New Title to Avoid More Crackpots

Hellooooo!! We arrived this afternoon safe-ish and sound-ish from Socialist Cuba. Without even looking at what Lucas might write I know it will be almost exactly the same as the next bit I'm going to write...Cuba was a...

LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP!!

Some of the highs in the past three weeks include:

- 30 degrees and 80-90% humidity the entire time (I enjoyed it).
- Riding old bikes with flat tyres for four hours in the midday sun
- Eating 5c soft serve cones and 20c cheese pizzas from the side of the road
- Singing songs about how we have gone crazy as coconuts
- Smoking 8-inch Cuban cigars (and feeling queasy afterwards being a non-smoker)
- Being offered swigs of cheap rum by cubanos everywhere at any time of day
- Catching an 8-hour truck ride from Santiago de Cuba to Baracoa squeezed in with chickens, mangos and cubanos
- Going and sitting in the ocean with local cubanos during a terrific lightening storm crashing all around us
- Eating some of the best dark chocolate grown and produced in the Baracoa region of Cuba
- Learning 'Guantanamera' (Girl from Guantanamo) and 'Compai Segundo' (Famous Buena Vista Social Club tune) on the guitar and teaching other cubanos how to play them, while they sing the words
- Staying in a cheap illegal 'casa particular' (registered families that people can stay with on holidays) right next to a turqoise sea and white sands
- Being fed lobster, fish and prawns pulled straight from the ocean, mangos and pineapples straight from the ground/tree, goats milk straight from the goat for four days in our illegal house
- Covert eating and sleeping in our house while the police kept a close eye on who came to and from the beach, pretending to not speak spanish was a handy trick
- Having an entire night of electricity which means less mossies and a fan all night
- A tour of a cocoa farm, although after lifelong anticipation, to my disappointment the cocoa in the pods taste nothing like chocolate
- Jumping and swimming in a waterfall at the chocolate farm.
- Others but I'm getting tired now and I'm sure you are too.

Some of the lows include:

- Having 99% of cubanos trying to extract as much money from us as possible, ripping us off wherever they got the chance - luckily we cottoned on to a few of the tricks early on and didn't lose to much.
- Not trusting anyone as a result on the above people - now when we get offered something like a cup of tea - even seemingly for free, the reaction is always - why? whats in it for you? how much will i have to pay? you're sure i won't have to pay anything? what about the water that comes with the teabag, how much does that cost? No I don't drink tea.
- The constant blackouts meaning we would get stuck with no money because all the banks had no power. And hot nighs sleep with mossies with no fans.
- The illegal casa particular with rats and spiders and scorpion looking things and mossies all night.
- The lack of choice for food (rice and pork or cheese pizza) in the towns and villages (mangos and more mangos)
- Plenty more, but again running out of time and energy.

Other stuff, but the political environment was another interesting apsect of Cuba - including the atrocities committed by American foreign policy makers and the hardships overcome by the cuban people, but I'll just give a quick run down of some observations...

SOCIALIST CUBA:

The socialist politics of Cuba could not be called Communism exactly - a bit of an exagerration created somewhere by someone - I think the fact that they apply a lot of communist principles and almost everything is state owned leads people to believe it is some kind of totalitarian dictatorship. As we were told by a American student doing a PhD in Cuban politics, Fidel is not a dictator, he is elected via an upward flow of voting (ie. people vote for a local rep, who then votes on their behalf for a region rep and so forth until a council has been elected who elects a president - with each level having a serious input into domestic and foreign policy (what limited forgein policy they are allowed to conduct) and a 97% voter turnout, Cuba has the highest direct involvement of the people into government policy (according to the PhD student)and generally the cubans were spoke to were happy with the system . This was an explicit statement made in Fidel's 'History Will Absolve Me' speech he gave at his trial in 1953 after being arrested for his first attempt at inciting a revolution - later successful with the help of Rebel Army Commanders Che Guevarra and Camilo Cienfuegos - among others. As I noted Cuba has a limited choice of products - more visible to us being outsiders from a consumer society, the main reason is that Cuba produces almost everything that it consumes, why? Because the USA made explicit in legislation enacted in 1996 that any country found to be trading with Cuba would have trade related measures imposed upon them by the US, previously an implicit deal (again info from the American student). One of the first things we noticed on our arrival was that there were no homeless people on Cuba, ZERO! How many countries with a GDP per capita of around $2000 can boast that statistic, let alone the 'developed' countries, plus every house is provided with sufficient food, not only does it mean no-one starves, but no-one is obese (unlike it's neighbour), Cubans are the most athletically built country of people I have ever seen. But as is human nature, there will always be those who want more than they need to survive, and as a result the majority of Cubans who we had dealings with were those with an entreprenuerial edge to their nature and would go to great lengths with specially concocted stories to part us from our already non-existant resources. We were told by many people in Cuba that all Cubans, no matter their profession, get paid between $12-$24 dollars per month (doesn't sound like much, but when you don't need to buy food or a house and living expenses for a Cuban are very cheap - it isn't that bad). But with employment and income guaranteed after free education the notion of pursuing a career path for pecuniary reasons probably isn't as prevalent and I would imagine this allows people see work as something other than a means to an end.

So if anything, despite some negative experiences resulting from the socialist apsect of Cuba and the attitude towards tourists as being money machines (Cubas only major export is tourism, funding its meagre amount of imports) we came away with a positive view of the place. Obviously others with a more economic rationalist ideaology would be appalled, but after seeing people starving and begging and developed nations, and then not seeing any in Cuba, I would prefer a system of equality.

Anyway - I could go on for ages about what a hero I think Che Guevara was - not just for Cuba but for the oppressed peoples of the world - a non-nationalist fighting for people from any and every country based on the rights of the masses.

The air in Cancun is putrid with wealth and waste - and who said consumers allocate resources more efficiently? That is the most laughable economic concept possible, based on a list of 'ceteris paribus' style assumptions as long as your arm - I suppose a 21 year old rich kid from LA spending $2000 for a week getting drunk and trying to pick up - his money going straight to the corporations and super-funds that own the place - is a better allocation of resources than building houses and buying medicine for sick people. (note: that comment has nothing to do with Cuba, so calm down).