Denise Milani Breast Expansion

Third day in Havana, between the hope of the revolution and the regime gerontocracy

Havana, April 20 2011
Whenever I have clearer that has been a success choose to stay at home of a Cuban family and not a hotel. One reason is location, the rest talk later.

We are in Central Havana, near Malecon but outside the main tourist area. What surrounds us is the real Cuba, the day to day, not the theme park which has become the beautiful Old Havana. We live in Havana of the lighting for energy savings in buying in Cuban pesos, that the facades of elegant nineteenth-century houses are cracked and unpainted, in one in which there is no public service of cleaning, or if there not appear, in which someone is repairing a car in every corner and where no one looks entice tourists to reap some benefits.

In Pictures wandering through Cuba eight days Here are children playing in the street and women who are long queues to buy bread or a calling card gold price that allows them to call relatives living abroad. Instead of international boutiques, Old Havana there is even a Benetton store delicatessen and tearooms are tastes, popular restaurants of the state, and stores do not bother to remove the windows dusty products. Also surprised no one China Town Chinese, as most fled before to live a second revolution. This is the Cuba that we wanted to see. Old Havana is really nice but hardly anything distinguishes the old town of Cartagena de Indias, makeup and other doll without a soul, where you have to queue to enter the premises in which Hemingway was a regular client and the tourist is nothing but a bag of notes marked by a dollar sign, or euro because the dollar is taxed with higher taxes ...

The first impression I hit, I jumped at the sight of anything beyond an apparent misery and more than routine direct and indirect censorship of the state. Can not be considered even minimally free a society in which there are only three newspapers handled by a single party less than ten pages each and the international news that hardly take half. Nor one that in the XXI century is almost impossible to call abroad because the minute costs around four dollars and where the Internet is almost nonexistent because the prices are excessive and the speed is fifteen years ago elsewhere. Poverty is no excuse, Senegal is full of cafes. Not to mention the tough immigration policy.

De Photos eight days wandering through Cuba

words, the State claims, because hardly get it, directing the thought as if a select few may be above the views of other citizens. And yet, despite a certain weariness that seems to be detected in the conversations in shops, bars and street corners and in their own state of the streets that seem to speak for themselves ... despite 50 years of "permanent revolution" would appear to show a perpetual immobility, despite all, why comparing the situation of Havana with other cities in the region I think is a bad place like? Cuba high cultural level of all strata of the population is more than evident, as is access to the arts. Faced with the real misery of Colombia in the street bleeding and social differences, to name the country where I live, you can not deny that, one way of another, here you meet the basic needs of people. Against the frivolity of life in the mall and the woman's body as an object sold to cosmetic surgery, abound on this island dance and conversation.

That the law should democratize it seems essential, it is necessary to free speech, free movement of its citizens, but then Europe is responsible for closing its doors, and a real debate on excessive bureaucracy and harsh measures, including the death penalty, which stained his name. But I think nobody can deny that progress should be maintained. You should not let this country also succumb to the depredations of large corporations and international economic organizations that fill the windows but end with the sovereignty of states. Here health reaches the entire population, as well as education at all levels and 90% of Cubans own their homes. This is something rare in most of the world, something to defend tooth and nail.

addition There is another important timing issue, if the WWF said this is the only environmentally sustainable country will have to learn something from the outside. Organoponics eg, organic urban gardens that abound everywhere. The disappearance of the Soviet Union and the products made there were sent to investigate alternatives to industrialization. The car is not a basic human right, not changing clothes every season. Yet the lack of freedom of expression choking ...

It's late and tomorrow we will travel to Trinidad so I'll rest. They keep writing about this country that so many contradictions me generated. I still talk about her more than obvious English track on the beaches of all the blues and a nice and safe streets for walking ... and how much I missed walking ... and how much more violence on every corner, walking cautious ...