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Σημειώσεις από ένα ταξίδι στην Κούβα (2004)
By
Wu Ming 4, July 2004
As I head away from the Malecon towards the old city, through the
groups of people lingering at the edge of the demonstration, I hear
someone call out to me, "Ehi, Italy! Silbio Berlusconi…hah hah hah!"
I don't know whether to laugh or feel embarrassed. Getting the
piss taken out of you like this in the streets of a country which, by
European logic, is considered a dictatorship - and right at the end of a
Castro rally - says a lot about the political reputation Italians enjoy
abroad.
I push on towards the older labyrinth, trying to escape the
implacable sun. It's the hottest June of recent years, and in May not
even the rains came. The sea breeze feels like a giant hair dryer
blowing into the face of La Habana. Because of this, the march against
the blockade was organised for early morning, right in front of the
North American Interests Bureau, the large cement building overlooking
the Malecon where every day entry visas to the U.S. are granted or
denied. Given the impromptu nature of the event, organized with a
minimum of notice, only four suburbs were mobilised: roughly two or
three hundred thousand people that filled the seaside promenade and were
now moving in an orderly fashion towards waiting buses.
For forty five years the Americans have asked themselves how the
Castro regime is able to enjoy such incredible popular support. For
forty five years the Americans could have given themselves a simple
answer: it's because of them. The Cuban revolutionary spirit, with a
pedigree that's at least a century and a half long, has survived the
shifting sands of history steeling itself through arduous effort to
resist the economic siege of the largest world power, continuing to
sustain a socialist model a few miles from the cradle of global
capitalism. The discomfort of the Cubans isn't political, as the nearby
yanquis would like to see it; rather it's social, it depends on the lack
of options. This puts them in league with all of the world's poor
countries, with the difference that here a welfare system exists and
resists. The paradoxes are what keep this island moving forward,
fragmenting it and holding it together at the same time, preventing it
from disintegrating.
Standing on the rocks in the tiny port of Cojimar, I watch my
Cuban friends fishing with nylon thread. The night envelops the sea, but
the lights of the large suburb of Alamar stand out against it, almost
making the crumbling blocks of flats seem beautiful. The sound of an
open air club throbs in the distance. . It's been years since Hemingway
used to come fishing here. Television crews once wanting interviews with
the ancient Gregorio Fuentes, skipper of "Papà" Ernest's boat who died
some time ago at 104, no longer come either.
Felix and Augustin don't give a damn about Hemingway, or of the
commanding bronze bust behind them, a homage made by the Cojimar sailors
to the foreigner that was in love with their island.
"The problem with our life is the absence of any prospects," says Augustin.
"I want to travel, to see the world," adds Felix, who is younger, "I
don't want to live and die under the same sky. We're shut in here,
always in a state of alert. We can never let our guard down, relax a
moment. Now that Nazi Bush is acting the madman out in the world, we're
more imprisoned than before."
I tell him that maybe if Kerry wins the elections in the United
States on November 4, something could change, the blockade could loosen.
Felix shrugs. "Maybe."
Ah yes, the blockade.
"Do you have any idea what it means for us not to be able to buy what we
need in the United States?" asks another Cuban friend. "To have to buy
it in Canada or Japan? It means it costs double, because of transport
and all the rest. And why? Because the mafiosi that live in Miami are
hand in glove with Jeff Bush, the governor of Florida, the one who
organised the poll-rigging in 2001 to make his little brother win the
elections. It's one big clique of politicos supporting each other."
From here, from the tenement suburbs of La Habana, things take on
different facets, which are difficult to perceive from Europe. The truth
is that with Clinton the situation was different. The Democratic
Presidency had made a small concession to the Cuban expats in Miami,
approving the infamous Helms-Burton law that reinforced the blockade
against Cuba.
But then in reality the law was by-passed, applied only partially.
The Clinton presidency forged an accord with Castro: 20,000 entry visas
per year to the United States, with a clause allowing migrants to
return to Cuba once a year for family visits. There were even two daily
flights guaranteed from Los Angeles and Miami to La Habana.
