Destination: Cuba
Che Guevara: Revolutionary, Icon, ‘the Guy Who Invented Those Mojitos’?
by Jim Benning | 06.02.08 | 12:13 PM ET
Uh, something like that. In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Ben Ehrenreich reflects on Che as pop icon, Steven Soderbergh’s Che and “Chevolution,” an intriguing new documentary about the famed Alberto Korda photo.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzSteven Soderbergh’s ‘Che’: ‘Almost Unreleasable in its Current Form’
by Jim Benning | 05.28.08 | 2:07 PM ET
That seems to be the consensus of those who saw the biopic at the Cannes Film Festival. While Benicio Del Toro (pictured) won the best actor award for his performance of the rebel who launched a million T-shirts, critics say Soderbergh’s highly anticipated biopic, which runs no less than four and a half hours, isn’t likely to find its way into theaters soon. The film was made in two parts, the first covering the revolution in Cuba, the second focusing on Guevara’s ill-fated adventures in Bolivia. It’s “almost unreleasable in its current form in any country in the world,” critic John Powers said yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Photo: The Cuba T-Shirt Nearly 50 Years in the Making
by Jim Benning | 05.19.08 | 12:44 PM ET
I spotted this black number for sale next to the usual guayaberas and baseball T’s at the Cuban Music Festival in Los Angeles’ Echo Park over the weekend. It was, not surprisingly, a particularly festive affair.
Related on World Hum:
* Adios Fidel, Hola Cuba*
* Hey, Let’s Turn Gitmo Into a Cruise Ship Terminal!
* R.I.P. Cachao
Photo by Jim Benning.
Time Magazine’s 100 List Includes Elizabeth Gilbert, Cuban Blogger
by Julia Ross | 05.05.08 | 9:58 AM ET
R.I.P. Cachao
by Jim Benning | 03.24.08 | 10:25 AM ET
Hey, Let’s Turn Gitmo Into a Cruise Ship Terminal!
by Jim Benning | 02.22.08 | 1:03 PM ET
Photo by lyng883 via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
You have to love all the rampant speculation and wild ideas floating around about Cuba tourism following news of Fidel Castro’s resignation this week. Take this USA Today report that “Cruise lines are ready to pounce on Cuba.” Um, is there any sector of the U.S. travel industry that hasn’t been ready to “pounce on Cuba” for decades? It drew a number of comments, including one from someone claiming to be a former security officer at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Adios Fidel, Hola Cuba?*
by Jim Benning | 02.19.08 | 10:09 AM ET
What does today’s big news of Fidel Castro’s retirement mean for American travelers now barred from visiting Cuba? Likely very little in the short term, experts agree. But Reuters, among other outlets, is taking the opportunity to review the presidential candidates’ positions on Cuba. Who knows? They could actually be relevant now.
Eating Cuban on Miami’s Calle Ocho
by Jim Benning | 02.14.08 | 1:37 PM ET
The cultural heart of Cuban life in Miami is, naturally, Little Havana. And in Little Havana, the main drag is Calle Ocho—8th Street. It’s on Calle Ocho where old men in elegant guayaberas gather to play dominoes, and it’s on Calle Ocho where a number of fine Cuban restaurants have been serving up strong espresso and garlic-infused fried pork for years. For Americans who want to experience authentic Cuban culture without violating U.S. laws with a clandestino trip to Havana, Miami’s Calle Ocho is the place to start.
R.I.P. Philip Agee
by Michael Yessis | 01.09.08 | 11:47 AM ET
The former CIA agent, who died this morning in Havana following ulcer surgery, famously outed purported agency operatives in a book, but he also played an eccentric role in the world of travel: He established a travel Web site to help U.S. travelers visit Cuba in defiance of the government ban. He was 72.
