For some looks attractive, other more hostile, difficult in any case be indifferent. Beautiful beaches and share memories revolutionary image away, civilized reflections of a reality full of contrasts, in discovery, men and women who daily rusent towers with a fate sometimes exhilarating, sometimes suffocating, often disturbing, not lost ...
plight of the "special period" that followed the fall of the Soviet trade powerful ally in the nineties, and still suffering the embargo on American who imports and exports, the island suffered today ' hui hit hard by a combination of additional factors which accentuate the malfunction of its economic development: first, the global economic crisis, which has been hard fall tourism (now the second source of income in the country behind the currency shipments of Cuban exiles); other hand, the series of very violent hurricanes that hit the island in 2008 and, in addition to raising spending phenomenal for reconstruction, have profoundly affected the country's agricultural rents (the third source of income).
It is not easy to live in Cuba. If highly positive aspects that are completely free access to health care and education, the very low rents and expenses, and contributions by the State of a minimal part of basic foodstuffs, are undeniable, however they are overshadowed by a drastic embargo maintained for decades by United States (and re-extended by Obama), and conditions creating a severe shortage of human and material resources that would make it truly effective and efficient policy of accessibility required by the state.
Some basic foodstuffs such as oil, cost, they, the equivalent of one quarter of the average monthly salary. Cubans are often required to combine the jobs to live, and the informal economy is everywhere.
And politics?
recent years, little by little, changes are being felt. The growth in inequality (the "past twenty years, the rate of Cubans living in urban poverty and whose basic needs are not met, rose from 7 to 20%" - gives us an article in the Monde Diplomatique Mayra Espina, Cuban sociologist - a nod to Yannick ;-) recognition by Raul Castro that he must review and improve the Cuban economic model; rise less less gagged voices advocating greater freedom of expression and movement (several political and cultural figures such as Raul Castro's daughter, were in favor of a more flexible regime) and a generation gap increasingly gaping between youth and the generation that experienced the Batista dictatorship and the advent of the Revolution, ... all these factors contribute more or less strongly and at different levels, to an irrepressible opening.
This does not mean a total negation of the values of social justice and equality coiled in the ideals of the revolution. Many think tanks - including many young people - meet to consider alternatives to a system whose flaws are not that feel too, but without denying the socialist road, without joining the ranks of exiles in Miami often positioned at the far right of the political spectrum.
These reflections will they be fruitful? We can only hope.
An illustration of this opening being held no later than Sunday with the debut at the Concert for Peace on the Place de la Revolution Colombian Juanes (the the song "Tengo La Camisa Negra"), around whom an unprecedented controversy has continued to swell, opposing anti-and pro-Castro but pleasing those who rightly saw in concert the permission of the artist highly controversial easing obsessions of sidedness observed until very recently the head of the Cuban authorities.
This far, we have read ... You will hear soon what we felt when walking the streets of Havana, and what comes out "confessions" of some Cuban and Cubans that we will cross en route, and with whom we probably will soon not have to share one or two mojitos ..
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