. They changed me.

JOE CONTRERAS: American tourists say they come to Cuba because they're curious. But whatever their intentions, the greenbacks they spend may only help Castro cling to power according to the State Department's Otto Reich.

OTTO REICH: They probably don't know what they're doing. A lot of people aren't aware of the nature of the regime in Cuba. I would say that they're putting money into the hands of a Communist dictator.

JOE CONTRERAS: Veterans of the Cold War can rehash the tired debate over dollars and dogma all they want. But they are missing the point: for better or worse, events on the ground are already pushing these two distant neighbors closer towards each other. Cuba will never again be the same.