Kinja reply list

Read More
rolandeschainHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:47am
Ham, as a Cuban-American, I congratulate you on a well-written piece. I really can't argue with anything you wrote describing the place.

A few years ago a cousin came to the US for the first time. She and I hit it off right away and had some great conversations. I was always of the "I won't go" crowd, like my dad's generation that swore that as along as the Castros were in power they would not go back. She convinced me otherwise. She made the same point you're making, that if I want to know what Cuba is like today, I have to see it with my own eyes. Later on, after things change, all there will be is the stories of how it was. So I went. The place is amazing, sad, happy, trashy, cool, smelly, loud, hot, dirty, and I loved every minute. The people can and will recite their rote speeches of communist party nonsense, but they consider the government a joke. Something to put up with while they live their lives and wait for what comes next. That's why they're so excited about the change in US policy. It's appears to be the beginning of the long-awaited "after".

You encourage other countries to extend Cuba credit, but fail to mention that those that have, have lost their money. Canadian companies have had their execs jailed for not kowtowing (paying off) government officials. So the government jailed them and took their property, just like they did in '59. If you want to start a business in Cuba, the government will own, 51% of it or more. If you want to hire Cuban workers and pay them a decent wage, forget it. You pay the government the living wage, and they then pay the workers a pittance.

It kills me to see the country of my birth in the state it's in. My people are among the most resourceful around. They are masters at making do and adapting. Cuban music and art is appreciated around the world. Cuban food (in Miami. natch) is awesome. In my two trips to Cuba, I never had a good meal out. My family (despite my asking them not to) managed to get good ingredients and made fabulous meals. I hate to think what they did without so they could.

The next few years ill be interesting. I can tell you that if things go well with the US's policy change, and the Cuban people get a break, they will do great things.
Reply
- Read More
  Thrumboliorolandeschain
  3/17/15 11:16am
  "You encourage other countries to extend Cuba credit, but fail to mention that those that have, have lost their money. Canadian companies have had their execs jailed for not kowtowing (paying off) government officials. So the government jailed them and took their property, just like they did in '59. If you want to start a business in Cuba, the government will own, 51% of it or more. If you want to hire Cuban workers and pay them a decent wage, forget it. You pay the government the living wage, and they then pay the workers a pittance."
  
  That, right there, encapsulates my primary misgivings about Socialism. It seems that it often amounts to a system as inherently unfair and criminal as unchecked Capitalism, only more subversive.
  Reply
- Read More
  rolandeschainThrumbolio
  3/17/15 1:06pm
  Take your pick of the "-isms". Many are fine ideals that fall apart when you add the human component. The fact is that Cuba has been ruined not by socialism, but by the failings of the humans running it. You need look no further than the economic disparity between the Cuban people and their minders. The top people, the Castros in particular, have lavish lifestyles and want for nothing.
  Reply
Read More
adoiiHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:03am
"Things can only get better" is the standard neo-liberal wet dream for Cuba, which generally ignores the few though significant accomplishments they've made, which is one of the best healthcare and education systems in the developing world, and Havana is easily one of the safest capitals in South America and the Caribbean. Things could actually get much worse, it's not hard to imagine a post-Castro Cuba where the government is subservient to the US war on drug interdiction and income inequality has spiraled upwards while the country was unable to grapple with issues like rising crime rates
Reply
- Read More
  Aludraadoii
  3/17/15 10:25am
  It's weird, there are people upthread wondering how Cuba will fare as a socialist country now that it has 'no more excuses'. I have strong concerns that it will be able to maintain its socialist policies under the weight of American influence.
  
  That said, as one of the few countries out there to actively thumb their nose at the U.S. and survive to tell the tale, I can only hope they don't throw away the past 60 years of progress entirely.
  Reply
- Read More
  WinterisComingToAnEndAludra
  3/17/15 10:30am
  Thumbing your nose? Mmmhmm, you've heard of France yes?
  Reply
Read More
gus-kalamarasHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:04am
Hamilton—

How has this experience changed or adjusted your views, if at all?
Reply
- Read More
  Hamilton Nolangus-kalamaras
  3/17/15 10:24am
  I think Cuba crystallized for me the related points—
  
  1. Idealism does not just have to be airy talk, it can indeed lead to a new reality. And
  
  2. That can come at a very steep price.
  Reply
- Read More
  Max Contrariangus-kalamaras
  3/17/15 10:26am
  I second this question, given Hamilton's frequent endorsement of outlandish socialist reforms (and paradoxical fitness self determinism).
  Reply
Read More
Hip Brooklyn StereotypeHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 9:58am
"Each person should wear a stupid shirt featuring my likeness that wholly triviliazes my legacy."

-Che Guevara
Reply
- Read More
  barknadoHip Brooklyn Stereotype
  3/17/15 10:01am
  What legacy?
  
