I just returned from an amazing week in Cuba. I went there legally, from Miami to Havana.
I wanted to go someplace warm in mid-winter but I didn’t want to sit on a beach in the sun. I wanted to learn. It took quite a lot of digging to discover that the U.S. government has granted licenses to a number of tour agencies to arrange trips to Cuba for U.S. citizens.
Last November, a high school chum in Houston told me she had just returned from Cuba, and she gave me the name of her agent, who is based in New York City. Her name is Myriam Castillo, and I found her via this article in Forbes because she doesn’t have a website. Some of the other agencies that organize people-to-people trips are mentioned in the same Forbes article.
Myriam planned a fantastic week for four of us. It was a customized tour, tailored to our interests in the culture, art, and history of Cuba. We visited museums, went to the homes of established artists, visited art galleries, toured historic sites, saw the countryside, ate wonderful food, and consumed countless mojitos. We were accompanied at various times by an architectural historian, an art historian, and various other experts.
We were excited by the sight of many vintage American automobiles from pre-1959–Chevrolets, Dodges, Oldsmobiles, Plymouths, Buicks–most in beautiful condition. We were amazed by the large number of tourists from Europe, South America, Canada, and yes, the United States. Last year, 400,000 tourists from the U.S. visited Cuba. When we departed the Havana airport on the morning of February 8, ten flights were leaving, and eight were headed for Miami. One of them was an American Airlines flight. Most, like ours, were charters carrying about 150 people.
The architecture of Havana is varied and wonderful, with some beautifully preserved buildings but very many in decrepit condition. A beautiful public square of stunning homes and apartment houses would be adjacent to blocks and blocks of squalid abodes. The magnificent and elegant Italianate mansion that houses an astonishing collection of Napoleonic artifacts is next door to a crumbling and ramshackle mansion built in the same era.
The Cuban people we met were warm and welcoming. The culture is vibrant. The music is fabulous.
Tourism is a major industry, probably the biggest in the country. And yet, the island is isolated in many ways, with no cell phone service and very limited access to the Internet. I was able to log on at a major hotel, but service was spotty.
There is no advertising, few shops, not much to buy, no billboards other than political slogans like “Defend socialism.” Everywhere, one sees Che souvenirs, so many that it seems like revolutionary kitsch.
And yet it seemed to me that Cuba is on the verge of a major transition. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen, it is happening already. A new generation is coming of age. They want opportunity. They want a better life. Little pockets of entrepreneurialism are opening up. Officially, the government owns everything, but there are many inconsistencies. Private restaurants called paladares offer excellent food (and pay heavy taxes). Because of a shortage of hotel space in some cities, many private homes rent rooms to guests. The old world is passing, dissolving, and a new world is beginning, shoots of grass breaking through the concrete.
The embargo seems as antique as the now ancient slogans.The sooner the embargo is lifted, the sooner there will be normal relations between our countries. As it now exists, cruise ships bypass Havana because they are not allowed to visit a U.S. port for six months if they dock in Cuba. Cuba’s isolation from the U.S. has impoverished many Cubans and done nothing to weaken the regime. If we wanted to weaken the regime, we would end the embargo and encourage open exchange among our populations.
We loved our trip. It was beautifully planned. It was educational. It was filled with surprises.
I hope that President Obama lifts the embargo and restores normal relations between our nations. This would be a major legacy for him, ending a dispute that began more than half a century ago. It is time.
Welcome back! I bet the sight of all this snow was a shock to your system upon your return!
Well that explains the tweet the other day which indicated you were in Miami! (You can turn off the locator under settings in Twitter if you want.)
Yeah, I couldn’t take laying on a beach either. Glad you had such a fun educational experience! It really IS time we stopped the embargo already.
I can hear the rheeformers now “Ravitch is a socialist”-ha ha.
“There is no advertising, few shops, not much to buy, no billboards…”–sounds like heaven, not just Havana.
Welcome back, Diane. 🙂
I want to comment regrading this para starting with “And yet it seemed to me that Cuba is on the verge of a major transition.”….
We need to understand that the contradictions are because of the strangling of Cuba by our government through the embargo. Our government will never let any country have an economic system other than capitalism. which is actually socialism for the 1% and YOYO (You on your Own) social darwinist capitalism for the 99%. In short neo-liberalism. Hope you are aware that Cuba has an awesome universal healthcare system and universal free education. My friend who visited Cuba said for a supposedly 3rd world country, Cubans look hale and healthy. They don’t have much but what they have is almost equally distributed. The only reason they couldn’t make more progress under the imperfect socialist model is because of the strangling by US.
