Please Stop Saying You Want to Go to Cuba Before It’s Ruined

[liberalhistorian]

132. I have heard these things from many Cubans I've known,

and I don't doubt it. I consider such sentiments as the author describes to be the height of privilege, people thinking that such a time bubble is so "authentic" and "real" and "beautiful" and "purposeful" and that such a time bubble and its people are lucky to be iving such "authentic" lives when the reality is that daily life sucks royally for most of the people in that bubble and the privileged don't want to hear about it because they don't want their idyllic delusions shattered.

I will be finding this out firsthand this fall when I go to Cuba for nearly two weeks with a group from my (progressive, liberal, social-justice-oriented, LGBT-welcoming) seminary, and I have no such delusions at all. It's interesting that the author mentions really old cars, because a couple of cars from the 1950's will be our transportation during our time there. Like she says, it's all our host group has and all that's available. And I'm actually looking forward to getting out of my privileged comfort zone.

Now, I've done that to some extent as a white gal living on an Indian reservation in the west. Before I came here, I'd never known people who walked twenty miles round trip to buy groceries and conduct business at the tribal office because they either can't afford cars or don't have enough gas money for the day. A lot of housing doesn't have modern amenities or is falling apart, and there's more than eighty percent unemployment. But I've still been somewhat sheltered from that given the fairly decent economic position hubby and I are in. There will be no such "sheltering" in Cuba and that's the way I and the other attendees want it.