With Bush things have changed. Just in the last month the
anti-Cuban laws have been implemented with greater zeal, the blockade
has returned to resemble an anachronistic iron curtain. Visas have been
reduced down to 10% (2,000 a year), and the provision for family visits
limited to one every three years. A foolish choice, one which has even
split the expat anti-Castro front (and this is a new political
occurrence). There are two million Cubans in Miami alone, and hundreds
of thousands more scattered throughout the United States. Many of these
don't give a damn about the arguments of Castro or Bush, they only want
to be able to go and visit their mother before she dies, bring her some
medicine, embrace their relatives. The result, therefore, is that for
the first time an American presidency has been able to make an enemy of a
section of the Cuban community. The times are changing and may yet hold
some surprises.
I listen to Felix's legitimate demands, like I do many other young
Cubans who are intolerant of this life as it drags on, slow and
uncertain. Immobility and uncertainty for the future intertwine. What
will happen when Fidel dies? Shrugs, arms raised outwards.
I
tell myself that everyone should be able to travel. Human beings should
be free to move, to migrate, try their luck elsewhere, see the world.
How many times have we written and talked about it in the demonstrations
that have crossed Europe in recent years… The law provides that Cubans
can leave the island only if they have a formal "invitation" from a
foreign citizen who acts as a guarantor for them. Or in the case of
family visits or reunions. Then there is the largest hurdle: money.
There are only very few Cubans with the means to travel overseas.
Needless to say, in spite of the many accusations leveled at the
Castro regime, this rigid migration control is in the interests of
precisely those developed countries that attack Cuba for its violations
of individual freedoms. It's our policy, that of the wealthy countries,
that calls for restrictions on circulation, rationing the number of
people allowed to leave.
Felix winds up the nylon thread after putting another fish in the
bag. He drinks another mouthful of ron from the bottle and says, "I've
lived here all my life, encircled by the sea. Finally I've found a way
to leave…"
Felix has no intention of giving money to the people smugglers or
risking his life on a raft. That stuff's for the crazy and the
desperate, he says. He tells me of an ex-convict from his suburb that,
as soon as he was released from jail, paid an amount to some blokes from
Key West to come and pick him up, "right here," (he points to a place
on the rocks). No one's had any news from him for two years.
Felix and Augustin laugh, "That one thought he was headed straight
to Las Vegas…and he's probably finished as a criminal somewhere. More
or less what he was doing here. That's providing he was able to get
there at all."
No, Felix will leave with a better plan, because he doesn't want
to end up a bum on the edge of an American metropolis, and the States -
the lifelong enemy - don't attract him one bit. This summer he's
marrying his Basque fiancé and finally he'll be able to come to Europe.
But it's not Cuban law that's forcing him to put a ring on his finger to
be able to see the world. The reality is that last year, his fiancé's
simple formal "invitation" was enough to get him an exit visa from Cuba,
but not an entry visa into Spain. It was Mr Aznar who shut the door in
Felix's face, not Mr Castro. It's just the same with George W. Bush
cutting entry visas for Cubans coming to the USA.
While we talk on the beach of Megano, my girlfriend points out
that the government should allow Cubans six month exit visas to look for
work abroad, renewable every year. The same proposal that a part of the
Italian left has suggested for migrants that arrive in our country.
Just another reminder that Cuba's problems are "our" problems,
that is the world's, if we are able to think of similar solutions for
both contexts. The Cuban anomaly provides a unique and privileged
vantage point from which to observe globalization. There is a strange
sensation you feel on this island: of being at some extreme, forgotten
edge of the empire and of history and at the same time of being in the
eye of the storm, at the heart of contradictions - a stone's throw from
the American colossus.
In fact on this island it's easy to get hold of the wrong end of
the stick, thinking all the problems converge here and are tied up with
the regime that's survived the collapse of socialism. It's easy to be
tempted into simplification, fishing for crabs and thinking they're
marlin, as if freedom of circulation wasn't also a crucial issue at
home, or in the United States. As if Schengen and the European unified
policy hadn't created a huge gap between "us" and "them", between those
who can move throughout the continent and the world in freedom and those
who do it whilst having to submit to - or clandestinely trying to get
around every kind of restriction.
As I was saying, the wrong end of the stick.
An Italian tourist who feels like talking clenches his teeth and
curses a policeman who walks amongst the beach umbrellas. The poor bloke
wearing boots and a beret at the height of Summer becomes the symbol of
Castro's police control.
"Bastard," grumbles the dentist from Milan who plays at being a Cuban
expert. He brags about his own experience and of his wife with her firm
body. He smokes a cigar stub and combs the few hairs he has left.
