Uncle Fidel...

[Cyclefrance]

OK, so you didn't notice my absence these past 7 days. That's all right. We Brits can weather such things (all to do with starchiness of the top lip area, and all that!).

Well , if you must know (and you MUST know), I've been to Uncle Fidel land. I know it's hardly number 1 on the American holiday agenda, which may account for the plethora (yes, I know, a bit of a long word for someone whose just endured 20 hours of travel without any sleep) of Canadians in the place, but I have to say that the resort we went to, Breezes Jibacoa, was just the ticket. Lived up to its Tripadvisor review status exactly, and absolutely on the agenda for a return visit.

Photos and commentary for those who can/might want to visit the island once I've had a few hours sleep (second thoughts, make that 'days')!

Viva La Revolution!

[Sundae]

Looking forward to it...!

I went to Cuba in 1998 and I'd love to go back to Havana - it had a kind of decaying grandeur. When we went most of the tourists were Italian, perhaps it's a seasonal thing?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Cyclefrance

I know it's hardly number 1 on the American holiday agenda

US tourists are not allowed to go to Cuba. US citizens are supposed to get a license from our Treasury Department if they want to go. But tourists can't obtain one of these licenses. So they either go and hope they don't get caught, or they lie to obtain a license. Most just go elsewhere.

The penalties, according to the Treasury Dept. website, are:

How much are the fines for violating these regulations?

The fines for violations can be substantial. Depending on the program, criminal penalties can include fines ranging from $50,000 to $10,000,000 and imprisonment ranging from 10 to 30 years for willful violations. Depending on the program, civil penalties range from $11,000 to $1,000,000 for each violation. [09-10-02]

Cuba seems like a cool country to visit. I hope Castro dies soon so I can check it out.

[barefoot serpent]

Hasta La Victo... umm La Muerte!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cuba seems like a cool country to visit. I hope Castro dies soon so I can check it out.

Actually you can go now......free.....at government expense. Just add the words bomb, allah and jihad to all your emails and phone calls. Be in Cuba before you know it.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by glatt

The penalties, according to the Treasury Dept. website, are:

Basically, the penalties for a US citizen visiting Cuba without government approval pretty much match the penalties for a Cuban citizen visting the US without approval. Of course, they pretty much don't even want to go back. I can't think of many Americans who would want to trade living in the US for living in Cuba.

It's still strange that it's easier to go to Vietnam, who we were at war with about 30 years ago, than Cuba, who we have not been officially at war with since 1898.

The 1959 revolution was against Batista, a dictator. The U.S. initially supported Castro until he embraced Communism. Europe doesn't seem to have the same problem with Castro that we do. If Castro dies and Cuba becomes a Socialist or Communist democracy, it will be interesting to see what excuses the US can come up with to keep the status quo, especially since we are still allied with Saudi Arabia and numerous non-constitutional monarchies in the Middle East.

From here.

On March 10, 1952, General Fulgencio Batista overthrew the president of Cuba, Carlos Prìo Socarrás, and canceled all elections. This angered the young lawyer Fidel Castro, and for the next seven years he attempted to overthrow Batista’s government. On July 26, 1953, Castro led an attack against the military barracks in Santiago, but he was defeated and arrested. Although Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Batista released him in 1955 in a show of supreme power. Castro did not back down and gathered a new group of rebels in Mexico. On December 2, 1956, he was again defeated by Batista’s army and fled to the Sierra Maestra. He began using guerrilla tactics to fight Batista’s armed forces, and with the aid of other rebellions throughout Cuba, he forced Batista to resign and flee the country on January 1, 1959. Castro became the Prime Minister of Cuba in February and had about 550 of Batista’s associates executed. He soon suspended all elections and named himself "President for Life", jailing or executing all who opposed him. He established a communist government with himself as a dictator and began relations with the Soviet Union.

At the beginning of his rule, the United States supported Castro. However, once he embraced communism, the U.S. attempted to overthrow him. Cuban exiles, armed and trained by Americans, formed an army known as La Brigada and invaded Cuba’s Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961. The army was crushed by Castro after President Kennedy refused to directly involve the U.S. armed forces, and 1200 of the invaders were captured. The United States was forced to give $53 million worth of food and supplies to Cuba for the release of the captives. Due to Kennedy’s lack of involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, felt that the U.S. would do little to resist Soviet Expansion. So, in July 1962, Khrushchev began installing missile sites in Cuba. When this was discovered, Kennedy completely blockaded Cuba and threatened to invade. The U.S.S.R. promised to withdraw from Cuba if the U.S. did not invade, and the conflict known as the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved. After the Crisis, Soviet aid represented 75% of Cuba’s economy. The United States had issued a trade embargo around the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion, so when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, so did Cuba’s economy. Strict rations were imposed on food and supplies and Castro’s regime continues to be on the verge of collapse.

