President Barack Obama is visiting Cuba this week, making him the first sitting president to visit the country in nearly 90 years. And last week his administration announced changes to travel restrictions that will make it easier for Americans to visit the country for educational purposes. ...
And Marienfeld thinks her students were impressed with the Cuban students' outlook on the future. Many dreamed of one day visiting the U.S., she says.
"One of the kids said, 'You know, I was very impressed with how little they had, and how happy they were,'" she says. She thought that was a pretty good observation because they do have – and exist – on so very little, but culturally they are so rich, she says.In an episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld's guest praises the amazing classic cars of Cuba. Seinfeld responds asking: "do you think that's what they want?"
People in Cuba make the best of what they have. But their economy is too small to support automobile manufacturing. The U.S. embargo has blocked exports from the U.S. for over fifty years. So Cubans developed an ecosystem of restoring and maintaining the Fords and Chevys already in Cuba before the 1959 revolution. For classic car enthusiasts, Cuba is wonderful. But for Cubans these cars are expensive to maintain, and their incomes are low.
For decades the Cuban government has claimed that the U.S. trade embargo is the source of Cuba's poverty. Economists agree the embargo has left both Cubans and Americans poorer than they would have been had travel and trade been legal over the last fifty years.
But economists also argue that Cuba's socialist economy system is a major cause for the poverty of everyday Cubans. Searching Google for "Causes of poverty in Cuba" brings up a wide range of articles, many praising the Cuban economic system and the socialist revolution.
For American tourists visiting Cuba may seem a low-cost Disney-like Fifties World vacation. But for many who live and work in Cuba and can't leave, living "on so very little" is not what they wish for if they could choose their government or do depart for the U.S.
In La Lucha: The Human Cost of Economic Repression in Cuba, Patricia Linderman describes her experiences living in Cuba (The Freeman, May 1, 2000):
As I opened the gate of the high security fence around my yard in Havana, a black woman in her 30s glanced left and right and quickly wheeled her rusty Chinese bicycle inside. Her name was Marta, and she was wearing a pair of my shorts, which I had once traded her for a small watermelon. This time she had pineapples in the plastic milk crate attached behind the seat of her bike. I handed her a dollar for two pineapples, then poked my head out into the street to make sure the coast was clear before Marta pedaled away.
Luckily, there were no police officers stationed on the corner of my street that day. Although farmers and gardeners have been permitted since 1994 to sell excess produce, they must do so personally, in an approved market stall, paying high license fees and taxes. Marta’s little enterprise, buying and reselling fruit, vegetables, and used clothing, put her into one of the Cuban government’s most reviled categories: she was a “speculator.” If caught, she would be charged a huge fine, maybe even sentenced to jail. Furthermore, the Cuban Ministry of Finance could confiscate everything she owned, without a hearing, for the crime of “profiteering.”So already a contrasting perspectives from a visiting student saying: "You know, I was very impressed with how little they had, and how happy they were." to the poverty/police state view from 2000. Maybe the Cuban economy has improved since 2000 and police state restrictions on commerce have declined.
This Miami Herald 20-year retrospective video on the 2004 Cuban Rafters story gives a glimpse of life in Cuba then and why so many were willing to take flimsy rafts for the U.S., crossing the "Straits of Death."
