Posted 5 years, 1 month ago just before lunchtime by oso
Update: The tone of this post gives the impression that Peter and I had different experiences in Cuba because I am somehow more qualified than he. To be entirely honest, that is probably how I felt. But after reading this comment and doing some more thinking, I’ve come to the conclusion that Peter and I had different experiences because we really did have different experiences and nothing more. I’m sure our different ideologies and personalities also played a part in how we observed Cuba, but I do regret trying to discredit his observations and I hope that if you read (or have read) what is written below that you also read Peter’s entire series before judging him in any way.
I dunno if you all have ever been on the forums at the Lonely Planet website. For your sake, I hope not. Here’s how it works. Some enthusiastic "newbie" comes on and starts raving about his/her latest trip to X developing, mountainous country which looked just like a National Geographic documentary from outside the rickety old bus which she/he actually had to share with livestock and oh my god it was so amazing and the locals taught me all about their customs and explained the political situation blah, blah, blah …
In other words, he or she is ecstatic and wants to share it with others who have had similar experiences. But then …
The self appointed keepers of the cave come on and stomp all over Mr./Miss Enthusiastic’s happy happy memories. They tell her/him (s)he traveled to X country at the wrong season. That by giving the photogenic children – with the white teeth – candy, (s)he is responsible for their teeth falling out when they are older. And for their diabetes. And by agreeing to pay $1 for each irresistable "ethnic looking" photograph, (s)he is creating a dependency on a volatile tourist industry which lures young children away from an already rocky school system. Not only that, but (s)he happened to go hiking right when an endagered alpine flower was in bloom and quite possibly is culpable of its extinction. Finally they tell her/him that (s)he really knows nothing at all about X country’s politics and that the locals only agreed to sit down and tell him/her what (s)he wanted to hear for the free soda.
Sometimes the cave keepers put on a layer of artificial politeness, but mostly they don’t bother. Sounds cruel, but the thing is they do have their points. There really are better ways to help out young people in developing nations than handing out candy care packs in every mountainous rural village. You could argue that they’re simply trying to educate people into becoming better tourists. But the more likely truth is that, like law school gunners, their real interest is showing everyone else how smart and experienced they are … and more importantly, how stupid everyone else is in comparison.
Which is something I’m really not going for. But it is true that some countries are harder to get to know than others. There are cultural and linguistic barriers. There is often a strong distrust of foreigners and a manipulation of experience-seeking tourists. Many readers of this weblog are pretty familiar with Mexico so you can relate to this example: Imagine a tourist from North America or Europe flies into Mexico City and heads straight for La Zona Rosa where (s)he stays in a comfortable hotel and tries to strike up conversation with as many people who speak English as (s)he can. But mostly (s)he finds himself/herself eating and talking with other tourists trying to make the same off-the-cuff socio-cultural observations. [Jorge Gobbi of Blog de Viajes, in fact, has some interesting stats from an experiment his friends did in Buenos Aires that show to just what extent tourists tend to spend their time isolated with other tourists] Then that person goes back to North America or Europe to spread the word about what Mexico and Mexicans are like. Inevitably skewed perspective right?
After such a recockulously long-ass disclaimer, I’ll say it straight: I have problems with how Peter represented Cuba. It doesn’t seem that he or his wife speak conversational Spanish [see here] (and what Cubans speak is just barely Spanish) – which limits his interaction to English speakers in the tourist industry and the many Habaneros who literally hunt down stereotypical Gringo tourists bent on finding "the real Cuba" and feeding them exactly what they want to hear in exchange for a free mojito or a commission from the "real" cigar shop they’ll take you to afterwards. Also, they stayed in a government designated hotel near the Malecón and removed from residential neighborhoods compared to an hospedaje with a Cuban family and their neighbors, tucked away into the suburbs. Lastly, from what I understand, they didn’t venture out of Habana at all, which will give an incredibly unbalanced view of a country whose government consistently siphens out urban revenues to care for rural residents.
Specifically, I had beef with statements like:
The way the police in the country worked reminded me of how I envisioned a fascist state. There are police in uniform on nearly every corner, you suspect that there are a few more undercover not too far away, and since the laws are ambiguous and randomly enforced there is always a slight chance that Cubans could get arrested at any time for a trivial offence.
