January 29, 2008

Here is what engagement with the Cuban regime gets you

Engagement with the murderous Cuban regime has long been touted by our European friends as the key to freedom in Cuba. However, it seems that when they got there to "engage," they were distracted by the quaint island village and its happy dancing people.

From the travel section of the UK's TimesOnline, we get this wonderful travelers review of Cuba, one of their "10 Perfect Caribbean Islands."


BEST FOR TOURERS

Cuba The great thing about Cuba is that it really lives up to its postcard. In Havana, crumbling Spanish palaces in pastel colours exfoliate gently beside the Capitol Building, sensuous salsa music slinks out of every bar, and 1950s Cadillacs cruise around town, horns honking at cigar-toting matrons in melon-print turbans.

The city is a fabulously schizoid mix of faded 1950s glitz and revolutionary bombast – don’t miss the Museo de la Revolucion, where the exhibits include “the genital tweezers used by Batista’s thugs”. Your cultural tour should also take in the Buena Vista Social Club, the Cohiba cigar factory and a mojito-fuelled bar crawl in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway.

That’s just the capital. Cuba demands wider exploration – especially Trinidad, a cobbled cowboy town that must be the cutest colonial settlement in the Caribbean, and the Turquino National Park, the original guerrilla stronghold of Castro’s revolution.

Just what the Cadillac cruising, horn honking, cigar toting, melon-print turban wearing Cubans need - a little more "engagement."

Posted by Alberto de la Cruz at January 29, 2008 07:15 AM



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Comments

I wonder why crumbling buildings are a tourist attraction, unless they're Egyptian, Roman or Greek.

If this is a tourist attraction, then why not the "squalid slums" of Caracas or Sao Paolo? They're so quaint.

The Sex Pistols had a song called "Holidays in the Sun" that began with the line "Cheap holidays in other people's misery..."

At least one Brit had it right.

Posted by: Scott [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 29, 2008 07:36 AM

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