I had communist leaning political sentiment in my youth, and traveled to Cuba in my early 20's.
You could tell the country (and Havana in particular) had once been stunning. I was horrified by what I saw; just how broken the infrastructure was, how poor and destitute the people were. The quality of food was poor, the country dirty, access to basic energy needs unmet. The cost of basic services high (i.e. $100 USD cab ride from airport to Havana).
I spent a lot of time getting to know locals and understanding what life looked like. Ration books for food, suppression of speech and behavior/associations. At the time, I was a mad keen surfer and met a few locals who showed me their hand-made boards, sourced from scrap and supplies stolen from their jobs. The state at the time viewed it as a non-sanctioned activity, and so no resources were approved for it.
That experience for me was certainly the straw that broke the camels back in terms of sympathy for communist-leaning ideologies. I hope the Cuban people break free of state tyranny.
pharos92•24m ago
You could tell the country (and Havana in particular) had once been stunning. I was horrified by what I saw; just how broken the infrastructure was, how poor and destitute the people were. The quality of food was poor, the country dirty, access to basic energy needs unmet. The cost of basic services high (i.e. $100 USD cab ride from airport to Havana).
I spent a lot of time getting to know locals and understanding what life looked like. Ration books for food, suppression of speech and behavior/associations. At the time, I was a mad keen surfer and met a few locals who showed me their hand-made boards, sourced from scrap and supplies stolen from their jobs. The state at the time viewed it as a non-sanctioned activity, and so no resources were approved for it.
That experience for me was certainly the straw that broke the camels back in terms of sympathy for communist-leaning ideologies. I hope the Cuban people break free of state tyranny.