IAmMyOwnReporter.Com Archives on: Any American Can Go To Cuba As His Own Reporter The so-called Cuban travel law is not, as you've been told, a law to protect America's (either notoriously misleading or humorously overblown - take your pick) national security. It's a law to keep American's from being told the inconvenient truth about Cuba. Most Cubans
choose socialism On a 6-week
2002 tour of Cuba, I surveyed 100 random Cubans about a petition
reportedly signed by 98% of eligible voters to lock socialism into
their constitution after George Bush accused Cuba of bio-terrorism
involvement and Jimmy Carter refuted the lie from Cuba but also
urged Cubans to "reform" their system.
Survey Intro,
Interviews 1-17 Havana, 18-48 Baracoa,
49-73 on the road, 74-89
Cienfuegos, 90-100 Havana. "Cuban Notebooks" Begun on-line in 2004 during my 5th trip to Cuba, this slowly composed E-book was meant to be finished during an 8th trip I haven't made YET, so it's still a bit scrambled, but you can read any posted chapter just
by clicking the chapter number below. Foreword One
Two Three
Four
Five Six Seven
Eight Nine
Ten
Eleven Twelve
Thirteen Fourteen Misconceptions about
Cuba 2018: This document, widely reprinted on other websites, was first posted on iammyownreporter.com in the summer of 2004 during my fifth visit to Cuba. It was last thoroughly updated in the spring of 2007, during my seventh and last visit. So, in spite of somewhat constant editing, some of the present tense references in it still relate to 2007. I keep intending to return to Cuba for an eighth visit but old age (I'm now 82) and intermittent health issues keep me pinned down. When I do return, in spite of the embargo that still technically exists but which I and a lot of other Americans more alert than your local newspaper editor continue to ignore, I will, of course, revise this document extensively, but I'm pretty sure that it is still the most objectively true account of Cuba that you're likely to find on the internet. But, if you're reading this on someone else's site, I advise you to supplement it by reading (both are above) at least "Cubans Choose Socialism" (a 56-page survey of 100 Cubans questioned in 2002), and "Cuban Notebooks" (the so-far posted part of a book I've been trying for years to write on the internet recounting my personal experiences on the island AND in the rest of Latin America since 1989). The other person included in the word "we" in the first line below was a fellow American I won't name until the embargo is lifted and maybe not then, since I don't trust ANY black, white, male, female, Democrat or Republican president. 2004: The day before we flew out of Tijuana
for Havana in 2000, the San Diego Union ran a letter to the editor from
a Cuban "exile" who hadn't seen Cuba for 41 years but claimed
to still miss the little dog he'd had as a boy and to be very sad that
now "there are no dogs or cats in Cuba because the poor starving
people have eaten them all." I lay awake the next night in Havana
listening to yowling cats. During the next 3 weeks of extensive travel,
I saw cats and dogs everywhere I went, but I saw no starving people.
1. Cubans earn $8 a month. Wrong!
Nonsense. Except for some Cubans working in the tourist sector for tips, Cubans aren't paid in dollars at all. In fact, the Cuban minimum salary has just been changed to 225 pesos
a month. If they buy dollars, which they don't really need, 225 pesos equals about $9. But so what? If they
buy almost anything else, things they need, 225 pesos is worth a little
more than $225 is worth in California. Green beans cost almost the same in pesos in Cuba as they cost me in dollars in the town where I live in California.
Buying fruits, vegetables, and other basic foods in a mercado, a peso in Cuba
is worth a bit more than a dollar is worth in California. Bus fare in the city is 40 centavos,
which makes a whole peso worth about $2.50 - compared to any city in America
where bus fare is still only a dollar. What pesos are worth on the foreign exchange is irrelevant to most Cubans. In fact, dollars and euros are now irrelevant in Cuba, where tourists must buy and use Convertible Pesos, a unit the value of which the Cuban government sets, and what tourists can buy with their CPU's, which cost them OVER a dollar each (about $1.25 last time I checked), is largely irrelevant, too, since Cubans are often charged less than tourists. Most necessities tourists traveling in Cuba find reasonable
for one convertible peso now cost Cubans 1 peso or less. Since house
payments in Cuban pesos are usually 10% of a person's salary, any
monthly salary, in terms of housing, is equal to $6,000 to $10,000 a
month in California. The best or most important things in life are free. I told an
insurance salesman the health plan I wanted, describing the ordinary
plan every Cuban has, and he estimated I'd pay something over $1,000
a month for it. In fact, salaries in Cuba are only paid at
all as a way to let people eat and dress and recreate according to their
individual tastes. Necessities are virtually free or subsidized generously. So a Cuban's salary actually includes all the benefits of the system his participation buys, including all the subsidies, all the free benefits, AND the cash salaries paid.
