cuba

My brother Tim and I just got back from ten days in Cuba (April 2003); starting in Havana, then Trinidad, then Cienfuegos. We spent the first three nights at Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, then the rest of the time in "casa particulars"-- private homes recently licensed to rent rooms to tourists, a concession by the communists during the "Special Period" after the Soviet pullout in 1991. We ate most of our meals in "paladors"-- private homes licensed to serve meals. The few state owned restaurants we tried had bad food and worse service.
We met a lot of interesting people. I brought a trumpet mouthpiece and borrowed a horn there, and got to jam one day with some musicians in Trinidad. I even went to their homes and spent some time drinking and talking with them about music and about their lives in Cuba.
We also saw a baseball game during the finals; this was a great experience. We were perhaps the only tourists of the ten thousand rowdy male fans at the game. Our hotel offered tourist tickets at US$10 each but we decided to go on our own so we could sit in the regular section. The ballpark ticket-booth lady refused our US money but a Cuban baseball fan saw what happened, and upset that another fan would miss the game, he rushed up to the front of the line and bought us each a ticket (one Cuban peso each, about four cents US) and walked away quickly after giving them to us, not allowing us to pay him in US dollars. During the game, one of the interesting items was seeing a ballpark with no ads! It was also interesting to listen to the Spanish slang spoken by the fans, and to watch their yelling matches.

I came away from the trip a bit depressed about the economic and political situation in Cuba. When I planned the trip, I knew about the good things in Cuba today (music, health, education, lack of crime etc) but had been perhaps naive about the level of bad things to discover. These were jarring to experience in person.
It was very stressful to me having to say "NO" every ten minutes to the aggressive beggars and hustlers (jinteros). I don't know how other tourists managed to be less effected by this than me-- maybe it was worse for me since this was my first unhosted visit to a "third world" country. Even with a cop on each street corner in Havana's hotel district, the hustlers were still active there. We did not spend too much time in these areas, but encountered beggars and hustlers almost everywhere. The most stressless walk was one night during one of the many blackouts, when the streets were full of Cubans who could not identify us as tourists due to the dark.
The parallel economies (Cuban peso vs US dollar) create a lot of tension. One day I was sitting on the curb outside a casa particular where we were staying. A young black hustler approached and asked "where are you from" which is the most popular first question, to get you talking. He wanted me to give him a T shirt. (The travel books advise against ever giving stuff to someone who approaches you, as this will only make the hustlers and beggars more aggressive, ending up hurting the tourist trade and thus cutting into the desparately needed dollars. Instead, they advised finding and donating to a Cuban charity if so inclined.) The young man was very charming and persistent, he asked me what the casa particular was like-- it seemed that he feared and revered the unknown of a fancy house connected with the government enough to get to host tourists for dollars. At one point the woman of the house came to the door and joined the conversation; the young man talked himself into the hallway, and his eyes grew wide as he took in the many possessions inside the modest house.

Cubans are clearly very repressed, with strong propaganda and no access to other opinions or media, very heavy policing, strict travel restrictions, neighborhood "watch" groups, and only one political party, with alternate opinions being illegal. The Cubans who are connected to tourist dollars were generally very pro-Castro (no surprise), but other Cubans would open up with the criticisms when they were not around their neighbors and/or after they started drinking.
Even tourists are carefully managed, e.g., we could not bring communications equipment, the private home owners we stayed with had to bring our passport info to immigration every day, and police on the highways would frequently stop all buses and vans to make sure there were no tourists on Cuban-only licensed transport and vice versa.
Visiting a third world country is in some ways like visiting a concentration camp in that there is some pain involved but it should probably be done at least once in your life from an awareness and education standpoint.
See also my one page summary of Cuban history.

We were in Cuba during the 2003 Iraq war, and also during a new crackdown by Castro directed at Cubans who have spoken or acted out against policies of his government. (Just after we left, Castro had three Cubans executed and 75 others imprisoned.)
I have a photo of my brother at a Hotel Nacional bar in Havana watching the noosed Saddam Hussein statue coming down on CNN Espanol. (I think the only Cubans who have access to foreign media are the ones in hotels, and I can tell you that they all were fixated on CNN, MTV, etc.)
It was interesting time to be in Cuba. We also spent some time talking with other tourists about Cuba-- people from Barcelona, Munich, Frankfurt, Paris, Quebec, and Italy. They seemed to have a consensus that the US "blockade" was immoral. There is much debate about whether the blockade helps or hurts Castro's cause, but it is pretty clear it hurts the Cuban people.

I talked one day with a fourth year American medical student who was in Cuba for six weeks on a medical exchange program. He told me that doctors in Cuba take ownership of both public and private health issues. E.g., on their regular home visits, one of the fields on their report form was "is the family functioning" and another was "are their living conditions acceptable". He had also been surprised to find Cubans much more knowledgable and active in their health care than were Americans. Although one Cuban doctor told him that two of the reasons Cubans are not fat is they have very little food available, and very few cars-- most transport is done via bicycle or walking.
One day I visited some very poor Cubans in houses which were about 12 feet by 25 feet with no doors, dirt roads and floors, with four or five people living there. Although they were clearly very poor, the two children (ages 3 and 8) looked very healthy, and the 8 year old girl was proud to show me her excellent writing skills.

The following links are to my photos and notes. Note that I did not take my camera with me everywhere, as I sometimes tried to appear a little bit less like a tourist... :)

Featured photos and text
Transportation
Propaganda
Botanical garden in Cienfuegos
Ernest Hemingway
Links to other Cuba websites

I hope that Cuba will become a country where people can offer their opinions and have public debates, can freely travel, and can have access to any information they want. I hope that Cuba will stay a semi-socialist state (especially with its excellent health and education programs) and will use its post-Castro post-embargo riches for good use, with little to no corruption. It would be great to see Cuba evolve to become a good and powerful country, and while it will be influenced by American dollars and culture (same as Mexico and Canada), it would be good if Cuba can maintain its own identity and culture. But most importantly, I hope the Cuban people determine their own destiny post-Castro.

My friend Randal tells me the Miami Cubans have a saying which in English is: "Miami is very close to the United States". :-)
Almost 2 million mostly white Cubans have fled the country since Castro's regime. (The current population of Cuba is about 11 million of which 37% are white.) Many of the exiles have settled in Miami, transforming South Florida over time to become a world class Latin American city. The Cuban Americans have in general done very well in the US, and they are a very powerful political force.

Here are some questions for pro-Castro people:

What percent of casa particular and paladar licensors are black? Of the 20 private businesses we visited in three cities, none of the owners were black. We also asked a few other tourists about this, and they said the same thing. Why is this?

If all the economic problems are caused by the US, and not by Cuba, why can't you get other countries (Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, etc) to invest? Yes, they are investing a little bit, but given the incredible obvious poverty, they are clearly not investing enough. Maybe there is something wrong with Cuba that prevents them from investing?

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