Then
he says he knows about skin ailments and, he specifies, venereal
diseases, with a wink and a nudge. Not a bad person. Just a dim bloke
that ignores the fact that the so called "grey beret" police corps were
formed with the specific task of protecting the tourists. When I go and
have a swim, the melancholy cop puts himself under the beach umbrella
next to mine and waits until I return from the foreshore to recommence
his solitary stroll. Only once does he come up to me and warn me to be
careful with my personal belongings. "The expert" mistakes the
bloke that guards his wallet, his flip flops and the sunglasses bought
from the beach vendors, for a rigid sentinel of dictatorship. If he'd
been robbed he'd probably have accused the Cuban police of inefficiency
and laziness.
From the last time I was here four years ago, the laws against
those who "straddle" the tourists (male or female), have been hardened.
Today you end up inside after only the second Police warning. The
women's prison for the
jineteras [horsewomen = hookers] - has
an ironic name: Villa Delicia. In reality it appears that it isn't a
tough jail; they often carry out their sentences doing socially useful
jobs, like sweeping the streets for example. The sentences, however,
remain disproportionately lengthy.
Libertarians like me don't like restrictions, and prisons even
less, but the fact that Bush has recently accused Cuba of fostering sex
tourism in order to squeeze money out of foreign yuppies has a
paradoxical ring to it.
Maybe it's more pertinent to ask where the legions of tombeurs de
femmes are coming from. Canada, Italy, Holland, Spain, France, Germany
etc. The rich, democratic, civil West comes here to screw in someone
else's poverty and revolution, distributing money and maybe even taking
home the most beautiful girls.
Nothing disreputable about it; let's be
frank, this is neither the place nor the time to be moralistic. In fact
an invasion of horny tourists is better that an invasion of marines, and
condoms are without doubt preferable to bombs. But it should be clear
that an invasion is still what it amounts to. There are roughly two
million tourists each year that bring fresh and irrefutable dollars. The
repressive way chosen by the regime to defend the island without giving
up on tourism is the attempt to maintain the arrivals while preventing
Cuba from becoming the giant bordello for foreigners that it was before
the Revolution. All this can seem hypocritical, even despicable, but
those ready to criticize aren't ready to confront some extra problems
and think about what risks are run by the casual evening escort.
The bulky Roman financier that I met on the beach complains about
the police state, because last night the woman that rents him his room
asked for the papers of the girl he was taking to bed. In reality any
landlord that didn't do so would risk loss of license and very high
fines if it's later found out that the escorts coming to their home are
prostitutes or persons of interest to the police. In short, it could
pass for co-conspiracy. I tell him, "Sorry, but listen, in Italy it
works the same way. If you bring a guest to a hotel, they have to show
i.d., and I imagine the reasons are more or less the same."
While I observe his thoughtful expression I think that sometimes
we're so used to speaking badly about Cuba, and yet we forget about
speaking badly of Italy.
A few days later a Cuban tourist guide tells me that in his
country freedom of information is rare; there's an information monopoly
in force that doesn't allow the whole truth to filter through. And then
he smiles, adding, "Of course, you Italians aren't exactly much better
off."
There you go, exactly.
Castro doesn't have a lot of time left: 79 springs and some people
are now even talking "cancer". Whatever the case, the end of the Lider
Maximo's political life can't be far away and what will happen after
nobody dares say. His role now is already a symbolic one more than
anything, and in a recent interview he himself complains that his
deputies don't tell him the whole truth on the state of things in Cuba.
And yet on the level of dialectics the old lion doesn't appear to
be missing a beat, even with the economic and political difficulties
he's been coping with since the fall of the USSR. The thing that
surprises me most traveling the roads of the island is discovering via
the huge billboards put up by the state the rhetorical and symbolic
shift towards globalization themes. Alongside the evergreen classics,
like "SIEMPRE REBELDES", "SOCIALISMO O MUERTE" and the effigies of Che,
new slogans have cropped up that mirror the Cuban regime's attempt to
approach the neo-global movement. "OTRO MUNDO ES POSIBLE" (Another world
is posible); "CUBA DEMONSTRARA' QUE OTRO MUNDO ES POSIBLE" (Cuba will
show another world is possible); the word "SOLIDARIDAD" (Solidarity)
pulverizing "NEOLIBERISMO"; and the most entertaining one: ALCA/PONE LA
MAFIA AL SERVICO DEL IMPERO" (The FTAA puts the mafia at the service of
the mpire)["Alca pone" = "Ftaa puts"].