Salaries are, in fact, only for extras, and they are adequate for sensible people. 2. Cubans eat only one meal a day.
Wrong! This is an example of typical Miami warp. Because
Cuba guarantees every child up to 7 a healthy ration of milk, no matter
how tough times are, the "exiles" claim 8-year-old kids aren't
"allowed" to drink milk. In fact, free meals are served in schools and on the job, and Cubans get at least enough subsidized food on
the ration for one meal a day at home. This can easily be doubled for 20 pesos
a month or tripled for 40. This system ensures people can eat enough (I personally get fat on
one meal a day; how about you?) and lets them decide what 1/3 to 2/3 of their
food will be (it's virtually a saying in Cuba that Cubans eat 3 times
a day). They also eat lots of ice cream and cheese, there's plenty of powdered and canned milk, and as the number of dairy cows grows and new breeds are added, there is more milk every year. 3. Cubans live in miserable slums. Wrong!
In fact, the only slum in Cuba is Old Havana, foolishly (in my opinion)
kept for the tourists. Most Cubans who once lived in shanties now live in institutional apartment buildings,
just like most Spaniards. A substantial number live in old houses considered
substandard by the government and scheduled to be replaced. But very
few of those have dirt floors. Far more live in 50's era homes that
are perfectly alright. More and more are living in new apartments and
casitas that put the Russian concept Cuba accepted for too long to shame.
The only dirt floored shanty towns (actually some small clusters) I
have seen in Cuba are the unnecessary, non-systemic result of a minority
of refuseniks who abandon good houses in their home towns to come to
Havana or Santiago to hustle dollars. One of their scams is to show
off their artificial poverty to foolish tourists for donations. Most
small cities in Cuba are nice to beautiful places where there's nothing
that looks like a slum. 4. The embargo causes intense suffering and many
deaths. Wrong! In fact, almost
no other country observes the embargo. Certainly, it causes problems,
because America should be a closer and cheaper source of many things
Cuba, which is an island of limited resources, regularly buys. But Mexico
is just as close. Venezuela, a major oil producer, is now very friendly.
Cuba makes most of its own medicines; I ask in every pharmacy I pass
and they always tell me they fill virtually all prescriptions; and when
I went to the Ministry of Health and asked for a list of actually critical
medical needs, I got a very short list. Most importantly, the absence
of any general suffering in Cuba is dramatically visible to the naked
eye. 5. Cuba is guilty of gross human rights abuses.
Wrong! Punch up human rights and Cuba on
your Computer and read stories in the New York Times about how the U.N.
Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and the Red Cross all
rated Cuba's justice system as normal, i.e. no better or worse than
ours. That was before the Bush administration. In the last 4 years,
Cuba has been way above the U.S. in the area of human rights. While
Cuba was being criticized for executing 3 terrorists and for jailing
75 people proven to be working for and in the pay of a foreign power
self proclaimed to be Cuba's enemy for the purpose of sabotaging the
Cuban system, the Bush administration was being criticized and protested
by millions of people all over the world for killing, maiming, and crippling
thousands of people for no acceptable reason, and for jailing nobody
even knows how many people for no known reason. Did I make that up? 6. There's a cop on every corner. Wrong!
This is a favorite of embedded reporters who haven't been on every corner.
