FYI, Lindberg went to Germany under cover for us. He spied on the new German fighter aircraft and was instrumental in convincing the British to fast track their Spitfire.
Posted on 06/13/2002 5:35:52 AM PDT by Bill Rice
ADA (Ohio)- Life in Cuba is very different than what most Americans envision, said two Ohio Northern University faculty members who have traveled to the communist country twice.
"The people are wonderful. They are really very much like we are," said Terry Keiser, chair of the school's department of Biological Sciences. "They are really happy people. If you did not know about their government or anything about them, you would say they are friendly, nice people."
Keiser returned from his second trip to Havana last week. Terry Maris, dean of the school's College of Business Administration, will leave June 23 for his third trip.
The two are working to establish relationships with officials from the University of Havana. A group of business students traveled to Havana last summer, and students from both departments are expected to return to Havana within the next year. Keiser said the plan is to have students from Havana come to Ohio Northern, too.
"At some point, the situation will change and commerce between the two countries will be permitted. We are trying to prepare our students for that," Maris said.
The trips have taken a great deal of planning, both men having to receive an education license from the U.S. government to travel there. Tourists have to get the OK from the government to visit Cuba and no American businesses are permitted to operate there because of the embargo on U.S. trade and investment in Cuba.
Both men said they were surprised they were so welcomed in Cuba and that they never came across anyone who was hostile to them because they are Americans.
"I expected hostility, but they were very generous and hospitable," Maris said. "They wanted to avoid even talking about politics. They wanted to talk about rock stars and about movies."
"They are very proud to be Cuban, but you should not mistake that for being anti-American," Keiser added.
The one bit of politics Cubans didn't mind talking about was former President Jimmy Carter's recent visit.
"They thought Carter was wonderful. They said he was very positive and he and Fidel really hit it off," Keiser said. "I heard that Carter provided very easy access to the average guy on the street."
They also noted that the people they came into contact with spoke highly of Fidel Castro, saying that despite recent opposition heard about in the news, Castro seems to have the support of the people.
"Whether they like or dislike him, everything I heard was positive for Castro," Keiser said. "They mainly talk about the revolution and good things he has done for them like free health care and free education."
Duh - I guess no one has bothered to tell these liberal egg-heads what happens to those who say otherwise.
Let's explain it to them.
t-keiser@onu.edu
tkeiser@unify.onu.edu
t-maris@onu.edu
tmaris@unify.onu.edu
but we do, don't we? ::: shaking head ::::
I guess this clueless idiot thinks that everyone in the world enjoys freedom of speech. Gee, given the experience described here, I wonder why so many people would want to leave that wonderful paradise.
..this is something that has just recently popped up? :: banging head on keyboard ::
Obviously, these "historians" from ONU are ignorant of history. Nothing like a specialist who doesn't know his specialty.
God I love the smell of ignorance in the morning.
Congressman Billybob
I wouldn't expect the average Cuban to be hostile.
But I wouldn't be fooled by a bunch of people who decline to talk politics feeling an urgent need to tell me how much they like Fidel Castro.
FYI, Lindberg went to Germany under cover for us. He spied on the new German fighter aircraft and was instrumental in convincing the British to fast track their Spitfire.
Or perhaps: These people want to teach indoctrinate our kids.
I'm pretty sure that is B.S. U.S. dollars cannot be spent in Cuba, but people with u.s. passports can travel there.
That may be true but if you do go expect to be put in a room on your return
for a Q&A and you better not have any Havana Club rum or cuban receipts on you.
Column by Matthew Fisher
WHERE TIME STANDS STILL
Cuba in appearance hasn't changed much in the last 50 years. Beyond the fabulous beaches, the people of Cuba eke out a living housed in rundown buildings and are transported in rusted vintage cars from the '50's , bikes and horse buggies. Visitors to the Caribbean think it's quaint. However, Toronto SUN columnist Matthew Fisher warns Canadians not to be fooled by a conniving communist government that holds a firm grip over Cuba.
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VARADERO,Cuba -- Joyous,azure skies. Warm, turquoise waters. Coconut palms. A silky, coral beach that stretches forever.
This is Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy's Cuba, Fidel Castro's Cuba.
The island is prettier than the Florida Keys.
It's a tropical Shangri-La.
More than 155,000 Canadians visited Cuba in 1996, a 10% jump on the year before. More Canucks than ever are expected to vacation here in 1997.
