Revolutionary Tourism: Selling the Cuban Communist Paradise (Video)
HAVANA TIMES – Hundreds of foreigners visit Cuba each year looking for the communist paradise that propaganda sells worldwide. They come to Cuba to perform “voluntary work,” talk with “civil society,” and have contact with the “Cuban reality.”
However, it’s all theater serving dark purposes of image laundering for a dictatorial regime. Here, we reveal what the “solidarity brigades” that visit Cuba each year are about, a kind of “political tourism” or “revolutionary tourism.”
The video has subtitles in English.
So long as the US excludes Cuban officials from entering the US or doing business here, and excludes state-owned or state-affiliated enterprises from doing business in the US, and punishes any other companies that do business with the Cuban state, who cares what they do. We have seen a Cuban-style revolution turn Venezuela into a poor country full of oil (ah, communism!), and I doubt many will be seduced by the glory of Cuban production. If rich, racist American lefties want to visit and play their revolutionary chic games, let them. Cuba is everything one would expect a communist country to be (corrupt, poor,…). Leave them to their revolution. There is no need for US intervention unless the Chinese start setting up shop. Then bomb every building to rubble.
Alberto, I get the impression you didn’t even watch the video or didn’t understand it. I suggest watching it again.
Sounds like this lousy article is referring to a Country other than Cuba.
The so-called free Healthcare System is nothing but a bad joke that costs Cubans thousands of lives every year!
STOP justifying a repressive system that has destroyed both Cuba and Cubans!
Perhaps, a giant political billboard announcing Free Elections would sound better.
No semantics bullshit: there’s no such thing as a blockade but rather an embargo. The other embargo is the one from the Dictators to the Cuban people.
I don’t overly oppose most of the views in the Revolutionary Tourism video. Cuba now allows it’s citizens to leave the island, and figures approaching 25% of it’s population have already left to live abroad since the pandemic. The USA governmental system has tightened the screws on the Cuban government for decades with it’s blockade. Trump reversed all of Obama’s attempts at ‘apertura’ and has appointed Marco Rubio, a second generation Cuban American, to put the final nail in the coffin. Why is Cuba on the US terrorist list? Why does the US penalise the rest of the world if they do business with Cuba? Why does the US blame the Cuban government for spreading it’s regime of an Utopian socialist ideal when they interfere in the governments of the world at large?
We all know about the woes and failures of the Cuban revolution but apart from a few forays in Angola, Bolivia (Ché Guevara) and placing doctors abroad, they have largely kept themselves to themselves. We all know that there isn’t an open democracy in Cuba and that maybe the Cuban revolution sell by date, but what is the answer? Replacing giant political billboards on the island with Marlboro or Coca Cola advertising? McDonald’s, Starbucks, a Walmart on every corner? Replacing crumbling historic colonial buildings with US inspired edifices?
Nobody is starving in Cuba and despite recent problems, the free health care system does serve the nation reasonably well. The Cuban S
state would like to do away with the food ration books but they provide a lifeline to many people even if they seem antiquated in the 21st century. Because Cubans don’t consume much, there isn’t much waste.
What the video doesn’t tell you is that Cubans are currently allowed to set up small private limited companies and import goods from abroad. The government charges a 4% duty at Mariel port near Havana to bring the products into the country. I saw my first private shop, a Mom and Pop ‘hole in the wall’ shop in someone’s home, after a 6 year absence from Cuba. They were selling beer, pasta, eggs, cooking oil and coffee amongst other basic staples. If that’s not capitalism,
then what is? Previously, the Cuban State has prohibited any private shops but due to a mixture of mismanagement on their part and the US blockade/embargo, the population were often confronted with empty shelves in the supermarkets. Perhaps the commonest expletive in Cuba today is ‘No hay!’ (There isn’t any!).
This is not to say that Cubans aren’t responsible for some of their actions and failings. Fidel loved using the blockade as a scapegoat for the island’s problems. The land is fertile and some years back, the government implemented a scheme to help
people to farm land but this hardly scratched the surface of the problem. Two young men were selling a bunch of spring onions at 300 pesos in Havana; that’s nearly US$3 at the official change rate. Only well off Cubans can afford that, as the average wage in Cuba is approximately US$30-$40 per month. The wage is paid in Cuban pesos so the workers can’t even take advantage of the black market rate that was 320 Cuban pesos to 1 US$ in November 2024. The official rate is 120. This means that the vast majority of Cubans can’t even enjoy a beer, which costs from half a US$ in the shops, at the end of the day after work.
Yes, there seems to be little doubt that Cuba is edging towards bankruptcy as their biggest financial contribution, tourism, has halved since the pandemic, but one wonders whether the USA can justify their intervention into this island’s affairs considering their own shambolic record for penalising countries in the rest of the world who dont conform to their political or humanistic idealogy.