Castro's Crumbling Cuba. By Uncle Monty at New York City.

Castro's Crumbling Cuba.

By Uncle Monty at New York City.

Photos of Cuba By Alex Albion.

Part 1 of 2.

~~~

Driving from José Marti International Airport

to Cuba's capital of central Havana was akin to

witnessing at first hand a Third World country

under the communist tyranny of the Castro

Brothers - Raúl, its current president and

Fidel its former president of Cuba.

~~~

The scenery looked quite primitive in the late

evening drive with awful roads, sub-standard

dwellings, shabby knots of Afro-Cubans

lanquishing on the dirt sidewalks, piles of

garbage visible at the packed neighbour-

hoods, and crumbling infrastructure

rudely invading the senses.

~~~

Any romantic view of Cuba was soon dead!
Marking this year the 50th Anniversary of

the Fidel Ruz Castro Communist Régime of

1959, the revolutionary rhetoric and the

reality of life in Cuba for the masses is

stark and contradictory to say the least.

At the street level, the Castro party ap-

paratus controls and grinds the lives of

the people from demands of monthly taxes

collected from door to door to the military

and police presence everywhere to the

enforced silence of dissent that sees the

prisons of Cuba full of political prisoners.

No wonder so many Cubans seek free-

dom elsewhere by fleeing to America

by whatever means they can.

~~~

The Cuban-American opposition to

all things called "Castro" is so valid now to

me after visiting Cuba and seeing with my

own eyes an undernourished society that

is so oppressed and absolutely unfree.

~~~
Street Woman at Cuba's Havana.

~~~
At Havana itself, I saw nobody reading the

free daily newspapers because there are none

to buy or to read, save for such national propa-

ganda news sheets - like El Granma - that aren't

worth the paper they're printed on. Cellphone

users are few and far between on the crowded

streets of the Cuban capital of 2½ million people

with internet access so limited to expensive tourist

hotels at about £3.50 per hour use. Tourist money

helps feed the Castro Tyranny. And, when it comes

time to leave the tourist must then pay 25CUC or

almost 20 quid in cash for so-called "Airport Tax"

that helps the communistic coffers of those still

in power after 50 years of iron rule. My plane

alone carried 400 air passengers. So figure that

at almost 20 quid per head and count the total

of free money rolling in for Cuba's political

elite and Castro's own crude thugs and old re-

volutionary henchmen. It's about £8.000 per

plane load. At say 5 plane loads per day, that's

£40.000 in free money each day. In the mean-

time, the Cuban masses grow poorer and more

blighted and more oppressed every day

under old Castro's crumbling Cuba.

~~~

And if America's Obama decides to lift the

U.S. embargo against Cuba, then it must be

tied to open demands that all political prisoners

under Castro be unconditionally-released and

without any further harm against them by his

vile and ever-present Cuban secret police.

:: And, This Just In ::

"U.S., Cuba agree to resume migration talks."

By John Whitesides.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE54U0WO20090531

~~~

If, by the way, you want a bellyful of Ernesto "Che"

