Not wanting to give the US any reason to invade, and perhaps still smarting from its soul-sucking era as a mafia paradise, the Cuban government put the ixnay on drugs, and today they’re really not a presence in Cuba. But Cuba is also really strict about the import of drugs. The lack of homelessness is fairly obvious-the government provides housing. But when it came to hard-core addicts and homeless people, I didn’t see any. Weird.ĭuring my time in Cuba, I got pan-handled maybe half a dozen times, and saw one toothless, staggering old lady that looked like the resident town wino. After a couple of days wandering around Havana, I realized I hadn’t seen any cardboard alley homes and not a single crackhead.
Even in one the wealthiest countries on earth (guess which one), pan-handlers, under-the-freeway encampments, and twitchy characters of all narcotic varieties are everyday fixtures on the streets, even in posh tourist attractions (San Francisco). Oddity #2: Lack of Homeless People and Drug Addictsīeggars and bleary-eyed glue sniffers are par for the course in the cities of most poor countries. Good thing we didn’t get used to it less than 48 hours after getting home, my travel buddy was robbed at gunpoint. Whatever the reason, walking around at night and realizing that you have no need to be weary is a strange feeling for an Oakland kid like me. Or you can think it’s got something to do with the fact that base needs like housing, education, medical care and some amount of food are all guaranteed by the Communist government, taking the edge of desperation out of the poverty equation. Protecting tourists is in the best interest of the island as a whole. You can chalk Cuba’s safety up to a number of factors, depending on your politics and worldview: The police force is strong and no one wants to risk a lengthy stay in a Cuban prison. (It would have sucked to have my bag stolen, but it sucks a lot worse to get a gun put under your chin.) And while, yes, there’s hustlers and pick-pockets, and yes, some laughing 12-year-olds tried to snatch my bag one night, the gravity of the threat of real violence isn’t there. One look at the crumbling building facades and boys playing baseball with scrap pieces of plywood, and you start to understand just how poor Cuba is. From Rio’s famed favelas to Cairo’s ghettos of Sudanese refugees, to deep East Oakland, the relative safety of a neighborhood is most often directly proportionate to the level of wealth, or lack thereof. In the US, and most other countries in the world, poverty equals danger. I suppose what strikes one as odd about the lack of violent crime in Cuba is that the country is so terribly poor. I was still uneasy about rolling into the country with over a thousand dollars in cash on me, and neither my travel companion nor I could easily shed our well-grained habits of stone-facing strangers and checking our backs like motherfucks. Touted in guidebooks to be paradise for solo female travelers, where any dark backalley can be delved into any time of day or night, I was willing to accept that Cuba was probably safer than Oakland. One of the first things I read about Cuba was how safe it was. (I’ll let you guess which option I think has more value.) Besides, I’m back home I’ve got the toilet paper and functional plumbing to handle barrages of shit. But we either dance delicately around these things, saying the same, tired, noncommittal niceties ( Dante had a hell for that), or we get real-sit down, look it in the eye and say what we mean.
Yes, I realize I’m walking into a shitstorm. These reasons are inextricably linked to the country’s politics, to the revolution and the island’s legacy of struggle.
What I want to talk about, and what’s of importance to the traveler to Cuba, are the ways in which Cuba is unlike any other country I’ve experienced. Like everyone else, I’ve got my personal views-seeing as I was raised in a house that had 38 volumes of Lenin on the shelf, I’ll just let you guess what side of the spectrum I fall on.īut I’m not here to talk about that. It’s impossible to talk about Cuba without getting into some kind of political discussion. But I’ve never been to another place where capitalism wasn’t a presence, and where the ensuing materialism and infiltration of American culture was so miniscule. Sure, I’ve been to non-Western countries I’ve trekked through remote jungles studded with indigenous villages and spent a night in a water-world town-on-stilts where the night sky erupted with spontaneous flashes of thunderless lightning. Hands down, beyond a doubt, Cuba is the most different place I’ve ever traveled to.
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