A View of Cuba

This interesting piece appeared in a newspaper from El Salvador, I believe in 2003. It was written by a Doctor who attended a Cuban medical conference and includes his brief observations of Cuba. It is a little long but worth reading. The other interesting fact is that the writer was a roommate of mine in school for 3 years. Although not he is not Cuban, we share similar beliefs about communism. He doesn't know I translated it or put it on the blog hopefully he will not mind. I have not spoken with him in over 5 years. He must have touched a nerve: please read the spinmeisters at work at Granma after the piece came out!

A View of Cuba

By Rodrigo Siman Siri from El Diario de Hoy.El Salvador

To talk about Cuba is to talk about a beautiful paradise where natural beauty is entwined with the everyone’s dream of good and hard-working people. I am sitting on the balcony of a hotel in la Havana, watching one of the most illuminating sunsets I could have ever imagined, with a mixture of strong emotions similar to the smell of Cuban cigars.

I thought that writing a few lines about Cuba was going to be easy after having been here for one week, but it is a difficult objective when your ideas are fogged and your eyes tear constantly with the large number of vivid sensations in these days.

I was invited by the health authorities of this beautiful country to a medical conference, perfectly organized by the Cuban doctors. I had the opportunity to see the legendary Fidel Castro, who must had been a strong guerrilla. He arrived in his heavily guarded caravan which consisted of three black Mercedes-Benz's, just like the ones used by General Pinochet. “The ironies of life” I thought. We witnessed an elderly man dressed in olive green speak confusingly for more than one hour about thousands of things, loose words with no meaningful message, from the Iraq war to mosquitoes causing Dengue.

As a doctor I arrived believing that the health system was one of the best in the world. After all that is what the health statistics show and are constantly repeated by the FMLN. I’m not sure what parameters the Cuban politicians use, but yesterday I saw a child whom appeared to be 7 years old tell me he was 15, and his body had changes consistent with severe malnutrition.

We asked to visit a hospital and they took us to see a tourist hospital exclusively for foreigners. It was elegant and impeccably clean. Later we found out that the public hospitals are impoverished and that they look worse than our Rosale hospital. They are old with unending lines of people waiting to be seen with a scarcity of medicines and with health professionals suggesting under the table dollar payments to be treated faster and with better medicines. And my biggest surprise was to find that a medical specialist earns the measly sum of $20 per month. This is $20 per month when a bottle of water cost$1.00, obviously you cannot drink the tap water because it is contaminated, our Cuban colleagues warned us. If all this is happening in La Habana, what must it be like in the rural communities?

In Cuba there really aren’t beggars wearing rags or barefoot kids, but there is an overabundance of elderly and young that will approach the tourist for money or a piece of bread.

The tourists have access to the places created especially for them, giant hotels, luxurious restaurants, all paid for in dollars of course. The Cubans can only be passive witnesses of the good life that is offered to foreigners. A friendly taxi driver commented to me with tearful eyes between rage and sorrow “ Here the tourists are humans and we are aliens”.

I discovered Cuba and its heroic and valiant community that lives, or rather survives in a regime of oppression, fear and misery. Thanks goodness for tourism here because at least the Cubans can see the difference between them and the rest of the free world.

I was approached silently by a gentleman who, after asking where I was from, asked me for a newspaper from El Salvador. They are hungry for real world news, not the fantasy created by the authorities who nobody believes anymore. Many have asked about President Flores. They want to know about his personality. They are impressed with him because he is the only person to have put Fidel in his place. This has all been learned through word of mouth because none of this news was broadcast in Cuba.

Last week in La Habana, 3 youths were executed because they dreamed of freedom and tried to escape Cuba on a stolen raft. For this grave crime, they were tried in one day. And 24 hours later they were savagely executed as an example, so that the people see what happens to those who go against the regime. When I was told this by a beautiful Cuban girl, all I could say was that things will change soon. I felt really stupid when she answered that they have been waiting for 44 years and the many still die, some by rifle such as the three youths. And many live but their hope of freedom, work and improvement and exercise of rights without repression has been executed.

But, it would be unjust to talk about Cuba and only mention the misery of an obsolete regime. To talk of Cuba is to talk of its women, the most beautiful in the world, the rhythm and quality of its people, of the beautiful look of its people, of the beauty of its streets with smells of salt, tobacco and rum. To talk of Cuba is to talk of a paradise where natural beauty is entwined with the everyone’s dream of good and hardworking people that continue to wait for the true revolution.