In fact, there is a substantial police presence in tourist concentration
zones, which means single cops or pairs, with tiny guns or no guns,
on foot, whose main function is to makes sure nothing happens to the
tourists (including a possible staged incident to justify an attack). Walk one block away from the tourist zone and keep walking
and you may not see another cop all day. There is very little police
presence in Cuba and almost no military presence. 7. Harsh conditions have given rise to a Cuban
sex industry. Wrong! This is a lie spread by Miami. There is no actual sex industry
in Cuba. A lot of Cubans say that sex is the national sport. Cuban girls
are widely regarded as the world's champion flirters. There's little
religion. There's total health care and sex education, and unabashed
birth control availability. It's hot and clothing is light. But there
are no red light districts, no houses, few pimps, and no real need to
sell one's body. There is a tiny amount of professional prostitution,
and there's a fair amount of amateurism in tourist centers, and there
are gold diggers exploiting foreign boyfriends or girlfriends. But this
isn't rampant, and is without the manner or method of a sex industry.
More important, it is not motivated by harsh conditions. It is motivated
by silly desire for showy clothes and other status symbols glamorized
in American movies and TV and further promoted by Miami relatives and
the insidious presence of what look like rich tourists to the Cubans,
because the government has opted for the wrong kind of tourism (against
Fidel's advice I've heard).
8. Oppressed Cubans long to be freed from the yoke
of communism. Wrong! On this website,
you can read a 56 page report of a survey
I conducted in Cuba to verify whether 98% of the Cuban electorate really
signed a petition to lock socialism into their constitution. I conducted
the survey because I don't believe U.S. media or politicians about Cuba.
I found out for myself that Cubans are mostly happy with their system,
with their leaders, and with their lives. 9. Cubans are brainwashed.
Americans are brainwashed! Almost everyone is brainwashed,
and the slickest, most pervasive, most relentless brainwashing machine 10. Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere
still not free. Absurdly wrong!
I've seen most of the major Latin American countries and Cuba is the
one country most clearly not a police state. And yet all of Cuba, including
in the old downtowns, is free of the fear of economically desperate
people that is common in other countries, because Cuba is free of economic
desperation. Free? A lot of things that cost too much elsewhere are
free or almost free in Cuba because everything critical is subsidized.
Good housing in Cuba is almost free. Pervasive education and health
care with nutritional guarantees are truly free and as
universal and democratic as the laws of physics, biology, and geography
permit. 11. Cubans are constantly fleeing in boats to
freedom in Miami. Wrong! In fact,
every time a few Cubans paddle a boat to Florida you read about it in
the paper, so, as in the case of great white shark attacks, you get
the impression of more action than there is. Furthermore, the trickle
of boaters aren't necessarily "fleeing." Children, like Elian
Gonzalez, are just taken. Some adults, like Elian's mother, are foolishly
following their crazy partners. Most are playing a cruel and dangerous
game Washington deliberately entices them to play. By refusing to grant
many visas but letting it be known that any Cuban who illegally sets
foot on a U.S. beach will be welcome, Washington creates the false impression
you get. It's called propaganda, it's brutally cynical, and both you
and the Cubans are the victims. But, in fact, Cuba is not a police state,
Cubans are not oppressed and, compared to other Latin Americans, very few of them want to leave Cuba. 12. Castro (which now means Raul to some and still means Fidel to idiots) makes all the decisions. Wrong!
One man couldn't run a small town by himself. But Fidel never ran
Cuba alone. And neither does Raul. Neither is a medical expert or an agricultural expert or
a building trades specialist. Fidel is amazingly well versed and smarter
and more articulate than any American president since Jefferson, which
is why it would have been a bad idea to replace him ever and it's too bad he got old.
But he never ran Cuba by himself. In Cuba, they know that and everybody
still thinks that everything that goes wrong goes wrong because Fidel
doesn't know about it. 13. Fidel Castro is one of the bad guys.
Wrong! That's in the context of the comic
book version of contemporary world history that Americans accept from
their mass media. Outside the U.S. bubble, Fidel was the most highly
respected chief of state in the world. American presidents avoided contact
with him because they knew he would upstage them. This happened to George
Bush Sr. in Rio, where (1) the press corps followed Fidel around and
ignored Bush, (2) Fidel got a long standing ovation and there was only
polite clapping for Bush, and when Fidel said from the platform
that capitalism threatens the ecosystem as much as overpopulation, the house monitors caught Bush
fidgeting and everyone laughed. * American media stick religiously to
the myth that Castro's status was only due to his defiance toward the
U.S. But, in fact, he was and still is respected for his intelligence, for his credibility,
and for successfully making Cuba a good place for its citizens to live. 14. DO YOU REMEMBER THIS MYTH THAT IS NOW AS ANTIQUE AS CUBA'S 50's MODEL CARS?: Nobody knows, the embedded media experts used to say, what will happen when Fidel Castro
dies. Hey! Fidel isn't yet dead, but he's been retired for years and that myth was OBVIOUSLY WRONG!, though please note US media have never admitted that they were wrong, that they either didn't know what they were talking about or were always lying. Below, read, first, what I wrote on January 1, '07, and then what I had already written in March'04.
