Cuba Reflections

First, I want to start with some gratitude for…

Sra. R. and Sr. K, the teachers at DD1’s school who organized our trip. Between multiple meetings, collecting payments, raising funds, and supervising everyone during the trip, it was no easy feat, yet they pulled it off admirably.

Alandis, the educational tour company that worked with us. Everything was great and they put together an itinerary that struck a good balance: we did many things , but we weren’t run ragged. They run trips to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Spain. Here is their website: https://alandistravel.com

Dalila, the Alandis site director who did our orientation and kept things running smoothly behind the scenes.

Luis Fidel, our guide who accompanied us at every stop with smiles and an easygoing personality. He shared a wealth of information about Cuban history and culture with us.

Giovanni, our bus driver. There were some very tight spots that he had to steer our large bus into, but he was a pro and got us everywhere safely.

Our hosting families in Havana and Viñales for their warm welcome. We got to know our Havana family in particular and appreciate their help in meeting my cousin and the serendipitous meeting of my uncle’s friend.

My cousin and his wife for their hospitality. It may have only been for one evening, but we sincerely appreciated getting to meet them in person.

DD1, who when I expressed my doubts about going, said that she wanted to go so she could learn more about her culture because we have very little of it where we live. Her words made me realize that we should give this trip a chance. Also, she took many photos that I used for the blog entries (everything but the cans in this post).

Now I want to share some reflections that I gained on this trip, in the hopes that they inform someone’s thinking or plans for a trip to Cuba.

As a tourist, you will live better than many locals.

Yes, there is food scarcity on the island: as of this writing, Cuba was receiving food assistance from the UN. However, with the purchasing power of foreign currency, you will not go hungry. That holds even if you change your money to Cuban pesos because of the exchange rate favoring the US dollar so much.

I have mixed feelings about this. It’s hard knowing that your casa hosts are giving you their best and that they may not be eating as well when you’re not around… or that, even if they have food security at every meal, they probably know someone who doesn’t. But as a tourist, my choices are to visit Cuba, go elsewhere, or stay home. Not going to Cuba means nobody there gets whatever boost I give to their local economy. And Cuba is not the only country where the tourists tend to live more comfortably than the locals. So, for now at least, I feel that visiting was a good choice for me.

You can’t buy your way out of every inconvenience.

No matter how much money you have, you may find yourself dealing with an apagón. Or you may go to a fancy restaurant, like La Barraca at the Hotel Nacional, and see that the bathroom has no TP. If you don’t think that you will be able to roll with the punches when these issues pop up, I can’t recommend Cuba to you.

Cuba is in contact with the rest of the world.

Seems obvious, right? But it can be easy for those of us living in the US to forget that our country is the only one with an embargo. For residents of other countries, Cuba is another option for a Caribbean vacation, which means that it hosts tourists from all over.

Overall, Cubans know more about US culture than vice versa.

I know that, in general, people in the US have an earned a reputation for not knowing about other countries. So the surprising part for me was just how much the Cubans knew about US culture despite the embargo. Some examples:

Talking baseball with a Cuban at an internet café: He says he supports the Tampa Bay Rays. I say that I’m not a big baseball fan, but that I root for the Tigers, who haven’t won a World Series since 1984. He then names some Cuban guy who played for the Tigers in the 80s! For anyone wondering, it’s Bárbaro Garbey, who played on the 1984 team.

Talking TV with my cousin and his wife: They are fans of Grey’s Anatomy and Friends, and we talked about how sad Matthew Perry’s passing was.

US products still get into Cuba.

I observed this on two levels. First, there were products from US companies that were made in other countries, such as this Pepsi bottled (canned?) in Malta

And this 7UP by way of Mexico.

Second, we ended up with something directly from the US. We visited a store(mipyme) in someone’s garage. It was the kind of place with drinks and snacks behind a counter. I spotted coffee on a shelf and thought it would be fun to buy some for my mom. They had two different brands, so I asked the clerk which one he liked best and purchased it. After returning to our casa, I saw that the coffee was from New Jersey! I have lots of questions: is this a regular offering? Does the owner have family members who bring it by the suitcase, or is there another way they are getting it? How is it preferable to the locally grown and ground coffee? Regardless of the answers, one thing is true: there are at least some US products making it through the embargo.

The embargo keeps families and friends apart, which is sad.

I have known this at some level my whole life, but it hit home for me in a new way on my trip. Maybe what did it was looking at family photos with my cousin: even though I knew that my great-aunts and uncles and others had passed years ago, I realized just how many people I didn’t get to meet because I couldn’t go. (For anyone who cites family exceptions to the embargo, they do exist, but as I said in an earlier post, some administrations did not include cousins in the family exception, and the current regulations are pretty complicated.)

Meeting my uncle’s friend also made me think about friendships cut short or interrupted. Hearing the friend’s perspective, one day they were playing in the neighborhood like always, the next my uncle was gone. He missed his friend. I’m glad that he and my uncle are in touch again. In the first decades after the Revolution, it was more difficult to stay in touch because you didn’t know if your letters arrived, and phone calls were complicated events to orchestrate. I hope that more people are able to make similar (re)connections thanks to technology like email, WhatsApp, and social media.

In all, I’m no foreign policy expert, but all of this separation has been sad, and I ask myself why it had and still has to be that way.

For Cuban-Americans:

Our relationship with Cuba is even more complicated than our government’s. Everyone has a unique story about how their family got to the US and the different factors involved: when, what exactly made their relatives decide to leave, how the family members who stayed reacted, etc. So I’m not going to tell anyone what to do. I can only share my own experience, and I can tell you that everyone was welcoming to DD1 and me, and that nobody’s attitude towards us changed when they found out that we were Cuban-Americans whose immediate family had left in the 60s. I will also say that I was on the fence about this trip because it was not how I envisioned my first time there, but I am so glad that DD1 and I took the opportunity to go.

In the preparations for this trip, I learned more about the “Support for the Cuban People” exception to the embargo. In brief, you stay at casas particulares and eat at paladares, so you support private establishments. It might be a good way for my family to go without worrying about my kids being accepted under the family exception, so I will investigate that more in the future. I do want to return someday.

Thanks for reading! I’m already behind on blogging my family’s summer vacation, so I will get to that soon.