Reader Alfredo sent me the link to this piece from the UK’s Times Online. In it Irish novelist Adrian McKinty describes his surreal experience in Cuba. It can best be summarized with this one sentence which the times selected as the headline:
Any book in Hemingway’s library for $200
McKinty also sheds like on Cuba’s child prostitution industry:
I have been in cities which have a bad reputation for child prostitution, but neither Phnom Penh nor Bangkok can hold a candle to Havana in December. In south east Asia the perverts at least have the decency to be furtive about their activities. In Havana however the Canadian, Scandanavian and German males who come to this tropical island to commit statutory rape on mostly black and mulatto girls (and boys) have absolutely no shame.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole sad thing.
One of the most horrific things about the tyranny is how Cuba’s cultural patrimony has been pilfered: sold off at Sotheby’s and Christies, or as in this case, sold off [or attempted to be sold off] to tourists by sub-human, greedy government aparatchiks and ignoramuses hoping to pocket some money. People like that guy who tried to sell of that book deserve a slow painful death!
Don’t expect the pro-Castro American Library Association to complain.
The guy hit the nail on the head regarding prostitution. Walking along the Malecon after dark can be one of the most anger-inducing experiences for those with any amount of morals.
It is . . . in a word – subhuman.