  Throwing a country into poverty?
  Reply
- Read More
  opiumsmabytchHip Brooklyn Stereotype
  3/17/15 10:01am
  Man if he only knew....
  Reply
Read More
benjaminalloverHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:41am
Everything except rice and beans amounts to a rare treat. I'm unconvinced that there is any milk on the entire island. The "yoghurt drink" tasted like fruit juice. The butter tasted like Shedd's spread. The ice cream tasted like frozen coconut, and the mayonnaise tasted like Vegemite. When we visited the countryside, we saw many cows, and they were all very, very skinny. "Dairy cows," they explained.

Oh, the food.

When I was studying in Cuba in 2001, we toured a milk factory. It was a large facility built in the soviet era, but there was very little production capacity. Milk is rationed, and at that time there was basically only enough for children and oblivious tourists.

The rural areas were so much different than the cities and touristy areas. We stayed on some farming communes, where the people lived a seemingly quite satisfying life. We ate the best produce and fish I've ever eaten in my life there, and I thought to my self, "I could live here happily". There were perhaps a dozen families living there, and they had their own school and their own doctors, since everyone is so highly educated in Cuba. We ate freshly caught fish and pineapple that was crispy and sweet, like an apple. We danced every night on a covered platform to a taped-together radio, young and old all together. The people constantly bragged about their lives, some of it bullshit, but most of it true.

But the more contact people had with tourists, the more dissatisfied they seemed. Kids in Havana wearing name-brand t-shirts and wanting for north American consumables, idolizing snack foods like they were precious commodities. No fresh fish, no pineapple. We stayed in a soviet-style apartment in New Havana, and the family were obsessed with how rich Canadians are, asking me to tell them stories about the cars and houses and supermarkets in my country. They did not brag about their lives.

There was a restaurant called El Rapido, a sort of Cuban McDonald's. They had "hot dogs" or "pizza" (rather, pathetic facsimiles thereof) but each of restaurant I went into as we traveled across the country only either had pizza or hot dogs. The person stood there under the two item menu and made you go through the absurd motion of "choosing" "pizza", only to inform you that this particular restaurant only had hot dogs. That was modern Cuba in a nutshell, to me.
Reply
- Read More
  lime_greenbenjaminallover
  3/17/15 11:00am
  When I was studying in Cuba in 2009 I remember buying a bag of spaghetti from a food stand. It was odd. I actually remember having really good pizza there though. Sometimes with basil and olives. Sometimes just with the government white cheese.
  
  Come to Cuba for the Italian food!
  Reply
- Read More
  benjaminalloverlime_green
  3/17/15 11:10am
  I brought a whole bunch of goods with me- generic OTC medicines, shoes, toiletries- all sorts of stuff they just couldn't get due to the embargo, to give as gifts to the people with whom we stayed. People were incredibly grateful for all these items, but the strongest reaction was from an old lady to whom I gave a set of spices. She cried, and fell on the floor. Seriously; after 50 years of eating bland, rationed food, she was overwhelmed to receive such a thing, which is actually an item of great status in Cuba in addition to being practically useful. It was very humbling, because as a Canadian I just never think about the fact that I can stroll into a store and choose from 10,000 different grocery items.
  Reply
Read More
Attoret2000Hamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:45am
My mother-in-law (and now-deceased father-in-law) — both white, educated, 100% "pure" Spaniard-ancestry (like most people there of the upper and upper-middle class in Cuba) participated in the revolution, she in a small way (secretly selling a kind of war bond) and he literally — going to Mexico to train and living with the revolutionaries hiding in the Cuban mountains. Even though they and their families lived privileged lives before the revolution, life under Batista was pretty horrific and violent (my mother-in-law remembers friends being shot on a street-corner) and they honestly, idealistically hoped they could make life better for everyone. And, you have to remember, they actually did succeed in the overthrow. It wasn't until afterwards, when Castro embraced the help of Russia and the Communist ideals that life got truly horrible (and people like my in-laws who were fortunate enough to have the wherewithal to get out, fled — even though it meant losing everything and living in utter poverty for years.) It was when the US abandoned the Cuba people to be slaughtered at the Bay of Pigs that, I think, literally, all hope was lost. My husband wants to go to Cuba as soon as it's legal. My mother-in-law, no. She says seeing it the way it's become would break her heart.
Reply
- Read More
  fulanitaAttoret2000
  3/17/15 5:52pm
  That's the experience of many Cubans of that generation. It's a unfortunately an oft-repeated fallacy that everyone who is now anti-Castro must have been pro-Batista. I;ve posted about this here before. My family background is the same as your in laws' and I can promise you that they and their peers had a huge hand in Castro coming to power. The tables were then turned, and here we are.
  Reply
- Read More
  Attoret2000fulanita
  3/17/15 8:01pm
  fulanita, My mother in law tells a pretty good story about their fleeing Cuba — since her passport and tickets "for vacation" were in her maiden name, her husband stood away from her in line and told her that if he was stopped that she wasn't to say a word or even let on that she knew him but should just get on the plane and go. She was about 7 months pregnant with my husband at the time — I can't imagine the anxiety she must have felt, so many of Castro's former supporters were being "disappeared" at the time. (And she was on the Communist's bad list herself (according to the family's driver, who was by then a member of the Communist party), since she back talked some Communist party members who had been sent out to collect "voluntary contributions" of food and household goods — she insisted that they admit that it wasn't actually voluntary, if they were demanding it. Pretty gutsy for someone well under 5' tall and probably 85 pounds soaking wet!) They got out in '61. They were lucky - some of her cousins got out as children on the "Pedro Pan" flights but their parents were never allowed to follow. Her in-laws and her mother got out, though her mother was stuck in Spain, alone, for several years. Castro never let her father go though because, as a heart surgeon, he was too valuable and they watched him too closely. She never saw him again.
  Reply
Read More
ThrumbolioHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:05am
I should very much like to see what happens when there aren't any more excuses, and the taint of Western imperialism (and, to be fair, Eastern imperialism) fades.