Anyone who has traveled even as far south as Ensenada knows that an oversupply of stern looking, but otherwise harmless, corner cops stems from Latin American unemployment and local government campaign promises. But they’re certainly not the defenders of a Fascist police state. I wish that Peter had gone up and tried talking to one of them like I did one night after a few too many Cuba Libres. I was hopelessly lost in a suburban labyrinth and the police officer escorted me all the way to my hospedaje while we chatted about how good the vegetarian food was across the street from the University bookstore. Of course I tried to convince him to take me to the torture chambers for unwelcome capitalists, but no such luck, only a nice smile.
I write this not to discount the experiences and qualifications of Peter and his wife. They are both obviously over-the-top intelligent and articulate. But so little is written about Cuba in the United States without an ideological agenda and frankly I don’t think their descriptions help change that in any way. (You have to remember you’re reading the accounts of a super-libertarian in a super-socialist country, which would like be reading Elenamary’s impressions of a Young Republicans’ meeting) Maybe mine don’t either, but I would like to at least offer another perspective. (and you will see by the end that I am neither pro-Cuban, pro-Castro, pro-Che, nor pro-Socialism)
I was extremely lucky on my trip to Cuba. I ended up meeting a girl from Mexico City who was studying ballet at the University of Habana (Cuba’s national ballet is one of the best). She was super social and introduced me to around 20 of her friends, all Cubans except for one Chilean girl in her early 30’s who came to Habana to study photography after becoming fed up with Chile’s recent conservative turn. [note: the front-runner in Chile's upcoming presidential election is both female and socialist.] We would go out to various garden and house parties every night I was in Habana to drink, dance, and talk the night away. Much of what they told me and asked me I found surprising and maybe you will too.
After a week in Habana I took the bus to Cienfuegos and then Trinidad where, very much inspired, I scribbled and scribbled all that I could into my journal. It occurred to me during these days that I wanted to write a travel essay about my trip. So a lot of what I wrote in my journal were random thoughts, observations, and excerpts that I thought I’d try to fit together after getting back into San Diego. That never happened.
Transcribing everything from my journal into my laptop, I once again thought about trying to fit it all together into one coherent piece, but instead I’m gonna just give it to you straight with as little editing as possible. The writing is pretty terrible because I had been speaking strictly Spanish for the past two months when I wrote it and because I foolishly was trying to come off scholarly.
You’ll see that what follows over the next several days is both personal and political. But like they say, everything political is personal. It also might start getting drab unless you’re particularly curious about Cuba. Unfortunately, reading my journal is not nearly as juicy as most people’s, which just goes to show what a wannabe-sociologist-geek I am. So hopefully Moreno will post something inbetween about either Michael Jackson or an upcoming Via Polenta show, or most likely, both. Or maybe Abogado will post some incriminating photos from this upcoming Friday night when we’ll probably be drinking too much until too late. We did that once more than a decade ago in Utah and the sunuvabitch took a swing at me. Time for some sweet revenge.
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Wow, what an amazing entry. I have to admit I am one of those “Cave Keepers”. I am one of those people who both criticizes those who have never traveled and those who have traveled to peripheral and semi-peripheral countries and return with a romanticised view of “Now, I understand how it is”. The question is (and of course I don’t have an answer) how do you travel while not being part of the problem?
BTW are you insinuating that I might not be able to cover a young-fascist, *cough-cough* excuse me, young-republican meeting, justly?
I mean come on now, look at how well HP and I get along.
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EM, puts is so well, she beat me to my comment on how dam fucking well you write these entries. Everytime I read your blog I end up coming up with all these ideas, swirling around in the cabeza, and it would take way too long to post here or over in my blog. No, I’d rather sit down with you, a few beers aqui y aya, and throw ideas around. Pero no se puede, so…I’ll just share one thing: When one travels to unknown places and meets people and so on, do we really experience the “real” place?
I think this has nothing to do with someone’s ideologies they infringe on the experience of let’s say Cuba or even, shit, Texas. It has to do with how we experiences the world and then relay it to the masses (the way you do) through their own paradigm, which is collected through our own social, political views and our values and morals inherited and collected.
So, whether Peter and his wifey or you have the authentic view of Cuba, really doesn’t matter. We all experience the world differently and it takes someone that reads (like you, Oso) a variety of accounts to say, “That there, Peter and his wifey’s experience is not the only angle. Look at what I learned, what I saw.” I think the beauty of it all is dissecting your p.o.v. against theirs. analyzing each of your paradigms and watching what surfaces.
