A Visit to Cuba During Trumpian Times
Last month, my family and I had the opportunity to go to Cuba. We traveled under the rules issued by the Obama administration as part of the renewal of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuban governments. These guidelines allow for individual U.S. citizens to arrange their own visits to the island nation under the category of “people to people exchange.”
While we were there, meeting with dozens of ordinary Cubans across the country, exploring social, economic, political and cultural issues, President Trump announced that he was revoking this travel category. This makes us, for the time being at least, some of the last American citizens that our government will allow to independently visit Cuba as individuals exercising our own free will to learn, explore, engage and dialogue. So I thought it was particularly pertinent to relate our experience and share my perspective.
Arriving in Havana is like entering a time warp. Classic 1950s vehicles painted bright blue, green and pink cut through the humidity. The crumbling architecture evokes the splendor of a dilapidated Paris, or Rome, or Buenos Aires. Music flows from nearly every doorway. And while the Internet is there, it is limited; people on the street, in cafes, and in the vast majority of spaces are not constantly glued to their phone screens. Along with the near total absence of advertising of any kind, it lends the feel that this is a parallel universe where corporate globalization never happened.
Of course, just below this enchanting surface is a more complicated reality. Look under the hood. The classic cars run on Hyundai engines and subsidized Venezuelan oil processed in a 1950s era refinery that spews pollution across Old Havana. The city’s elegant decay belies a deep economic malaise — buildings are falling apart because, in most cases, there is no money to fix them up. There are no billboards or ads both because most people don’t have the money to buy anything, and because the state severely restricts the operation of most any private enterprise. And the lack of pervasive Internet access (you can get it if you can pay for it) conveniently restricts an important 21st century avenue of dissent.
A Land of Paradox
In Cuba we found a land of paradox. A government at once fiercely independent, and yet deeply reliant on external support. A country whose people are wealthy and impoverished in the same breath. A political system that both meets fundamental human needs and restricts basic human rights. A nation that leads the world in so many areas and yet lags behind in others.
I have spent a lot of time in more than a dozen Latin American countries, and many, for all their wonderful attributes, are also rife with illiteracy, hunger, addiction, violence and little access to health care. If you look at Cuba’s neighbors — Haiti, the Dominican Republic — this is certainly the case. In this context, it is phenomenal what Cuba has achieved and maintained over more than half a century since Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista and it pulled itself out of wrenching banana republic poverty. Free, universal health care and education, 100% literacy, no drugs or gangs, the city streets are the safest I’ve ever walked, anywhere, and the cultural life — the art and music — is vibrant.
Cubans we met were universally proud of these accomplishments. They asked about health care in the US and told us about open-heart surgery or other health interventions they received that didn’t cost them a penny. They asked about violence and mass killings in U.S. cities and told our daughters that they were safe there — pretty much anytime, anywhere. And most everyone was clearly well educated and well spoken; many were thoughtful and articulate. For instance, we met a guitar-toting campesino in the countryside who engaged us in a lively and quite sophisticated conversation on U.S.-Cuban relations, climate change and the Trump administration’s exit from the Paris accord. That doesn’t happen in most places, let alone on a rural dirt road.
At the same time — and here really is the paradox — the Cuban system is not sustainable in its current form. Education is free for everyone up through graduate school, if you want to go. Yet we met Pepe, a teacher who doesn’t teach, because the standard salary is an unlivable $30 a month. Instead, he sells hats to tourists on the beach. He wouldn’t let me take his picture because selling hats freelance is illegal. We met Pedro, a cab driver who told us that medicine is free or deeply subsidized, but the pharmacy shelves are bare; if you’re kid is sick, sometimes you need to go to the pharmacy that caters to tourists and pay high, dollar prices to get the cure — if you have the currency. Most everyone we spoke with agreed that the system has to change. Something has to give.
To be openly critical of and to call for change in this closed system could easily get you thrown in jail. The Cuban government is a child of a Cold War that has never ended. With the U.S., stuck in its own time warp, calling for regime change ninety miles south of Miami, Cuba still lives in an economic and political siege mentality. Our new friend Rene told us he thought everyone should be able to express their own opinion publicly, but that clearly wasn’t happening in Cuba without trouble coming with it.
But how can you lecture us about human rights, many of them asked, when in your country you can get shot for driving while black, don’t provide health care for your poorest people, don’t provide a free university education to those who are qualified, and refuse to take responsibility for your role in contributing to climate change, which will claim millions of lives in the future?
Times are Changing
At the same time, it is clear some change is afoot in Cuba — at least on the economic front. There are giant cruise ships from Florida parked at the docks in Old Havana, with American tourists swarming the rum and cigar shops. Buildings across the city are being restored to their former elegance. Investment from abroad is pouring in. Small town plazas are wifi enabled, turning the town square into a virtual meeting place.
The government is also slowly loosening controls on small-scale private enterprise. For instance, restaurants in people’s homes, hostels for travelers and homestays are everywhere. We booked our visits in Havana and three other towns through Airbnb, which set up virtual shop after Obama renewed relations. Many Americans traveling on their own have been availing themselves of these services, contributing to the empowerment of small business in Cuba.
Ironically, it is the little guy in Cuba who will suffer from Trump’s new rules. The President isn’t banning American cruise ship visits, or limiting airline routes. He’s not closing the embassy that Obama reopened. He’s letting US companies do business, so long as it’s not with the military. But he is clamping down on individuals like us, whose travel is supporting the development of an entrepreneurial Cuban middle class.
One of our last stops in Cuba was Playa Giron, the infamous Bay of Pigs. This was the site of the failed CIA-sponsored mercenary invasion of Cuba, organized by the Kennedy administration to overthrow the Castro regime in 1961, the year before I was born. It was a debacle that then led to the Cuban missile crisis — an event that almost sucked the U.S. and the Soviets into nuclear Armageddon and forced Cuba squarely into the Soviet camp for decades to come. The place is laden with historical overtones and a symbol of Cuban resistance to American intervention.
At the Bay of Pigs, we met Nello, a “profesor de beisbol,” about my age. Over his career he had coached several players who made the national team. He told us he thought baseball in Cuba was going downhill because all the best players were being scooped up by the MLB. Meanwhile, they could barely afford the basic equipment, gloves, bats, balls. The field was full of ruts. He had other complaints about what was happening in Cuba beyond baseball too.
But when it came to Trump’s (he and others pronounced it Trooomp) new Cuba policy, he told us what pretty much everyone else in Cuba said about Mr. Trooomp. “We’ve been through it all and we have survived” he said. “Fifty years of blockade, ten U.S. presidents. If he thinks he’s any different, he’s wrong. We are here now and we will be here after he’s gone. Bring it on.”
My family and I left Cuba with a deep sense that this unique, enchanting, contradictory island nation had a right to forge its own path and determine its own destiny — warts and all.
We also came home with a foreboding feeling that Trump’s new policy is restricting our rights and freedoms as American citizens to travel and speak freely with whom we choose when we choose and how we choose.
