Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Cuba? Si! Castro? No! by MARGARET DICKSON For half a century, Cuba has been the neighbor we love to hate. Just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba might as well be on the other side of the earth for most Americans. I recently had a conversation with a young person of the Generation X (or maybe Y) persuasion who said of Cuba, "Oh, yeah, isn't that the place with all the American cars from the 1950s?" It has not always been this way. Until 1959 when Fidel Castro led a rebel take-over of the Cuban government and ousted the Americanbacked dictator, Americans flocked to Cuba, especially to Havana, a kind of Las Vegas of its day. Since the early 1960s, though, the United States has had no diplomatic, economic, cultural or any other sort of relations with Cuba whatsoever. The few Americans who risked visiting did so illegally by entering from another country. Hence my young friend's impression of Cuba, even though the rest of the world visits the island nation and considers it just another Caribbean vacation paradise. Tourism is Cuba's major industry, with most visitors winging into its international terminal from Canada and western Europe. And so we cruised through the decades, with Castro leading a Communist Cuba, which had the rug suddenly and irretrievably yanked out from under it when the Soviet Union abruptly fell in 1991. It was the national equivalent of having the rich uncle who had always supported you drop dead, leaving you nothing. Enter the Obama Administration which has eased travel restrictions for Americans visiting Cuba. Such travel is still tightly controlled — by us, not the Cubans, but it is possible with agents licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department for specific purposes, including education and humanitarian relief. Education was the umbrella under which three friends and I traveled to Cuba last fall, and an education is what we got. We saw and felt firsthand what it means to be cut off from the world's most powerful and influential nation for 50 years. We saw a "ration store," where Cubans can purchase a diminishing variety of staples — powdered milk, rice, coffee and such — at very low prices, though the government appears to be phasing out this practice. We saw a once grand city, Havana, slowly rehabilitating beautiful colonial buildings with tourism money. We saw an economy transitioning from the Communist model to some hybrid of communism and capitalism. Cubans are now permitted to own real estate other than cemetery plots, and many are opening private businesses, often restaurants, in their homes. We were lectured by a charming economics professor from the University of Havana who also teaches at Harvard about Cuba's emerging economies, particularly medicine and healthcare, to augment tourism. Food, traditionally rice and beans with pork and chicken, was uniformly undistinguished and occasionally inedible in government-run restaurants and delicious in the private ones, which included fresh seafood. Being an artist is a high-status career, and the artwork was fascinating. Music is an intrinsic part of Cuban culture, and music — mostly live — is everywhere — on the streets, in hotels and restaurants along beaches. With music comes a familiar exercise in free enterprise, the sale of CDs, several of which I am enjoying at home. We struggled to find Internet service which is spotty and expensive, a fact often blamed on American refusal to allow access to our satellites. Money was an issue since the U.S. no longer allows dollars to be accepted in Cuba, and American banks cannot do business there, meaning none of our credit or debit cards could be used. I did not take quite enough cash to be converted into Cuban currency, called CUCs, and I arrived back in Miami with not a cent to my name, making a mad dash to the first ATM I could find. We encountered a mystery for which we found no explanation. For reasons known only to Cubans and maybe not even to them, there is a shortage of — of all things — toilet seats! Not just lids, but entire seats! This is true in both men's and women's facilities in establishments of all types, upscale and downscale. Where they go, no one could tell us, which leaves me wondering whether a giant toilet-seat mountain exists somewhere in rural Cuba or whether there is a black market of some sort dealing in this most ordinary bathroom part. On the plus side, Cubans have great respect for their elders and provide both inhome and facility care for them. Cuban coffee is the best I have ever had — so, too, the rum. Cubans are proud of their country and their heritage and seem excited as their country evolves into its next incarnation. There are many old American cars, of course, but there are many new ones as well, including fancy German ones that would definitely be as high-end here as they are there. Am I glad I went to Cuba? Yes, absolutely, and glad I went legally as well. And I wish the Cuban people only the best MARGARET DICKSON, Conas their next chapter unfolds. tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Family Friendly! Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. "Kids Eat Free" on Tuesdays (with purchase of adult entree) Open Daily for Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-2:30pm 484-0261 Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! JANUARY 16-22, 2013 UCW 5