Practicamos Español.. En Cuba
Last week I traveled to Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean and the only place in the Americas where communism still has a strong presence. I went under a people-to-people educational license and was bused around the country to experience the culture, rum and cigars (and of course practice Spanish!)
Cuba feels like it’s locked in time. Everywhere you go vintage cars line the streets. And it seems that everyone is outside all the time, walking, relaxing, just living life. I think you can attribute this to the restricted media, handful of government TV stations available, and where only 5% of the population has access to the internet. However I did overhear someone at the Industriales game discussing the latest rerun of Grey’s Anatomy.
I’ve always been fascinated by our estranged relationship with Fidel. If you’re unfamiliar with America’s embargo laws, just know that our trade policies make it so everything is stretched thin in Cuba to barely provide for the people. Yet the government still manages to deliver free education and healthcare.
Many Cubans I talked to said that it is difficult to cover the costs of living. Chemists, artists, taxi-drivers, musicians, acrobats, doctors, teachers, everyone, are all paid between $25-$35 / month. I was asked many times for soap from my hotel room. It’s such a strange poverty situation where the people have freedom of education and healthcare, but can barely get by because of the system.
I found Cuba very alluring. Everyone lives in the moment and it has such a romantic back-in-time feel. However it seemed that this state of crystallization wouldn’t last much longer.
In the past decade private taxi companies, coops, and other ventures have sprung up as the government started to allow some forms of capitalism to take root. And it seems that today everyone is experimenting with the new changes by working a second, non government job. There’s a social revolution underway, and there’s no telling what will happen when Cuba is fully exposed to the world.