As far as vacationing there. One thing to consider is that if you walk a few miles from the hotel, the people you encounter are probably better off than the people you would find walking away from a vacation club in Haiti.

I really look forward to a democratic government in Cuba, as well as Saudi Arabia, Burma, and any number of other places. That being said, I still wonder at the special status we have given Cuba considering the sins we forgave Noriega for until we decided to do something about him.

[Tonchi]

There will not be a democratic government in Cuba, whether Castro croaks tomorrow or in 10 years, because the leftist movement is picking up steam in South America now and they need for Cuba to stay the way it is in order to act as the role model for their governmental overhauls.

Venezuela is firmly on board this waggon with Bolivia signing on the minute they elected their first indigenous President last month. Why anybody would want as a role model a country which has failed in every possible social and economic endeavor is beyond my understanding, but that is how too many of those destitute countries down there are thinking right now. Fidel will play along because when the Russian empire imploded he lost his only supporter, but now he can count on oil-rich Venezuela to underwrite his schemes. Bolivia, which is also supposed to have vast oil and mineral resources, will now nationalize them (i.e., seize) from Western companies who will not go along with their demands. As you may guess, once OIL gets into the equation.......in come the US troops with Halliburton not far behind. Cuba only conceeded a few resorts to the decadent Western tourists because there was literally no other possible source of income for the country. Now, Uncle Fidel's last miserable sugarcane fields, run by requiring men to do their "socialist duty" on a seasonal rotation, will become the final casualty of the fabulous economic revolution and the guns will come out again. Communists who have no food begin "exporting revolution." And Venezuela is eager to pay for it.

You might want to do your winter vacations on some other Caribbean island next time.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why anybody would want as a role model a country which has failed in every possible social and economic endeavor is beyond my understanding, but that is how too many of those destitute countries down there are thinking right now.

Because most of these countries have a handfull of very rich and the rest have nothing, the idea of everyone having basic needs looks like heaven. How many people in these South American countries have ever been to Cuba? They only know they don't like what they have and are being promised a better life.
They've been down so goddamn long, it looks like up to them?

Post Fidel, the lure of American companies looking for offshore, cheap labor only 90 miles from the IRS might be tempting.

[Cyclefrance]

It’s interesting to read all the above entries since my opening post. I admit first and foremost that my knowledge of Cuba is extremely limited. I deliberately have avoided reading tourist guides as I wanted to make my own judgements about the place. This will therefore be an account of what I saw and experienced. I’ll add comments where I feel appropriate but try to be as objective as possible. I’ll also break down this ‘travelogue’ into 4 sections: ‘First Impressions’, ‘In and Around the Resort’, ‘Havana’, and finally ‘Tropicana’.

First Impressions
-------

I regret that I have no photos to support this section, having managed to pack my camera in the luggage compartment of the coach on both the outward and the return trip! I’ll make up for this next time (I am sure I will return to Cuba - as much from a desire to learn more about the country as to enjoy another visit to the resort where we stayed).

On approaching and landing in Havana, the airport and terrain seems no different from any other holiday destination that we are used to, such as in Spain and Portugal. The terrain is barren. I expected to see old vehicles, but surprisingly at the airport there were predominantly new ones (coaches and cars). This is exceptional, and a reflection of the government funding for tourism, as once out on the country’s roads taking the 90 minute journey to the resort, this changed completely.

Once on the road, immediately noticeable is the absence of any proper transport infrastructure - public or commercial. No retail outlets either. Cubans wait for the odd ‘bus’ which is always filled to capacity, or else they hitch for a ride, or walk – it wasn't unusual to see a large dumper truck go by with anything up to a dozen people in the back of it as passngers!

Vehicles bear different-coloured registration/number plates. Our coach bore one with a blue background. All vehicles with blue background plates are (or act as) public vehicles. They are government subsidised, and seem obliged to take passengers on board. Cubans tried to hail down our coach, but the drivers are clearly instructed not to carry non-tourists (one wonders why…).

