# "The Real Cuba Isn't a Potemkin Airbnb" https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-cuba-isnt-a-potemkin-airbnb by Antonio Garcia Martinez July 14th, 2021 [[Bari Weiss]]: _García Martínez has handled the matter with the kind of perspective and good humor that can only come from a person who understands that as terrible as American-style cancellations are, there are other countries in which the situation can be far, far worse. In his essay today, he reminds us that as mad as our culture has become — and he very much believes that it has — Americans are a world away from the Cuba that his parents and grandparents fled. The Cuba where, right now, three generations after the revolution, people are being beaten in the streets for demanding vaccines and freedom._ > **The difference between the communist system and the capitalist one is that both kick you in the ass, but in the communist one they kick you and you have to applaud, while in the capitalist one they kick you and you can scream. I came here to scream.** **— [Reinaldo Arenas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinaldo_Arenas),** _**Antes Que Anochezca**_ It’s hard to convey to those who live in the free world what life is like under a totalitarian dictatorship. I’d never experienced anything remotely like it before I traveled to Cuba in 2017 to report [a story for](https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revolution/) _[WIRED](https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revolution/)_ [magazine](https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revolution/), and it was one of the most memorable and unpleasant experiences of my life. The first thing is the fear: you as an individual exist naked without any recourse against the depredations of the state. I was reporting illegally, with no journalist visa, which would have taken at best months to get. The police could have knocked on the door and hauled me away to the _cuartico_ (little room) at [Villa Marista](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Marista), the Cuban Lubyanka, or disappeared me into some other extrajudicial hole. The authorities did just that yesterday to [Camila Acosta](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spain-demands-immediate-release-journalist-detained-cuba-2021-07-13/), a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper _ABC_ for “crimes against state security.” The Founding Fathers’ warnings about tyrannical kings and their obsession with _habeas corpus_ hit differently when you’re confronted with an unaccountable state machine and no recourse to rule of law or individual rights. ^96cdda The second thing you notice is the deception: To live in Cuba is to live in a web of lies. It begins with the media, which is pure propaganda repeated by everyone, chorus-like, or else. As a cope, everyone has a half-dozen make-believe realities in their heads, which they selectively deploy depending on whom they’re addressing. I’d ask person A about person B and they’d warn me they worked for the state and to be careful. Then I’d then speak to person B and they’d tell me the same about person A. Perhaps both were correct. I wasn’t exempt: I’d lie about what I was doing in Cuba since I wasn’t supposed to be there. Everything is a regimented fantasy. Underneath it is an ever-shifting haze of rumor, speculation, and wishful thinking. The American tourists who visited Cuba during the Obama period saw nothing other than a Potemkin Airbnb reality they inhabited for a few dollar-fueled days. To really feel the brunt of the Cuban state you need to live as Cubans do, or run afoul of the sliver of relative freedom the state affords foreigners. I’ll share two anecdotes where that normally translucent atmosphere of repression revealed itself to me. The first occurred while I was meeting one of the tiny number of independent journalists who around 2017 were tentatively stepping out of the official channels and launching their own blogs. (He’s in the United States now but I’ll keep his name out of it.) The scene was the Café Mamainé, one of the few trendy hangout spots that had sprung up in the relatively upscale Vedado neighborhood of Havana. The journalist was recounting his independent reporting from the eastern part of the island after Hurricane Irma, when the government (as with COVID) was caught horribly unprepared. “By showing the reality of the government’s lack of preparation, we hope to increase accountability in our democratic process….” Me, the idiot American who didn’t quite understand yet how this worked, interrupted him: ”What accountability? What democracy? This is a total dictatorship.” He stared at me like I’d relieved myself on the cafe’s floor, looked quickly around us, and then proceeded to utterly ignore what I’d just said as if it hadn’t happened. In Cuba, there’s very much a Set of Things You Cannot Say. “Cancellation” is a rather harder proposition there than it is in the U.S. The second example was at a festive barbecue held in the studio space of one of the small number of Cuban artists who have managed to sell their pieces overseas for hard dollars. The company was friendly, composed of sets of mutual friends with family in tow. The hour was late, rum had flowed, and per usual, the Cubans settled down to a convivial game of double-nine dominoes. One boy, I’d guess his age around nine or ten, was engaged in the age-old ritual of punking his elders by telling salty jokes he’d