January
1 '07: Six months after Fidel called in sick and
his vice president took over, the answer to the question,
"But what will happen when Fidel is gone?" is not
exactly NOTHING but certainly NO PROBLEM. The explanation
below was posted over two years ago in the spring or summer
of '04. In a mid-December ('06) speech explaining his own
standing, Raul Castro could have been reading this website.
But I didn't use a crystal ball; I used real research and
common sense, very sensibly ignoring Miami, Washington, and
the U.S. media, none of whom have acknowledged that their
sneering question has been answered and that they now owe
the public some red faces. Obviously, as Raul pointed out,
Cuba has been run by a lot of people for a long time and that
hasn't changed. For a better understanding of the relationship
between Cuba and Fidel Castro, read the document Viva
y Habla Fidel; also on this website since April '05.
Misconceptions from the other side: 15. Cubans are all dancing and singing to the
traditional island beat, playing dominoes and digging swell Santeria
ceremonies. Wrong! Cuba has both
good and bad music, and their best music, old and new, is obviously
as good as music gets. But a lot of young Cubans unfortunately share
the gross musical tastes of their counterparts everywhere and some of
the best musical venues in the bigger cities are relatively neglected.
Favorites from the 50's are choices only in places with lots of choices
and son competes with salsa and even stupidly amplified rock in too
many dance halls. Sidewalk domino games are a common sight in some
parts of Havana and some other places. Walking all over
Cuba, including Regla and Centro, I've personally never seen any sign
of Santeria. I'm not very interested in it, so I'll concede that I'm
probably not hip to the clues. I'm sure it's there, but I guarantee
that it's a bigger deal to the tourists who find it than it is to most
Cubans. 16. Habana Vieja is the real Cuba. Extremely
wrong! Hip tourists who think the still existing historic squalor
of Old and Centro Havana are funky and wonderful and what makes Cuba
tick are wrong. The ugliness they think they cherish is left over from
before the revolution when white flight turned downtown Havana into
a typical capitalist slum. The government intends to restore all of
that area, keeping it historic but making it a beautiful, healthy place
to live, and they are making rapid progress. Gusanos who claim their
photos and videos of the worst remaining enclaves of Old and Centro
Havana show how all poor miserable Cubans live are liars. There are
11.2 million Cubans. Only the .2 (approximately, maybe) live in Old
Havana and Centro and a lot of those have from perfectly OK to very
nice homes. Most of the other 11 million live in neighborhoods that,
to the eye, resemble all the levels of the middle class and sometimes
the upper class in the San Joaquin Valley. That's to the eye. A range
of free and near free benefits of the developing communist (but still
transitional, i.e. socialist) system actually make their lives better
than the eye can casually see. Hip tourists are strongly advised to
learn Spanish and see the rest of Cuba. * Castro
Mystique - Castro's still got it IAmMyOwnReporter.com Archives on: The Last Unspinning Official Stories Post from - 2017 27 Oct, 2017: This website has changed, and, after 10 years of more or less regular news commentary, this will be the last "Unspinning Official Stories" post.
The only reason for this last post is to repeat myself and tell you AGAIN, that whatever the nerds, the currently embedded "scientists," or your never changing misleaders and THEIR leaders say, the ONLY way you can "save" your world now is NOT by unchanging the climate with MORE FUCKING technology BUT BY REDUCING HUMAN POPULATION AND ENDING CAPITALISM. Of course, I'll keep telling you THAT because, whether you like being told that or not, that IS the truth about which you are in your most stupid and stubbornly on-and-on-and-ongoing denial. I'm not wrong. You're wrong! |