Havana, Santiago de Cuba and Guadalavaca have their fans, but most visitors from Canada stay on this lush peninsula, 130 km east of Havana and 120 km south of Key West, Fla.
An armada of charter jets makes the three-hour hops everyweekend from Terminal 2 at Toronto's Pearson Airport to Varadero. Other flights arrive directly from Montreal and Ottawa and several points west.
Who cam blame the snowbirds for coming?
The weather is divine. The locals are exceedingly friendly. The quantity and quality ofthe food is overwhelming. (Mona's aside here: THAT is definitely an exaggeration... for tourists, that is.... Cuba has the worst food in the Caribbean....)... okay, back to Mr. Fisher...
The entertainment laid on nightly at every Varadero hotel is exuberant, if not refined. The hotels themselves are good, if occasionally in need of a fresh coat of paint.
Best of all, when compared with most of its Caribbean rivals, a winter vacation in Cuba is a fantastic bargain. A week in the sun - flight, food, lodging -- can be had for less than $900 Canadian. In places such as Jamaica or Barbados it can cost double that or more.
There is another advantage to a Cuban holiday. Because the US Government prevents its citizens from travelling here, there are very few Yanks for Canadian tourists to compete with. Yet American cultural comforts such as HBO and CINEMAX, even the Cartoon Network for the kiddies, are available in most hotels. thanks to satellite dishes which pirate American television signals from the sky.
Coca-Cola, like much else, beats the American trade embargo by coming in via Latin America.
Most Canadians rave about Varadero and Cuba. So much fun for so little money.
Dazed by the sun, few visitors think to ask their host any probing questions about their lives and ambitions. Dazzled by the sand and the sea, very few Canadians notice the Cuban secret police lurk everywhere to make sure that such questions, if asked, are not truthfully answered.
In Hawaii, men and women bearing flower necklaces meet most jets from the mainland. In Barbados, school kids shout cheerful hellos and often sing a little song of welcome.
The greeting in Cuba is provided by crack troops from the feared Interior Ministry who position themselves at the bottom of the aircraft stairs. These grim men are not there to welcome anyone. Their job is to count bodies and ensure that no Cubans can escape by sneaking on board a foreign-bound airplane.
PARANOIA CONTINUES
The Soviet paranoia continues in the terminal, where immigration booths are an exact copy of those used in Moscow and Xray machines and their minders closely scrutinize every passenger and every piece of luggage. Mirrors are strategically placed behind where every tourist must stand awaiting judgment in immigration booths. This is so unsmiling border guards can see if the visitor is wearing a wig or some other disguise. Another part of their sinister routine is to go through a KBG-taught routine of looking three times at the passport photo of the usually grey-haired grandmother who has come from Canada armed with nothing but goodwill and a purse full of American dollars to help Cuba's sickly economy.
If the granny passes the passport test, she does not receive a nice souvenir stamp clearly indicating she has been to Cuba. If she searches long enough she will discover that a little code has been stamped to the back page of her travel papers.
Life is more complicated if a Canadian intends to stay with a friend in Cuba. The visitor must first provide the consulate in Toronto with the complete name and address of this person, pay $91 and wait 10 days while the person to be visited is checked out by the local authorities.
It's more complicated yet if a Canadian wants to invite a Cuban to Canada. The invitation must be "legalized by the consulate." There is a $196 free and a 10 day wait while Cuban officials investigate the invitee.
AN UNREAL WORLD
Once free of the interior ministry and the airport, Canadians enter an unreal world. Guides bombard them with happy talk about Cuba's literacy rate, its free medicine, its free schools. Kids in nice school uniforms complete the picture by grinning obligingly for visitors.
To the uninquisitive tourist, Cuba looks and sounds like a land of plenty. But what would Canadians say if Ottawa obliged them to make due with their one tube of toothpaste every two months for a family of four, as Havana does? Or that a school teacher in prosperous-looking Varadero receives a salary of 140 pesos or $7.90 US a month, not enough, as one teacher bitterly told me, to buy a glove.
Most snowbirds have no idea that those who pamper them in luxury hotels don't get anything like a fair share of the tens of millions of dollars the snowbirds spend. Like the average Cuban, those who work in the tourism industry earn more than $15 a month. Nor have any workers eaten anything like the extravagant buffet meals which Canadians devour without a second thought daily.