But that's not all. There are many slogans that sing the praises
of energy and water conservation. The art of recycling and getting by in
Cuba is vaunted in every suburb, you only have to think of how the
Cubans are able to keep the early fifties Buicks, Plymouths and
Chevrolets on the road. There isn't a street corner where you don't see a
small group of people intent on fixing something. That this is due to
shortages and that the intention of the regime is to encourage frugality
to reduce costs are points both beyond doubt. But that this should
necessarily be viewed as a negative is disputable.
It's something else Felix makes me understand during a second
night of fishing. I explain to him that the problem of the wealthy
nations is the opposite to that of Cuba: we over consume in order keep
our economy moving forward. At home we don't repair cars forever,
they're sent to the scrap yard after a few years with state incentives.
At home, things that are out of fashion, outdated models, old items are
thrown away or substituted. I try and explain to him that our
development model has something perverse and self-destructive about it.
He laughs and tells me, "You know what you should do? When you
return to Italy write to the big wigs and tell them to contact our
Comandante.
He's the biggest recycler in the world. Here we don't throw out
anything. Send your old computers to us so we can put them in the
schools. Give us your cars and the rest as well, because we need
everything here!"
In effect this already happens. When I visited the Island of Youth
in '98, I found there the red buses with yellow roofs that I used to
ride on as a boy in Bologna in the 70s. A gift from the Emilia Romagna
region. The garbage trucks of La Habana on the other hand come from the
Basque Countries. And so it goes. Cuba is a giant open air workshop in
which discarded first world goods still in working order are recycled.
Or maybe I like to imagine it like that.
Every now and then the water runs out (but all Cubans have a tank
on the roof of their house to compensate in emergencies). Every now and
then there's a blackout, because of rationing, or failures in the
electricity grid. No one goes mad over this, no one despairs. They turn
on a torch and wait for the lights to come back on. I think of the
lights in the banks or the shops that are left on all night. I think of
the infinite waste of material, drinking water, electricity, cellulose
that distinguishes our "highly advanced" countries, and of the
objectively unsustainable nature of such a model, driven by the idea of
infinite development.
It appears that even the old wolf Castro has understood it and
at least on the rhetorical level is playing the alternative card.
Well, it won't be an easy job, given that Cubans completely lack an
ecological sensibility and still throw paper and cans on the ground, on
the beach and in the sea (exactly like in Europe). National TV has just
started showing educational commercials about respect for the
environment it will take time for a sense of collective responsibility
to be born.
Nevertheless I wonder if there might be something to be learned from this island.
For example, it leaps out at you that Cuba is probably the most
mixed country in the world. Whites, blacks, half castes and all the
shades in between fill the streets and live side by side. It makes you
laugh to think of the problems back home. Parent committees that
complain about the favoritism given to children of immigrants when
accessing child care. The places are counted: four dark kids to one
white, those most in need win and the Italian child is left out. In Cuba
the solution would be simple: if child care is a right, then build
another centre and send all the children, whether they're white or
black, according to the real needs. Ah but you make it sound easy, ah
but where's the money going to
come from, ah but what about this, ah but what about that…ah bullshit.
We're the wealthy ones, they're the poor ones. We shut down
child-care centres, they build them. We make them charge, they don't:
how the fuck is it possible?! Then people ask themselves how this regime
has been able to survive the collapse of socialism…the truth is that
here, with all the problems and the shortages, the paradoxes of "our"
world are the ones that come to light.
Even Fidel's rhetoric has been subject to anti-global and
Zapatista influence. Due to his advanced age, "Grandpa Fidel" no longer
dispenses five or six hour speeches but limits himself to 45 minutes.
And they're no longer really addresses: in the last rallies he read two
personal letters addressed to George W. Bush in which, apart from
putting the environmental question at the forefront, Castro adopted the
tone of a
Western movie, a showdown at the OK Corral launched from one boss
of the Florida Straight to the other. My father, who is by now a
naturalized Cuban, tells me about the May 14 "march" - a tide that
filled the Malecon - and of Castro's closing lines. Many here still
quote them a month later, some seriously, others jokingly, as if
repeating the dialogue of some film.
