These 10 Photos Will Make You Rethink Your Trip to Cuba

Fortune ^ | February 21, 2016 | Wally Nowinski

[grundle]

I recently got back from a 10-day trip to Cuba. And during those days I gained some insight into what thousands of Americans are going to find when they leave their luxury hotels and lavish supermarkets and spend significant amounts of money to travel to an island hobbled by embargo and food shortages. In a nutshell, it’s going to be a huge, huge mess. But (probably!) worth it, particularly for the adventurous and culinarily unambitious.

The trip I went on was a “people-to-people” educational group voyage, in compliance with U.S. State Department guidelines. I like to think of it as the last government trip to Cuba, before normalized tourism takes hold. The group spent most of its time in Havana, but we also visited Viñales in the west and Trinidad on the Caribbean coast. Cuba is a fascinating and outrageously photogenic place. Here’s what I saw.

The food is bad, but the plumbing is worse

[Slyfox]

CUBA!!

[vette6387]

“The reason we don’t drive 55 Chevys around America anymore is that they were terrible cars.”

If that is true, and it isn’t, why are they selling at auction for prices in excess of $100,000?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

These photos are lies put out by capitalist pigs! The revolution has succeeded!

[eddie willers]

I don’t care what they say, my ‘57 Chevy was the best car I ever had.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Not enough tractors? Didn’t the USA send them 500 tractors as ransom for the Bay of Pigs captives?
Yes, I do remember those days.

[sphinx]

As a tool of regime change, the American trade embargo has been a complete failure. The Castro government is now the longest serving in the world. But as an exercise in immiserating a small country, it has been a smashing success. Turns out that locking 11.5 million people out of the world economy does, in fact, result in radically higher prices, crumbling infrastructure and widespread human suffering.

It is amazing to find an author who does not realize that the rest of the world has been trading with Cuba for decades. We have not locked Cuba out of the world economy. We have only locked them out of the U.S. market, which is a different thing entirely.

[Dave W]

No. The depression was much worse.

[from occupied ga]

It won’t make me rethink my trip to Cuba. I have never had any intention of ever going to that commie sh!thole, and looking at the pictures doesn’t change that at all. Besides if Hillary had won we’d all be living like that in a decade or two.

[The Westerner]

That dark moment in history marked the end of America’s place as the home of those seeking safe harbor from oppressors. Hillary Clinton and her soulmate Butch Reno oversaw that.

[Robwin]

Amusing line from the piece: Almost everyone you encountered — save for the employees at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, who set the global standard for surly hotel staff — were genuinely excited to find out we were Americans.

[dfwgator]

Castro IS the Embargo.

[barker]

Cuba is second behind Mexico for places I will never go.

[The Westerner]

The moment our Republic died.

[ilovesarah2012]

This was over a year ago. Maybe it has gotten better.

[Honorary Serb]

.....The revolution capped farms at 40 acres making them too small to effectively mechanize even if you could afford machines.....

That’s how post-Charlemagne feudalism in Europe worked. too!!!! They couldn’t even efficiently use horse-drawn plows, so relied on human muscle-power. That’s the real reason they were so “backward”, in terms of technology, education, etc.!!!!

[Buckeye McFrog]

I know two Canadians who went. They say it sucks. Starving man on the beach begged one of them to bring him food from the hotel buffet.

[Stosh]

From the article:

“Everyone in Cuba desperately wants the embargo lifted.”

Here’s the point I could never understand: presumably, before the Castro boys, the Cuban economy was exploited by the Yankee capitalists, who reduced all but the elites to poverty. So you’d think they’d welcome strict separation from those dastardly Americans, especially (as you point out) everybody else can trade with them.

I wish the heck they’d make up their minds - do they want to get exploited by us, or not?

[Dr. Sivana]

The reason we don’t drive 55 Chevys around America anymore is that they were terrible cars. On every measure aside from sheer bulk, classic cars were drastically worse than what we drive today. They were slow; got terrible fuel economy, and were almost-certain-deathtraps in any sort of accident. Perhaps worst of all: they lack catalytic converters.

A '55 Chevy in new condition will fetch more than most modern cars and their catalytic converters. The article is undermined by a half-true statement like the above. And some of us LIKE sheer bulk ... and bench seats and repairability, too!

[I want the USA back]

Read it. Notice that salaries in the Communist Paradise are almost the same for all. Doctors make 3 times the standard pay.

Then recall how avidly democrats cry for a 15$ minimum hourly rate, and do all they can to tax the hell out of anyone who makes over $200,000. Remember how bammy say no one needs more than that?

Democrats are communists with a different name.

And the embargo is not the main reason why Cubans are poor - it’s communism.

[TADSLOS]

Tropical East Germany.