Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Cuba before the Rolling Stones … oh! and a president - part four



If Havana’s tourist ground zero, there’s always the countryside. Some rural areas have been popular for years, but usually have sufficient space to spread out.

Scenery is wonderful and people welcoming. 


Unlike many Caribbean islands where you just know locals detest tourists, Cubans, even when not a buck’s to be earned, frequently make eye contact, smile and say ‘Hola!’



The Vinales Valley with its curious limestone mojotes is my base for a few days.






This old boy's gold for even the most incompetent photographer.

To the east is the province of Sancti Spiritus and colonial Trinidad.




The man in white is a follower of Santeria, mixing Christianity and beliefs brought from Africa by slaves. Some estimates suggest, despite years of communism, well over half of all Cubans practise some form of Santeria. 


In a farmer’s home, a faded family photo of a child ‘with Che’.


An afternoon of chess.



A young woman poses for photos marking her Quinceañera, the fifteenth birthday transition to adulthood.






It’s easy to say that Cubans - despite so much adversity - have a dignity, a sense of national self-confidence sometimes lacking in other Third World countries. Or, toeing the political line, do most simply quietly lead lives of resigned frustration? I don’t know; perhaps all those traits and emotions. 

An American president’s arrival is significant, but certainly doesn’t herald imminent regime collapse. My uneducated guess is that economic change comes first - as it already is - and political change will take far longer.

A Cuban-American was upset on learning I was going to Cuba. Okay, I won’t go (back) to Cuba, if you (in a general sense) don’t go to China. And if you stop trading with China. And if you block hundreds of thousands of Chinese students from studying in the West. And, by the way, don’t go to Vietnam, where thousands of Americans were killed. And certainly don’t get on a cruise to St. Petersburg, since Russia’s becoming  ever more repressive and aggressive. And …