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EMC,
Speaking of visiting areas and throwing down beers, I just bought airline tickets to go to Austin. My boy from college just got a job down there and wants me to visit. So I’ll be up there on the Labor Day weekend. Hopefully you can get some time off, we need to chill and talk shit, especially about Oso and liberals in general. I got some of the funniest jokes (how many liberals does it take to change a lightbulb…)
Seriously though, hopefully we can chill.
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Hey Oso – it is so funny that you post on Cuba today. I had been thinking of the country this morning while getting ready for work, then when I got to work I had a message from CodePink saying that they are organizing a trip to Cuba (along with other “enemy” countries, such as Venezuela and Libya). And now I read your great post! That’s it – I’m going to Cuba. You know, when I can afford to – 20 years from now.
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Good stuff, Oso. I’m looking forward to the future posts.
The thorntree is about the most frustrating message board on the net. The keepers, missinformation, and 80% of the messages are the same questions, over and over.
That said, I have to give the TT some credit. It was quite helpful with our Peru trip in researching small fesivals or markets that wouldn’t be really known about to outsiders. For example, the xmas eve market in Cuzco was a lot of fun for us to visit, but we would have never known about it without someone posting about it on the TT.
elenamary said:
Wish I knew. The big things are easy – give people & places your respect, understanding, and desire to learn. But as I mention here, just by visiting a country you inevitably make changes to it. Money changes things, especially in poorer nations. I don’t think there is any way around it.
This of course leads to some bad things. However, good can come out of these changes as well. In Peru for example, the tourists’ interest in historic sites has lead to protection of the sites. The attention from the tourist industry has also started to spawn interest and pride in the general population towards their own history and culture – something that has not been encouraged for a few hundred years.
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We’ve always wanted to go to Cuba. My husband is Cuban (born in the U.S, but his parents are from Cuba), but his dad (a POW in Cuba thanks to Castro) doesn’t want him to go, he worries for his safety I guess.
I’ll be looking forward to reading your posts.
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Here’s the thing: just as EMC said, everyone is going to have a totally different experience and account of everywhere they have ever been in the world. Who cares? While I do agree that certain behavior should be used while touring foreign countries (such as respect for the people and culture, politeness, patience, etc), most of the people you speak with behave properly. While they may not have seen the deepest culture that the country has to offer, they saw what they could and the fact that they took something away from it should be enough for anyone. Just because I went from Bangkok to Koh Pha-Ngan to Chiang Mai doesn’t mean I’m an asshole tourist who is contributing to the problems of Thailand. It just means that those were the places I visited. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
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Can I love the bobbo?
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interesting entry. i was more than a tad bit annoyed by some or most of the things that couple recounted of their trip to cuba. i look forward to your other stuff and i agree with the others–great writing.
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Hola Oso,
I still haven’t read Peter and Emily’s account of their trip in Cuba. Perhaps it’s because HP recommended I read and most of what HP recommends I completely ignore.
I realized when I was in Mazatlán that I didn’t interact with any locals and just stuck with the people I knew, my cousin, his wife, his son, and his mother-in-law. Now, I could make the arguement that the wife and mother-in-law were locals, but I still didn’t branch out. I’ve become one of those US travellers who sticks with the comfortable. Even if I did meet someone like the Mexican dancer you met, I’d still be too shy to talk to her friends (my cousins in Guanajuato thought I was really, really shy).
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve finally gotten around to posting the Cuba journals.
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I am already looking forward to reading your autobiography or memoirs when you publish them many years down the line.
One of my fellow anthropologist friends did her dissertation research in Cuba. It was great hearing her stories – both good and bad. Not that we anthropologist can shed all our layers of ideology and bias, but I think we do get to see more than what the typical toursit gets exposed to (in our jargon: Cultural Intimacy).
People always tell me how lucky/fortunate/wonderful it is that I have done research in Italy. My response is always, “It is a nice place to visit…”
While I recognize many of the problems associated with tourism, I still think it is better for people to be exposed, even if it is in a trivial way, to other cultures than not to be exposed at all…
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Echoing the sentiments above – your writing ROCKS! While reading this entry I thought about the times I have gone to Zacatecas. Zacatecas has a small population of Huicholes and I have never made an effort to learn about them. Now I know better!
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Bobbo is right. Let’s nuke Cuba
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Thank you all for the complements, they really mean a lot … especially because they’re coming from amazing writers.
