Word: cubans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...city as the tour, I would spend a lot of time laughing at my initial impression and its outrageous incongruity with the rest of my experience. Except for a small group of soldiers guarding the national monuments in Havana, which the government fears may be targets for counter-revolutionaries, Cuban streets were generally unpatrolled, even by policemen. Even so, there was little rowdiness or theft and no sense at all of the menacing atmosphere that enshrouds so many American cities...
...decades ago, the leader of that revolution, Fidel Ruiz Castro, was under attack at home and abroad. Today Cuban schoolchildren, when asked about their nation's leader, call him "padre," and he is one of the acknowledged, albeit controversial, leaders of the Third World...
...Cuban government now owns and runs just about every enterprise from the largest sugar refinery to the smallest poolside bar. It guarantees every citizen a job, free hospital and dental care, free education, a month's vacation, housing at low rent, or the opportunity to purchase a home. The work of the society is carried out by large organizations like the Federation of Cuban Women, which keeps the streets clean and provides volunteers for factories, microbrigades, factory workers who build housing for their fellow workers, and, of course, the Communist party...
Private farmers are still a large force in Cuban agriculture, working 19 per cent of the land and producing 30 per cent of the tobacco, 25 per cent of the sugar, and 40 per cent of the fruit crop. So far, the decision to sell has been a totally voluntary one. Nevertheless, because an independent farmer can sell his produce only to the government, which unilaterally sets prices, the state can make a community like Jibacoa a farmer's only viable economic alternative. It seems clear that the state eventually plans to control all agricultural production...
...workers at Jibacoa live in apartments contained in four- and five-tiered slablike structures that dot the Cuban landscape like Levittowns, their mass-produced white facades disrupting Cuba's naturally palmy beauty and aesthetically appealing Spanish architecture. The country's massive new construction efforts have little to do with aesthetics and even building quality. Instead, their purpose is to provide minimum standard housing to all Cubans as quickly and cheaply as possible...