Breaking free from the yoke of tyranny in Cuba one mojito at a time
When the Obama administration relaxed Cuba travel restrictions for American citizens nearly four years ago, the reasoning given was to engage in "cultural exchanges" with the Cuban people and help them finally break free of the yoke of tyranny imposed upon them by the Castro dictatorship. Just how those "cultural exchanges" would accomplish that was never really explained, but after these past few years, it has become clear how the White House thinks this will happen: One mojito at a time.
At the Huffington Post, travel writer and guide editor of GuidePal, Tyler Wetherall, aka Our Girl in Havana, gives first-time American visitors to Cuba the where-to-go and what-to-do advice that is sure to bring freedom and liberty to Cuba and end the more than five decades long dictatorship of the Castro regime quicker than you can say"two mojitos, por favor."
In the interest of brevity, I have taken the trouble of giving our readers a brief synopsis of Ms. Wetherall's Cuba itinerary for a two-week, freedom and liberty instilling, culture exchanging, democracy building visit to the communist island of Cuba:
Day 1-3 - Havana: Eat, drink, play, and dance.
Day 4-6 - Trinidad: Drink, swim, hike, and lay out on the beach.
Day 7-8 - Santa Clara: Che hero-worship, drink, party at the nightclubs.
Day 9-13 - Cayo Las Brujas: Lay out on the beach and drink.
There you have it, my friends: the road to freedom for Cubans, one mojito and one drunk apathetic American tourist at a time. Dios nos salve.
Cayo Las Brujas - Momo on Flickr
We can complain about this shit all we want, but it will simply be ignored as long as enough Cubans (or Cubanoids) are doing what amounts to the same thing, more or less. Needless to say, and for obvious reasons, Cubanoids will now be taken as the normative updated reference point by all the usual suspects, the useful idiots and the simply ignorant and indifferent. They fit the desired narrative much better than “those people.” The latter, regardless of age, will be painted the same way Oliphant smeared them in his infamous 2008 cartoon: as geriatric or outmoded cranks who still pine for Batista. Cubanoids will NOT condemn this kind of tourism because they don’t want any kind of restriction, since conceivably that might, by extension, restrict their own activities. So, we go back to the same old problems: lack of dignity, lack of seriousness, lack of vision, the focus on instant gratification, and blowing off everything except the purely personal and immediate. I know it’s a downer and many don’t want to hear it, but no country self-destructs unless there is SERIOUS dysfunction in a large enough number of its people. That was true of Cuba, and (God forbid) it may prove true of the US. Unfortunately, a key feature of such dysfunction is that the afflicted cannot or will not recognize it as such, which means that nothing is done about it, and if they're confronted, they simply get defensive, dig in their heels and may actually get worse. Just remember: shit happens because it can.