Should I Tell My Friends to Visit Cuba, or Stay Away?
HAVANA TIMES – I have friends who aren’t from this island, and they’d like to come visit Cuba. More than once, I’ve felt a certain degree of shame for belonging to a country that has produced nothing but tyrannies in the last decades of history, and with them a criminal culture. That’s how I see it. A place where there’s no rule of law, and no respect for the people or anything else that lives in it. Also, shame for the consequences of a crisis that not only is never overcome but instead is ever more atrocious. Yet all these friends manifest their desire to experience this Caribbean land, and I continue wavering about whether or not I should encourage them to have such an encounter.
So I posted about this matter on my Facebook profile: “Friends – I’m wondering about the following: when faced with other people who aren’t Cubans and want to see Cuba, what do I tell them?
Choice one: Not to come, so as not to inject money into the dictatorship’s economy, since this corrupt Communist government then eats it up, dying of laughter in front of our eyes, while they make us suffer the way they do, which is very easy to verify.
Choice two: Or do I tell them – yes, they should come, so they can see close up what communist fascism is capable of doing to a people? How people have to leave, fleeing to other lands; the buildings falling to pieces; how those of us left are dying of anguish and hunger…
What do I do? I don’t know which answer to give.”
I got a lot of reactions. But only two people told me I should suggest they don’t come. One of those two, a journalist from Camaguey who today lives outside the country, wrote: “I tell those I can, not to go. Not only to keep from giving more oxygen to the GAESA [Cuban military-run conglomerate that controls much of the economy], but also for themselves, to avoid a bad experience.” The other comments advocated for the positive, for two main reasons: 1) to confirm for themselves what the Cuban reality looks like; 2) To share [the truth] with the world.
So now, after thinking a little more about this matter. and considering the responses of my friends. and my own experiences receiving delegations from Canada, the United States, Latin America, and other places when I studied at the Matanzas Evangelical Theology Seminary, I then asked myself: When these foreign friends come to Cuba, will they experience the Cuba I suffer with?
Obviously, the answer is no. They’ll stay in hotels that millions of Cubans have never known, and possibly never will know. The blackouts that send us running won’t touch them, or very little, since – as one of those in charge of Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism has declared – the alterations in the provision of electricity don’t occur in the tourist centers.
Instead, they’ll be treated like goddesses and gods, whose smallest wish will be granted, not only because of the inculcated sense of inferiority we carry for remaining imprisoned in Cuba (Citizens we’re certainly not, given all that’s forbidden to us politically and economically) by a regime that has always worked for its international image, while treating the country’s working people like mere game pieces in their political-ideological apparatus.
They’ll get to see wonderful places on the Island that are closed to us, because we were born here and don’t belong to the leader caste – those “others” who hold the unquestionable honor of knowing better than anyone else how to safeguard their power. And for many other reasons, those friends from the other shore won’t get to know the Cuba that I live in.
The one I live in is crumbling. In the Cuba where I live, no one wants to be there, and people flee terrified to any other place beyond its borders. The Cuba I live in generates anxiety, terror, panic… because it’s very hard to live where there’s no water, food, cooking gas, and where every transaction, no matter how small or insignificant, demands a brutal quantity of work, effort and time.
I remember one time when I was visiting with some neighbors I loved dearly. They had begun to attend the same Protestant worship group as me, and the community leader asked me where they lived, so he could make the customary Pastoral visit. Naturally, I went to see them and mentioned this. My neighbors’ mother responded: “No! You can’t bring them here!” And I, in my girlish innocence, asked her: “Why not?” To me, such visits were a natural thing. She answered: “Because all this is very ugly.” That remark made me aware that she lived in very lamentable conditions.
Over time, I understood it better, and I comprehended the importance of having a space we call decent – clean, ordered, comfortable. Something that’s become very difficult, and increasingly more so, for a long time now, and – for some people – during their whole lives.
So, I myself now feel like my neighbor did, and I want to tell those would-be visitors the exact same thing. No, don’t come. We have some crucial affairs to settle in the country. A despotic, abusive state must be brought down and replaced by one that values happiness. Reconstructing the decaying buildings whose collapses have already killed so many people. Institutions for everyone must be repaired or founded. And especially, we must care for nature and see if we can resolve the pollution we’re suffering from; raise up an economy that’s currently non-existent, not even a glimpse, because all the money is in foreign banks owned by the military, and by those in high Communist Party positions….
There’s a lot to do – better to tell them not to come for the moment.
But none of us are God, I believe, so, like it or not, I have to agree with one of the answers I got, in this case from a friend who happily now lives in the United States. She says, and I quote: “Explain your dilemma to them and let them decide.” That’s right. The decision should always be made by each individual. I can’t allow myself – as the Cuban dictatorship has done, is doing, and will continue doing when faced with ways of thinking different than their own – to eliminate them. In any case, it’s best to share my points of view out of consideration and human obligation. Later, each one can make their own decision. That’s my final criteria.