There are four background colours in all to registration plates. Those with yellow plates are privately owned and can be counted on to be old wrecks in virtually every case (here are your old Buicks and Chryslers, now probably fitted with a more frugal engine). Then there are orange-plated ones, being government-owned vehicles and available to ‘professionals’, such as doctors. Lastly there are brown plates which indicate a rental vehicle, as used by tourists. Needless to say these are very modern vehicles (we saw brand new VW Golfs and also Audi A4s).


The roads are something else. Six-lane highways have very little traffic on them, and are in disastrous condition with deep pot-holes at frequent intervals. There seems to be no rule about where vehicles travel apart from the best place to avoid the holes – we regularly traveled on the middle lane of the road bearing traffic coming on the opposite direction! All to achieve a ‘smooth’ ride.

The land either side of the road, once away from Havana district, is consistently and predominantly barren, with no sign of development or investment. We saw no new architecture outside Havana (discounting the holiday resorts - the results of JVs between Cuba and the holiday companies concerned). Cubans either occupy the houses and villas that were left after the expulsion of non-nationals, or else occupy ‘shanty-town’ dwellings – roughly constructed shacks with concrete or timber walls and corrugated rooves (either metal or what seemed to be asbestos). The expulsion properties have decayed in virtually every case, consistently having poor electrics, bare floors, make-shift furniture, and often without glazed windows (these being open to the elements or boarded up).

There was evidence of some minor oil exploration along the northern coast east of Havana, but as this stretch boasts the best coastline and obvious location for tourist resorts there is a conflict of interest here – the idea of creating beaches elsewhere to allow them to exploit oil resources here doesn’t seem to have entered the government’s mind – not yet, anyway.

No sign either of extensive agriculture. There was the occasional prepared (ploughed and harrowed very small field or crops grown in sufficient number to support a family - but not a population. A horse cow and bullock could also be seen occasionally, tethered by the roadside or next to a dwelling.

I did not see much evidence of wealth anywhere that we visited – everyone apparently ‘earns’ the same basic wage (or so we were advised), and that doesn’t amount to much. There are two currencies. LOcal pesos which the nationals earn adn Cuban Convertible pesos (CuCs) which foreigners must acquire and use to buy goods and services. Prices of goods in retail outlets are marked in CuCs - one CuC peso is equivalent to 12 local pesos. Locals have very little chance to buy goods meant for tourists as a result. It is pretty clear that the government takes the lion's share of monies received by shops, although I did not uncover the detail of how the system works in this respect.

All-in-all, the initial picture presented was of a country where the opportunity or encouragement to improve seemed absent. Yet people didn’t look poor, as in under-nourished and open to illness and disease, they just seemed controlled and unable to make life better for themselves - they had to lead the life the government dictated they should lead. For someone from the outside this naturally seems totally unacceptable, but there is as much a fear of change as there is a desire for it amongst the Cuban people. I’ll expand on this in a later section.

[Tonchi]

Anybody wanting to "get to know Cuba" would do better to visit Miami for a week instead. That is where every Cuban with an ounce of brains and principles beyond Socialism is now. The Cuban people WERE very exceptional, smart/educated/creative, but they are not in Cuba any longer. The best of the best fled, both right after the "Great Revolution" showed what things were REALLY going to be like once the Communists under Fidel took charge and in thousands of smuggling or hijacking operations for 20 years thereafter. What remains now is the homesick, the old, and the poor, overlaid with a generation of Hitler-Youth-like young Cubans who never knew anything except the drab, goods-scarce Communist rule. And they will continue to get older and poorer, no matter how many hotels are built, because the money from these plastic resorts goes through the government to be "trickled down" as they see the need. All radio and tv broadcasts from more than a few miles out are blocked/jammed. Cubans outside the island have to have phone calls to their relatives or loved ones scheduled and monitored. But they are encouraged to send gifts of money and they do, just as in Mexico, and these dollars keep many families above the subsistance level since there are no jobs except where the government says they are needed to work. The Mexican Embassy has been closed several times and diplomatic relations severed because the Cuban military has begun to shoot or arrest people trying to get out of the country by appealing to the Mexicans. The "War of the Billboards" continues, along with blaring anthems, across the street from the American Embassy, because the word "Freedom" was used in one of our postings.

Again, C-France, I wonder why you want to spend your heavily-taxed British income to visit this museum of failed systems? Latin America has so many other really nice places waiting for you.

[Cyclefrance]

Hi Tonchi - to try to answer your question briefly for now. I originally chose Cuba on the basis I might choose any other holiday destination about which I knew very little. It was within our budget, had good feedback, and met our weather and accommodation criteria. The political aspect took a back seat at this stage.

