What I Remember About Cuba? Fidel Spoken Here.
POLITICS: Always remember: “It’s complicated.” “Revolucion Siempre” Always the revolution. In Cuba, revolution counts, and not just the one in 1959. Signs and slogans are everywhere. Cuba is a country of revolutions: against Spain in 1868 and 1895, and Batista and imperialist intervention in 1959. When I think of Cuba it is one-dimensional: Fidel/Communism/State; for […]
LA HABANA de CUBA
19 December 2013: LA HABANA de CUBA “Havana is Havana, the rest is grass,” probably said by a Habanero. I prefer “If you don’t get out of Havana, you haven’t seen Cuba.” Everyone is ready for Havana. We speed along the Autopista, a bumpy, wide, but straight highway from Che to Fidel. The highway was designed […]
AWESOME THREESOME OF CUBA
15 December 2013: TRINIDAD, CIENFUEGOS AND SANTA CLARA – AWESOME THREESOME Rough and narrow roads filled with more horse carts than cars. Dense fields of maribou; grazing cows and horses, pigs and chickens running through yards; vegetable gardens; men cutting marabou for charcoal, machetes chopping away; mountain peaks to the north, and everywhere the banana […]
SANCTI SPIRITUS – lively and spirited colonial city
13 December 2013: SANCTI SPIRITUS I experience a four-hour bus ride through the least developed area of the island: narrow road with no paved shoulders, some sugar cane fields, pig and chicken farms, goats, sheep, busy small towns, cattle, horses, trucks, bikes, people transports, and pedestrians. The slim road is a gauntlet of movement.
CAMAGÜEY – DODGING CUBAN TRANSPORTATION
12 December 2013: CAMAGÜEY Drove bumpy, two-lane, horse and bicycle filled roads to Camagüey. In the mining town of El Cobre is Our Lady of Charity Basilica where resides the patron saint of Cuba in the form of a 16″ statue of the Virgin Mary, visited by everyone from Hemingway to Fidel’s mother. Prayed for her son’s […]
Dear U.S.A.: May I Please Visit Cuba?
9 December 2013: SANTIAGO DE CUBA After much research, my final decision was to ask my government’s permission and legally travel to Cuba. I remember the revolution and Fidel’s verbose entry to international politics, sweated the missile crisis, lived 50 years with the U.S. Embargo of this island, and read about Cuba. Now I wished […]