{"id":561,"date":"2016-01-09T13:59:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-09T20:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/blog\/?p=561"},"modified":"2017-01-20T10:55:27","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T17:55:27","slug":"a-letter-from-the-freedom-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/?p=561","title":{"rendered":"A letter from the Freedom Island"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cuba-US-Flags\"<\/a>
A lone US Flags in Havana, Cuba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m riding \u201cshotgun\u201d in a 1928 Ford Cabriolet along a nearly empty six-lane promenade. A sunny Sunday afternoon was tailor-made for cruising in a classic convertible along the Atlantic coast. If this beautiful road were located in Miami, or any other world-class seaside city, it would have been clogged by\u00a0expensive cars filled with\u00a0cool\u00a0people.<\/p>\n

But this street is called Malec\u00f3n<\/i>\u00a0in Havana and it is deserted because most Cubans do not own cars and don’t drive. Instead of the multimillion dollar condominiums and 5-star hotels, Malec\u00f3n is lined with dilapidated apartment buildings. Their balconies hang by a thread from the broken walls and their inhabitants resemble squatters of condemned properties. A real effort is needed to imagine this area as\u00a0a prime real estate location, as it rightfully deserves.<\/p>\n

Visiting Cuba at this stage of its history means asking a lot of questions and not getting many satisfying answers. This happens not only because the answers are given with a knowing look over one’s shoulder – Who else might be listening?<\/i> – but also because there isn\u2019t any\u00a0clarity about where the country is now and where it is heading.\u00a0My friends and I have come to Cuba in December of 2015\u00a0because we want to see this country in its pre-globalized state, just a few\u00a0years before it becomes yet another Caribbean resort destination.<\/p>\n

The change is definitely in the air. As the long\u00a0Malec\u00f3n<\/em>\u00a0finally\u00a0deposits our classic cars\u00a0into\u00a0the Old Town, I see\u00a0a large MSC cruise ship docked in the half-abandoned port. A few thousand ship passengers have already flooded Habana Vieja<\/em> and are doing what they do best, i.e. consuming. They buy the Che Guevara t-shirts, revolutionary posters, old banknotes, contemporary paintings, rum, cigars, and so on. It is easy for a foreigner to drop\u00a0$20 – $30 on a meal, drinks and tips, which is equivalent to a local monthly salary.<\/p>\n

I see tourists snapping\u00a0photographs everywhere – the Old Town\u00a0is a real gem with\u00a0beautiful squares and former palaces, pretty people, charming streets, stately hotels, stern cathedrals, neighborhood bars, art galleries and street performers. If I ignore the subtropical vegetation I could easily imagine myself walking through a European capital. Now I know why Ernest Hemingway had loved living in Cuba and why “El Papa”<\/em> was fatally depressed to leave the island in July of 1960.<\/p>\n

The newly restored part\u00a0of Habana Vieja<\/em>\u00a0covers a fairly small area. I keep on strolling and soon\u00a0enter a neighborhood that has not seen any paint since the Revolution. There is a dead cat lying on the street and old Soviet Lada<\/em> and Moskvich<\/em> cars misfire thick clouds of black exhaust. A dozen men and women are lined up along the wall and patiently wait for\u00a0their turn to get something from a small dark window. All of them look at me with curiosity – a foreign visitor doesn\u2019t appear\u00a0here too\u00a0often.<\/p>\n

Why was this magical city ignored and allowed to disintegrate? The official\u00a0answer is that the country\u2019s wealth was taken\u00a0out by the emigres, while the US trade embargo keeps on blocking the new money from reaching\u00a0Cuba. I don’t buy this –\u00a0the economic blockade has never been airtight: the USSR\u00a0had pumped lots of resources into the “Freedom Island” between 1961 – 1991\u00a0and\u00a0most countries (including EU, Japan, China, India, etc.) did not support\u00a0the US embargo.<\/p>\n

It seems that everything in Cuba is \u201ccarbon dated” by the Revolution. Most of the country\u2019s buildings and infrastructure\u00a0were constructed Before the Revolution<\/em>, while some sad Soviet-style apartment blocks and monuments belong to\u00a0the After the Revolution<\/em> category.<\/p>\n

As an ex-Soviet, I easily find the remnants of the “evil\u00a0empire” all over the island: police\u00a0road\u00a0checkpoints, official pins and medals on\u00a0sale in a local park, semi-empty supermarket shelves, posters with the faces of Heroes of Cuba, crumbling apartment blocks, underground music, indifferent sales clerks, a few boring channels on TV, and so on.<\/p>\n

Will this maddening stagnation\u00a0ever end? I believe\u00a0so. Just as it happened\u00a0in the USSR in 1991, the Cuban people may\u00a0wake up one morning and discover\u00a0that the totalitarian\u00a0rule is gone and the mighty “market economy”\u00a0is now in charge of their country. Alternatively, the Communists could adapt the Chinese pragmatic model of a\u00a0hybrid society, as described by the late Deng Xiaoping:\u00a0“It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.” In other words, the Communists may still retain the political control, while some form of the market economy will be encouraged to thrive. Regardless, it will not be an easy transition and\u00a0there will be disappointments and arguments whether the new way of life\u00a0is better than the old one. Most of the pensioners and revolutionary veterans will be angry with the changes, while the young generation will embrace the new reality.<\/p>\n

The future visitors to Cuba will enjoy the\u00a0benefits and drawbacks of globalization: freedom of speech, assembly, travel; Coca-Cola; plentiful hot water;\u00a0the Golden Arches; glitzy jewelry stores; unemployment; fast Internet and cellular connection; credit cards; homeless people; smiling waiters; reasonable currency exchange rates; restored buildings; and, of course, bumper to bumper traffic on\u00a0Malec\u00f3n<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0wish the Cuban people best of luck, success and patience in their journey. Viva Cuba!<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to see a tiny portion of what I saw in December of 2015.<\/p>\n

Keep on traveling,
\nLenkaTraveler
\nwww.facebook.com\/LenkaTraveler<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m riding \u201cshotgun\u201d in a 1928 Ford Cabriolet along a nearly empty six-lane promenade. A sunny Sunday afternoon was tailor-made for cruising in a classic convertible along the Atlantic coast. If this beautiful road were located in Miami, or any…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-blog","tag-cuba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":694,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenkatraveler.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}