The Cuban Economy

Clearly this isn't a Warton dissertation, but here are some simple obversations about what I've seen so far. The average Cuban has a salary of less than $20 per month. But Cuba is nothing like North Korea or China during the Great Leap Forward, the people are not starving and for the most part everyone lives comfortable, albeit modest lives. Here is how it is possible.

First, there are two currencies: the Cuban Peso (aka Moneda Nacional, or just peso), and the Convertible Peso (CUC). 25 Pesos equals 1 CUC, and 1 CUC is $1 USD. Each Cuban citizen is assigned a ration card that allows them to buy certain items each month using Moneda Nacional. These include rice, beans, bread, small quantities of meat, soap, simple clothing, and other basic foods and amenities. There are also a number of food stands in every town that sell sandwiches, personal pizzas, coffee, and sweets in moneda nacional. Once I made the discovery that I could buy essentailly the same ham and cheese sandwich for 15 pesos that I had paid $5 CUCs the previous day, I've become a strict pesotarian. Brendy and I even managed to find a beer stand in pesos which we visited once or twice.

Any item outside of the basics - electronics, furniture, almost all alcohol - has to be paid for in CUCs. From what people have told me the ration card covers just enough to meagerly get by. Once the supplies from the ration cards is gone people have to use CUCs for everything. Unless someone works with tourists in some way (as tour guides, in restaurants, taxi drivers, and most recently homeowners with a spare room to rent) people are paid in moneda national.

People affiliated with tourism covers a decent amount of the population but is by no means a majority. So how do the rest of the people get by? Many get by with a little help from their friends (or more likely a family member) in the US. Tell 10 people on the street that you are from the US, at least 5 of them will happily exclaim they have friends or family in Miami. Even $50, an amount that most people would consider nominal spread over the course of a month, almost triples the average salary.

Finally, there are those that don't have family who can send them money and do not work in an industry that pays in CUCs, and quite frankly these people are just have a tougher time. The obvious irony is that this system has created a dichotomy anathema to Fidel's dream: the population is divided into those who have access to CUCs, and those that do not. CUCs are king, and if you don't have access to any you are going to live a significantly less comfortable life style.

 

The Bay of Pigs

During our 8-day tour we stopped at Giron beach, also known as the Bay of Pigs. While I'm by no means an expert (despite writing more or less the same Cuban Missile Crisis paper throughout middle school), here a quick account of what happened and my experiences at the museum.

 

But first, the tinniest of backgrounds. The current political structure was established when Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra overthrew Fulgencio Batista on New Years Eve, 1959. Fidel was elected president (there are elections but just the one party) and retained the position until 2008, when illness forced him to take a less active role and his brother Raul assumed the presidency. The specific details of Che's depature from Cuba are not discussed here, but he tried to lead similar communist revolutions in Africa and South America before being assassinated in Bolivia in 1967 (the CIA almost certainly helped with that one).

 

 

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was one of the US's earlier attempts at getting rid of Castro. Essentially, the CIA trained a few thousand Cuban refugees, armed them, and sent them to land on Giron beach with the promise of aerial support. The thinking was that an invasion from even a token force would incite an internal upheaval: the oppressed population would rise up and the army would turn against Fidel, overthrowing the communist regime. Turns out most of the country actually liked Castro and this uprising did not occur, there was no air support, and unsurprisingly the force was anihilated quite quickly when an entire country's army showed up to defend itself.

 

The museum commemorating the invasion was fascinating, especially the black-and-white propoganda video that was made shortly after. A dramatic 1960's theatrical score blares over a series of battle clips and long lines of prisoners marching, with the occasional victorious slogan sprinkled throughout. My favorite: the evil imperialist invaders with the world's most advanced technology were defeated by the humble peasantry equipped only with a just cause. I love the USA and am forever grateful to be an American, but we aren't the Jesus of the world: sometimes we fuck up, and this was one of our dumber foreign policy maneuvers. It was refreshing to see how another depicts its version of history, albeit with a flair of exageration.

 

 

 

Around Western Cuba in 8 Days

It's been about 2 and a half weeks in Cuba so far and it certainly is an intersting place. This post will be mostly a reccount of the activites so far with less political observation/commentary, but I'll include that on a later post.

But first, isn't it illegal for Americans to travel to Cuba? Yes and no. Obama actually legalized travel for American citizens who are at least third generation Cuban, and as my maternal grandmother is Cuban this qualified our entire family. For those less fortunate who do not have sangre cubana, it is still technically legal to travel to Cuba... you just are not allowed to spend any money. This essentially makes it illegal to come here, but tens of thousands of Americans make the trip via Mexico or Canada each year and nothing happens.

