Trip to "Cuban Paradise"

Recently the Washington Post dedicated three pages of its travel section to Cuba. Apparently, since April last year, the Treasury Department’s Office of Asset Control has issued “people-to-people” licenses to organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation and tour operators such as Friendly Planet and Insight Cuba. The current administration has decided last year to reinstate licenses to touring companies for trips to the communist island previously boycotted for 50 years.

The Friendly Planet arranges group travel in “humanitarian activities throughout the world” and contributes to “people-to-people” projects in some countries:

-           Special tours to Cuba since 2010 for “volunteer-minded travelers to interact directly with the Cuban people, and to help people in need by bringing medical supplies and educational materials, which are in short supply and badly needed in Cuba”

-          Kiva Microlending (travelers loan as little as they wish to an entrepreneur of their choice in the country of their choice)

-          Clean water in Cambodia (over 200 wells in villages built by Friendly Planet and funded by some travelers as well)

-          Bicycles and supplies in Vietnamese schools donated by travelers

Visitors have to file a “full-time schedule of educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.” This does not sound to me like a free visit of another country but a state-controlled indoctrination tour.

Mentioning everyday Cuban life difficulties as stereotypes, the author acknowledges the multitude of Eisenhower era American cars on the Malecon, Havana’s 4-mile long boulevard by the sea. Garish murals, pro-revolution propaganda billboards, anti-United States propaganda, and Che Guevara are everywhere. All her stereotypes were confirmed.

“Che Guevara’s face was as ubiquitous as McDonald’s golden arches are here. His mustachioed mien and disheveled locks appeared on roadside signs and posters, a reassuring fist pump of perseverance.” Really? Perseverance in the imprisonment, torture, and killing of people, while oppressing the entire Cuban population for 50 years? Reassuring the rest of Cubans to better behave in lock step with the communist regime or else?

The famous Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) are not mentioned. A peaceful opposition movement in Cuba, they protest the imprisonment of their husbands, brothers, fathers, and other political dissident relatives, by attending Mass each Sunday wearing white dresses and silently walking through the streets afterwards.

All controversial topics were answered with “according to the government,” or “things work this way in theory.” A Cuban teacher earns 450 pesos a month ($17).  I wonder what the teachers in Wisconsin would think if paid $17 per month. They protested the loss of collective bargaining for salaries upwards of $100,000 per year. Communism is coming this way, with Marxist remunerations “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” needs decided by the government not the free market system.

In the Plaza de Armas square, “vendors sold books and souvenirs celebrating Che, ‘the face of Cuba,’ and the revolution.” It is as nauseating as the American high school and college students wearing Che Guevara t-shirts and bandanas.

The appearance of an old woman begging prompted the official of the City of Havana to explain, “Mainly, they don’t want to work. There is plenty of work to be done, construction, and agriculture. It is hard to find homeless. Maybe one or two people in the evenings, a drunk person.” (Isabel Leon Candelario)

“The government – socialist in its politics, communist in its ideals – guarantees housing and jobs, plus provides free health care and education. Despite ration cards, the Cubans’ biggest expenditure is food.” (Andrea Sachs)

Since this is a travel diary, Andrea does not explain the dismal state of the economy, the tiny dilapidated and shabby state-provided apartments, the communist indoctrination in schools, and the sub-standard and downright dangerous medical care or the lack of basic medical supplies, drugs, and sterile hospitals. Neither is the education of their doctors on par with western doctors in spite of Michael Moore’s propaganda movie, “Sicko,” which presents a state of the art picture of Cuban medicine. The reality is quite different.

Most Cubans cannot support themselves on the government’s wages so they resort to black market dealings, accepting gratuities from tourists, tutoring, translation work, or performing in the streets.

Visiting an elementary school on a “chewed-up street with flaking facades and chipped doorways,” the visitor was enchanted by a bust of the national hero Jose Marti and by a recitation of a Marti poem by fifth graders “by heart and from the heart.”

Jose Marti was a writer and political activist called the “Apostle of Cuban Independence.” He was a symbol of Cuba’s independence from Spain and of Cuban revolutionaries and those reluctant to start a revolution. Marti fought against the threat of U.S. “expansionism” into Cuba. His poem, “Versos Sencillos” (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song, “Guantanamera,” which has become the patriotic song of Cuba.

The fifth graders’ poetry recitation brings to mind the poems we had to memorize by heart glorifying the communist revolution in Romania. I can honestly say, it never came from the heart for most of us. It was something we had to do in order to survive another day.

The author continues, “The first graders were ‘glued to their seats.’ I can attest from experience that we were not allowed to move from a straight, at attention position, in our seats, with hands clasped behinds our backs unless the teacher gave us assignments to write or we had to raise our hands in order to ask questions. Wiggling, giggling, or note passing were not allowed. Behavior was graded harshly on monthly report cards.

The touted Cuban economic reform is dust in the eyes of the Cubans. A few restaurants opened to cater to tourists and their foreign currencies. Cuba, as any current or former communist state, charges a high 10 percent tax on exchanging dollars to peso but none for Euros or Canadian dollars.

Toilet paper is in short supply and tourists are encouraged to bring their own. I remember we had rough toilet paper when we could find it and some of it had visible splinters.

Tourist donations were encouraged to schools and medical centers in the form of pens, notebooks, toiletries, and other necessities. If communism is so exceptional and superior to capitalism, as Castro and his lefty supporters present it, why do they need donations and help from the “evil enslaving capitalists” of the free world?

 
Part of the dictated tour was the Museum of the Revolution, with its collection of “decrepit newspaper clippings, bullet pocked tanks, and Granma, the fishing boat that brought Castro from Mexico to Cuba in 1956.” The next stop was “a sharp pinch of reality” to an apartment complex on the outskirts of town, what “HUD would call a project.”

“The government had relocated a family recently to a two-bedroom apartment in the projects after their colonial domicile in Havana collapsed like a dollhouse made of dry crackers.”

Many beautiful colonial homes in Havana had collapsed from lack of maintenance under the Castro regime. They were confiscated from the previous owners and allocated to families who lived together, sharing bathrooms and kitchens. They did not have money for upkeep and the government did not provide much maintenance if any.

The tropical paradise, the island with so much potential, brought to its knees by an oppressive “revolutionary” communist government, has a long way to go before any anemic government enacted economic reforms can bring it back to its former glory.