Cuba

While I was in Cancun I met lots of people that went over to Cuba for all inclusive vacations that cost very little. I heard mixed reviews of the little island country. All my life I have heard about Castro and Cuban communism. Castro is always made out to be an evil mean dictator. The people I talked to varied widely on their opinions of Cuba and Castro. The stories told two different pictures of this country and this man. Castro sounds like he can be both good and evil at the same time. The romantic Cuba of Papa Hemingway's time apparently is long gone.

I have to start with the story of a friend of mine. He went up to Canada on a business trip to Toronto and he met a Cuban business woman there. They had a good time together and the woman invited him to come to Cuba. So this guy told his wife that he was going fishing in Mexico with his friends and then he flew from Cancun to Havana Cuba to meet up with his new girlfriend. The woman met him at the airport and they went straight to a hotel and started to do the wild thing. They were going at it for only a few minutes when four soldiers broke their door down and came into the room and beat the living crap out of both of them with their rifle butts. My friend had multiple broken bones in his face, arms, hands and ribs. He was hauled off to a jail cell and thrown in a dark cell without any medical care. After he was interrogated for a couple of days the Cubans decided that he was not the anti Castro financier that they thought he was and they told him he was free to go if he paid them $30,000 for a fine. My friend called his wife and told her he was in prison in Cuba and she mortgaged the house to come up with the cash and a family friend carried the cash down to Havana Cuba where he was met at the airport by the soldiers. They exchanged the prisoner for the cash and made both of them fly out on the next plane. My friend had to go straight to the hospital when he returned to the States because he had to get the broken bones rebroken and cast so that they would heal correctly. He then needed physical therapy for many months to rehabilitate his beat up body. He still has ongoing health problems from the beating incident. His wife forgave him for his indiscretion. Within a year however, it just ate away at their relationship and she divorced him in the end. He along with his friend that carried the cash to Cuba were both charged by the American government for taking cash to Cuba and they were fined something like a hundred grand. He is still paying off the debts for his two minutes of pleasure.

Other people that have gone to Cuba talk about a country that is extremely poor but that is full of happy healthy people. The old cars from the fifties that were there when Castro took over are still running and the towns are in disrepair but otherwise these people seem to like the country. I guess if you are lucky and have no problems then the country can be a nice vacation spot. There are a lot of brutal things that happen there if you disagree with the politics or lifestyle choices of Castro whether you are a tourist or a citizen. There is a huge prison where they put gays and people with HIV to isolate them. There are people that have just gone missing because they were opposed to Castro. Religion is allowed but very restricted and very few people are believers now. There is free health care so the people are relatively healthy and education is free so the level of schooling is very high but the education is very biased.

Cuba is hit by hurricanes every hurricane season because it is in the direct path of hurricanes coming across the Atlantic. The hurricanes take out most of the trees and flowers and weaker buildings so the place is a barren concrete jungle of grey buildings with very little landscaping that survives all the wind. Rum and cigars are still the elixirs of the masses there. Both are cheap and very good quality. Lots of tourists go there from Mexico and from Europe for the sex trade in Cuba. Apparently almost anybody in the country will have sex with a tourist. Twenty dollars for five hours is the most common rate I hear people talking about. I saw big full page ads in Mexican newspapers for these sex trips and the ads were aimed at both men and women. I met literally hundreds of people that went on these sex tours and most of them raved about how much fun they had.

There is also a good music scene in Cuba that is internationally known for the style and quality of music they play. Tourists told me about clubs like El Gato Cierto and The Tropicana or Hotel National where there is music and or cabaret shows just like from the fifties. There is also an area of the country that is on a peninsula with good beaches that is only for tourists. The only Cubans allowed into the area are workers for the clubs and hotels in this district. Castro has made the American dollar illegal and also made a law against Cubans talking or interacting with Americans except for business relationships like giving them a taxi ride or renting them a hotel.

All of these reports about Cuba sound kind of mixed up and weird to me. Maybe someday the country will open up to Americans and it will reintegrate itself back into the world of 2010 instead of 1956. I can only hope it does because I would love to go explore the country someday without the fear of having soldiers beat me up and throw me in jail.