Cuba, Our Nearest and Most Distant Neighbor

The flight was less than an hour, from Miami, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, the capital of the nation we Americans probably know less about than any other. But in the lively streets of Havana I felt like I had traveled across decades and light years from home.

Cuban flag flies over Havana''s opera house

In case you've forgotten, Cuban revolutionaries overthrew a dictator named Batista 54 years ago and established a socialist government with support from the Soviet Union. America responded by imposing an embargo on trade with Cuba in hopes of destroying the regime economically. For a while some of our allies respected the embargo, but eventually saw that it was having no real impact and reopened trade with the Caribbean nation. 

For the adventurous American traveler, this all meant that American citizens were effectively the only people on the planet who could not legally visit our southern neighbor. One of the saddest consequences of the embargo is that we Americans have become woefully ignorant of the nation that lies a mere 90 miles from Key West.

So last fall when a friend asked if I'd like to go to Cuba, legally, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to see Cuba first-hand and perhaps understand this nation that has successfully thumbed its nose at us for more than half a century. 

Whether one can truly comprehend a place in an 8-day guided tour is questionable, but it's better than reading anything about it in American newspapers over the past half century. And it's better even than relying on the accounts of others who have been there. Once I was committed to this trip, I read everything I could find and talked to as many people as I could who have visited Cuba in recent years. And everything I heard and read contradicted everything else I heard and read, so I abandoned all expectations and went just to experience it for myself in mid-January. 

And now, over several blog posts and through my photographs, I will tell you about my experience and my impressions, fully aware that even those on the same tour with me may well contradict everything I say about it. So, if you're interested, I encourage you to go see for yourself.

Which you can now do, legally. The U.S. government is currently licensing tour operators to put together educational "People to People" visits for various affinity groups. There is a partial list of such groups at http://www.lawg.org/storage/documents/people2people.pdf. They range from college alumni groups to the Audubon Society to Witness for Peace. The group I went with was organized by a photographer with an emphasis on photographing Cuba, though not all 12 of us were serious photographers.

We spent eight days in Cuba, mostly in and around Havana, but with a day trip to Viñales in Pinar del Rio Province in western Cuba, and a two-night excursion to the 400-year old town of Trinidad on the south central coast, with stops in the port city of Cienfuegos on the way.

For the photographer, Cuba is a land rich with opportunities, stories, color, personality and history. The contradictions in the accounts of those who have been there merely reflect the contradictions and paradoxes that make up Cuba today and make it so fascinating. 

Cuba is a country where the average salary for government workers -- and virtually everyone works for the government -- is $25 a month, but there is little evidence of poverty, oppression or unhappiness. It is a nation with few natural resources of its own, but with the ingenuity to keep 60-year-old American cars running and gleaming and the ability to adopt widespread organic farming when the source of fertilizer (Soviet Union) collapsed.

Cuba's Capitol building in Central Havana

It is a "godless communist" government where people practice all religions in elegant churches, cathedrals, mosques and synagogues and where Raul Castro attended the dedication of a new Russian Orthodox church a few years ago. 

The free public education system produces a 99 percent literacy rate and 99 percent employment.The health care system is free to all Cuban citizens and good enough to attract foreign heads of state for cancer treatment.

When I changed my money from dollars to CUCs, the convertible pesos that tourists get (not the same as the Cuban pesos that Cubans are paid with), the friendly bank teller told me, "Welcome to Cuba. You're going to love Havana, but you will hate the people." I assumed she was joking, and my experience for the ensuing eight days confirmed it.

I did love Havana, but I did not hate the people. I deeply regretted that I speak almost no Spanish, because I would have loved to converse more with people, but enough of them spoke English that I could get by. When people learned we were Americans they were friendly, curious and generally helpful. On the other hand, nearly everyone had a service or product for sale, whether it was questionable little candies, willingness to pose for pictures, or prostitutes. Hardly anyone just asked for money, but there were always a few panhandlers near the big hotels in Central Havana.

In subsequent blog posts, I'll ruminate on some of my experiences in more detail. In the meantime, please visit my Cuba photos at http://www.finsfeathersfoto.com/f461394966.