I highly recommend Jonathan Kozol’s first hand account of Castro’s literacy campaign in the 1960’s :”The children of the revolution”.
Excellent post.
Embargoes and sanctions punish everyday people and consolidate power for the ruling regime. See: Iraq, North Korea, Iran.
They are still pristine, though. As soon as it opens up, the tour boats will ruin the coral reef, and pollution will be king. Seems like we could find some sort of a happy medium.
I went to Cuba and toured schools with US educators in 2002 and again for a short visit several years ago. The embargo serves no purpose. We have a lot to learn from the Cubans and they from us. You are right: it is time.
I’m sure you had a wonderful and very interesting trip. As a cuban-american I have been to Cuba over a dozen times in the past decade to visit family and reconnect with my country of birth. Cuba is a wonderful country full of contradictions… However, as the Secretary of Education for the State of Vermont I also have had a keen interest in Cuba’s successful educational system and learning more about it. I have been fortunate enough to travel to Cuba specifically to learn more about how their schooling works and how they are able to produce what many consider one of the more comprehensive and successful educational systems in the western hemisphere. I know that this is difficult to prove as Cuba is very “closed” about much of their country’s operations. However, there is now a wonderful opportunity to travel to Cuba with a specific focus on education through what I believe to be the only program that provides graduate level credits for teachers to visit Cuba and learn/study about their educational system. Burlington College in Burlington, Vermont has 2 educational trips per year to Cuba to study their educational system and to see this beautiful country. There is much we can learn from each other related to education. Hopefully, someday soon we will change our outdated and counter-productive policy toward Cuba. More info can be found at https://www.burlington.edu/TEACHERS
Good day to you Armando,
As Vermont’s Secretary of Education, I am dismayed that your posting fails to meet the CCSL K-5 Standards for Conventions of English:
Conventions of Standard English
1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
You may need a longer work year to attain proficiency in the use of capital letters and quotations.
I haven’t been to Cuba since 1980 when I visited family. We were fortunate enough to get to stay with our family and not as part of a tour group. But even though we were fed well we still saw how poor the regular folk were. Grocery stores were thread bare and everyone was on a strict rationing system. Those who belonged to the communist party then had it a little better. I wonder if any of what I saw has changed.
An astounding literacy rate, good medical care, good education for health care professionals and 1959 cars that run! Who needs to learn from whom?
And college graduates working as bartenders and tour guides and desk clerks in hotel clerks because there are so few jobs that pay a living wage or where one has a chance to improve one’s lot in life.
I know quite a few college graduates working as secretaries, bartenders, pouring coffee at Starbucks, etc. right here in the good old USA.
Finding a decent job with health benefits is no easy trick here these days.
Hey, we have something in common with Cuba. Who knew?
Finding a job with a livable wage is no easy trick here these days either, let alone a job with any benefits whatsoever –and not just for new college graduates, but also for people with advanced degrees and decades of experience in their fields.
That’s what happens when billionaire “free market” capitalists can buy elections, politicians and legislation, privatize public services and push out labor unions. They have figured out that they don’t even have to pay minimum wage, payroll taxes and unemployment insurance if they just misclassify employees as “independent contractors,” too.
Robber baron capitalism is not the answer to a better life for the masses any more than dictatorships and communism are. Why do we so often think that extremes are the best solutions and overlook balancing the best of different worlds?
Atleast they have quality universal healthcare and universal education. When they graduate, they don’t come out as debt slaves. And in a society where inequality is not so high as ours, atleast they don’t have the scarcity mentality.
I know a college grad with a business degree working the docks at UPS. At least he gets union benefits.
I went to Cuba as well this year, in the summer with the Venceremos Brigade. I would like to say that I think this article is filled with all sorts of assumptions typical for Americans, even ones who have visited the island. First of all, the assumption that Cuba is slowly but surely abandoning socialism. Contrary to popular wisdom, it isn’t. Cuba is moving away from the Soviet model of socialism, yes. But the form of socialism that existed in the USSR is not the only form of socialism there has been or could ever be. Many of these so-called ‘private’ enterprises are in fact co-operatives that are run and collectively controlled by the workers themselves-the workers democratically decide their wages and salaries as well as what to do with the profits they generate, not some elite board of directors. This past July I visited a co-operative mango farm in Cuba in which the average field laborer made more then the elected manager of the farm! These are not capitalist enterprises, quite the opposite. I highly recommend this article about Cuba’s reforms:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13918-the-new-cuba-a-beachhead-for-economic-democracy-we-should-support#.UP5OP-y7ie4.email
Second, there is no ‘regime’ that is above and disconnected from the Cuban people. It ‘regime’ and the people of Cuba are more or less the same thing. Cuba has it’s own system of elections, contrary to popular mythology:
http://www.quaylargo.com/Productions/McCelvey.html
The people of Cuba overwhelmingly support the revolution still and they support socialism. They may have their criticisms, but they strongly believe that whatever problems their country may have can be solved within the framework of the socialist system, not by going back to what their country was before the revolution, when it was a colony of the US. That’s why Cuba’s system has survived in the face of a 50-year US blockade, 600 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, CIA-backed terrorist attacks against its people and the loss of nearly all its foreign aid when its Soviet ally collapsed. It’s because the revolution can rely on the support of the Cuban population.