Give Cuba a substantial line of credit, and see if the Socialist Avalon comes to fruition. As with any endeavor designed and implemented by human beings, particularly one in which any sort of hierarchy is involved, I'm very skeptical that the end goal is anything more than a pipe dream.
Reply
- Read More
  toothpetardThrumbolio
  3/17/15 10:08am
  When it fails it can all become casinos and illiterates again, like god intended.
  Reply
- Read More
  bayonet1974Thrumbolio
  3/17/15 1:47pm
  The problem with giving lines of credits to the Cuban government is that they are a notoriously poor credit risk.
  
  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/0…
  Reply
Read More
corgitoy1961Hamilton Nolan
3/17/15 10:06am
Regarding Cubans who have given up careers as Doctors and Engineers to make more money driving a cab isn't a new thing there. I remember reading in Robert Lacey's biography of Meyer Lansky where Lansky was partners with Cleveland's Lakeview Road gang in several casinos in Havana. Every so often someone from the Cleveland gang would fly down to Havana, to check on their investment, and one of the gang members who went became friendly with a blackjack dealer who was very intelligent and well spoken.

One day, they were having lunch, and the gangster asked the dealer what he did for a living before he started dealing cards. The dealer replied, "I was a doctor, but this pays more." The gangster returned to Cleveland, and encouraged his partners to have Lansky buy them out, as he believed that a country in which a man gives up being a Doctor to make more money dealing cards is totally screwed. Lansky was thrilled at the idea at having no partners, and paid the Cleveland gang top dollar for their share, and less than two years later, Castro took over and closed the casinos.
Reply
- Read More
  Dorian Gray was my Red-Headed Stepsoncorgitoy1961
  3/17/15 11:02am
  The notion that Cleveland, OH had mobsters seems a quaint one.
  Reply
- Read More
  bayonet1974corgitoy1961
  3/17/15 2:51pm
  So it seems 56 years of revolution and nothing has changed. Yep, does seem like communism and castroism.
  Reply
Read More
gilbertkittensHamilton Nolan
3/17/15 11:08am

Reply
- Read More
  Grimkegilbertkittens
  3/17/15 1:18pm
  The article was good but Hamilton needs to post more of his pics. Where are his vacation selfies?
  Reply
- Read More
  gilbertkittensGrimke
  3/17/15 1:37pm
  That's exactly why I felt motivated to post mine.
  Reply
Read More
bayonet1974Hamilton Nolan
3/17/15 1:44pm
Excellent article, as a Cuban I found very little to complain about, and having gone to Cuba you must know how rare that is. One thing you screwed up though, when you say "The blockade that we've had in place for the past half century has effectively frozen Cuba out of membership in the civilized world". The blockade actually lasted from October 1962, until November 1962.

The castro government loves to call the current embargo a blockade, but it is not that.
Reply
- Read More
  harveybayonet1974
  3/18/15 6:16pm
  Yes it is. The Embargo is in fact a blockade. Many elements of the embargo stifles Cuban trade with other countries and they end up having to pay way above market prices for necessary goods to bring to Cuba. You also need to consider that The American dollar is the international currency. In fact many banks from other countries have been fined millions of dollars for doing transactions with Cuba. So the Blockade doesn't just impede trade with the US, it actually prevents normal trade with other countries and that's the main problem.
  Reply
- Read More
  bayonet1974harvey
  3/26/15 8:58am
  Please list the banks from other countries that have been fined millions of dollars for doing transactions with Cuba? Fined by whom?
  Reply