EM,
I think informing other tourists in a supportive way of what they can do to decrease tourism’s negative impact and increase it’s positive is really helpful and that there needs to be more of it. Jorge’s got two great blogs – one in Spanish and the other in English – about tourism’s impact on Latin America. And yes …you can love the bobbo. We all do.
EMC,
You somehow managed to say everything I had wanted to in just three paragraphs. It’s so important to be able to view a person, place, and thing from multiple perspectives and understand why they differ. Especially ouselves. And I think Texas is actually a good example because, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Colombia, it’s a place easy to misjudge from others’ stories and jokes before actually going there. So more than anything, I’m saying that everyone should travel to Cuba and see for themselves. Seriously … like next month.
HP,
You puttin the horns on me baby boo?
e,
So nice to hear from you again. Unfortunately, Cuba won’t be Cuba in 20 years.
CN,
I’m bound to get this story wrong so Abogado will have to correct me, but when we went to Istanbul a couple years ago we met a girl (something Thorn Tree doesn’t teach you how to do) working in the travel agency in our hostel. She asked us how we found out about the hostel we were staying at and Abogado tells her he was on ThornTree and saw some people recommending it. She said, yeah, those people were her. But I agree, if you’re intuitive enough to weed out the bullshit, it’s actually a helpful resource.
TS,
I felt extremely, extremely safe in Cuba. Some of the nicest people in the world and I’m not one to say that about the people of every country I visit (like Mexico and Peru for example)
Bobbo,
พัฒน์พงษ.
Cindylu,
I try to avoid what HP recommends to me too (The Game, for example), but that book he loaned me actually isn’t that bad. I’d give the Cuba series a try.
xolo,
I agree completely. Something I learned from our trip to SE Asia last fall too was that reading blogs from the country your traveling in really gives you a much much better understanding and experience. Also, I really don’t get why the U.S. doesn’t allow tourists to travel to Cuba. If more lefty Americans saw the restrictions on freedom in Cuba, they’d probably mellow out with their Socialism quite a bit. And if more Cubans saw our neat little toys (my iPod was such the hit), they’d start demanding more reforms. Like they say, “Russians didn’t want Capitalism, they wanted Levi’s.”
Julissa,
I am also completely guilty of not reading up on indigenous groups of Northern Mexico. I’ve photocopied a few essays, but they’re just laying around. Zacatecas is such a beautiful city.
Moreno,
I like your new name.
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Oso- I´m disappointed. Obviously some things we wrote struck a nerve with you but there are some facts that need to be cleared up. Despite your disclaimer that it was not your intention to discredit our experiences, many of your assumptions do exactly that.
And sadly, many of your assumptions are wrong. That’s not fair and truthfully I expected more.
First off:
…and you go on to say how this severly limited our exposure to the real Cubans. Why would you assume that I don´t speak Spanish? I’d say 98% of the conversations you read on my site took place in Spanish. You might want to correct that above in case people don’t make it down to this comment.
You are right when you say that an experience would be severely limited in Cuba without being able to have a conversation in Spanish. The pieces of conversation that we quote are translated to English on our site so folks back home can understand it. To me, it goes without saying, but nonetheless, if you had any doubts you could have easily asked me before posting.
I lived in Spain for nearly a year, and while I didn´t attend a great deal of language school there, you pick it up pretty quick living with a Spaniard, training in boxing gyms that had previously never seen an American walk thorugh their doors, and working landscaping with two guys who didn´t speak a lick of English (you pick up some Catalan too).
My wife lived in Spain for 5 months as well. We´re both currently doing some brush up courses in Guanajuato that I wish I could have taken before our trip to Cuba. Alas, the U.S. govt would only let us spend money in Cuba until July 15th, the day our licenses expired, so we had to push the trip forward. So while our Spanish was a little rusty, it was better than conversational. If you want references let me know
.
Second:
You are right. We did. But we also spent time in a suburb of Havana, Zona Playa, with a Cuban couple and various neighbors during the last few days of our trip (as you should know from our final entries). It was, in fact, a very different experience. The families we talked with in this area had a very different take on Cuba than others and undoubtedly lived a better life. Some went so far as to tell us that we shouldn’t listen to the government, nor the poorer people in the center of Havana, but instead to them as they can see both sides. I’m going to be writing more on this but haven’t yet had time. Still, our stay was not confined to a government hotel off the Malecon where we merely drank mojitos with other tourists.