Finally, Cuba’s socialism is not ‘antique’, or some sort of relic of the Cold War. It’s actually more relevant then ever. For the people of Latin America and of the Third World in general, Cuba is an inspiration and living proof that a way out of the poverty, disease, misery, and hunger that capitalism has inflicted on most of the world is indeed possible. That is why Venezuela is undertaking its own revolution in emulation of Cuba, and many Latin American countries-from Bolivia to Ecuador to Brazil, are adopting aspects of Cuba’s system, particularly its health care system.
Viva La Revolucion Cubana.
Gosh, I think we saw different Cubas and met different people. I saw people eager to find a new and better life. I saw college graduates working in menial jobs because they wanted the tips from tourists. I saw people turning their homes into restaurants and bed/breakfasts, hoping to make more money. I met people who started small business but were closed down by a geriatric bureaucracy. I saw Che kitsch everywhere–meant for the tourists–and no one buying. I saw a country that is isolated in the world–along with North Korea, living in an antique vision. I saw a cruel and stupid American policy that impoverishes Cuba. I saw widespread poverty. I saw a nation on the verge of change–incremental change, to be sure, but change nonetheless.
I had the same sense when I was in Poland in 1989; as I was in Warsaw, the Berlin Wall opened, and Communism began to crumble across Eastern Europe. I visited the Soviet Union in 1990. A year later, the regime fell apart.
Dictatorships don’t last forever. People want a better life. They are grateful for the education and healthcare, but they want a better life and a chance to improve the lives of their children. Fidel Castro was virulently homophobic. His brother Raul has a daughter, Mariela Castro, who is a champion for gay rights. Gays in Cuba are no longer persecuted. Many things are changing. Cuban socialism is dissolving and will be replaced by something that is uniquely Cuban. It will be different and better than what now exists.
I posted a comment at the top echoing similar views. People view Cuba’s contradictions in isolation instead of in the context of strangling by US which results in “siege” socialism, if Cuba hadn’t been suffering under siege, their achievements in healthcare and education would have spread to other areas too,.
You have managed to clarify a lot misconceptions regarding Cuban
politics and culture . Thank You
I have said that I have too been to Cuba and found it to be nothing like what we are told we should think it to be. History just might show that what happened in Cuba was to build a system much more humane than exist in our so called “free” societies where even speech can be costly, not to mention the pursuit of truth for those who wish to visit places they want to understand firsthand.
Wonderful! Cuba is a free country. Oh, no. You said it was a more “humane” country than here. Is living in a dictatorship something you think is good for human self development? Perhaps you’d enjoy Venezuela, or Dagestan, or Talibanistan.
What can I say except that one should experience the life before they condemn it. I would ask that you consider issues of quality of life in both countries and then make the judgements regarding which is terrible or more terrible or better than the other. I do not think that the people in Cuba are leading miserable lives, or at least no more miserable than many living their lives in so called Western democracies. I would think that the wise would study both the good and the bad in both and in doing that be able to see what is real.
I had a friend that returned to Cuba after 20 years. 20 years ago, he had to go through Canada and pre-pay everything. He noted things got worse. Everyone was walking around with eggs, because it was egg ration day. As with most things, it is people that suffer and not the leaders.
I have been there a few times and will be returning soon. It is a lovely place, for all the reasons you stated, the lack of shopping being one of the best. It is so odd to spend a day or two or more in an environment in which one cannot find an advertisement even if one truly wants to find one. Oddly, and this was probably a communist propaganda ploy, people look very healthy, are informed and articulate. My hope is that change will bring about something other than a vacation island with hot tourist spots for wealthy Americans.
I like to shop. I didn’t go to Cuba to admire Communism (I don’t) but because I wanted to learn about the Cuban people and their culture. Also, I wanted to go to a place that has been officially “off limits” to Americans for more than fifty years, and to do it legally. I hope that we will one day soon have good relations with Cuba so that Americans and Cubans can travel easily and freely.
