A country that I really wanted to visit was Cuba, and I especially liked its nature, a very beautiful country, but I came here very desolate and sad, about how Cubans live, with a salary that ranges from € 5 for a retiree to € 30. € a lawyer or a doctor, in Cuba there are two currencies: Cuban pesos, which are what they receive from what the fidelista regime calls salary, and the convertible peso ( Cuc ) that tourists use, the dollar is penalized with 20 % and € uro change it to street 1 * 1 Cuc, The cars that exist are taxis, either from the time of colonialism, ramshackle Americans, or Ladas, almost all of them are taxis since it is unthinkable to buy a new car with a salary of € 10 or € 20 that a wage earner earns, all cars 98% are taxis and 2% are private, but the state of the vehicle is degrading, the tires are worn, the taxi is full of smoke from the tailpipe, the glass is broken and dirty, the doors fall off, the seats have very large holes, only a minority are in good condition etc. the bus transport is very precarious or old and dilapidated, some imported or rather donated from France and even though they are very old they have not yet changed the exit or entrance signs are in French and Like the buses that came from Italy, the signs are in Italian, the transport in Havana could still be said to be bad but existing, but outside the capital there is no collective transport, so the poor s Cubans, who can be farm workers or nurses or doctors or even the military, because I have seen it with my own eyes, they hitchhike, both to go to work and to go home, and as private transport is minimal , because with 20 dollars a month you cannot buy anything, the transport is from the state, the poor hitchhikers have to wait hours and hours for a truck to pass a state taxi that they have to stop or any other public transport, or Whether they spend more hours on the roads than working, the houses where they live in the cities is degrading, the electrical installations as in the 40s in Spain, or worse the houses propped up so that they are not demolished, and the worst with people and children living in these houses that are completely uninhabitable for people and even for animals, I have seen many dogs, but all sick and mangy, people are desperate, they can only live on the tips they receive from the t Uristas, and begging, in the countryside things are a little better, since the land belongs to the state but the cultivation is shared 50% with the state and they have to sell to cooperatives that are also state-owned, the Cattle cannot be slaughtered to eat since it is from the state, and if someone happens to sacrifice a cow, they go directly to jail for many years, nobody thinks of doing this, in Cuba 11 million people live where 1 million They are policemen, Cubans are completely controlled and no one thinks of talking about politics with a foreigner like me, if there is the presence of another Cuban, on an excursion that I did in Cuba the taxi driver explained his life condition to me, that It is this, he had a father who died 4 months ago, his mother was paralyzed, his wife did not have a job because he had hormonal disorders, and he has a 6-year-old girl, he would like to have more children, but it is impossible given the precarious economy, Well, this young Cuban had that ue to work every day of the week, because if you don’t work they don’t give you a salary, with $ 20 a month you have to support to the mother, to the wife to the daughter and himself, this is impossible, because this is the reality of the Cuban people, and without the possibility of being able to go to work abroad, the first day I was in Havana and did not know The Cuban reality, I was very bothered by the begging and insight of the Cubans to be able to have access to some tips, going down the street of Havana is impossible without the intervention of its needy people, examples: a normally old man comes and you Ask if you want a newspaper, this newspaper is not a normal newspaper, it is from the communist party, they give it to him, he gives it to you for free but when you take it he tells you that he has not eaten and if you can give him help, another They ask you where you are, if you answer you are already lost they do not let you go and in the end you have to give a Cuban peso or something like that, requests if you want a taxi or a Coco (motorcycle taxi) bicycle taxi (tricycle) or taxi in tartana, this is constant, and it can be overwhelming because I Saint hundreds of times every two or three minutes, another example is a woman with a baby in her arms, asking for food for her son or a disabled person asking for food, in John Lennon’s park I took a photo next to the statue of John Lennon Then a man came and put John Lennon’s glasses on him so that we could photograph him, in order to have his dollar as a tip, all these things can be overwhelming, but understandable when you know the reality of Cuba, Cubans have a pittance of salary, then another source of income is necessary for them and this is the tip, the problem is that not many know the reality of this problem and this can be frustrated for them, prices in Cuba are not very high so you have to think about everything that is done to give a Euro or a dollar of tip to all the people, they appreciate it very much because it is the only source of income, the problem is when the person is an office cook or someone of this style who is not in contact Directly with tourism, the current reality in Cuba is the legalization of slavery, the misery of the frustration of despair, Cubans are very friendly people, very open, but their survival is threatened with extinction, it is very difficult, a revolt inside since there is a lot of control, and a lot of fear, even some Cubans have told me that the only solution is to shoot themselves in the head, having said that … I think everything has been said … a quick and very superficial analysis is the following after the 1959 Revolution where Fidel gave back to the Cuban people what was theirs, the regime repressed the Cuban people with a demagogic and communist dictatorship and distributed the poverty and misery that today after so many years the dictatorship does not find any solution. an agriculture and industry today totally non-existent, sugar cane was a power, today it almost does not exist, one of the many causes that I think has done a lot of harm to Cuba, was the Soviet Union n country that was the supplier, and that supplied Cuba with all agricultural and industrial products, the Cubans did not have to cultivate the land or set up industries.The Soviet Union did this for two reasons, one was, because they wanted a communist country almost to the center of the USA and this did a lot of damage to the Americans and the other because they wanted to mount a war arsenal in Cuba, the atomic one did not go well, and after a few years when the Soviet Union dissolved, all Soviet aid ceased, And this led to the fact that now in Cuba there is neither agriculture nor industry, and everything belongs to the state. This is a very quick analysis, but not because I think it’s totally true, what can be done for these people…. Well, I don’t know … there must be some strategy, but I don’t know, what I do know is that it is deplorable to see and not be able to do anything, my problem is that I love these people, these people, and I would like freedom so that they are no more slaves of a bad, cruel and despotic regime and who see their citizens starving misery and calamities and without any future
For a free Cuba
Enric Giné
Tossa 2011