heard from adults. It was the classic humor format of putting different stock characters in a comedic situation, and joking about how they’d handle it. In this case, the joke was about waiting interminably for a bus, a common Cuban occupation: > _Y la divorciada (and the divorced woman)…_ > _Hahaha…._ > _Y el cuentapropista (and the small-business owner)…_ > _Hahaha…_ > _Y el fidelista (and the Fidel supporter)…_ Suddenly the warm atmosphere was shattered as everyone, as if on a pre-arranged signal, raised their voices at once. Everyone chastised him loudly, as you would a child about to stick their hand into a fire. One couldn’t joke about Fidel supporters, even in a private social setting among friends: who knew who was an informant? Nobody wanted the knock on the door or the _[acto de repudio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_repudiation)_ the next day. And just like that, the domino game went on and the boy stopped with his jokes. The reflex was automatic, as natural as covering your face when sneezing. That’s the reality of Cuba you don’t see from a tourist hotel. So is this: ![[Screen Shot 2021-07-15 at 3.18.32 AM.png]] [tweet](https://twitter.com/Cristi_up/status/1414452909371232256) And this: _"TODAY: Military groups beat adolescents in the streets of Holguín" [video](https://twitter.com/RosaMariaPaya/status/1414741252973674499) And this: _The dictatorship in [#Cuba](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Cuba?src=hashtag_click) mobilize their black berets.#SOSCuba_ [video](https://twitter.com/RNapoles/status/1414316965712302085) Because the press is unfree in Cuba, the story is fractured but sometime around Sunday July 11 protests broke out in Cuba’s San Antonio de los Baños. To chants of “‘we want vaccines”’ and “down with the dictatorship,” Cubans marched in an unprecedentedly anti-government and open fashion. Protests soon spread to major cities like Havana and Santiago de Cuba and they continue even now. An uploaded Facebook video _—_ which was soon yanked, but not before being uploaded to YouTube by dissident media [14ymedio](https://www.14ymedio.com/) _—_ shows hundreds of Cubans protesting in the streets. A comment from a protestor walking in front of Cuba’s soaring capitol summarizes the gist of the protestors’ grievances: “We’re here because of the repression against the people. They’ve got us starving to death, all of Havana is falling apart, and we don’t have homes. We have nothing. There’s money to build hotels and all sorts of things, and us, they’ve got us hungry and experiencing great difficulties.” Another protestor yells from behind: “62 years of dictatorship!” ==Despite the various challenges we face, the reality is that Americans have not  known hard times within living memory — _real_ hard times, not invented ones based on Twitter dramas and “misinformation.” All that Americans have known since World War II is ever higher plateaus of freedom and material wealth, with all the horrors of the world — killing fields, political prisons, autocratic demagogues, a _real_ resistance — held so far out of their mind’s eye they don’t even know what they look like anymore.== **But there is no law of physics that dictates that the good times must continue. The sad reality is that countries can and do choose to commit suicide, as we’ve seen with Syria and Venezuela more recently, and Cuba, three generations ago. Embracing some revolutionary philosophy that promises to heal all ills and right all wrongs, and then exploiting the worst human tendencies to implement that wild-eyed vision, is the sure path to ruin.** **America is not remotely at the level of Cuba, but it sure seems we have a growing taste for apocalyptic politics and orthodoxies enforced by public acts of repudiation. We have developed a high tolerance for snitches sanctimoniously ratting out people publicly for personal gain, lists of Things That Cannot Be Said, and citizens huddling in private groups to share ideological samizdat they dare not discuss in public.** **America wasn’t built on “content moderation” guidelines and “problematic” this and that. It was built on the inalienable right of every citizen to tell their government, as well as any fellow citizen, to go fuck themselves and read and write and do whatever they like. The perfect is often the enemy of the good, and the hellbent drive toward some supposed utopia often ruins an imperfect society that would be better served by a more fervent embrace of its founding principles. We’ve lived so comfortably in the society those principles created that we delude ourselves into thinking they can be dispensed with in the name of some newfangled orthodoxy.** I can’t help but think here of the president who avidly fought the empire of which Cuba was once the extension. In his 1967 inaugural address for California governor, Reagan issued a warning: > ==Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it . . . have never known it again.