“I like to shop.” Yes, rather hard to shop in Cuba and for those who like to escape commercialism, it is the great escape. And while the people there cannot just go for the casual shopping trip, they eat, get health care, and are given a decent education. What a price to pay! What I hate about the way some people go about seeing the world is that they want every place to be like the place they left! In a world of limited resources, perhaps Cuba, with its free arts and music venues, its unspoiled beaches, its highly articulate and warm people offers something that is better than what you were after but too blind to see?
You are so right. The people are warm, thoughtful and educated. The food is absolutely delicious, and the left over mansions, now hotels are wonderful. Except, they can’t buy cheap toilet paper, can’t fill the shopping centers with western goods and vegetables, can’t get help from western countries to install state of the art facilities (all because of USA’s stupid policy. (By the way did you see the 1959 autos that looked better than my US 2009. No I don;t want to move to Cuba, but I love to “vacation” there,
Cuba has its problems, big problems, problems somewhat different from what we have here. I am not sure whose problems are worse, but I do know whose problems affect people beyond the particular nation’s borders, those people having no say in the effect the policies have on their lives. So, I do think that Cuba may have more going for it as a model of conduct in the world and, in many ways, I would like us to be able to learn from Cuba what it can teach us.
I find this comment a bit abstract and obscure. Can you elaborate?
Fascinating exchange. Diane, this is the first time I’ve seen your conservative roots show.
I have not been to Cuba, and cannot speak from personal experience. But I agree that educated people working menial jobs happens in this country too, and here it’s because of the failures of big banks and the capitalist system in the U.S. I am a lesbian. I know that Cuba’s government was (and is?) homophobic. Perhaps its population was (and is?) too, and the two will move forward together?
I am excited that there is one country that tries to exist outside of the world capitalist model. I would love for the rigidities to go away, but I recognize that it’s hard when you’re in the shadow of the U.S., which tries to overthrow your government.
You’re right , Cuba is macho and homophobic as was the U. S .
in 1959 . What you have to realize is it is still 1959 in Cuba .
Attitudes are changing quickly though and much progress has
been made recently . largely due to an educated population .
The change is largely due to Raul Castro’s wonderful daughter and the removal of homophobic Fidel.
I would look again at what has happened in recent years in Cuba regarding Gay folk. And I would also ask you to ask why it was that Castro’s daughter was kept from attending a conference in the U.S. where she was to be honored for her work as a gay rights advocate.
Raul Casto’s daughter (I think her name is Mariela) has completely changed Cuba’s policies towards gays in Cuba. Cuba had its first gay rights event in 2012. She is not gay. She is married and has two children. When she came to a UN event, she was denied permission by our government to travel to Philadelphia. American diplomats are also restricted in Cuba. It is part of the absurd embargo that prevents normal cultural exchanges between the two countries. http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2013/04/mariela-castro-gets-a-visa-to-visit-new-york-but-wont-be-able-to-pick-up-lgbt-award-in-philly.html
Failed capitalism????? Nonsense, Ms. Vanhattum. Are you a public school teacher filling your innocent kiddies with this anti-freedom garbage? The entire north east now permits same-sex marriage. It may happen late in say, Texas, but seriously, under freedom and rule of the people in a republic it will eventually come to every state. People have come to understand that love triumphs everything. The capitalism you deplore is responsible for the freedom you enjoy and will enjoy to love anyone you want. It’s called freedom of choice. At the moment the socialist statists are in control of the federal administration, but that won’t last forever. At least if you’d help out. Vote for tea party candidates, or at least Republicans who are pro growth. We don’t call them “tax and spend” Democrats for nothing. Every unnecessary dollar taken out of the economy by taxes is a drag on growth. Wake up and smell the wonderful aroma of capitalist coffee.
I went to Cuba in 1979, and found much of the same. The people were very warm to our group, and that has really stuck with us. As a result of my trip, I took a one-year leave of absence from my teaching job, and joined what was then called VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). This was inspired by one of our guides, responding to a comment from a fellow visitor who’d said, “I would love to come here to help your people.” He replied,”Why don’t you stay in America and help your own people?” The VISTA experience, in Miami, working as a child advocacy coordinator/trainer in the Haitian community, taught me so much about people, DID, indeed, help me to help people and gave me a wealth of information to take back into my teaching life. Cuba and the U.S. are so close, yet so far–it is definitely time to end the embargo. There is much to learn from each other.
P.S. One of the most interesting/amusing thing to happen on the trip was the inability of the large, modern tour bus to navigate some of the ancient, twisty roads (obviously not built in the time of the megabus). All of the people in the street (even coming out of their homes or shops) would gather round and cheerfully guide the driver’s maneuvers, so that the bus would make it safely through. What great teamwork and camaraderie! A heartwarming example of “it takes a village…”