Capitalists cavorting in Cuba?

Capitalists cavorting in Cuba?
James Varney, NOLA.com|The Times-Picayune By James Varney, NOLA.com|The
Times-Picayune
on April 30, 2013 at 3:17 PM, updated April 30, 2013 at 3:19 PM

For an unabashed capitalist, there are more agreeable sights than
"grandiose portraits" of the Communist executioner Che Guevara. On the
other hand, it's far better to gaze upon Guevara's portrait with a
tropical breeze at your back than upon the real thing with your back up
against the wall.

It is that former, less lethal encounter that awaits those signing up
for the "trip of a lifetime" with the St. Tammany West Chamber of
Commerce. From June 21-28, the capitalism boosters will be running a
visit to the paradise Fidel Castro hath wrought.

It should be stressed no laws are being broken here. The St. Tammany
chamber has followed the complicated rules that still make travel to
Cuba unnecessarily difficult. As always, the point isn't that some
frayed embargo is being violated, but that Cuba's Communist overlords
are pocketing much of the cash.

Both the promotional language of the trip and the chamber's website
underscore those points.

"This evening an Informational Briefing will be held at the hotel by a
Chamber Explorations Representative about the day 2 charter flight to
Havana and the start of your people to people experience to Cuba," reads
the alluring trip pitch.

One wonders if the briefing will be followed by prolonged and stormy
applause. Cuba may offer romantic nights under Caribbean palms and
mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio, but those pleasures may be enjoyed
under the, ahem, censorious eyes of a "representative."

But wait; there's more. All this can be yours for the low starting price
of just $3,999 per person. That's right, a week in Cuba for only $1,000
more than the cost of the chamber's trip later this year to the Bavarian
Alps or the Danube River cruise.

Is it possible some Communist apparatchik is skimming some greenbacks here?

"I don't want to comment on that," said Lacey Toledano, president and
chief executive of the St. Tammany West Chamber. "Everything has a
price, and you can't go unless it's with a group with a license."

Toledano, who is not slated to make the Cuba trip, is correct; after
all, some of the chief benefits that accrue to totalitarian leaders are
the rules and the money. But it's passing strange that even a previous
trip to China cost $1,000 less - including airfare - than the quick hop
to Havana.

In the chamber's defense, there is a purpose to the trip: profit. There
is something redemptive about making a dollar or two off Castro, and
Toledano described trips like these or the European jaunts have become
important sources of "non-dues revenue" for chambers around the country.

Indeed, in her eyes the trip has a purely capitalist motive, albeit with
a pleasurable tinge.

"There is an element of global awareness to this, it is a chance to
learn about the country, the history," Toledano said. "It is strictly
for observation, not in support of what's happening or has happened in
Cuba. If anything, it will make you appreciate our freedoms and our
country."

It's true our freedoms aren't available there. The Castro brothers
aren't about to allow Cubans a free press, or the freedom of assembly,
or the freedom of speech and association. Havana residents don't enjoy
any guarantees against unlawful searches or seizures; don't look for gay
marriage or gun ownership to be topics discussed freely with the
otherwise friendly staff at La Floridita.

All that pesky liberty, along with a great many lives, was the sort of
thing snuffed out by the homicidal Guevara. His ghost makes an
appearance on the first day of the chamber's trip, according to the
literature, when the visiting bourgeoisie head to the Plaza of the
Revolution to be harangued by a guide speaking, "below the grandiose
portraits of national hero Che Guevara ... where millions of Cubans have
stood while listening to speeches of Fidel Castro."

Thank goodness for small favors - not only will the tourists avoid
looking down the barrel of Guevara's smoking gun, but Castro speeches
take forever.

The trip promises rum and cigar factories, the Tropicana Cabaret Show;
there is no denying colonial Havana's alluring color, sound and
architecture. But as New Orleans attorney and Cuban-American National
Foundation executive George Fowler noted, other spots loom even larger
in everyday Cuban existence.

"Castro's prisons are also worthy of a visit," Fowler noted drily in a
letter to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. "The G-2 Prison of Santiago de
Cuba keeps their cells at either a very high or very low temperature.
The isolated prisoners are woken up every 20 minutes and stripped of
their clothes."

In her own pitch for the trip, Toledano waxed enthusiastic about a land,
"untouched by commercialism" and where the billboards "extol the virtues
of socialism." Those would seem dubious draws for anyone looking to make
an honest buck.

James Varney can be reached at jvarney@nola.com.

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