"Mr. George W. Bush [...] Since you have
decided that the die is cast, I have the pleasure of saying farewell to
you like the Roman gladiators who were about to fight in the arena: Hail
Cesar, we who are about to die salute you!
My only regret is that I will not see your face because you will
be thousands of miles away while I'm on the frontline ready to die
fighting in defense of my homeland."
I decide to make it to the second appointment on June 21. Same
day, same time, same place. In front of the North American Interests
Bureau, the only yankee diplomatic office on the Island. But first I
need to understand something, because I feel I've missed a few chapters -
that there are some elements missing. A year ago the Cuban regime was
definitively off-loaded by the Italian Left (up until that point there'd
only been criticism), the day after the arrest of dissident
intellectuals accused of having plotted against the country.
The Left
Democrats organized a conference on freedom of speech in Cuba; the
Communist Refoundation Party wore sackcloth and ashes and so on. It had
come out that the ranks of democratic dissidents had been greatly
infiltrated by state counter-espionage agents, right to the top levels,
and some intellectuals were put in jail, etc. In Europe there were cries
of prisoners of conscience and Castro was depicted as a Stalinist
dictator. Provisions for sanctions were made against Cuba. Above all,
the push was lead by Spain and Italy. In fact here demonstrations were
organized in front of the embassies of both countries, pointing out that
in the same period they were condemning the repression in Cuba, Italy
and Spain were lending their military support to the invasion of Iraq.
The next year Castro sends the FBI a detailed report on the plans
of the Cuban mafia in Miami to harm the island. Castro's sources are
five counter-espionage agents that have infiltrated the balseros in Florida. They are uncovered and arrested (they're still in jail in the United States).
In 1999 the Elian Gonzales case explodes and protracts until 2000.
A young boy taken by his mother on the rubber boat of a people smuggler
is the only survivor when the journey ends in shipwreck. An enormous
political game between the two sides of the Florida channel is played on
little Elian's head. In the end Castro will win out, an American court
will recognize the father's right to take his son back with him to the
island.
In 2001 Bush wins the elections with the ballot rigging in
Florida. In September the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the
Pentagon shake the world. Bush's holy war on terror begins. Cuba ends up
on the list of rogue states that support international terrorism.
The United States invade Afghanistan, then, in 2003, Iraq. In Cuba there's growing concern.
2003 is precisely the crucial year.
The international situation is explosive. Bush is scary, he's
declared a preemptive war that, he maintains, will last thirty years.
There are more than a few third world countries that tremble at the
thought. After Afghanistan and Iraq, who'll be next?
The CIA doesn't waste time: it incites rolling strikes and
protests against the government of Hugo Chavez that has nationalized the
Venezuelan petrol wells and promised agrarian reform.
Meanwhile already in September 2002 a new head of the North
American Interests Bureau has arrived: James Cason. His resume describes
a person always in the right place at the right time: Guatemala,
Honduras, Salvador, etc. A respectable face for other people's dirty
tricks?
Nothing is more likely. Between the end of 2002 and the beginning
of 2003, Cason meets with all the dissident Cuban intellectuals and
journalists, urging them to make their voices heard and guaranteeing his
office's support for their activities.
Let's stop a moment.
n the same months, two Cuban domestic flights are hijacked by
desperados armed and ready to do anything to leave the island. A
coincidence? Following this, a ferry that does the commuter trip across
the bay of La Habana is hijacked by a group of former criminals with
pistols and knives. The tourists taken hostage are able to jump
overboard and the hijackers are captured by the Cuban coast guard. Tried
with a summary judgment they are shot to death for piracy and acts of
terrorism.
Meanwhile Cason continues his campaign of initiatives in support
of the dissident "intellighenzia". The dissidents come and go as they
like at the Bureau of North American Interests, and a press room is set
up for them in the building. Cason offers them economic help, grocery
supplies, medicines they can give away to make themselves liked,
precious United States entry visas, contacts with ex-pat groups linked
to the old Batistan mafia. It's pretty evident that the operation takes
shape as an attempt to create a "democratic" opposition that renders
itself visible and lays the foundations for a destabilization of the
regime.
The premise that there should be an opposition to the government
in Cuba should be as legitimate as it is in any other country. What
doesn't seem justifiable, however, is that such an opposition should
look for support from those people who have kept the island under an
economic siege for forty five years and maintain close contact at the
highest level with the Miami bosses. Would we, in Italy, justify a
political group that had ties with the Albanian mafia of the KLA or some
Islamic inspired bombing outfit? Is it possible that these dissident
activists can be so stupid?
