Politicians have debated the merits of capitalism versus communism in back rooms and senate floors for decades. In the streets of Havana, the debate rests on the end of a waffle cone.

Fidel Castro was a notorious ice cream lover. To bypass the trade embargo, he once forced his ambassador in Canada to send him 28 containers of the stuff from Howard Johnson’s, a US restaurant chain, while the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez recalled seeing the revolutionary leader polish off 18 scoops after “a good-sized lunch”. So it seems only logical that Castro’s grand vision of a utopian society not only included free health care and education, but also government-subsidized ice cream.

The dream that each citizen could afford a high-quality cool treat on a hot day worked for decades. Today, however, as Cuba’s economy begins to shift, one just has to look at Havana’s ice cream parlours to see how Castro’s egalitarian dream is melting.

Before the revolution, Cubans consumed ice cream imported from the United States. When the US embargo made imported ice cream illegal, El Comandante took it upon himself to create a better tasting ice cream than his Yankee rivals.

“Helado por el pueblo” (ice cream for the people) became a rallying cry. In the heyday of the revolution, when the Soviet Union was propping up the Cuban government with up to $5bn per year, Cuba was flushed with cash. So Castro decided to build the world’s largest ice cream parlour for his faithful revolutionaries.