Young girl with guitar in Trinidad, Cuba
Cuba is a fascinating, colorful, heartbreaking and vibrant Island. Home of the world’s best branded dictatorship, it is fitting that this country is brimful of contradictions. Smiling Cubans will strike up conversations with passing foreigners to say how wonderful life on the island is - before requesting a peso or two to help them get through the day. Defunct missiles are pointed towards the United States as a provocative two fingers to Cuba’s close neighbor - yet public monuments honor a long list of North American heroes such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison and Martin Luther King. Cuba’s famed medical excellence supports developing countries across the globe, yet at home malnutrition is a blight no medicines can cure. The list of paradoxes continues - perhaps the saddest being that Cuba is perhaps most enjoyed by non-Cubans. Tourists, well looked after at hotels or casas particulares can sample the country’s bountiful delights whilst being free to filter out its ongoing darker perversions.
As the seat of Government of a totalitarian regime, Havana can evoke in visitors a surprisingly open, optimistic and cosmopolitan feel. Place names are highly international - Avenida De Italia, Calle Brasil and even Sraid Ui Raigheallai ("O’Reilly Street” in the Irish language). Striking monuments, vibrant art, pulsating song and dance and even heavenly chocolate indulgences abound in the city - all combining to weave the unique magic that the evocative name Havana promises. However, locals living in the city may have a less rosy interpretation of Havana life - the crumbling buildings provide a beautiful aesthetic to visitors but are no-doubt grim to live in. The decrepitude that the city is famed for is also a reminder of the spiteful neglect the revolutionary government inflicted on the city for decades, belatedly being addressed through some impressive regeneration projects.
The colonial architecture of the city of Trinidad rightly makes the city itself a living art exhibit. The crumbling but still visible grandeur of Trinidad is an insight into the positive portion of the legacy left by the Spanish. Architectural gems as well as cultural and linguistic ties to Europe and the rest of Latin America to be placed on the opposite side of the scales with the most horrific annihilation of the indigenous, mostly Taino, population, centuries of plunder and yet more greed-induced misery with the forced migration of over 1 million African slaves.
The stunning mountains of Cuba have been the backdrop of the recurring battles of Cuba’s history. The first guerrilla warrior to use these hills against the dominant power on the island was the Taino chief Hatuey (famously for refusing a hour of death conversion to Christianity on the grounds he did not want to go to heaven if he would meet the “cruel and wicked” Spanish there). Fidel Castro used these same mountains for similar purposes against first the corrupt Batista government and then, having attained power, against former comrades disaffected by what was happening in Castro-led Cuba.
Fidel’s recent retirement as President of Cuba has raised many questions about the future of the island. New President Raul Castro is only a few years younger than Fidel, so his leadership is seen by many as merely a transition point to an uncertain future. When witnessing Cuba’s beauty, abundance and highly educated population and noting both its strategic location just 90 miles from Florida and cultural ties to the rest of Latin America a Western mind might start totting all the money to be made from investing here should capitalism supplant a troubled state-directed economy. No doubt many people are having these thoughts, which herald both opportunity and threat for Cubans. With recent US legislation providing a legal basis for the appropriation of Cuban assets in the event of a new political environment, there is a real danger that even should totalitarianism in Cuba end in the near future, ordinary Cubans may find themselves still living in effective subjugation.
A grim prospect for Cuba is a repeat of what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union - national assets sold from under the feet of the population for a fraction of their value. However, the near-term transition to market capitalism is not quite the foregone conclusion some may predict. In the political posters throughout Cuba, Fidel’s image is paramount. However, the next most prominent face on these posters is not his brother and successor as President Raul. Astonishingly it is Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. Bizarre as it may be for the president of another country to be celebrated so conspicuously, Cuba is, was and continues to be unpredictable in its exceptionalism. What happens next will be another chapter in a riveting story.
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