Guevara (1928-1967) then Cuba is the place to visit

with him plastered on the street walls of many Cuban

cities. In fact, there seems to be more of "Che" than

Castro himself on the walls, despite "Che" being

second only to his revolutionary comrade and

brother-in-arms Fidel Castro. Guevara has

romanticizing disciples the world over even

though he was a ruthless and avowed orthodox

Marxist of Argentine birth who was finally

killed off in Bolivia while trying to lead

a peasant uprising there.
~~~
Here's another example of Castro's Crumbling Cuba.

While most Cubans are very friendly, there were elements who despise tourists and went out of their way to scream at you with their anti-Gringo and/or anti-Anglo obscenities! On the far back streets of Hanava, I was about to take a picture of a cluster of half-a-dozen young male Afro-Cubans sitting down playing dominoes outside together on the open street of Calle Sol, when one of them suddenly came at me with loud screams of obscenities in my face and telling me "to go back to the country" I was from and that foreigners like me had no welcome in Cuba. His face was a rage of full hate and his mates just egged him onto being even more hostile and anti-Anglo. Else where, another young, tall, and angry Afro-Cuban male tried to snatch my camera from me and told me he didn't want any photos taken of the graffiti-scrawled sign that said "Viva Fidel." On the other extreme, over-friendly non-Afro male hustlers abound with their broken English trying to entice you to buy Havana cigars or to give them money for something or other or to take a taxi ride. I was accosted twice by underage Afro-Cuban females for purposes of street prostitution! I just kept on walking until I got rid of them. Another thing to beware of is when given change at street stores that will foist old Cuban money on you knowing you're not then aware of the difference between the old and new money called "Cuban Convertible Pesos." The old money is now worthless and I got stuck with perhaps some 18 old pesoes in my change from just one store. I soon learned to be alert to such trickery and refused change that wasn't the new currency that came about only just last year in all of Cuba. I also sensed that many Cubans have simply a love/hate view of Europeans and Americans, but if they gain money from you then they will tolerate you no matter what. As for Havana waitresses, they are poorly trained if trained at all. They're sloppy and forgetful when called upon to serve their customers. At one restaurant, Contessa Maria and I was left for over 30 minutes while the waitress decided she'd take a personal break right in the middle of serving our lunch!! She seemed lost when she returned, too, with no apology. Maria was then furious and she promptly walked out and refused to pay a dime for the lunch we never actually got to take a bite of. There was consternation and pleas from the manager begging us to finish our now cold and useless lunch. He also bowed and scraped to Maria, but to no avail. Too late, buddy!!

But what really took the biscuit for me was when I walked across some grass that was forbidden to be used at one of the national monuments. Before I knew what, I had three military guyz, two armed policemen, and a young plainclothes cop surrounding me and demanding me to identify myself. When the plaincothes cop saw the copy of The Big Issue I had taken with me to Cuba, he quickly grabbed it from me but couldn't understand a word of English. I think at first he might have thought it was counter-revolutionary material against the Castro Régime!! Such is strictly forbidden and if found with such you can count on being detained in one of Castro's many secret prisons for here on out for the offense against public order. They finally, after 20 minutes, threw their hands up in the air when they couldn't understand a word I was saying and trying to also tell them I saw no sign that prohibited where I had simply walked to cross the road. I was not afraid of them and I was getting pretty angry with them for such an authoritarian overkill over little or nothing ... What that experience taught me was that inside Cuba it is almost equally as bad as inside North Korea and inside China (of which I have both visited) for the state control over every aspect of a person's public activity that is deemed the enforced order of the day. The eyes and ears of Raúl and Fidel Castro are every where. Although, Britain today isn't far behind them with her 7 million ubiquitous surveillance cameras in a society that is otherwise called "free" while Cuba cannot pretend to be.

Typical Cuban Junior H.S. Brainwashed for starters!
~~~ Wall poster of Castro with his pal Hugo Chavez.
~~~ When by accident I attended the public event marking Gustavo Ameijeiras' 51th anniversary death at downtown Havana, it was there that I first saw Comandante Juan Almeida (shown above), who is one of Fidel Castro's right hand men. He looked half-dead to me and he looked scruffy in his unpressed military outfit and seemed also abit lame did the comandante with many school kids shipped in for the occasion where they seemed to do their mechanical salutes and boring lip service to their régime masters. Juan Almeida was the nearest I got (or ever will) to Fidel himself while in Cuba for some 10 days. The comandante's own son - Juan Juan - was arrested for trying to illegally leave the country by Castro's own secret police!! http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1069051.html

~~~

I must say, the longer I stayed the less I liked the

Cuban society I saw. I measure a country by my

desire to perhaps live there by a scale of 1 to 10.

The highest is 1 to the lowest that is 10. For me,

I'd give Cuba only about an 8 and that's it!!!
~~~

Havana or Habana Radio is state controlled.

~~~
"Che" at Cuba's Pinar del Rio some 100 miles

from Havana, that is pronounced "Abana." ~~~
In part 2, I'll have more photos of Cuba and more comments, etc.
For now read this: Miami judge awards $1.2 billion in suit against Cuba.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54S69B20090529

Right now, I'm here at New York City with Maria at her luxurious Manhattan home before I then head next back to home base. I want to thank very much Maria, yet once again, for her kind hospitality at The Big Apple and for her generosity while at Havana by her underwriting of my complete 12.000-mile round trip. Bless you, my dear as always!!!

Truly, Uncle Monty. +Eve of Whitsuntide, 2oo9.

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