Cuba is not a Place for Good Socialists

Neil Clark went to Havana looking for the socialist paradise he had always heard it would be. By the time he left, he was happy just to get out alive!

All the people whose views we respect had said that the Caribbean island was a progressive model whose policies on education and healthcare ought to be copied throughout the world. We went there last April desperately wanting to like the place — after all, if George W. Bush and other right-wing nasties hated Cuba so much, then the country must be on the right tracks.

But we returned home terribly disillusioned. Neither of us had been to a country which was so utterly decrepit.

...The average wage in Cuba is a pitiful $17 a month. The monthly ration which includes 283g of fish, 226g of chicken, ten eggs and 1.8kg of potatoes is barely enough for a fortnight, meaning most Cubans need to work the black market to stay alive. Things that we in Britain take totally for granted — such as toilet paper, toothpaste and pens — are luxury goods in Cuba. I’ll never forget the look of joy from an old lady when I handed her a couple of old marker pens and a coloured pencil.

For Fidel’s chums, life is somewhat easier. Despite its calls for further belt-tightening, the Cuban government last year ordered Series 1, 3 and 5 BMWs for all its ambassadors and a Series 5 model for Raúl Castro, who had taken charge of the country after his brother’s hospitalisation.

The heartbreaking consequences of Cuba’s currency apartheid were bought home to my wife and I on a Saturday afternoon visit to Havana’s Coppelia ‘Ice Cream’ park. To the right of the park gates was a long queue of Cubans who had only Cuban pesos. They have to wait on average two hours every weekend to get their weekly scoop of ice cream. On the left, there was walk-in access to tourists and the lucky locals who had convertible pesos. Fifty years on, the Cuban revolution has turned full circle in a truly Orwellian fashion. Once again the locals find themselves excluded from the best beaches in their country, as they were under Batista. And prostitution, so rife in pre-revolutionary days, is back — the jineteras being the only group of Cubans allowed to enter the new purpose-built resorts.

...The totalitarian nature of Castro’s Cuba is no right-wing myth, but a reality....After the stress of our final day in Cuba, my wife and I were hugely relieved to leave the country. And when we were safely airborne, we both reflected that if any country was in need of a revolution, it was Fidel Castro’s Cuba. ___Source

Go ahead and read the full story of Neil Clark's visit to Havana. Also consider Czech super-model Helena Houdova, who had to hide her digital memory card in her bra, to get visual evidence of Cuba's collapse out of the country. And think about the people who continue to repeat the lies about Castro's "revolution paradise", and consider what these dishonest rumour-bearers are really up to. And while you are thinking about that, think about the same brainless ideologues who mecca'd to Sandinista Nicaragua, and who continue to pilgrimage to Chavez' Venezuela.

These are the type of true believers who will happily make 90% of Earth's human population disappear, if that is what the gods of global warming and peak oil demand. It is an unhappy group of pilgrims, acolytes, disciples, and zombies. Their beliefs far outweigh anything that can be shown to their lying eyes.