MY VISIT TO CUBA: December 2013

Pres. Obama issued an executive order on May 23, 2011, allowing travel to Cuba by US citizens as part of educational or cultural people-to-people groups.  Ours was a group of 25 through the Alumni Association of the UofA, as part of Go Next of Edina, MN, licensed by the US Treasury Dept.

Videos of each day are on YouTube.  So is this narrative, with lots more pix: MY VISIT TO CUBA

Americans are visiting Cuba in record numbers despite strict travel restrictions, joining the hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans who travel home each year, according to Cuban government figures published on Oct 18, 2013.

Here's the website if that link doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOilf2fo36c

Just over 98,000 U.S. citizens visited Cuba in 2012, up from 73,500 in 2011 and twice the number compared with five years ago, according to an online report by the National Statistics Office (www.one.cu).

Cuba is not a threat to US national or economic security.  It is an island of 11.27 million people (2012), 90 miles south of Key West, Florida.   In 2012 it had a gross domestic product of $(US)60.81 billion. 

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Full disclosure: As a college student I was a member of Fair Play For Cuba.  I heard Castro speak from a truck outside the Theresa Hotel in Harlem on Sept. 23, 1960, and looking forward to the day when I could travel there.

Looking back, I can’t believe the ground that we covered in our Chinese-built tour bus (with a Cuban guide).    Sometimes, on the open road, an announcement could be heard, first in Chinese and then in English, warning the driver that he was exceeding the posted speed limit. 

Often would hit 4 or 5 cultural or educational spots between breakfast and dinner, with an hour or two of free time in between.  We took brisk walks down the Prado and along the Malecon before sun-up, and often went pub-crawling after dinner. 

Cuba is definitely not a police state.  We saw no armed soldiers; traffic cops carried 9mm handguns.  No one approached us demanding “papers please.”

Cuba is most definitely a socialist country.   Or at least partly.  The online edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary has this definition:

1:  any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods

2 a :  a system of society or group living in which there is no private property

   b :  a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3:  a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done. 

Read on and decide.

There is a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba and it is on the short list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.

Example: A subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) recently paid a $600 million fine for doing business with Cuba.

Cuba has had 3 sugar-daddies for most of its history:

Spain, from 1492 until 1896

US, from 1896 until 1959

USSR from 1960 until 1994

Now they are trying to go it alone, and not doing all that well. 

Cuba is definitely not the US definition of democracy.  Then again, no one elected the queen of England nor the British prime minister.  They have their own definition of democratic elections for their leaders.

Conditions in Cuba are shameful::

-Homes and public buildings are in desperate need of repair and painting.

-Some public housing is Soviet-era blocks of apartment houses.

-Roads have potholes that are beyond belief.

-Water is not safe to drink by US standards; Cubans who can drink bottled water; others boil theirs.

-Electricity seems OK now; there have been no brown-outs lately.

-Internet is based on pathetically-poor satellites, although there are 2 undersea fiber-optic cables that skirt the island on the east and west. Most people do not have internet access.

82% of Cubans own their own homes or apartments. In the case of apartment buildings, the government owns the buildings themselves.  Cuba has a housing deficit of between 0.5 and 1.6 million units, depending on whose figures you believe.

We stayed in the Central Park Hotel, a 5-star property of Spain’s IberoStar, in which the Cuban govt owns 51% and the Spanish company owns 49%.  Most of the employees are Cubans, with just a few top managers being Spanish.

Cubans take great pride in their country and love US people and money.  They like Pres Obama –mostly because he is a mulato –their word-- like most of them. 

Cuba had always been a racist country. Slavery was not abolished until 1886. The ruler, Batista, whom the revolution overthrew in 1959, also a mulato –again, their word—had been denied membership in Havana’s most prestigious country club because he was not white.  He joined the #2 club.

With Raul Castro as president for nearly 5 years the govt is re-assessing a centralized, planned economy –but trying to stay true to their socialist principles.

Universal health care is free.  The number of children per women has been cut from an average of 7 or 8 in 1959 to 1.46, in part due to an increase in feminism and also better health.  Infant mortality is low:

In 2011 the US life expectancy was 78.64 years; Cuba’s is 79.13 years, up from 65 in 1959.

It is not unusual for couples to marry in their late twenties or not at all.  Birth-control is provided; abortion is legal.

Education is free from age 1.  Illiteracy has been cut from 24% in 1959 to 4% now –the lowest in the hemisphere.

When graduating from high school and passing the college admissions test you get to select 10 fields in which you want to major in college.  You are assigned the one where graduates are needed most.  After high school, college or professional school you owe 3 years of public service (women); 2 years of public service and 1 year of military service for men.  Medical doctors are allowed up to 8 years of overseas service, after which they still owe their public/military service.  Doctors are the largest Cuban export; medical tourism, including plastic surgery, is a great source of income.

As of 2011 there have been 648 assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro.   He did not live in a Presidential Palace when he was president.  He is said to sleep in different places each night, as does his brother Raul, the current president.  There are no statues of either man; no photos on billboards.  Quotations, yes --aplenty.  Che Guevera is the one shown in public art of all sorts.  On October 9th, 1967, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was put to death by Bolivian soldiers, trained, equipped and guided by U.S. Green Beret and CIA operatives. His execution remains a historic and controversial event; and years later, the circumstances of his guerrilla foray into Bolivia, his capture, killing, and burial are still the subject of intense public interest and discussion around the world.  Che is memorialized everywhere on the island.