My stay in Cuba began with an 8 day tour of Western Cuba. Due to flight timing I landed the evening before the rest of my family, but they arrived the next morning and we spent the day in Havana before starting the offical tour. I'm still not quite sure how this happened but somehow I ended up in first class from Mexico City to Havana, a very welcome gift after a 3:30am wakeup and a 4 hour connection delay.

Completely by chance our entire tour was American: my family, a family from Orange County, another from New Mexico, and a teacher from Washington DC. Our guide, Dadi, was a Cuban native who spoke English with an Australian accent, and drove the crew around in our nicely air conditioned bus.

First stop was the Che museum, a 2 hour ride outside Havana and about 30 minutes from our first night in Santa Clara. Interestingly enough there are posters and slogans of Che everywhere but very few of Fidel. The relationship between Cuba, Che, and Fidel could be my graduate thesis topic so lets just note that observation and move forward.

In the evening we took an hour bus ride outside of the city to a small town famous for its Christmas Eve fireworks. Christmas has an interesting history in Cuba: after the revolution Fidel banned it and people had to work on the 25th (how was there never a grinch parody with Fidel??). When the pope visited in 1997 Christmas was reinstated and the people got their holiday back, but because there was nearly a 40 year gap it isn't that strongly celebrated. The party for Christmas Eve apparently never got canceled though and this was quite the fiesta. The fireworks were somewhere in between the size that you light off in your backyard and the ones at Disneyland, but with almost no wind and a launch pad in the center of the square we were literally doging the fallout. Would it have sucked to have been burned by firework debris? Absolutely. But I had a great time, and these are the kind of experiences that our litigeous society has for better or worse erradicated.

The next day we left for Trinidad, a colonial town that is celebrating its 500th anniversary next week (the Menlo Almanac hasn't returned my emails for a paid stipend to be their correspondent but I'm going back anyways). Most of the town is cobblestone and you can walk just about everywhere, but the town seemed big enough that you could spend a week and have enough to do. We ate Christmas dinner on the beach, and while its not quite the same as waking up with presents under the tree it was an adequate substitute.

One of the most interesting experiences of Trinidad was by far the least expected... a discoteca in a cave! $3 gets you into the place, one mojito, a bizarre 30 minute show where a group of shirtless dudes pick up a table with their teeth, and unlimited cave dancing.

Our last stop before returning to Havana was Vinales, a bucholic town noted for its tobacco farms. This required a 9-hour bus ride across half of the country which was fortunately broken up by stops in Cienfuegos and the Bay of Pigs.

Once in Vinales, the highlight was a 3 hour hike through one of the farms where we enjoyed freshly rolled cigars at the source. The hike was capped by the best piña colada I have ever tasted in some random gazebo 30 minutes into the hillside. We ate our farewell dinner with the group at a nearby organic farm where we feasted on at least 10 different meat and vegetable dishes cultivated a few meters from our picnic table.

Guided tours are admittedly not my favorite activity (pub crawls of course are an exception), but as tours go this one offered enough independence and variety that I had a good time. Other than the two nights in Havana and the night in Santa Clara we slept in the homes of local Cubans, all of which were very comfortable with a private bedroom/bathroom. Overall, a pretty solid introduction to Cuba.

 

Veracruz vs Sucre

After completing my second destination, I thought it would be interesting to compare each place I´ve been on a few categories to get a glimpse of what each offered. Considering the structure of my time in Sucre and Veracruz were significantly different, some of these comparisons won´t exactly sync. But by the end of my travels this should work for a a quick scale of the highlights. I arbitrarily chose the following categories based on what I think mattered and what I had pictures of:

Food: The Dream Team vs Angola, Alabama's football team vs. Western Kentucky St., freedom of speech in North Korea. What do these all have in common? All very one-sided affairs. That is exactly the case with Bolivian vs Mexican food. In Bolivia it is a national crime if there aren´t at least two different kinds of potatoes in every dish. I certainly enjoy potatoes, but I really don´t need to eat potato soup followed by rice, boiled potatoes, and some mashed potatoes on the side, and then do it all again the next day. Even if the food was incredible in Bolivia I don´t think it could have withstood my passion for Mexican cusine, but this wasn´t even close. My last week in Veracruz I discovered the holy grail of restaurants, an all you can eat taco buffet for $4.50. That alone should defeat all challengers, but the enchilladas, quesadillas, gorditas, empanadas, and molé dishes make this an unfair fight.