Despite their low wages, hotel workers are the luckiest and the most envied people in Cuba. They get hard currency tips, a chance to talk with exotir foreigners and, perhaps, most important of all, to eat from the same kitchens as the tourists.
UNAWARE
Snowbirds return home blissfully unaware that Cubans can only buy eggs once or twice a year, that staples such as salt, coffee and sugar are strictly rationed, that almost no one has tasted Coca-Cola since it takes several days to earn enough money to buy one, and that shops which sell non-rationed goods of any kind for pesos are empty.
Whatever the Cuban dictatorship's vile rhetoric about the US, the American greenback is kind. Even if Canada is Cuba's great friend and the US is an evil empire, no one in the tourism industry wants anything to do with Canadian money.
This is because only US dollars are accepted in the relatively well-stocked, state-controlled stores where those few lucky Cubans with access to hard currency are forced to shop once their meagre rations are exhausted.
Canadians cannot be blind to this because it surrounds them everywhere in Varadero, but few seem uncomfortable with the fact that those who wait on them and clearn their rooms and toilets must queue every dawn and dusk South-African apartheid style, for cramped bus and truck journeys to their distant, dreary, electricity-starved homes.
Canadians staying in Varadero are so naive and untraveled that few notice police prevent any Cubans who don't live or work on the 20km long peninsula to cross the bridge across a canal which divides it from the mainland. Nor do they seem to realize that to avoid what Communists call "social contamination" cops in the small resort town constantly harass residents demanding their documents. Those who aren't supposed to be there are arrested or expelled.
But Varadero is as good as Cuba gets. Many towns, such as Cardenas, are awful, faded places reek of open sewage. Mangy, half-starving dogs compete for space with threadbare kids so poor that they play baseball with skinless balls and bats fashioned from branches.
Except for scores of clapped out second-hand American designed buses, once used in Quebec, more transport in Cardenas as the 20th century comes to a close is provided by horse-drawn carts or battered Fords and Chevys which predate Castro's marvelous revolution 37 years ago.
It's the same sad story in Havana. The once fabulous waterfront is a tumbledown mess. The only color on many of the walls are the hollow slogans of the Communist party.
Che Guevara is god, and "now, more than ever, Socialism is invincible."
As in Varadero, security types are much in evidence. Plain-clothes cops routinely infiltrate tourist groups in shops and museums to eavesdrop and prevent Cubans from getting in any political discussions.
But strangely, they do nothing to prevent flocks of teenage prostitutes from offering themselves to male visitors.
CRIMINALS UNTOUCHED
Nor do they appear interested in stopping crime. Of the 30 or so folks from Canada that I was with for a week, a woman had her purse ripped from her arm and a little girl had her goggles and snorkeling snitched. My camera disappeared.
If asked, and no secret police are near by, most Cubans are eager to unburden themselves about their miserable lives.
After helping point out several spies hovering among several unsuspecting Canucks in Haana, a guide said she was required to spout nonsense about Cuba's supposed achievements and say nothing about the harsh reality.
What to do? If she didn't, she would lose her job or worse.
Of the dozens of Cubans I spoke with as I travelled in tour groups and by rent-a-car, everyone acknowledged that life had become much worse since massive Soviet subsidies were withdrawn by Boris Yeltsin's Russian government.
People are fed up. They are desperate.
But they are terrified to step out of line because police checks have been dramatically stepped up as more and more tourists arrive from Canada and European countries.
Several Cubans insisted that unauthorized contacts with tourists could result in severe penalties. After two warning letters, Cubans who continued to fraternize with foreigners could get two years in jail.
For Canadians who love the sun and who aren't curious abut this strange, oppressive little island, Cuba is a gilded cage.
For Cubans, the invisible bars are made with steel.
Isn't that nice. Sort of like pre-indoctrination to soften up their brains.
"They mainly talk about the revolution and good things he has done for them like free health care and free education."
It's not so free. I guess they didn't get past the communist front. Did they notice. Do they care?
Sounds like your garden variety agitprop. Their soft, limousined minds cannot resist it.
``It was certainly exciting to meet with him. He is a very charming and eloquent man,'' said Jeffords, who traveled here with the university's Center for Women and Democracy. Their visit ends Friday. Castro learned the importance of courting average Americans such as these women during the fight for shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez, who returned to the island in the summer of 2000.***
Thank you Registered!
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