Related on World Hum:
* Americans Defy Cuba Travel Ban Before ‘Other Americans…Ruin it All’
The Che Image, 40 Years Later
by Jim Benning | 10.09.07 | 5:32 PM ET
Forty years ago today, Che Guevara was killed by CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers, and the anniversary has prompted gatherings around the Latin world—Bolivian President Evo Morales, fresh off a visit to The Daily Show, choppered in for an event near the site where Che was killed. Predictably, media outlets have published a slew of stories about the man, the myth, the travelers on the “Che Trail” and the iconic image.
Americans Defy Cuba Travel Ban Before ‘Other Americans…Ruin it All’
by Jim Benning | 09.11.07 | 8:02 AM ET
Yes, this is the peculiar form of national self loathing a number of Americans express in defying the Cuba travel ban. Just how many Americans visit Cuba without U.S. permission? Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but a new AP report citing Cuban government sources puts the number at close to 20,000 in the first half of this year alone. And according to the story, “many say being sneaky is part of the fun.”
Travelocity Fined $183,000 for Selling Cuba Trips
by Jim Benning | 08.16.07 | 1:19 PM ET
In what’s believed to be the first penalty of its kind for an online travel provider, Travelocity has been fined nearly $183,000 for booking nearly 1,400 trip to Cuba between 1998 and 2004, violating the U.S.-Cuba trade embargo. Travelocity officials say the bookings were the result of a technical glitch and that the company never intended to sell the trips. “Travelocity’s penalty comes amid conflicts over foreign arms of U.S. firms selling trips into the popular Caribbean vacation spot,” the Miami Herald reports. “And it touches on the complications of isolating a country commercially amid an increasingly global and digital economy.”
Related on World Hum:
* Duo Charged With Inventing Fake Religious Organizations to Facilitate Travel to Cuba
* Did Hemingway Really Drink Mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio?
Did Hemingway Really Drink Mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio?
by Jim Benning | 08.06.07 | 3:23 PM ET
Depending on your perspective, mojitos are either all the rage and part of “mint’s moment” or as dated as “Sex and the City” reruns. I polished off a too-sweet-for-my-taste mojito last night at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, as evidenced by this photo of my empty glass, mainly because the drink set me back $11 and I couldn’t stand the idea of wasting it. I like the occasional mojito, but I’ve been enjoying the mojito press coverage even more, and I particularly liked this piece in the Wall Street Journal focusing on Ernest Hemingway’s relationship—or lack thereof—with the drink. I thought it was a given that Hemingway tossed back mojitos at La Bodeguita del Medio in Havana. Tourists flock to the bar for that very reason.
A Traveler’s Take on Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’
by Jim Benning | 07.23.07 | 3:12 PM ET
Forget the controversial fact-checking piece CNN’s Sanjay Gupta put together for Michael Moore’s documentary on health care, “Sicko.” Now, the San Francisco Chronicle’s John Flinn—ever the provocateur columnist—takes Moore to task for his coverage of foreign hospitals, based entirely on Flinn’s own unplanned visits to hospitals in France, Cuba and elsewhere during his travels. “Michael Moore got it all wrong about the French health care system in his new movie, ‘Sicko,’” Flinn writes. “The best part isn’t that the government sends workers out to the homes of new mothers to do their laundry. It’s that French hospital meals come with wine. I don’t know how Moore, who seems rather starry-eyed over la belle France in the film, forgot to include that nugget.”
‘Vamos a Cuba’: Should the Children’s Travel Book be Removed from Miami Schools?
by Michael Yessis | 06.07.07 | 5:39 PM ET
No way, I say. The fate of “Vamos a Cuba,” however, rests in the hands of a three-judge panel at the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Miami, which yesterday heard arguments regarding a Miami-Dade Country school board decision to remove the book from school libraries. According to the Miami Herald’s Tania deLuzuriaga, the controversy started when Juan Amador Rodriguez, a parent and former political prisoner in Cuba, complained that the travel book failed to accurately depict life on the island. The school board removed “Vamos a Cuba” in June 2006. A federal judge soon ordered the book back into the library, setting the stage for the current appeal process.