 

Snack: I´m giving this one to Sucre. I loved the cheese empanadas and enjoyed the various flavors of tamales, but the salteña is the perfect on-the-go creation. Chicken and veggies wade together in a salacious broth, gifted in a buttery, flakey, slightly sweet crust for $1. For some inexplicable reason these were only sold between the hours of 9am to 2pm; I can only assume the potato lobby is responsible for this atrocity.

Climate: Close call here but Sucre gets the edge. Veracruz was low 80s during the day, mid 60s at night with slight humidity. That´s pretty good, but the humidity made it uncomfortable to wear pants during the day (I try to avoid screaming that I´m a tourist and shorts are a bulls-eye) and at night it was still too warm to wear my favorite piece of clothing. There were also mosquitoes... enough said. Sucre was high 70s during the day, mid 50s at night with 0 humidity. I really can´t think of a better climate than that. T-shirt and khakis during the day, just warm enough at night (after a few drinks) to wear a t-shirt, but most importantly it allowed me to wear my most coveted attire... the sweater!

Music: This one is a tie. Live music wasn´t featured in either place and the music played at the bars was more or less the same. I cannot stand the Mexican music of the north that features a heavy dosage of the accordion but thankfully I only heard it sparingly.

Drinks: Also too close to call, with maybe the slightest edge to Sucre. Amazingly enough I did not have one margarita when I was in Mexico... probably because no one really drinks them there outside of all-inclusive resorts. Instead the local drink unique to Veracruz was the Torito, a thick, flavored drink fermented from sugar cane. In Mexico the common beer was Sol, a very light lager similiar to Corona. There were other, slightly darker options but nothing too spectacular. Pretty much all the beers in Sucre tasted the same but with a little more flavor, and more importantly higher alcohol content. Bolivia´s local spirit is Singani, a clear, tequila-esque liquid, and mixed with Sprite creates the Chuflay. Not my favorite beverage, but tasty enough.

Bars/clubs: This isn´t entirely fair since I went out significantly more in Sucre than in Veracruz, but Sucre wins. I had a great time when I went out on the weekends in Veracruz, but I am glad that I already had a group of people I knew to go with beforehand. The venues themselves were great in both places, but in Veracruz the people seemed less conducive to meeting strangers. Many times in Sucre I ventured out on my own and joined a group of locals. I didn´t get the same feeling in Veracruz, it felt a little more cliquey. Veracruz definitely had the better bar hours, there was no hard 3am shutdown that applied to most places in Sucre. Still, I´ll take the friendliness of strangers over the guarantee that my bar will not close at 3am.

Spanish (accent, slang, etc): Mexico wins, but it´s close. Both Mexican and Bolivian Spanish are very clear, not too fast, and use the generally accepted words for most items. Mexico wins because of its slang, specifically the usage of the word ¨wey.¨ This means absolutely nothing but I guess the closest would be ¨man¨ as in ¨hola wey¨ (hey man) or ¨pásame una cerveza wey¨ (gimme a beer, man). This had to be the most common word I heard at M-A whenever I listened to kids speaking Spanish so it was fun getting to actually use it in conversation. Plus, the Spanish teachers in Mexico were closer to my age so they were a little bit more fun to converse with.

Adventure: Sucre is the defacto winner of this category since I really did nothing except school and a few weekend trips to bars in Mexico. This category should be much more interesting once I actually start moving around to different places.

Something Random: The zebra crossing guards in Sucre win here. I guess I can understand why there are crossing guards even though there are crosswalks, but why are they dressed as zebras? The something random contender of Veracruz would be the pet crocodile of the owners of my favorite local restaurant. I had to see this one to believe it, but sure enough in the backyard there is a crocodile. Señor croc lives a leisurely lifestyle of sunbathing, but I did not confirm if he does in fact enjoy a nice scratch behind the ears.

 

 

Cookin by the Book

Another week in Veracruz has come and gone without too much fanfare. It was a quiet week at the school with only 3 students, and I decided to take advantage of the vast library to study on my own. And with a lightning fast internet connection I was able to catch up on all the highlights of a very enjoyable football Sunday.

I did continue my culinary education and learned how to make a number of delectable treats. Empanadas are a typical Mexican snack eaten in the morning or afternoon, but unlike in Bolivia you can find them just about any time of day. You probably have encountered some version of the empanada sometime in your comestible adventures, but here is how to make one Mexican style. For those unfortunate souls who have voluntarily regressed along the evolutionary spectrum, this version does not have meat.

First step, acquire the ingredients. We only need two for empanadas de queso: dough and cheese, and both can be found at the local tortillera.

