By José Manzaneda on July 5, 2022
Cuba offers safe tourism that is not always reflected in the world’s media. Photo: Bill Hackwell
Go to the travel section of any major newspaper, El País, for example, and you will be able to discover the “Caribbean beaches, gastronomy and heritage” of the Yucatan. The “most musical Puerto Rico”. The “cultural and ethnic hotbed” of Trebisonda, Turkey. The “eight reasons why Chicago deserves a trip”, among them to see “the most curious jail”, because it has “windows so narrow that they don’t need bars”. Curious prison except for the prisoners who live in it, we imagine. And about Colombia, we will discover Cali, “the capital of salsa”, among many other materials.
What we will not find is a single comment on the social or political situation in those places. Not a single reference to the teacher led social protests in Puerto Rico; to the gun violence in Chicago, the U.S. city with the highest number of homicides, or to the 145 people killed in Colombia for their defense of human rights last year. No politics, instead the tone is neutral, friendly to travelers.
Now enter, in that same section and medium, a travel report… about visiting Cuba. And you will see how the story changes. Journalist Maruxa Ruiz Del Árbol narrated in El País about her last visit to the island, with a suggestive title: “Return to an always indecipherable Havana”. So indecipherable that she dedicated almost a third of her report on tourism to the political and social situation and the “civil protests (…) against the Cuban government” in July 2021. However, without mentioning once the economic blockade or the over 200 sanctions imposed by the U.S. on the country in recent years, 50 of them in the middle of the pandemic, nor was there a mention of the cause of the shortage of supplies that generated those protests.
The text also included an excerpt to praise the San Isidro Movement, which -we read- “groups of young artists” and “independent journalists” opposed to the “repressive measures of the Government of the island”. Did she talk about their proven connections with the U.S. embassy? Did she mention that one of its leaders, Maykel Osorbo, asked Donald Trump for a naval blockade and invasion of Cuba? Not a word.
But she does assure us that in Cuba there is “ideological persecution” and a “very strong culture of chivatism“, which “has made Cubans (…) reluctant to speak in confidence outside their narrow circles”.
Are Cubans really reluctant to speak, to express themselves, to complain, to dissent? For any of us who go to Cuba regularly we never find Cubans who don’t have an educated opinion about just about any subject under the sun including the problems.
If you want to know something about Cuba before visiting, for the first time, please do not let yourselves be guided by “reports for travelers” like those of the corporate newspaper El País. Because if you do you will still not get out of the labyrinth of your “indecipherable Cuba”.
Source: Cubainformación, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English