== Such a people is then condemned to live in the crumbling ruins of their once-beautiful country, as Cubans are now, struggling feebly for their own subsistence and against their own government. If you’re fortunate, you live out the rest of your days nostalgically recalling what your nation was once like, as my grandparents did, while having to build a new life in a foreign one. Some mistakes a free people get to make only once. ## Comments ### Comment by Beeswax Our tour guide was surprisingly forthright in her disdain for how her country was being run. Yes, she made sure we received the mandatory speeches about "the Revolution.” And she didn't have to sugarcoat the fact that people get good medical care in Cuba, as long as you follow all the rules, because if you miss one of your mandatory pre-natal visits you risk losing custody of your infant. (Your baby belongs to the State, not to you.) She was also upfront about the hideous condition of housing in Havana, where you could wake up after a rainstorm with the ceiling on top of your face, because fixing a decrepit old roof was out of the question. She explained why the Cuban divorce rate is sky high: three unrelated couples with one child apiece cannot maintain intimacy while sharing a three-bedroom apartment with one kitchen and one bathroom. As our tour was ending, she asked if I could send her some books on astronomy for her son. He was very interested in that subject and NO BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE. I also learned that Cubans cannot choose their professions. You work where they tell you to work. This explained the dead eyes of the hospitality staff at the hotel, who do their jobs flawlessly and without a glimmer of human feeling. Again, through our tour guide: every little girl took ballet lessons, every little boy played baseball, because these were the only two possible pathways to a prestigious career, that might also lead to the possibility to defect. - This is just like [[North Korea]] In Cuba, I met beautiful, industrious, kind, talented people, full of humor, frustration and rage, with nothing but good will for us Americans and tourists from all over the world. I could cry thinking about them now. These people were trapped, and they knew they are trapped. Back then, Castro was still alive, making his four-hour speeches. It was clear from their affect that they were waiting for him to die, in the hopes that things would improve. Things did not improve. I am so inspired and terrified for the Cuban people right now, taking to the streets. They literally have nothing to lose. #### Reply by Alejandra I went to Cuba as part of student performing arts program. I was there with classmates and teachers and we stayed for a week. The year was 1998 and I was a teenager. I was born in Mexico and so young at the time that there were no issues with immigration. It has been a while since then, but this is what I remember: 1. Beggars outside our hotel who begged for food/goods rather than money. 2. Having given the extra food I had packed to such beggars (not much foresight on my part). 3. Our hotel was not luxurious by any means. We barely had any furniture in our room (what it lacked on furniture it made up on cockroaches, though). 4. I don't consider myself a picky eater, but the hotel food was terrible (salad with just lettuce and no dressing, flat tasteless pancakes with no butter or syrup, milk with curd). Moros y cristianos was the only food that tasted OK. 5. Feeling hungry and being unable to find anything resembling a restaurant or store near the hotel. 6. We visited a pizzeria and an ice cream parlor (coppelia) in Habana 1 time each during our stay. In both venues, were the only costumers and we paid with dollars. These were the 2 filling “meals” I had in Cuba. 7. Fidel propaganda billboards and anachronistic cars. 8. Empty Habana streets. 9. My friend twisting her ankle and her being sent to a shaman/witch doctor, rather than to a proper clinic. 10. Beautiful beaches that’s were almost empty. 11. Few Europeans, many of them wearing Che t-shirts. 12. Lovely and warm Cuban people. 13. Interestingly, we could watch VH1 from the hotel TV along with the Cuban Channels (only that one random American channel though). #### Response by Beeswax You were in Cuba in 1998, during the terrible Special Period (1991-2001) that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. What you’re describing is consistent with those years of extreme deprivation and poverty as the result of Cuba’s loss of its nanny state. By the time I visited in 2011, the country had recovered significantly due to foreign investments in tourism. I also had the impression that a small amount of private enterprise was allowed. We visited an outdoor market in Havana where all kinds of fruits and vegetables were available for sale, apparently by private citizens (although prices were fixed). I’m not a Cuba expert, but it seems that COVID dried up the tourism industry and Cubans are again suffering from hunger and shortages of everything. Cuba is a small but very fertile island and it surprised me to see how much of it remains undeveloped (we saw the entire length of the island from the plane). ### Comment by "Classical Liberal" Thank you for writing this powerful article. The juxtaposition between true resistance in Cuba against a tyrannical government and America’s “woke” wannabe revolutionaries is astonishing. While reading the excellent comparisons you draw between the two, the following two quotes from philosopher Eric Hoffer come to mind that take it a bit deeper: "They who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the "free will." They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society." "It is doubtful that the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power - the power to oppress." Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self, not a realization of individual hopes: "A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.