Cuba (and I don't mean the actor)

This time last year I was headed to Mexico City and Havana on a trip for business school. Looking back I realize that I had no inkling what I was in store for. However there was no way I could have had any idea what I would find.

Mexico City is like a black and white photo with stark contrast. Picture a sun bleached, bark bare tree against a outcropping of dark basaltic rocks. The white of the wood is the have-a-lots and the basaltic rock are the impoverished. There is a level of opulence in Mexico city that is difficult to find in Beverly Hills. Then, outside the formal city, there are the countless people living literally on the fringes of society 3/4 of the way up the volcanic hillsides. Streets so steep no car could climb them; but that's ok, no one there owns a car or has running water.

Cuba is a canvas painted flat black. No one has anything. I've never felt as privileged as when I visited Cuba. Cubans are a very warm and friendly people by day. At night, the underbelly of Havana show itself. Most Cubans make enough money in their government assigned jobs to make it through 3 weeks of every month. The last month is up to you. You either get inventive or go hungry. Needless to say, everyone in Cuba is hustling something, be it cigars out the back of one of the factories or themselves.

My time in Cuba has forever changed my perspectives on governments, human beings, trade and opportunity. I think about this trip often. I remember standing in one of the Spanish fortifications, listening to a little boy or 5 or 6 calling out to a container ship as it left the harbor. "un BAR-co! un BAR-co! un BAR-co!" he cried joyfully - the Spanish word for ship..

His father stood a few feet a way. His face stoic and his eyes glaring at the ship. He looked at the 1/2 empty ship as it steamed out of Havana harbor and I knew he was wondering, "will my boy ever make it off this forgotten island? Or is he doomed to waste the best years of his life imprisoned by the ideology of a failed experiment?"

Cuba could only exist on an island. Fidel and his comrades could only impose control on an island. There is no Cuban commercial fishing fleet. Put a Cuban on a boat and they won't come back. The island is rotting. Who knows how many of the beautiful buildings will need to be demolished because their structures are unsafe from neglect? I can only hope that the transition there moves faster and that our governments can come to an agreement to open trade again. Time is running out for the beauty that was Old Havana. Someday I hope to go back. I just hope it will still be there.