Cuba and Castro
Today marks the 79th birthday of Fidel Castro. The chief underlying causes of the Cuban revolution were most probably; the huge difference in wealth between the poverty stricken agricultural workers and the corrupt rich of the big cities; the desire for self governance as the country was more or less ruled by American plantation owners and gangsters. It had noble beginnings. There is little doubt that at the start, the chief protagonists, Fidel Castro and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara were of good heart and idealists.

The ideal that all men are equal and should share in the profit of their labour is a noble one and I fully believe that Che lived that belief. As the renowned photographer Alberto Korda related;

"Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot. He was hard that way."

The Cuba of today is a mix of poverty and tourism, wealthy foreigners walk around the lobbies of the Hotel Nacional wearing 'T'shirts printed with Che's image while on the streets of central Havana people live in slums often without running water, grafting away, conning tourists, selling reject cigars, the girls renting themselves out to the foreigners. The barmaid at the hotel selling a $2 drink that costs more than she earns in a week, the friendly cubana waitress talking about the medicine that her mother needs, the doctors moonlighting as illicit taxi drivers to augment their $12 or so monthly wage all under the ever present eye of the police, there to keep a lid on overt fraternisation and prevent the poor cubanos liberating the very well to do tourists of their cash.

In an interview with US students Guevara said;
"What I least like is our occasional lack of courage in confronting certain realities, sometimes economic and sometimes political, but especially economic. At times we have had compaĂąeros adopting the ostrich approach burying their heads in the sand . We have blamed drought, imperialism... for our economic problems and, at times when we have not wanted to broadcast the bad news, we have hesitated, and then only the [U.S.'s] Voice of America version has remained.

Something about the spirit of Che Guevara makes me think that if he were alive today, he'd be living in the tenements of central Havana, which are crumbling and falling to the ground as we speak.

The poor agricultural workers in the towns in the countryside living in houses without glazed windows or running water are not living the same lives as the people who work for he government. The taxi drivers that rip off the tourists get more from a trip around the block than the nurse earns in a week. Most all are surviving on the government rations of rice, beans, peas, a little cooking oil and a few eggs and powdered milk for the children. What little meat they can buy in the markets has to go a long way as a pound of chopped chicken costs 27 pesos cubano (about $1) or 3 days wages for the night porter at the hotel.

Perhaps it is time for another revolution, but this time a peaceful one that really will bring an equitable standard of living and enable the people to regain their dignity.

Hasta la victoria siempre!