I knew very little about the Cuban situation before I went. Living closer to events, you would undoubtedly know more that might otherwise influence you - rather in the same way that we here might now more about the Northern Ireland political situation compared to many in the US.

As to your assesment of the Cuba, I suspect it has a good deal of truth in it, but that doesn't make me want to write off a whole nation of peoples. There are plenty of destinations around the world where the political and economical situations might not match our own or our ideals, but that surely shouldn't (and doesn't) stop us visiting. I have a training job to perform in China at the end of March. There's a lot wrong with that country, but would I really be helping matters if I refused to go?

It's an interesting debate, and maybe others here would like to take it up. What's right? -turning your back on such a country that offers the opportunity of visit or going ahead so that you have the chance therefore to learn and possibly to educate also?

[Tonchi]

Heavens no, I'm not suggesting that you "turn your back on an entire country" or "write off a whole nation of peoples". If you want to "help CUBANS", I can find you plenty of addresses and contacts where you can feel good about making a contribution instead of handing over your money to a Communist regime who has oppressed said peoples for 40 years and will continue to put anything they get from you into the same purpose. You can tip a Cuban busboy at a restaurant in Miami and get more money into the Cuban economy than you will in any hermetically-sealed tourist compound there. Slang also thinks he is helping the Philippines economy while I firmly believe he is merely being separated from his money in a country where that is a way of life. But he's not going to listen to me either

Of course, everybody thinks they made their choices for good reasons, and everybody is certainly entitled to do things their way. My problem is I have spent my entire adult life either in school with, working with, or socializing with Latinos from many countries and the only news programs I watch and the only radio I listen to is in Spanish. So I have constant exposure to the situations in many countries of Central and South America and get to discuss it constantly. No doubt you can say the same about the UK and the adjoining countries

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Cyclefrance

It's an interesting debate, and maybe others here would like to take it up. What's right? -turning your back on such a country that offers the opportunity of visit or going ahead so that you have the chance therefore to learn and possibly to educate also?

I think folks should visit these places. The American embargo is counter-productive. We sort of believe in free enterprise the current administration not with-standing. It is very easy for Castro to tell his people they have a superior system without a lot of well-heeled Americans circulating around the country. The Americans they see now are mostly sympathetic leftists who'd trade nationalized health care for any other political good. We don't really know the situation there either and it would do us good to see it. Definitely approach your vacation the Tonchi way if you can get around your government handlers and spend your money in a helpful manner.

[Cyclefrance]

There's more I want to say and show in the follow-on sections related to the way the country runs, but as an interim comment now, for me, it's definitely a case of 'see for myself' rather than help from a distance, main reason being that direct contact with those who are feeling the effects of the regime holds more value for me. I'm not trying to devalue any other approach, just saying what I prefer.

This time around it was just another holiday without the intention to become interested in the country from another aspect. Future visits will be geared more to the latter. As these will be some distance off I hope that until then I may use distance learning from a variety of sources to gain a better overall understanding.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Griff

I think folks should visit these places. The American embargo is counter-productive. We sort of believe in free enterprise the current administration not with-standing. It is very easy for Castro to tell his people they have a superior system without a lot of well-heeled Americans circulating around the country. The Americans they see now are mostly sympathetic leftists who'd trade nationalized health care for any other political good. We don't really know the situation there either and it would do us good to see it. Definitely approach your vacation the Tonchi way if you can get around your government handlers and spend your money in a helpful manner.

I agree. Our normalizing relations and trading with Vietnam has done more towards moving that country forward than all of the troops we placed there in the 60's.

Castro definitely has to go. He's no better than Pahlevi, Noriega, Pinochet, Marcos, or any of the other strongmen and thugs who have taken power over the years. However, his main selling point is the same one President Bush is using to justify his executive power - security. Cubans are probably afraid of becoming a US possession with no real national identity, like the Philippines pre-WWII or a non-state like the Virgin Islands. Every argument GWB has used here has been used by Castro for 46 years. The big difference is that people are constantly reminded that the US is only 90 miles away. The US did sponsor the Bay of Pigs invasion. Imagine how much power Bush would have if a known terrorist state were only 90 miles from the US border.

The opening of trade with Cuba would weaken Castro more than support him. The reasons for not doing so have as much to do with the threat to the sugar oligopoly in the US and political support from Cuban exiles as it does with any coherent foreign policy strategy.