Inside Raśl’s Cuba: ‘Es Exactamente Igual’

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  06.05.07 | 12:10 PM ET

imageBella Thomas spent several years living in Cuba in the late ‘90s. In April, she returned to the island to find out whether the transfer of power from an ailing Fidel Castro to his brother Raśl had stimulated any meaningful change for the country and its residents. Not yet, she reports in the June issue of Prospect magazine. “Those who must see Cuba before it ‘all gets washed away’ by the Americans need not worry,” she writes. “The current impasse will outlast Fidel, and may outlast Raśl for a few years—to the great cost of the Cuban people, and the architecture and resources of this remarkable island.” Thomas’s perspective defies conventional wisdom—and some reporting by the Today Show, which broadcast from Havana today.

I caught a segment about the U.S. embargo (see “What is next for Cuba? halfway down the page), which is supposed to ban Americans from doing business in Cuba. Correspondent Kerry Sanders went to the grocery store and found U.S. products, including Windex and Johnson and Johnson shampoo. They’re symptoms, he implied, of a failing policy.

Who knows how those products got into Cuban stores? But once the Castro regime ends, Sanders reports, businesses will jump at the opportunity to sell in Cuba. In fact, many people already have plans for a post-Fidel Cuba, including those in the cruise industry.

“Major U.S. cruise lines won’t publicly admit this, but each has now charted at least seven, and perhaps eight viable Cuban harbors,” Today Show travel correspondent Peter Greenberg writes. “It stands to reason that the cruise ships will be first in when the travel rules are changed.”

Related on World Hum:
* The Move to Open Travel to Cuba
* New Hope for Legal Travel to Cuba?
* Cashing in on Santeria Tourism in Cuba
* Che and the Image Seen ‘Round the World

Photo by Paul Mannix, via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Tags: Caribbean, Cuba


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