“What is it About These Poor Countries?”

Ann Marlowe recently visited Cuba, and the discrepancy between haves and have nots there caused her to rethink her travels to developing nations. “I am starting to have a problem with my trips to the developing—or, in the case of Cuba, the undeveloping—world, a problem with the perfume of misery, with the way sadism is imposed by the luck of nations,” Marlowe writes in a recent issue of Salon. “Cuba is more interesting than St. Barts, but perhaps I should go back there instead. It might be better to complain about the profit the locals are making on the outrageously priced hotel rooms than worrying about whether they have enough to eat.”

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