You’re also absolutely right that we didn’t travel outside of Havana. Hurricane Dennis threw a monkey wrench in any plans we had to see other parts of the country. Still, I tried to report what I saw. I’ll be interested in your take of the surrounding cities, and compare that to what people in Havana had to say about the surrounding areas.
Third:
You “had a beef” with one of my statements about Cuba reminding me of a fascist state, but you lift the quote out of context. An experience from the prior day is what made this comparison seem valid as well as others. Here is an exerpt of what you left out:
Yes, as you note, Mexico has it’s own problems with the police which I have also experienced. But watching three young guys randomly detained and thrown into a grey police van for the crime of talking to a tourist was a new experience for me. I’ve also never been in a country where I’ve seen so many nationals stopped and asked for identification. We saw it happen all the time in Cuba. Again, Mexico has many problems with it’s policeforce, but so far with stops in Baja, Hermasillo, Navajoa, Los Mochis, Mazatlan, Guadalajara, and Guanajuato, from my point of view, there is no comparison with Havana.
Maybe you had a different experience while in the city. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Finally, as a disclaimer (and as I’m sure you know), you can’t fit every conversation and experience you have in a day into a 2000 word post. It’s just impossible. I’ve tried to cover a good deal to give people an idea of what we saw.
But I seriously debated even putting it up as I thought people might pick apart my rough notes on any given day to try to discredit what we had experienced. It would be easy to do as these notes were written daily and barely altered afterwards. We definitly learned a lot during the trip about Cuba and view it differently now than we did the first day after we left that paladar. Really, these posts only scratch the surface.
Anyway, I’ll definitely read your soon to be published posts on Cuba but this will probably be my last comment for awhile. I’m already behind on a lot of writing I want to get done, so I’m going to bow out of this one.
Have a good one…
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Peter,
I obviously offended you and really didn’t mean to. I corrected the bit about conversational spanish above and if there are any other parts you think I should edit, please let me know. I really hope that anyone who reads through this and judges what you wrote at all 1.) reads through your entire series 2.) visits Cuba for themselves.
I had no idea your Spanish was so good. Part of what threw me off is just how well you translate to English. Most people when translating Spanish into English tend to keep much of the same Spanish structure, but you do well converting it to nuanced English speech.
I’ve gotta go pick up Abogado at the airport, but I’ll respond to all your points sometime soon. Safe travels my man.
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Peter,
While I agree with what you write, you can’t be too hard on Oso. As you know, Cuba is a touchy subject with liberals. In fact, Cuba is such a divisive subject between liberals and conservatives (…and libertarians) that I think you can pretty accurately stereotype someone’s whole political, especially economical, worldview just on one simple question, “What is your view of Cuba’s economic and political situation”?. Of course liberals are going to see Cuba much more favorably than conservatives, and conservatives much less favorably than liberals, it’s all rooted in fundamental philosophy differences (partly explained here). It’s what makes Oso a lefty and me and you righties.
Oso,
Cuba is touchy, you just might spark off an economic discussion that you might not have wanted to start this early.
Btw, you know I’m just talking shit, there is no way I’m going to talk shit about you (liberals yes, but not you). You know you my boy dawg, I just like to give you a hard time.
Oh yeah, about The Game, you hear he is fighting with 50 cent now? So of course this means the West Coast vs. East Coast feuds are back on….West SEAAAAHH FOO LIIIEEAAA MY NIAAA…Gotta stay true to my Compton roots!!!8)
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[...] How are we viewed by Mexicans in Mexico? Personally I don’t give a shit what they think of me. They poke fun at us because of how we speak. Somehow we are less Mexican because of that? To be a Mexican in the United States you have to work twice as hard as other people. You have to speak perfect Spanish in order to make the Mexicans in Mexico happy while you have to speak proper English to make the Gavachos here happy. It’s ridiculous. I think this is why many times we love to use Spanglish and other inventions. It’s almost like saying you know what this is our own language (like Ebonics). If you understand it good, if not who cares. I am not going to change to make Mexicans in Mexico love me (I know not all feel the same way). To be honest if my parents never moved to the states I would still be working the family land and tending to the cows and goats. Is that what the so called real Mexicans want? It’s similar to what Oso said about world travelers that don’t want other cultures to change. I guess some Mexicans wanted us provincianos to stay poor and live a miserable existence in agriculture where the mal gobierno doesn’t protect nor promote but simply rob. [...]