 

The dough is actually produced offsite by farmers who receive some government subsidies to keep prices low. That is great for us at the school, but unfortunately the recipe is not widely known anymore and is aledgedly difficult to reproduce. I will have to count on a member of the Mexican population north of the border to have retained this national secret... I hear there might be a few in California.

Take a look at the menu and order your two ingredients, Maza and Queso Fresco. For reference, $1 is 13 pesos.

Once you have ordered, the dough is weighed, bagged, and you can be on your way.

 

Now you have your ingredients, its time to make the tortillas. Take a handfull of dough, ball it into a circle, and lightly slap it onto the middle of your circular plastic cut-out. Slowly spin the plastic circle with one hand while applying pressure to the outside of the dough with the heel of your other hand and watch your tortilla grow! This sorry excuse for a tortilla took me about 45 seconds to spin and required some emergency resuscitation from the master chef; it took her about 10 seconds to crush hers. But this is how we learn, and the good news is that even the ugly ones taste good.

Once you have your tortilla, time to add the cheese. The cheese comes in a large block but is very easy to string, a job that I most dutifully carried out.

Now its time to fold. Here's where the plastic comes in handy again, all you have to do is take hold of one side and match it together. Apply a little pressure, remove the plastic, and your empanada is ready for the frying pan (apologies for the blurry picture on this one).

 

 

Scoop that bad boy up with a spatula and place it into a frying pan generously filled with oil. Cook until things look crispy (about a minute) and try not to burn yourself as you take your delectable snack out of the pan. ¡Provecho!

 

 

 

A Few Observations

8 hours of school and afternoons spent lounging around is even less interesting to write about than living in Sucre. But here are a few thoughts on Veracruz:

This is essentially the US with slightly more dilapidated infrastructure. Walmart, Carls Jr, 4g networks, and the Hunger Games can be found throughout the city. There are absolutely no foreign tourists... other than the students at the school I have seen 2 English-speakers. I had read that this was not a touristy place and the people who did come were mostly Mexican tourists, but for a beach city with 500,000+ people it is a pleasant surprise that English is all but absent.

 I never stopped believing in you big guy

The food is awesome. It took me 7 days before I finally ate a non-Mexican dish and it is looking like another 7 days before I need break. Part of that is Mexican food has always been my favorite, but there are just so many different meats and salsas that I could eat tacos every meal for a month and it would be a slightly different taste. Mix in empanadas, quesadillas, picadas, chile rellenos, and mole and I am set for life.

 Fresh tacos al pastor!

Finally, there are no police here... just the millitary. I haven't done my own reading, but from what the teachers have told me there were some issues with drugs here a few years ago. So the government replaced the municipal force with the millitary and now there are no problems. You will often see pickup trucks full of soliders equipped with machine guns patroling the boulevard flashing their lights, but I have yet to see them actually do anything. And they are very polite, I usually say hi when I walk by a group and get a friendly response. From what I have experienced so far this is an incredibly safe city and I have no problem with their presence.

 ¡Hola!

Bienvenidos A Veracruz

After a week hiatus for a quick turkey recharge in the US I'm back on the wagon. My next destination is Veracruz, a coastal city in southeast Mexico.

I'll be studying Spanish at the aptly named Language Immersion Institute. Run by an American couple, the school takes a slightly different approach to teaching, emphasizing conversation and activities rather than the traditional lecture format. I found the school by googling Spanish immersion and Mexican cooking: Mexican food has always been my favorite, so I figured I might as well learn how to cook as part of my year of self enrichment.

Everything happens at the school: classes, room, and board. The median age for students here is 49 and as expected I am the youngest one here, but many of the staff are my age and with an early morning wakeup it is probably for the best that there is less of a temptation to stay out past my parents' bedtime.

And here you really are immersed in Spanish. My day began at 7:30 for breakfast with the students/teachers followed by an hour of cooking: today we prepared two different kinds of salsa and a flan.

Next was an hour of conversation and reading one-on-one, followed by an hour walk around the city with my professora. Everyone reconvenes for lunch, and formal classes finally end with another 2 hours of conversation in the afternoon for essentially 8 hours of straight Spanish. After that there is a teacher assigned to hang out on the couch until 9pm for anyone that wants to continue to practice, and there are evening excusions a few nights each week.

I honestly cannot think of a better set-up for Spanish immersion. Everyone has their own room and bathroom with AC, there is high speed wifi throughout the school (same speed as home), you get to eat delicious home-cooked Mexican food, and you are forced to speak Spanish for a minimum of 8 hours each day. But aside from the physical comforts, it is the emphasis on conversation that really wins me over. At this point in my Spanish development I've learned the fundamental aspects of grammar, it is now all about speaking. I also appreciate that the school is half a block from the ocean.