Evidently yes. But why?
I go to read a book of interviews with the Cuban counterespionage
infiltrators. I try and cast a critical eye over the regime's version
and begin to glean some sense from it.
These groups were active for over ten years. They were opposed by
the regime, controlled by the regime, according to standards that for us
Europeans evoke Orwellian specters. But they weren't persecuted (if it
is true they were able to continue their activities: above all the
collection of testimonials on civil and human rights violations) until
they placed themselves in the hands of Mr Cason. The descriptions of the
dissident milieu made by those who spent years amongst it make you
think that these people's foreign allies were their most serious
problem.
Instead of sustaining the most lucid critical minds, the Americans
gave space and offered assistance to the most boorish and untrustworthy
detractors of the Castro regime. The concept of "transition" that the
Americans have in mind is, as usual, totally simplistic, racist and
utilitarian. The result is that besides a few sincere and serious
people, there's a stream of reprobates, aspiring journalists, failed
hacks and general opportunists that have spied the opportunity of a trip
to the United States in business class and the acquisition of political
exile status, all pushing and shoving to take whatever bone is thrown
at them. In other words: some useful idiots. There's no other way to
explain why individuals that call themselves democratic should have
accepted support from people who have always treated Latin America as
their backyard and done as they pleased with it. It's no coincidence
these organizations only had a few dozen militants and the average
person on the street in Cuba is practically indifferent to their fate.
Finally, the peculiar fact is that the majority of the moderate
minds among the top dissidents were…undercover agents whose position was
to develop the critical and information gathering activities without
entering into a lethal embrace with the Americans. Basically the
moderate minority within the "dissident" groups, the supporters of a
soft transition, were made up largely of Castro supporters, incognito.
As I said, an island of paradoxes.
We arrive in the vicinity of the stage by taxi, taking a side
street. They'd told us they wouldn't let us even get near it, but we
immerse ourselves in the sea of people without any trouble and find a
raised position where we can listen to Fidel's speech. Despite his age,
the Comandante nevertheless is able to be less rhetorical than the young
orators that precede him.
One of the points Castro hammers the most is freedom of
circulation. He laments the recent restrictions of the blockade and the
cutting of visas. He laments the fact that North American citizens
aren't able to visit Cuba, on pain of reprisal from their own country.
The conclusion also deals with the same topic.
"Mr. George W. Bush [...] You surely know that
44 million people in the United States lack medical insurance and that
at some point in a two-year period, 82 million Americans had no
insurance and could not afford the astronomical costs of essential
healthcare services in your country.
A very conservative estimate
indicates that many tens of thousands of lives are lost every year in
the United States because of this, perhaps thirty or forty times the
number that died in the Twin Towers. Someone should calculate this
exactly.
In a short five-year period, Cuba is prepared to save the lives
of 3,000 American poor. It is perfectly possible today to forecast and
prevent a heart attack that could be fatal and alleviate illnesses that
lead inevitably to death. These three thousand Americans could come to
our country accompanied by a relative and receive medical treatment
absolutely free of charge.
I wish to ask you a question, Mr. Bush, about ethics and
principles. Would you be willing to give those people permission to come
to Cuba on a program designed to save a life for every life lost in
that horrendous attack on the Twin Towers?
And, if they accepted the offer of those services and decided to come, would they be punished?
Show the world that there is an alternative to arrogance, war, genocide, hatred, egoism, hypocrisy and lies!
On behalf of the Cuban people,
Fidel Castro Ruz"
The old leader has finished. The crowd trickles away in a
thousand directions. All that's left are the blinding sun and Cuban
barbs about the lider minimo that fate has assigned to us Italians.
I return home reluctantly. I return to work, to the over consumption of energy and to e-mail.
While I review the 84 that have accumulated during my absence, I
think of Felix and all the young Cubans like him. Maybe he'll be able to
reach Europe. He said he wanted to travel across it all, to see Madrid,
Paris, Rome. And he wanted to experience cold, real cold, make
snowballs and finally eat red meat, which in Cuba is a rarity.
I hope with all my heart that he makes it and I've set a
rendezvous with him for New Year's 2005 in Spain. I tell him not to get
his hopes up, but I don't think he does. He's just another young person
like many others who wants to see the world and live with his
girlfriend.
