An Eye-Opening Cuban Vacation

An Eye-Opening Cuban Vacation
by Humberto Fontova
Posted Feb 03, 2006

Please keep this in mind, friends: the following was not written by a
"Cuban exile, Republican hard-liner, crackpot" (like me). What the
Cuban-exile crackpot presents here is a very crude translation of an
article printed in Oct. 25 in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo by a
backpacking tourist from Spain named Isane Aparicio Busto, who had just
returned from Cuba. Like so many "hip" European tourists to Cuba, Isane
might be expected to sport Che Guevara's face on her backpack or
T-shirt. I suspect she won't now.

I say "very crude translation" because Spaniards claim that Cubans don't
properly speak Spanish. Perhaps, but we at least pronounce our "S"
properly and without contorting our mouth to where we resemble someone
trying to spit out a mustache hair. At any rate, here goes:

"We arrived in Cuba without political prejudices, without any intention
to set foot in Varadero beach, intent on seeing the country outside the
much-lauded tourist areas," recalls Spanish backpacker Isane Aparicio
Busto. "The blow was shocking. We left with our perceptions about the
reality of the Cuban Revolution -- and even with our prior social and
political principles -- demolished.

"All we'd heard about from many Europeans who traveled to Cuba was the
rum, the happiness, the salsa, the Caribbean party atmosphere. But they
hadn't mentioned the prostitution either -- so we should have known they
weren't totally leveling with us. We'd traveled to Mexico City and
Caracas and seen the horrible slums on the outskirts of these cities.
But through old Havana we found ourselves walking constantly through a
miasma of pestilential odors, with morose faces looking at us from
decrepit doorways. My friend and I kept looking at each other asking,
'Where in the hell have all the people traveled that kept telling us
poverty didn't exist in Revolutionary Cuba?'

"We saw police everywhere. And it soon became obvious that Cubans are
the victims of the 21st century's version of apartheid. Hotels for
foreign tourists, stores for foreign tourists, buses for foreign
tourists -- a world set apart from the Cubans themselves as they are
prevented by the police from entering. So we asked a few Cubans how they
felt about this system.

"And they all answered -- while looking around -- that it was fine, had
to be done that way. That it was the proper way to protect tourists
because many Cubans are scoundrels. So was this that proud nationalism
of Revolutionary Cuba we'd heard about? The nation's impoverished people
forced to treat foreigners with such meekness and deference -- to grovel
before them?

"We wanted to stay away from the hotels and tried staying at the house
of a Cuban lady named Mari. On the first day there, the block chieftain
for the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, shows up and
says she's out of line and either she pays her the fee we've been paying
or she'll promptly report this to the police. So we leave.

"We learned that the Cuban system is nothing but misery, moral mendacity
and abuse. The system simply smothers you. And yet this revolution (with
it's Che Guevara banners) has sold itself to the youth of the world as a
paradigm of equality, liberty and national liberation. And the leaders
that govern my country (Spain) simply refuse to come out and call this
place a dictatorship. The Cuban people's personal aspirations seemed
completely mutilated. I've never felt such anguish about a nation and a
people in my life. If I were a Cuban, I'd certainly be on a raft."

That "Varadero" Isane mentioned is the gorgeous beach east of Havana
where millions of Cubans cavorted every weekend -- at least during
Cuba's stint as a racist-fascist U.S. satrapy terrorized by crooks and
gangsters.

In 1959, Fidel and his vanguard of the downtrodden rose in righteous
fury. Inflamed by a patriotic fervor they ended foreign humiliation of
Cubans. Of this we're assured by everyone from Charles Rangel, to Noam
Chomsky to Robert Redford to Jesse Jackson to Norman Mailer to any Ivy
League history professor.

Now, after 47 years of this fervently nationalist revolution, the best
of Varadero beach is barricaded against Cubans by armed police and
reserved for rich foreigners, their local footservants and prostitutes.

Jimmy Carter, Barbara Boxer, high-rolling trade delegations from
Nebraska to Louisiana to California to Maine are welcome -- not to
mention Isane herself. Let a non-governmental Cuban citizen try to enter
and he's bludgeoned with Czech machine gun butts.

And I suspect Isane didn't know the half of it. She probably didn't know
that prior to the glorious Revolution, Cuban had a higher standard of
living not only than the Venezuela and Mexico she'd visited but higher
than half of Europe, and boasted almost double her native Spain's per
capita income.

Revolutionary Cuba's early Minister of Industries and Bank President Che
Guevara had quite a base to work with. Yet it normally requires an
earthquake, volcano, tsunami or atom bomb to match Che's industrial and
economic achievements in Cuba. Indeed Tokyo, Pompeii, and Hiroshima have
all recovered. Havana, richer in the 1950s than Rome or Dallas, now
resembles Calcutta, Nairobi or Phnom Penh. One place where Cuban exiles
agree wholeheartedly with Castro is regarding his exalted post as a
Third World leader. He and Che made Cuba into a Third World country alright.

Copyright 2006 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12143