moresueandstevestravels: CUBA: 12-27 JANUARY 2017: JIBACOA

'The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit' : (Wim Wenders)

'When life gives you lemons, squeeze them in people's eyes' : (Cuban proverb)

'I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country': (Fidel Castro)

'50 years of isolating Cuba has failed to promote democracy': (Barack Obama)

December 2016 and we were looking for some Winter Sun and to visit somewhere interesting and new to us. Initial ideas of the West Indies and /or cruising were discounted for various reasons. Then we hit upon Cuba: various friends and work colleagues had been and all had sung its praises.
Little did we know that the day after booking, Fidel Castro was to die. Midway through our stay Donald Trump was scheduled to be inaugurated as US President, and his bellicose and nationalist campaign rhetoric left it open as to how he might view this new international turnabout! Would we even know, cut off, as we expected to be, from mainstream non-Cuban news sources? (In the event, CNN was freely available in our hotel as was, though at a price, access to the uncensored BBC website.)

HISTORY

On 27 October 1492 Christopher Columbus landed in the NE of Cuba, staying only 7 days and making another brief visit 2 years later. It was not until 1509 that the Spanish sent the first colonial expedition. By the end of the century almost all the indigenous people had been slaughtered and Spain was losing interest in an island whose gold reserves were now exhausted. As Spain's empire in Central and South America grew, however, Cuban ports, especially Havana, became vital stop overs on the sea route to and from Europe.
With the widespread use of African slaves, sugar and tobacco farming increased (as did contraband and smuggling) but was neither exploited to its full potential nor regulated until after 1713 when the new Bourbon regime in Spain sought to step up their monopoly on trade. While production increased, Cuba's economy stagnated (as it was forced to trade exclusively with Spain) , and Free Trade was not secured until the short-lived British seizure of Havana in 1762. Sugar production boomed and by 1776 the newly independent US was trading directly with Cubans.
Cuba took advantage of the 1791 revolution in Haiti to become the largest sugar producer in the region, and by the first half of the 19th century there were over 350,000 slaves on the island. But with this came increased slave rebellions culminating in the abolition of slavery in 1886, only to be replaced by the oppressive apprentice system.
The American Revolution was the precursor of a wave of Wars of Independence that swept across mainland Spanish America. Cuban rebels had to rely on American assistance in the Spanish-American War of 1898: Spain relinquished control of Cuba but was replaced by American military occupation. An American-devised constitution was introduced in 1901 establishing a Cuban republic but giving America a lease on the naval base at Guantanamo Bay and, via the Platt Amendment, the permanent right to intervene in Cuban affairs should the independence of the country come under threat. American investors quickly moved in to monopolise the economy.
The first 2 decades of the pseudo-republic saw 4 corrupt Cuban presidents and numerous American military interventions. The economy suffered severely during the Depression and the dictatorship of Machado was overthrown by Batista in 1933. He remained in power over a regime renowned for its violent repression, corruption and self-indulgent decadence, until the takeover by Fidel Castro in 1959.

MEMORIES JIBACOA

travel.saga.co.uk/holidays/destinations/caribbean/cuba/jibacoa/memories-jibacoa.

Jibacoa lies in the north of Mayabeque province around 90 minutes drive from Havana.

If the pictures suggest this is little short of paradise, they are right! Built in 1999, the hotel has been Canadian-owned for the past 4 years. We met a couple who had been 17 (!) times and plenty of others who had been several times. We could see why, though the 4 hour flight from Canada and lower prices than Florida must also have been an incentive for many.

The Great Snorkelling Adventure

A short distance from the beach lie coral reefs teeming with marine life. The hotel provides snorkel equipment free of charge and Steve was keen to have a go.

The first hurdle was getting the flippers on .....

......we didn't find out till later that it's best to walk backwards into the water.

Mission accomplished! Steve saw some spectacular fish but unfortunately as Sue cannot swim she was only able to take his word for it until we met Brenda, a Canadian who was snorkelling nearby using an underwater camera. She kindly emailed us her pictures on her return to Ottawa.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10158039582410447.1073742091.831650446&type=1&l=c77cc57089

More Successful Aquatic Feats!

The evening entertainment on offer was superb. Lots of Cuban music, dance, costumes and spectacle, all of a very high standard.
Sunday nights were a particular treat as there was an aquatic cabaret. The pictures don't really give full credit to it.

Neighbourhood Walk:

The hotel offered some daytime entertainment too, including a guided morning walk around the area bordering the hotel.

It was a very good chance to see a little of 'real' Cuba and to get some idea of the changes that had already taken place since Fidel Castro had handed over the presidency to his brother.
We were assured that this road-side restaurant was well worth a visit, offering lobster, salads and a drink for the local equivalent of £15. (We, Felicity and Babs asked our Saga Rep. Ossie to book us a table for 4 for the next Sunday evening.)

It is privately owned but must have been given a government licence, or equivalent, to operate as it would never otherwise have been able to guarantee its food supply in a country where there is a system of weekly food rations available only in designated shops. (Even on the night we ate there they had no potatoes.) The waiter went into panic-mode too when he could not at first locate our booking: clearly there were strictly enforced rules to ensure the food allocated to establishments like this went only onto diners' plates, not into the black market.
Private property ownership has in the past couple of years been introduced in Cuba, though when we asked questions about how this works in practice (eg can you sell at a profit?) we never got a complete answer about whether they really owned a house or merely leased it from the government which we were told still owns all land collectively in the name of the People.
Whichever, there was clearly some modernisation work being carried out on a number of homes.

There was also a lot of private enterprise. This house was offering hand-made hats for sale at £5 equivalent. Steve couldn't get one that fitted just right so after a quick flourish of a tape measure he was assured that it would be ready for collection at 5pm that afternoon. And it was!

A bit further along the road we were taken to a local 'farm'.

It looked pretty run-down and we were told that, like many Cubans trying to eke out a living on the land, the owners had given up. After 4 years of work, continually delayed by unavailability of building materials, they had finally completed the construction of a new room in their roof space which they were now renting out. This was providing as much if not more income as the farm had done, supplemented by turkeys

and pigs.

This one was no stranger to posing for the camera.

Apparently the alligator was a pet.

Why is relatively so little food grown in Cuba when ex-farms like this are clearly fertile?

We were given an array of reasons: plots of land apportioned after the revolution in 1959 proving to be too small to support a family but, until recently, an inability to buy more land; disincentive to invest in machinery, livestock, seed etc. because of the random and haphazard supply of spare parts, fertilisers etc.; the pull of the towns and cities and the burgeoning tourist industry for young people; a cultural reluctance to work on the land; the fact that Cuba has never fed herself as the investment made in the past was in the cash crops of sugar and tobacco.
The other explanation that was always given is the Embargo imposed by America after the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Obama in 2014 went a long way in opening up diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba but it is only a beginning, and may well not be built upon by the Trump administration. If the Embargo was to bring Castro down it clearly failed. If it was to teach Cuba a harsh lesson it would never forget it worked to a large extent. Many of the Cubans we spoke to were sceptical, though, believing that it was often used as an excuse to cover up the incompetence of a regime that could/would not accept that the world political landscape had changed irrevocably with the fall of the USSR.

Cars:

No introduction to a Cuban stay could ignore the fantastic cars we saw on the roads during our time in Cuba. There's real irony in the fact that the American embargo has resulted in a living museum dedicated to the best of American automobiles of the 1950s!